- Social Repair, Disaster Recovery, Humanitarianism, Pakistan, Visual Research, Resistance (Social), and 31 moreHumanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief, Humanitarian Intervention, Anthropology of Development, Disaster Culture, Disaster Studies, Anthropology of Violence, Critical Ecology, Environmental Humanities, Social Recovery, Social Resilience, 2010 Pakistan Floods, 2005 Kashmir Earthquake, Anthropology of War, International Development, Social Suffering, Natural Disasters, Disaster, Fieldwork in Anthropology, Crisis/disaster Management, Kashmir, Critical Development Studies, South Asia, Everyday Life, Islam, Himalayas, Western Himalaya, Anthropology of Disaster, Anthropology of Social Repair, Kashmir Conflict, Post-Structuralism, and Critical Disaster Studiesedit
- I am a transdisciplinary scholar of disaster and conflict, interested in how people imagine and claim their worlds in... moreI am a transdisciplinary scholar of disaster and conflict, interested in how people imagine and claim their worlds in the wake of colonial rule and environmental ruin while in the shadows of empire. Questioning disciplinary norms within disaster studies and the carceral logics of South Asia, my book "Atmospheric Violence: Disaster and Repair in Kashmir" (contemporary ethnography series at the University of Pennsylvania Press), foregrounds disasters as cascading forms of violence to examine living with/in dystopia as dailiness in the disputed territory of Kashmir and its continuity with Northern Pakistan. The book—a creative ethnography—focuses on violence in the longue durée and shows that disasters are rarely definitive ruptures of some coherent lifeworld but part and parcel of the ongoing labor of making life viable.
I work alongside international development, humanitarian, and human rights organizations, linking research with policy, practice, and activism. Prior to joining the University of Manchester, I held research fellowships at the University of Toronto and the University of Victoria, and served as a Lecturer in Global Challenges at Brunel University London. I received my Ph.D. in critical disaster studies and MA in community-engaged disaster response from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.edit
Available from Penn Press:
https://www.pennpress.org/9781512823615/atmospheric-violence/
https://www.pennpress.org/9781512823615/atmospheric-violence/
Research Interests: Southeast Asian Studies, Violence, Border Studies, Disaster Studies, Pakistan, and 11 moreEthnography (Research Methodology), Experimental Ethnography, Affect, Kashmir, Decolonization, Disaster, Decolononizing Research Methodologies, Line of Control, creative ethnography, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, and Pakistan administered Kashmir
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What can foraging, cooking, and eating reveal about the conflict in Kashmir? Can they be considered a mode of study? In this essay, through the entanglements of food (and a bloated stomach), I offer a relational praxis that is deeply... more
What can foraging, cooking, and eating reveal about the conflict in Kashmir? Can they be considered a mode of study? In this essay, through the entanglements of food (and a bloated stomach), I offer a relational praxis that is deeply felt, savoured, corporeal. Food-its preparation, eating, sharing-provides a different scale for intercepting the conflict in Kashmir, a disputed territory shaped by securitised geopolitical narratives. Small, evanescent stories structured around food offer glimpses of the worlds that take root during violence in the longue durée. These affective swirls illuminate the saturating of violence, its ineffable textures and tonalities, which are difficult to approximate otherwise. Within the push and pull of food lie traces of everyday acts of sovereignty and refusal that do not readily map onto a syntax of action. Telling different stories about Kashmir, such as through food, can offer new understandings of what is at stake while allowing us to feel coherent with the world as encountered.
Research Interests: Violence, Research Ethics, Border Studies, Qualitative methodology, Sovereignty, and 15 moreQualitative Research, Borderlands Studies, Theories of Sovereignty, Refusal, Kashmir, Ethnographic Writing, Post-Positivism, Cooking, Borderlands, Eating, Kashmir Conflict, Anthropology of Everyday Life, Line of Control, creative ethnography, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir
What openings are created if environmental violence is placed at the heart of the study of Kashmir? What might an attention to the absorption of ecological decay, ruin, and theft in the everyday reveal? The chapter is set in the... more
What openings are created if environmental violence is placed at the heart of the study of Kashmir? What might an attention to the absorption of ecological decay, ruin, and theft in the everyday reveal? The chapter is set in the mountainscapes of the Neelum valley in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. It weaves together residents' entanglements with conservationists, forest guards, and wildlife officers to illuminate the mutual absorption of the social, environmental, and political to bring to the fore the full range of violence at play and possibilities of ethical life therein. The people of Neelum insist on reparative readings of the environment as a site of abundance, potentiality, and intimacy as opposed to only scarcity, danger, and decline.
Research Interests: Ethnography, Sovereignty, South Asia, Pakistan, Environmental Politics, and 12 moreRefusal, State Politics, Kashmir, Decolonization, Nature Conservation, People & Nature Consrvation, Decolonial Studies, Environmental Violence, Environmental justice and sovereignty, Neelum Valley, Line of Control, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir
What about insāniyat (humanity)? Or put differently, how are morality and ethics compelled and shaped in the pahars (mountainscapes) of Kashmir? Insāniyat is an emotion and ethics that expresses interdependencies between people.... more
What about insāniyat (humanity)? Or put differently, how are morality and ethics compelled and shaped in the pahars (mountainscapes) of Kashmir? Insāniyat is an emotion and ethics that expresses interdependencies between people. Insāniyat is moral and ethical proclivity. It is not enforced by an external authority but inheres in human encounters. I explore the question of insāniyat with the help of Qari Safir, a village Imam in the pahars of Neelum valley of Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Devoted to the circulation of an Islamic-informed integrity of life, I read Qari Safir’s aspirations for himself and his community as extensions of wider struggles for Kashmir. I juxtapose his strivings to regain and nurture insāniyat with the multiple forms of violence which shape his life. Qari Safir helps us appreciate moral and ethical striving as a political project, and his work towards an imagined, utopic destination (where insāniyat is commonplace) as emblematic of Kashmiri futurities which are insistences for something more—both within and outside the realm of possibility and articulation. Insāniyat, as a lens, helps illuminate moral and ethical striving in a way that does not lend itself only in relation to state-based violence or directional responses to it. This, in turn, has the potential to open conversations on decolonial, rather than only postcolonial, notions of sovereignty. Through the use of narrative, parallel storylines, photographs, and recipes, the paper brings into purview the diffuse nature of violence in Kashmir’s pahars and its saturation of life therein. It attempts to think about Kashmir and its people on their own terms. In doing so, it pays attention to the ethical, ontological, and epistemological aspects of thinking and writing. In its attentiveness to ethnographic emergence, the paper contributes to the creation of diverse epistemic and discursive spaces where Kashmir (and Kashmiris) are not diminished by available language.
Research Interests: Ethics, Political Theory, Violence, Ethnography, Poststructuralism, and 15 morePakistan, Islam, Anthropology of Borders, Post-Structuralism, Decolonial Thought, Affect, Kashmir, Borderlands, Muslims, Borders and Borderlands, Modernity/coloniality/decoloniality, Decoloniality, Northern Areas of Pakistan, Decolonial Ethnography, and Line of Control
The Line of Control arbitrarily bifurcates Neelum valley, Kashmir into Pakistan and India. While the border attempts to constrain and categorize, the daily movements and flows of human and more-than-human bodies via " unofficial " routes... more
The Line of Control arbitrarily bifurcates Neelum valley, Kashmir into Pakistan and India. While the border attempts to constrain and categorize, the daily movements and flows of human and more-than-human bodies via " unofficial " routes and routines generate an understanding of Kashmir that is not dependent on geopolitics. Neelum as sculpted and carved by the masculine gaze such as those of the nation-state and humanitarians-indicates closure. But the intrusion of interconnected bodies through the valley's vast landscapes suggest a continuous reworking and reopening of its borders. These mobilities are stitched in the material inconveniences and intimacies of daily life in the valley. They are sustained by affective entanglements between human and more-than-human bodies constituting mutual processes of emplacement that are paradoxically unbounded and generative. In these movements and flows are analytical and philological opportunities to articulate fully formed visions of Kashmir. But this necessitates the location of theory and methodology as mutually constitutive within our literary genres (not outside of them) to elaborate narrative writing as praxis.
Research Interests: Political Geography and Geopolitics, Border Studies, Narrative, South Asian Studies, South Asia, and 22 morePolitics, Pakistan, Mountain communities, Anthropology of Borders, Political Geography, Borderlands Studies, Borders, Kashmir, Borders and Frontiers, Territory, Critical Ethnography, Borderlands, Border Regions, Borders and Borderlands, Azad Kashmir, Kashmir Conflict, Northern Pakistan, The Valley of Kashmir, Pahari Literature, Narrative Politics, Neelum Valley, and critical kashmir studies
This piece is part of APLA’s newest Speaking Justice to Power Series, which focuses on Kashmir and marks the one-year anniversary of the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A of the constitution (August 5, 2019).
Research Interests: Anthropology, Violence, Ethnography, Border Studies, South Asian Studies, and 14 moreConflict, South Asia, Pakistan, Borders, Kashmir, Borders and Frontiers, Coloniality, Decolonization, Borders and Borderlands, Kashmir Conflict, Jammu and Kashmir, Northern Pakistan, SPECIAL STATUS FOR KASHMIR, and Line of Control
As Kashmir faces new challenges, our forms of allyship must also evolve. Perhaps we can learn some lessons from its kitchens.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Border Studies, Sociology of Food and Eating, South Asian Studies, Anthropology of Food, and 12 moreCritical Race Theory, South Asia, Pakistan, India, Kashmir, Borders and Frontiers, Himalayas, Borders and Borderlands, Azad Kashmir, Kashmir Conflict, Critical Anthropology, and Allyship
In Indian-administered Kashmir, the Indian government is using tourism as a tactic to strengthen its colonial control of the region.
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Although the United Nations has called for a global ceasefire during the pandemic, Kashmiris are bracing for a new wave of violence as India accelerates its settler-colonial ambitions.
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Review of Ather Zia. Resisting Disappearance: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism in Kashmir, University of Washington Press, 2019, pp. 267.
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Current trends in humanitarian accountability are unpacked through the examination of an accountability system put in place after the 2010 monsoon floods in Pakistan. Humanitarian accountability, when narrowly understood as a technical... more
Current trends in humanitarian accountability are unpacked through the examination of an accountability system put in place after the 2010 monsoon floods in Pakistan. Humanitarian accountability, when narrowly understood as a technical and procedural tool, can undermine local self-advocacy efforts, silence community dissent and supress broader equity claims. Reframing humanitarian accountability as a political and ethical project can inspire innovation, support frontline aid workers, and ignite the radical revisioning of the humanitarian contract itself.
Research Interests: Humanitarianism, Accountability, Pakistan, Humanitarian Intervention, Disaster Response, and 10 moreHumanitarian Emergency Aid, Aid effectiveness, International Aid and Development, Floods, Technocracy, Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief, 2010 Pakistan Floods, Humanitarian Accountability, Ethics of Humanitarian Intervention, and Critical Disaster Studies
I explore the life of Chandni bibi; resident of a remote Himalayan valley in Northern Pakistan and her navigation of the 2005 Kashmir and Northern-Areas Earthquake, which killed 73,000 people and affected 5.1 million. Contrary to the... more
I explore the life of Chandni bibi; resident of a remote Himalayan valley in Northern Pakistan and her navigation of the 2005 Kashmir and Northern-Areas Earthquake, which killed 73,000 people and affected 5.1 million. Contrary to the claims of her family, Chandni insists that the earthquake caused her to become blind, which she describes as the “taking away of illumination.” Reading her experiences of the earthquake against the features of daily life (home, family, spirituality, winter season), I argue that Chandni embodies the social experience of the earthquake in her blindness, where bodily memory, biography and social history have merged.
Research Interests: Humanitarianism, Subjective Well-Being, Disaster Studies, Subjectivities, Spirituality, and 32 moreEmbodiment, Blindness, South Asia, Pakistan, Resistance (Social), Everyday Life Studies, Islamic Studies, Women and Gender Issues in Islam, Memory Studies, Sociology of Everyday Life, Earthquake, Gender and Islam, Everyday Life, Natural Disasters, Post Disaster Reconstruction, Women and Gender Studies, Subjectivity, Survival, Disasters, Precariousness, Himalayas, Disaster Culture, Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief, Disaster Recovery, Northern Pakistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Critical Disaster Studies, Social Repair, 2005 Kashmir Earthquake, Sabar, Siran valley, and Unknowable Subjects
Climate reparations are colonial reparations
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This paper explores how everyday religious narratives in post-disaster contexts can be interpreted as key sites of agency articulated in resistance to dominant discourses of disaster relief. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among... more
This paper explores how everyday religious narratives in post-disaster contexts can be interpreted as key sites of agency articulated in resistance to dominant discourses of disaster relief. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among affected communities after the 2010 floods in Pakistan, we argue that religious discourses code everyday actions with political meaning and significance. Deploying Scott’s (1990) theorization of hidden transcripts and everyday acts of resistance, as well as Mahmood’s (2005) more recent framing of agency as a capacity for action, we argue that local communities are dynamic political actors capable of transformative interventions even in the wake of major disasters and the relief efforts that ensue in their wake. By exploring how religious narratives are mobilized by local communities we seek to better understand how the post-disaster arena is used to rework concepts of ‘beneficiaries’, ‘relief provision,’ and ‘religion.’
Research Interests: Religion, Sociology of Religion, Gender Studies, Social Sciences, Interdisciplinarity, and 65 moreHumanitarianism, Disaster Studies, Resilience, South Asian Studies, Islamic Contemporary Studies, South Asia, Narrative and interpretation, Crisis Management, Gender, Pakistan, Resistance (Social), Everyday Life Studies, Natural Hazards, Agency Theory, Humanitarian Intervention, Islamic Studies, Women and Gender Issues in Islam, Subalternity, Subaltern Agency, Agency Structure, Disaster Management, Disaster Response, Islam, Vulnerability, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), Sociology of Everyday Life, Everyday life theory, Mass Disaster Preparedness/Management, Ethnography of Religion, Cultural power and resistance, Humanitarian Emergency Aid, Refugee Camps, Social Resilience, Everyday Life, Natural Disasters, Pakistan Studies, Social Reconstruction, Anthropology of Disaster, Agency, Interdisciplinary research, Anthropology of Disasters, Resistance, Muslims, Disaster Culture, Floods, Displacement, Humanitarian Aid, Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief, Disaster Recovery, 2010 Pakistan Floods, Social Aspects of Disaster Response and Recovery, Disaster And Religion, Disaster Relief, FLOODS IN PAKISTAN, Anthropology of Religion, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa History and Politics, Religion and Natural Disasters, Pashtuns, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Crisis/disaster Management, Ethics of Humanitarian Intervention, Contemporary Muslim society, South Asian Religious Narratives, Social Repair, Social Recovery, and Anthropology of Social Repair
This paper conceptualizes a social repair orientation to disaster recovery for policy makers and programmers. It locates the concept of social repair in a variety of academic disciplines and identifies two distinct understandings of... more
This paper conceptualizes a social repair orientation to disaster recovery for policy makers and programmers. It locates the concept of social repair in a variety of academic disciplines and identifies two distinct understandings of social repair: resumption of everyday life and re-humanization/re-constituting the self. The paper then theorizes the agency of memory, hope and resistance as strategic tools for achieving social repair. Additionally, social learning is used to describe the use of these tools by disaster survivors to achieve social repair. Finally, the paper delineates the differences between a social repair orientation to disaster recovery and existing disaster recovery praxis, offering guidance for policy makers and programmers.
Research Interests: Social Work, Social Policy, Public Management, Social Sciences, Interdisciplinarity, and 48 moreInternational Development, Humanitarianism, Community Resilience, Disaster Studies, Disaster risk management, Sustainable Development, Paulo Freire, Crisis Management, Resistance (Social), Transitional Justice, Humanitarian Intervention, Memory Studies, Disaster Management, Disaster Response, Social learning, Emergency Management, Mass Disaster Preparedness/Management, Interdisciplinary Studies, Humanitarian Emergency Aid, Interdisciplinary research (Social Sciences), Social Resilience, Public Policy - Social Welfare Policy, Everyday Life, Natural Disasters, Memory, Social Reconstruction, Agency, Disasters, Disaster Response and Recovery, Disaster risk reduction, Critical Development Studies, Resistance, Disaster, Social Suffering, Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief, Social Suffering and Structural Injustice, Disaster Recovery, Disaster Resilience, Public Administration and Policy, Social Disruption, Social Aspects of Disaster Response and Recovery, Risk and crisis management, Social Policy & Development, Emergency and Disaster Response Management, Crisis/disaster Management, Social Repair, Social Recovery, and Anthropology of Social Repair
Research Interests: Social Policy, Humanitarianism, Disaster Studies, Resilience, Disaster risk management, and 33 morePost-conflict Reconstruction and Development, South Asia, Pakistan, Risk and Vulnerability, Transitional Justice, Humanitarian Intervention, Disaster Management, Disaster Response, Risk and Vulnerability - Natural Hazards, Vulnerability, Social vulnerability, Social Resilience, Natural Disasters, Post Disaster Reconstruction, Disasters, Natural hazards and disasters, especially vulnerability analysis, Disaster Response and Recovery, Disaster risk reduction, Disaster, Post Disaster Recovery, Floods, Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief, Disaster Recovery, 2010 Pakistan Floods, Social Equity, Disaster Recovery Planning, FLOODS IN PAKISTAN, SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS, Crisis/disaster Management, Ethics of Humanitarian Intervention, UNISDR, Public Policy, and Social Repair
The United Nations cited the 2010 monsoon floods in Pakistan as the largest humanitarian crisis in living memory. The environmental catastrophe effected twenty million people and highlighted the complicated relationship between nature and... more
The United Nations cited the 2010 monsoon floods in Pakistan as the largest humanitarian crisis in living memory. The environmental catastrophe effected twenty million people and highlighted the complicated relationship between nature and society. The lives of extremely vulnerable groups such as subsistence farmers and unskilled laborers were severely disrupted by this catastrophe, forcing national and international observers to confront the uneven distribution of harm based on social factors in the wake of environmental disaster. In this visual essay, I explore the slow raging violence of floodwaters, which I witnessed as a humanitarian worker, and narrate a point of departure from social interventions after environmental collapse. The accompanying counter narratives draw the viewer’s attention to the politics of representation. They reveal the dominant discourses of domination of the Third World subaltern as enacted by humanitarian agencies. By juxtaposing photos and text, I invite the viewer to engage in a generative encounter that takes note of the tensions between disrupted communities and systems of international assistance.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Ethics, Visual Studies, Visual Anthropology, Climate Change, and 24 morePhotography, International Development, Humanitarianism, Visual Culture, International organizations, Sustainable Development, South Asia, Crisis Management, Pakistan, Environmental Ethics, Humanitarian Intervention, Photography Theory, Aesthetics and Politics, Critical Ecology, Environmental Humanities, Cultural power and resistance, Natural Disasters, Pakistan Studies, Critical Development Studies, Politics of representation, International Aid and Development, Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief, 2010 Pakistan Floods, and Climate Change in Developing Countries
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Climate Change, Humanitarianism, South Asian Studies, South Asia, and 11 morePolitics, Pakistan, Resistance (Social), Humanitarian Intervention, Cultural power and resistance, Social Resilience, Pakistan Studies, Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief, Resettlement, 2010 Pakistan Floods, and Climate Change in Developing Countries
Over the last eight years, my research has revolved around the extraordinary stories of ordinary people striving to make life possible despite overwhelming structural constraints. My interlocutors reside in geopolitical edges and... more
Over the last eight years, my research has revolved around the extraordinary stories of ordinary people striving to make life possible despite overwhelming structural constraints. My interlocutors reside in geopolitical edges and borderlands where environmental and political fragility and hyper-intersecting forms of violence coalesce into the daily burdens of living. I have argued that the violence of colonial occupation, militarization, and environmental disasters are rarely definitive ruptures of some coherent lifeworld but part and parcel of the ongoing labor of making life viable (see Aijazi, 2020, 2016). To enable this, I have tried to give primacy to the lived intensities of my interlocutors over some predetermined theoretical gaze. This assumes that using people’s lives as raw material to understand something particular, despite its advantages, must also be understood as a form of epistemic violence. And that writing storied lives in ways that seem incomplete, faulty, elaborate, is a project worthy of pursuit.
Research Interests: Emotion, Anthropology, Ethics, Reflective Practice, Violence, and 15 moreEthnography, Reciprocity (Social and Cultural Anthropology), Emotional Labour, Storytelling, Vulnerability, Fieldwork, Affect, Ethnographic Writing, Witnessing, Feeling, Narrative Writing, Ethnographic and Narrative Writing, Creative Methods, Epistemic Violence, and autotheory
We came together to write a paper on the devaluation of field researcher labor as an entry point into the broader domain of research ethics to unpack what collaboration may mean in settings of incommensurable inequality. These motivations... more
We came together to write a paper on the devaluation of field researcher labor as an entry point into the broader domain of research ethics to unpack what collaboration may mean in settings of incommensurable inequality. These motivations were grounded in the materialities of our involvement within an international research project focused on post- earthquake reconstruction processes in Nepal since 2015. However, since we started writing this piece, some of us felt that the paper did not adequately reflect their experiences, others felt it put them in the hot seat too quickly, and some thought that it mimicked the faulty modes of collaboration we wanted to unsettle in the first place. Realizing the power dynamics within our own writing collective, we stepped away from a centralized narrative to make room for our diverse, sometimes complementary, sometimes contradictory experiences. The paper is a bricolage of reflections that focus on issues such as the division of labor, coauthorship, and community engagement. We use these reflections as a way to think critically about the current juncture of transnational, collaborative research and propose a series of open- ended reflections that prompt the problematization of the inequities, tensions, and emotional labor inherent in collaborative work.
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The association of madrassas as " breeding grounds for terrorists " is problematic, exacerbated by a lack of understanding of how Islamic religious schools function and contribute to cities and urban social life. Our article provides an... more
The association of madrassas as " breeding grounds for terrorists " is problematic, exacerbated by a lack of understanding of how Islamic religious schools function and contribute to cities and urban social life. Our article provides an interpretative examination of the so-called madrassa question by explaining the urban-spatial embeddedness of madrassas and emphasizing the heightened sense and deployment of religious identities in the quotidian " worlding " of " lived religion " and " lived religious education " of research participants in two madrassa communities in Isla-mabad, Pakistan. Positioned within the growing research on urban sociology and geographies of the intersections of religion and education, this article examines lived religion and religious education within urban spaces. It discusses ethnographic findings on the performance and reproduction of spatially grounded extrareligious roles, identities, and practices in city-based madrassas. We emphasize the religious and nonreligious meanings people attach to these identities and practices, and how these are manifested, represented, and experienced in urban community spaces. We demonstrate madrassas’ connection to people’s place-making practices and
meaning-making as historical processes and purposeful action. Urban landscape, quotidian religious practices, and extra-local political economy are important to linking place, human aspirations, and lived religion in reframing the madrassa question in Pakistan.
meaning-making as historical processes and purposeful action. Urban landscape, quotidian religious practices, and extra-local political economy are important to linking place, human aspirations, and lived religion in reframing the madrassa question in Pakistan.
Research Interests: Urban Geography, Community Development, South Asian Studies, South Asia, Islamic Education & Islamic Schooling, and 14 morePakistan, Islam, Urban Sociology, Lived Religion, Institutional Ethnography (Research Methodology), Religion and Culture, Islamic Urbanism, Geographies of religion and spirituality, Religious Identity, Islamabad, Lived Religion and Religious Practice in Everyday Life, Anthropology of Religion, Madrassa, and Contemporary Muslim society
Although the nexus between religion, faith-based organizations, and community development is well established in the literature, the potential for change driven by indigenous and grassroots social structures such as Islamic schools... more
Although the nexus between religion, faith-based organizations, and community development is well established in the literature, the potential for change driven by indigenous and grassroots social structures such as Islamic schools (madrassas) is still largely ignored in practice. Against the backdrop of overall educational and political economic reforms affecting Pakistan, this paper examines the community development function and other extra-religious roles of the madrassa in development work following a disaster from an interpretivist approach. Mixed qualitative research methods based on institutional ethnographic interviews and participant observations were used with two selected madrassas and their immediate communities in Islamabad, Pakistan. Findings suggest the madrassa’s development roles in disadvantaged communities and in performing an intermediary role between the state, development organizations, and religious communities.
Research Interests: Religion, Education, Social Work, Social Policy, Development Studies, and 48 moreYouth Studies, Adult Education, Terrorism, Religious Education, International Development, Educational Research, Community Development, South Asian Studies, Sustainable Development, Community Based Education, Islamic Contemporary Studies, Identity (Culture), South Asia, Islamic Philosophy, Social Capital, Islamic Education, Islamic Education & Islamic Schooling, Pakistan, Education Policy, National Identity, Development and Religion(s), Islamic Studies, Social Exclusion, Islam, Islamic Political Thought, Islam (Anthropology), War on Terror, Madrasa education, Political Islam, Public Policy - Social Welfare Policy, Citizenship, Islamic Movements and Political Islam, Pakistan Studies, Social Development, Muslim World, Critical Development Studies, Anthropology of Islam, Madrasa, Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief, Islamic religious education, Deoband, Madrassa Education, Disaster And Religion, Anthropology of Religion, Madrasah, Madrassa, Islamic Education and Islamic Schooling, and 2005 Kashmir Earthquake
Why are academic and policy discourses on child soldiers relatively silent on sexual violence against boys in armed groups? Drawing from the experiences of boys forcibly conscripted into the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), this Chapter... more
Why are academic and policy discourses on child soldiers relatively silent on sexual violence against boys in armed groups? Drawing from the experiences of boys forcibly conscripted into the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), this Chapter seeks to transcend the gendered language of sexual slavery, concubines, forced pregnancy and rape. Most sexual and intimate relations in the LRA were violent impositions given the group’s modus operandi of forced conscription and sexual regulation. Keeping this in mind, this Chapter maps the multiple forms of sexual violence experienced by boys following their abduction and coming of age within the armed group. We note the erasures and conceptual challenges the category of the child soldier poses and highlight the need to advance analytical assemblages that extend beyond ageist and gendered understandings of sexual violence.
Research Interests: Gender Studies, Conflict, Post-conflict Reconstruction and Development, Gender and Sexuality, Gender, and 13 moreEast Africa, Uganda, Transitional Justice, Reconciliation, Children, Transitional justice and reconciliation processes, Child Soldiers, Rehabilitation and Reintegration of Child Soldiers, Social Conflict, northern Uganda, Forced Marriage, Stabilization and Reconstruction, and The Northern Uganda Armed Conflict
Rights-based approaches to forced marriage in wartime document forms of harm women experience, to the exclusion of men's experiences. Such framing problematically reiterates a binary of women/men, victim/perpetrator and consent/coercion.... more
Rights-based approaches to forced marriage in wartime document forms of harm women experience, to the exclusion of men's experiences. Such framing problematically reiterates a binary of women/men, victim/perpetrator and consent/coercion. Arguably, this delineation is useful in supporting projects of culpability and legal redress. However, what does such vocabulary obfuscate or render invisible? We draw from the experiences of men demobilized from the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and presently living in northern Uganda to consider how relationships and social account-abilities are governed in settings of coercion. We argue that forced marriage in wartime cannot be understood without examining the multiple relationalities on which it is contingent. We broaden the remit of men's relationships to women in the LRA to consider how men's relations to each other and to their children shaped their experiences of marriage during the war. We conclude by reflecting on concepts of consent and culpability in coercive settings.
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This chapter works through the dynamics of counterterrorism policy in Pakistan in relation to its inconsistent and often contradictory political imaginary and other postcolonial formulations. It sketches some of these contours and reveals... more
This chapter works through the dynamics of counterterrorism policy in Pakistan in relation to its inconsistent and often contradictory political imaginary and other postcolonial formulations. It sketches some of these contours and reveals Pakistan’s unevenness towards religious and secular modernities; inequitable patterns of social, political, and economic development; and problematic regional relations. The chapter then examines Pakistan’s approach toward counterterrorism since 9/11 and subsequent changes in counterterrorism policies after the 2015 Peshawar school bombings, which culminated in the National Action Plan. These discussions are framed within the broader sociopolitical entanglements in which Pakistan and its people are enmeshed, including changes within daily public and social life. Without diminishing the persistent reality of terrorism in Pakistan, the chapter concludes by arguing that Pakistan’s counterterrorism policies risk being formulated solely based on oversimplified narratives of national security and increasing state legibility without a deeper appreciation of the social, political, and intellectual lives of its citizens, and their aspirations for the future.
Research Interests: Terrorism, South Asian Studies, Security Studies, Critical Security Studies, Pakistan, and 8 moreCounter terrorism, War on Terror, Critical security studies (International Studies), Pakistan Studies, Critical Security Studies, Humanitarian Intervention, Third world security, Critical Terrorism Studies, Critical Geopolitics,regional Security, and Terrorism and Counterterrorism
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, the birthplace of the Greenpeace movement, has been a significant site for the articulation and enactment of multifaceted environmental consciousness. Since 2010, First Nation groups and environmental... more
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, the birthplace of the Greenpeace movement, has been a significant site for the articulation and enactment of multifaceted environmental
consciousness. Since 2010, First Nation groups and environmental NGOs have come together to oppose the construction of the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline in the form of public protests and demonstrations. Using a social networks perspective, we closely examine the nature of these protests and the convergence of First Nation groups and environmental NGOs. We argue that the Vancouver protests ultimately failed to transform into a social movement and had limited impact. While a common concern for the environment links both stakeholders in their opposition to the pipeline project, their motivations are rooted in very different epistemic concerns. For First Nation groups, resistance to the Enbridge pipeline is primarily tied to deeper political processes of regaining territorial control and ongoing struggles for cultural revival within British Columbia.
consciousness. Since 2010, First Nation groups and environmental NGOs have come together to oppose the construction of the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline in the form of public protests and demonstrations. Using a social networks perspective, we closely examine the nature of these protests and the convergence of First Nation groups and environmental NGOs. We argue that the Vancouver protests ultimately failed to transform into a social movement and had limited impact. While a common concern for the environment links both stakeholders in their opposition to the pipeline project, their motivations are rooted in very different epistemic concerns. For First Nation groups, resistance to the Enbridge pipeline is primarily tied to deeper political processes of regaining territorial control and ongoing struggles for cultural revival within British Columbia.
Research Interests: Environmental Sociology, Social Movements, Indigenous Studies, Social Networks, Environmental Studies, and 28 moreSocial Movement, Indigenous Politics, Colonialism, Resistance (Social), Indigenous Knowledge, Post-Colonialism, Indigenous Peoples Rights, Environmental Sustainability, Indigenous Peoples, Environmental Humanities, Cultural power and resistance, First Nations of Canada, Colonial Discourse, Canada, Vancouver, Social and Environmental Issues, International political economy of oil and gas, Territorial politics, Environmental Protection and Conservation, Decolonization, Coalition Formation, Social protests, Politics of Solidarity, environmental NGOs, British Columbia, First Nations Economic Development, Environmental Stewardship, and FIrst Nations Studies
Indigenous and Local communities are keepers of valuable environmental knowledge accumulated over generations. This knowledge is held individually and collectively, often orally transmitted and embodied. At least 25% of the world’s land... more
Indigenous and Local communities are keepers of valuable environmental knowledge accumulated over generations. This knowledge is held individually and collectively, often orally transmitted and embodied. At least 25% of the world’s land area is owned, managed, used or inhabited by these groups, and such areas are degrading less quickly than others. Yet, despite abundant empirical evidence, Indigenous and Local communities struggle to have their voices meaningfully included in environmental governance. Much more work remains to be done on the integration of Indigenous and local knowledge within nature conservation. What can communities teach us? responds to this gap and the growing calls for decolonising the conservation movement.
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Fast-tracking the SDGs: Driving Asia-Pacific transformations is the theme report of the Asia-Pacific SDG partnership for 2020. Reflecting on the theme of the7th Asia-Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development, it informs regional and global... more
Fast-tracking the SDGs: Driving Asia-Pacific transformations is the theme report of the Asia-Pacific SDG partnership for 2020. Reflecting on the theme of the7th Asia-Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development, it informs regional and global dialogue on sustainable development as well as national and regional implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It invites governments and stakeholders to align COVID-19 pandemic response and recovery strategies with the achievement of the SDGs and provides insights for the way forward.
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Research Interests:
Empowering people, ensuring inclusiveness and equality is fundamental to realizing sustainable development. What change is needed to strengthen empowerment and promote inclusion and equality of all people within our efforts to implement... more
Empowering people, ensuring inclusiveness and equality is fundamental to realizing sustainable development. What change is needed to strengthen empowerment and promote inclusion and equality of all people within our efforts to implement the 2030 Agenda, including its central aspiration to leave no one behind? This report helps to answer that question by proposing a framework of four synergistic elements that can promote these intertwined objectives. It applies the framework to three important policymaking spheres in Asia and the Pacific that will likely define the region’s success in achieving the 2030 Agenda – climate action, domestic resource mobilization, civic participation – and also takes a look at violence against women and girls.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This research report introduces a social repair orientation to disaster recovery for humanitarian policy makers and practitioners. It draws on four months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in two remote Himalayan valleys in Northern... more
This research report introduces a social repair orientation to disaster recovery for humanitarian policy makers and practitioners. It draws on four months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in two remote Himalayan valleys in Northern Pakistan: Neelum valley (Pakistan administered Kashmir) and Siran valley (Khyber Pakhtun Khwa Province).
This document was prepared for the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Humanitarian Research and Innovation Grant Program).
This document was prepared for the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Humanitarian Research and Innovation Grant Program).