ism and Political Identity in Southeast Asia.

lamented Anderson’s notion of modular and de-rivative character of nationalisms in the post-colonial world. “If nationalisms in the rest of the world”, Chaterjee wryly asked, “have to choose their imagined communities from certain ‘modular ’ forms already made available to them by Europe and the Americas, what do they have left to imagine? ” : . The echoes of this trenchant question reverberated as I read Antho-ny Reid’s Imperial Alchemy: Nationalism and Po-litical Identity in Southeast Asia. The way how this book is framed conjures up the spectre of doubt as to whether the field has moved far enough in the past two decades away from the spirit of this approach to nationalism