Vivek Chibber. Postcolonial Theory and Specter of Capital. London; Verso, 2013. Pp. xii, 306. US $29.95. The call of Subaltern Studies Project, formed by Ranajit Guha in 1982 and influenced by Marxist historical practice, to recover a bottom up historiography or from below has had an important influence postcolonial studies. In his Postcolonial Theory and Specter of Capital, Vivek Chibber recognises that [t]he truly innovative dimension of Subaltern Studies, then, was to marry popular history to analysis of colonial and postcolonial (6). Indeed, focus how individuals and groups on ground rather than their political and social elites have experienced capitalism has moved beyond India and other parts of South Asia to postcolonial world more broadly. Chibber opens with assertion that my central concern in this book is to examine framework that postcolonial studies has generated for historical analysis and, in particular, analysis of what was once called Third (5; emphasis in original). Taken as a whole, study argues that Subalternist theorists do not answer very question they raise--namely, how entry of capitalism into colonial world affected evolution of its cultural and political institutions (25). The first chapter sets out main argument of Postcolonial, which is that non-West should be conceptualised and understood through an application of same analysis and evaluation that is used to understand West. (I use terms the and the nonWest throughout this review because they are ones Chibber himself uses.) Chibber asserts: [i]nstead of being entirely different forms of society, West and non-West ... turn out to be variants of same species. Further, if they are indeed variations of same basic form, theories generated by European experience would not have to be overhauled or jettisoned, but simply modified. (23) Chibber draws and disputes works of Subaltern Studies theorists, primarily Ranajit Guhas Dominance without Hegemony (1997), Dipesh Chakrabarty's Provincializing Europe (2000), and Partha Chaterjee's Nationalist Thought and Colonial World (1986). Although Subaltern Studies has been criticised since its establishment over thirty years ago, Postcolonial departs from existing treatments (20) of Subaltern Studies because the claims for a fundamental difference with reference to capital, power, and agency are all irredeemably flawed.... The main thrust of book, then, is to elucidate failure of arguments from difference, so central to postcolonial theory (22). As such, Chibber challenges what he perceives to be two principal claims of Subaltern Studies, claims widely accepted and deployed throughout postcolonial theory. First is claim of difference, idea that there are very profound disparities in culture, politics, and sociology of West and non-West during colonial and postcolonial periods. Second is critique of Eurocentrism, claim that theories originating from West complicate and confuse instead of illuminate non-West by conveying onto it models that are inaccurate and misleading. …