Head-hunters and knowledge-gatherers: Colonialism,engineers and fields of planning

An archival reconstruction of a 1930s engineering expedition to study the hydro-electric potential of the River Nile explores the investigative modalities of engineers. Contributing to an evolving anthropology of infrastructure and electricity the paper offers a material/relational analysis of an engineering field of planning and explores the relationship between ways of seeing and the drive to quantify (commensuration). Contributing to the study of colonialism, the paper finds that the engineering methods brought the African population into view either as a labour force or as politically troublesome but not as potential consumers of electricity.     

Pakistan,militancy and identity: parallel struggles

This article focuses on the dominant and parallel struggles that have been carried out in Pakistan in terms of its Islamic identity since 9/11. It argues that the Pakistan government has legitimised and explained its partnership with the US government in countering terrorism through a discourse that makes use of Islamic symbols. The Islamists have engaged in a similar process, arguing for jihad against the enemies of Islam. Simultaneously, a tension has persisted between liberal/progressive and orthodox notions of being a Pakistani Muslim, which has been reflected in, for example, the debate on the blasphemy law in Pakistan. It is important that strategies to strengthen Pakistan also creatively empower groups subscribing to liberal/progressive ideas so as to succeed in the struggle against militancy in the long term. The argument is developed in three parts, starting with a discussion of opposing views on Pakistan's identity and the place of Islam as the context for the Pakistan government's participation in the War on Terror. The second part explores features of the opposing discourses adopted by Islamabad and jihadi groups. The third part discusses the parallel tensions between alternative understandings of Pakistan's Islamic identity at the societal level with reference to the blasphemy law. The concluding section suggests a carefully crafted approach to assisting Pakistan at this stage in its history that could also respond to the subordinate tensions.     

Nixon, Kissinger and the breakup of Pakistan, 1971

Based upon recently published American documents, this article examines the United States's policy towards the crisis which led to the breakup of Pakistan and the formation of Bangladesh at the end of 1971. President Richard M. Nixon and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, deliberately kept this policy closely under their control and were guided more by geopolitical than by moral considerations. In particular, they were anxious to forge a new relationship with communist China and the contribution of the Pakistani president, Yahya Khan, in facilitating contacts between the US and China were greatly appreciated by the two men. Nixon's visceral dislike of the Indian prime minister, Mrs Indira Gandhi, also contributed to a degree of myopia and misperception regarding India's objectives and their possible consequences. As the conflict between the rebels in East Pakistan (Bangladesh) and the central government deepened and Indian involvement on the side of the rebels grew, Nixon and Kissinger saw another threat in the shape of Soviet military and moral support for India. An Indian victory would not only increase India's prestige and position vis-à-vis those of Pakistan, but tip the global balance of power towards the Soviet Union and away from the United States. Frantic diplomatic efforts, combined with scarcely veiled threats, finally succeeded in preventing the total disintegration of Pakistan, but there is some doubt as to whether this was likely in the first place and whether US policy was successful in relation to either China or the Soviet Union.     

Accessibility interrupted: the Shimshal road,Gilgit‐Baltistan,Pakistan

Geographers working in mountainous northern Pakistan note that gains in accessibility following the Karakoram Highway's official opening in 1978 significantly reshaped social organization, economic activity, and land use across the region. These valuable regional‐scale analyses provide few insights regarding the contingent and variable ways new roads are conceived and experienced at the community and household level by the people whose mobility they drastically impact. This article addresses that limitation of regional research by focusing on an individual agricultural community called Shimshal that in 2003 completed a 40‐kilometre link‐road connecting it to the highway. Drawing from qualitative information gathered before and after the Shimshal road's completion, we briefly describe the community's motivation for constructing the road, villagers’ accessibility‐related hopes and concerns as it was being built, and some of the social, cultural, and economic changes that followed the road's completion. The article concludes by summarizing the community's response so far to landslide‐induced destruction of over 20 kilometres of the Karakoram Highway which, since January 2010, has left community members without vehicular access to the rest of Pakistan just seven years after their link‐road's completion.     

Infrastructure Nation: State Space,Hegemony, and Hydraulic Regionalism in Pakistan

Large‐scale infrastructures are often understood by state planners as fulfilling a national integrative function. This paper challenges the idea of infrastructures as national integrators by engaging theories of state/nation formation and infrastructure in a postcolonial context. Specifically, I put Lefebvre's characterization of the production of state space as a homogenization‐differentiation dialectic in conversation with Gramsci's understanding of hegemony, bureaucracy, and nationalism to analyze the controversy surrounding the giant Tarbela Dam in Pakistan in the 1960s. I use the Tarbela controversy as a case study to elaborate a theory of postcolonial nation‐formation through state‐led infrastructural projects. I argue that in a postcolonial context the failure to articulate a hegemonic nationalist ideology to accompany the production of large‐scale infrastructure results in a fragmentation of state space in some ways, even as state space is homogenized and integrated in other ways. The paper also offers a “hydraulic lens” on the politics of regionalism in Pakistan.     

Comparing the Old and New: Traditional Building Materials and the Uch Monument Complex,Pakistan

Abstract

The supposition that modern traditionally produced building materials are inherently similar to original building fabric is common in Pakistan. Laboratory analysis on historic and modern samples of fired brick, mud brick, and mud mortars was undertaken for the first time in the region to investigate similarities in basic physical properties and composition of the materials. Simple analytical techniques were used to determine porosity, density, particle size distribution, plastic limit and other properties, as well as chemical composition of the samples. Further analytical methods were used to confirm the results of simpler analyses and further characterize materials. Results indicate that modern locally produced materials were in many ways comparable to their historic counterparts and may be used as intervention materials within the buildings of the Uch Monument Complex. This information will inform the choice and manufacture of proposed intervention materials, while providing preliminary quantitative evidence for continuing traditions.     

AIDS Activism in Pakistan: Diminishing Funds,Evasive State

This article draws on a year of ethnographic fieldwork in the HIV/AIDS sector of Pakistan at the moment of rolling back a World Bank‐financed programme. Classified by UN agencies as at ‘high risk’ of a generalized HIV epidemic, Pakistan has an epidemiology driven by injecting drug use, and a Penal Code and Islamist legislation which criminalize non‐therapeutic drug use and extra‐marital sex. In recent years, a sharp increase in the numbers of registered HIV‐positive people has necessitated a shift from HIV prevention among ‘high risk groups’ to the provision of care to those living with HIV/AIDS. The rolling back of external funding, which was further compounded by the effects of devolution on the Ministry of Health, created challenges for AIDS activism in Pakistan, as reflected in the everyday lives — and deaths — of the patient‐activists and their community‐based organizations. This article recounts the story of one such aspiring AIDS activist caught in multiple dilemmas emanating from these macro‐processes. This story throws light on the limitations of the complex agency of actors in development, and shows how the shifting loci of power from the state to non‐state entities in the global neoliberal order impacts the provision of vital services like HIV prevention and AIDS control.