Description
Book SynopsisPakistan at Seventy-Five investigates the countrys multi-layered issues in the context of a post-colonial polity marked by diversity, heterogeneity, stratification and volatility. This wide-ranging discourse engages with diverse formal and informal actors as markers of identity, historical events and social conditions, as well as global geo-political and neo-colonial centreperiphery relations that shape narratives about the nation and the constructions of a sense of belonging. The editors and contributors utilise multi-faceted and multi-layered approaches, focusing on (1) identities, and questions of diversity and pluralism; (2) horizontal and vertical technologies and geographies of power related to questions of trust, legitimacy, participation, and governance; and (3) the distribution, deprivation and vulnerability of sociocultural, political, and human resources. Studying Pakistan has been subject to different approaches, including decolonial, indigenous, and feminist perspectives. This volume draws out alternative epistemological and methodological viewpoints: the insideroutsider conundrum, centreperiphery asymmetries, hegemonic discourses, and practices within Pakistans national/international academy. The chapter contributions are the outcome of a unique interdisciplinary research cooperation at Quaid-i-Azam University, focussing on early career researchers. Presenting a multiplicity of voices and trajectories, Pakistan at Seventy-Five provides new input to existing debates and directions for future scholarly endeavour. Contributors: Aftab Nasir, Andrea Fleschenberg, Arslan Waheed, Salman Rafi Sheikh, Sanaa Alimia, Sarah Holz, Sohaib Bodla, Wajeeha Tahir.
Trade Review‘One of the world’s most inegalitarian and unevenly developed societies, Pakistan remains in search of a viable nation-building project more than seven decades after coming into existence. This volume incisively captures logics of statecraft and accumulation in both centres and peripheries as well as the struggles of youth, working classes and academic-activists to forge a viable social contract and with it, a more just future.’ Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, Assistant Professor, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan
‘This is a fascinating and brilliant collection of essays decentring knowledge production of the nation and state building in Pakistan. Illustrating a multi-level, multilayer matrix of knowledge production opening a multiplicity of voices and transversal and intersecting identities that are rarely heard in Pakistan. This is even more remarkable given the difficult research terrain that Pakistani social sciences finds itself in.’ Yunas Samad, Professor South Asian Studies / Director Political Science LUMS, Lahore, Pakistan, Emeritus Professor University of Bradford, UK
Table of ContentsSeries Editor’s Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Nation-building in Pakistan: An Outline of Narratives and Academic Discussions - Sarah Holz
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Development Discourses and Urban Poor: A Case Study of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) and Katchi Abadis of Islamabad - Arslan Waheed
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English: An Advantage or a Barrier? Reproduction of Discourses of Inequality through Education - Aftab Nasir
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‘Afghan, Pakistani, or Both?’ How Afghan Migrants Are Reshaping Identity in Pakistan and the Diaspora - Sanaa Alimia
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Exploring Identity through Episodic Interviews: Conceptions, Perceptions and Negotiations among Students of Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad - Wajeeha Tahir
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Contestation, Cooperation and Consensus: The Council of Islamic Ideology as a Platform for Consensus Building? - Sarah Holz
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Ideology and Identity: Pakistan’s Ideological Engineering and Baloch Nationalism - Salman Rafi Sheikh
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Experiencing Control of a Post-Colonial Garrison State: An Appraisal of Nation Building and Resistance in Gilgit-Baltistan - Sohaib Bodla
Conclusion.
Reflecting Critical Knowledge Production and Social Sciences within an (Inter-) National, Decentred Research Cooperation on ‘Ideas, Issues and Questions of Nation-building in Pakistan’ - Andrea Fleschenberg
The Editors and Contributors
Index
