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With a focus on contemporary Pakistan, this course examines the Pakistan’s political economy through its history with respect to recent social transformations and dynamics. Examining gender, middle-classes, media, youth, urbanization and new spaces of capital and consumption, the course seeks to understand how the nature of the state and its relation to society and class has changed since 1947. These are questions that have been marginal in dominant academic narratives that have been concerned with the fraught relationship of Islam and nation, the place of political Islam then and now, and the post 9/11 themes of geo-politics, terrorism and extremism.
Pakistan is known to the world as that part of the Indian subcontinent that went down the road of authoritarianism after the colonial rule ended in 1947 and two nation-states emerged from partitioned British India. While independent India came to be known as the ‘largest democracy in the world’, Pakistan’s trajectory is presented an ostensibly stark contrast. After 1947, Pakistan experienced the almost immediate ascendency of what is commonly termed as the military-bureaucratic oligarchy. The political economy of Pakistan since its inception has undergone fundamental transformations that have remained understudied and undertheorized.
While there is no doubt that the military, bureaucracy, propertied classes, (and global capital) dominate Pakistan, beneath the surface these formations are characterized by changing power dynamics. At the same time the state is dependent on legitimacy from below. Pakistan’s contemporary political economy and state-society dynamics are shaped by social forces that cannot be encompassed by in a simple bifurcation into civil-military relations.
Language: The course will be taught in English but students can hand in assignments in German if they choose. Most readings will be in English.
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