Tariq Ali

My research and teaching focus on nineteenth and twentieth century South Asia and global histories of capital. I am particularly interested in how the material and everyday lives of ordinary men and women are shaped by transnational circulations of commodities and capital. I explored how global capitalism shaped peasant life and society in the Bengal delta during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuryin my first book, A Local History of Global Capital: Jute and Peasant Life in the Bengal Delta, (Princeton University Press, 2018. I am continuing this exploration in my current project, an examination of how decolonization, independence, and the rise of the nation-state restructured the working lives of peasants, boatmen, itinerant traders, and small businessmen in post-colonial East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh) in the 1950s and 1960s.