Colonial Subjects - by Ramon Grosfoguel (Paperback)

About the Book

"This book is a substantial contribution to the historical and interpretive sociology of the modern world. It is written as both a critique of the modernist paradigm, and as a reinterpretation of the contribution of Puerto Rico to the making of the modern world from a 'decentered' perspective."--Philip McMichael, author of "Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective"
"Grosfoguel's grounding in the complexities of the Puerto Rican past and present provides us with original and generative scholarship that requires a new self-reflexive approach to knowledge and nationalism, to colonialism and capitalism, to citizenship and subjectivity. Within ethnic studies, Grosfoguel's approach is a crucial contribution to the progress of the field beyond ethnic particularism and toward the identification and understanding of the broader social forces that create social differences and give them their determinate social meanings."--George Lipsitz, author of "American Studies in a Moment of Danger "
"Grosfoguel's book should become the definitive work on Puerto Rican migratory circuits."--Jose David Saldivar, author of "Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies"
"Grosfoguel discovers the relationship between the coloniality of power, the migratory movement to the Caribbean, the formation of new global cities like Miami, and tendencies toward a new geo-strategic configuration of a global scale."--Anibal Quijano, Professor of Sociology, Binghamton University
"In this exciting look at Puerto Rico from a world-systems perspective, Grosfoguel examines colonialism with a fresh theoretical eye."--Immanuel Wallerstein, author of "The Modern World-System"

Book Synopsis

Colonial Subjects is the first book to use a combination of world-system and postcolonial approaches to compare Puerto Rican migration with Caribbean migration to both the United States and Western Europe. Ramón Grosfoguel provides an alternative reading of the world-system approach to Puerto Rico's history, political economy, and urbanization processes. He offers a comprehensive and well-reasoned framework for understanding the position of Puerto Rico in the Caribbean, the position of Puerto Ricans in the United States, and the position of colonial migrants compared to noncolonial migrants in the world system.

From the Back Cover

"This book is a substantial contribution to the historical and interpretive sociology of the modern world. It is written as both a critique of the modernist paradigm, and as a reinterpretation of the contribution of Puerto Rico to the making of the modern world from a 'decentered' perspective."--Philip McMichael, author of Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective

"Grosfoguel's grounding in the complexities of the Puerto Rican past and present provides us with original and generative scholarship that requires a new self-reflexive approach to knowledge and nationalism, to colonialism and capitalism, to citizenship and subjectivity. Within ethnic studies, Grosfoguel's approach is a crucial contribution to the progress of the field beyond ethnic particularism and toward the identification and understanding of the broader social forces that create social differences and give them their determinate social meanings."--George Lipsitz, author of American Studies in a Moment of Danger

"Grosfoguel's book should become the definitive work on Puerto Rican migratory circuits."--Jose David Saldívar, author of Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies

"Grosfoguel discovers the relationship between the coloniality of power, the migratory movement to the Caribbean, the formation of new global cities like Miami, and tendencies toward a new geo-strategic configuration of a global scale."--Anibal Quijano, Professor of Sociology, Binghamton University

"In this exciting look at Puerto Rico from a world-systems perspective, Grosfoguel examines colonialism with a fresh theoretical eye."--Immanuel Wallerstein, author of The Modern World-System

Review Quotes

"Grosfogule's grounding in the complexities of the Puerto Rican past and present provides us with original and generative scholarship that requires a new self-reflexive approach to knowledge and nationalism, to colonialism and capitalism, to citizenship and subjectivity. Within ethnic studies, Grosfoguel's approach is a crucial contribution to the progress of the field beyond ethnic particularism and toward the identification and understanding of the broader social forces that create social differences and give them their determinate social meanings."

In a world of increasing globalization, where concepts such as developed and developing nations no longer hold, Grosfoguel points to the inadequacy of these concepts in the social sciences and in cultural studies. With its vanguard approach and wealth of new information, Colonial Subjects is a powerful demonstration of how the logic of geopolitics frames many migratory outcomes and how the cultural impact of colonial status lingers in contemporary stereotypes of migrant culture and migrants' own identities.

About the Author

Ramón Grosfoguel is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and coeditor of The Modern/Colonial/Capitalist World-System in the Twentieth Century (2002), Migration, Transnationalization, and Race in a Changing New York (2001), and Puerto Rican Jam: Rethinking Colonialism and Nationalism (1997). He is a research associate of the Maison des Science de l'Homme in Paris and the Fernand Braudel Center in New York.