State and Subject Formation in South Asia

Description

The extraordinarily visible and ubiquitous presence of the state in most of South Asia points to its overarching power. The state’s unbridled reach also suggests its importance as a locus for societal hopes, frustrations, and aspirations. However, scholarship on Pakistan (and to a lesser degree, South Asia more broadly), has offered few systematic attempts to address the complexity of these state-society relations. This edited volume is an attempt in this direction.

A defining feature of this volume is its focus on the state and society through a critical engagement with the theoretical openings offered by Michel Foucault. Prime among these lenses is the replacement of the concept of citizens with subjects, i.e. individuals whose modes of thinking and acting are shaped and governed by the intrusive arms of the state-apparatus. The contribution of the book is not simply theoretical; each chapter is deeply grounded in a South Asian context, with a sizable majority of chapters focusing specifically on Pakistan. The captivating case studies that lie at the heart of each chapter allow us to step into those domains of state-society relations—everyday life, discourses, rituals, etc.—that have been largely ignored in other studies on the state in Pakistan.

• The volume focuses on the state and society through a critical engagement with the theoretical openings offered by Michel Foucault
• The case studies that are in each chapter allow us to step into those domains of state-society relations – everyday life, discourses, rituals, etc. – that have been largely ignored in other studies on the state in Pakistan

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Mapping State-Society Relations in Pakistan and Beyond – Amen Jaffer and Mashal Saif
2. Governmentality and its Political Consequence – Partha Chatterjee
3. Tribal Governmentality: Patronage and the Production of Tribal Subjects in Balochista – Saifullah Nasar
4. Governance of Society or Self? Postcolonial Foucault and the Singur Movement in Indi – Dhritiman Chakraborty
5. Fabricated Identities: Legal Identity Construction of the Third Gender in Pakista – Azfar Nisar
6. Dispositifs of (Dis)Order: Gangs, Governmentality, and the Policing of Lyari, Pakista – Adeem Suhail
7. Together Without Consensus: Liberal Governmentality, Political Modernity, and Class Politics in the Lawyers Movement (20072009) in Pakista – Salman Hussain
8. The Judiciary as an Ideological State Apparatus for Controlled Democracy: Critique of Contemporary Legalism in Pakista – Muhammad Azeem
9. How Long Is Life? Neoliberalism and Islamic Piet – Humeira Iqtidar
10. The Subject of Development: Foucault, History, and Mass Housing Under the Ayub Khan Regim – Markus Daechsel
11. Postcolonial Autonomous Zones: Urban Spaces of Opposition to Authoritarian Rule in Lahore and Delhi during the Ziaul Haq and Indira Gandhi Regime – Kristin Plys
12. List of Contributors
13. Bibliography
14. Index

Authors Biography

Amen Jaffer is Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). His research focuses on the sociality of urban life in Pakistan by examining the interconnections between social, religious, and cultural dimensions of Sufi shrines, the politics around infrastructure in mohallas, and the social economy of recycling waste in Lahore. He is currently preparing a manuscript for publication that is provisionally titled, Making Islam Real: Everyday Life in Pakistan’s Urban Sufi Shrines. He was invited as a Visiting Scholar to École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in 2021 and was a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Study’s (Princeton) Summer Programme in the Social Science in 2018–2019.

Mashal Saif is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Clemson University, US. Dr Saif’s research interests include Islam in contemporary South Asia; ulema and madrasas; the trans-temporal dynamics between medieval and modern Islamic discourses; contemporary Muslim political theology; and the anthropology of the state. Her first monograph, The ‘Ulama in Contemporary Pakistan: Contesting and Cultivating an Islamic Republic, was published with Cambridge University Press in 2020. She has also published an array of articles and book chapters. In 2021 she was awarded a Senior Fellowship by the American Institute of Pakistan Studies. She is currently working on her second monograph, tentatively titled, Traditional Islam and Modernity in Pakistan: An Intimate Account.