Making of the Popular: Production of Culture and Discourses in Bangladesh

This book is firmly positioned in a defined location and very much aware of the intellectual-political meaning of the Global South. At the same time, it never moves away from the complex understanding of contemporary international scholarship. With the mix, Manosh Chowdhury provides a smooth yet critical reading of events in Bangladesh. He has a unique style of drawing the bigger picture with subtle nuances and punching with some 'un-academic' tones in academic writing. This book challenges the dominant notion of 'popular' in manifold forums and does it with some nuanced mastery.

Dr. Vesna Stanković Pejnović
Institute for Political Studies, Belgrade, Serbia


Manosh Chowdhury is an intellectual flaneur, inhabiting a formal role as a professor of anthropology, and a renegade life in campus activism, cinema talk, and pulp fiction. Here he probes the construction of the "popular" in Bangladesh through elite networks, multinational flows, political arrangements, and media bricolage. This book takes an anti-romantic view of the birthing of "popular," locating it within a power struggle between sentiment, institutions, and nationalisms.

Prof. Dr. Naeem Mohaiemen
Visual Arts Department, School of Arts
Columbia University