You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
List of Maps and Illustrations p. vii Foreword p. ix Preface p. xiii List of Abbreviations p. xv Introduction p. 1 Chapter 1 Ethnicizing Islam p. 20 Chapter 2 The Muhajir Qaumi Movement p. 56 Chapter 3 Pakka Qila p. 88 Chapter 4 Fun and Violence p. 111 Chapter 5 Making Martyrs p. 137 Chapter 6 Terrorism and the State p. 163 Epilogue p. 183 Calendar of Events p. 189 Glossary p. 191 Notes p. 195 Bibliography p. 199 Index p. 211.
Being part of a violent community in revolt can be addictive--it can be fun. This book offers a fascinating inside look at present-day political violence in Pakistan through a historical ethnography of the Muhajir Qaumi Movement (MQM), one of the most remarkable and successful religious nationalist movements in postcolonial South Asia. The MQM has mobilized much of the "migrant" (Muhajir) population in Karachi and other urban centers in southern Pakistan and has fomented large-scale ethnic-religious violence. Oskar Verkaaik argues that urban youth see it as an irresistible opportunity for "fun." Drawing on both anthropological fieldwork, including participatory observation among political mi...
This essential study develops new anthropological perspectives on religious architecture, including mosques, churches, temples and synagogues. Borrowing from a range of theoretical perspectives on space-making and material religion, the authors consider how religious buildings take their place in opposition to the secular surroundings and the neoliberal city; how they, as evocations of the sublime, help believers move beyond the boundaries of modern subjectivity; and how international heritage status may conflict with their function as community centres. The volume includes contributions from a wide range of disciplines and regions, anthropologists, social historians, and architects working in Brazil, India, Italy, Mali, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, and the UK.
Being part of a violent community in revolt can be addictive--it can be fun. This book offers a fascinating inside look at present-day political violence in Pakistan through a historical ethnography of the Muhajir Qaumi Movement (MQM), one of the most remarkable and successful religious nationalist movements in postcolonial South Asia. The MQM has mobilized much of the "migrant" (Muhajir) population in Karachi and other urban centers in southern Pakistan and has fomented large-scale ethnic-religious violence. Oskar Verkaaik argues that urban youth see it as an irresistible opportunity for "fun." Drawing on both anthropological fieldwork, including participatory observation among political mi...
The varied voices present within this book force the reader to rethink their perspective of Karachi
The state has recently been rediscovered as an object of inquiry by a broad range of scholars. Reflecting the new vitality of the field of political anthropology, States of Imagination draws together the best of this recent critical thinking to explore the postcolonial state. Contributors focus on a variety of locations from Guatemala, Pakistan, and Peru to India and Ecuador; they study what the state looks like to those seeing it from the vantage points of rural schools, police departments, small villages, and the inside of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Focusing on the micropolitics of everyday state-making, the contributors examine the mythologies, paradoxes, and inconsistencies...
Argues that within the seemingly chaotic malaise of Karachi's politics, a form of "manageable violence" exists, on which the functioning of the city is based.
"Whereas the history of philosophy defines metaphysics as asking the question 'What is Being?'; here is asked 'Where is Being?' What is to be analyzed is indeed part of the tradition of metaphysics to inquire about Being qua being, but here the inquiry is into its structure, its position within the ontological whole. The concept of the 'architectonic' is borrowed from Kant ... In this work, three philosophical structures are chosen for a more extensive examination: the three 'architectonics' are that of Plato's Chora, Aristoteles' continuum, and finally Leibniz's labyrinth"--Back cover.
Since Pakistan was established in the name of Islam, religion has always played a major role in the construction of a national ideology. This ideology has been challenged by several ethnic groups ever since the day of independence. Most fascinating in this respect are the mohakirs, migrants from India, who for several decades championed the national ideology, but are recently involved in a process of becoming an ethnic group. Using a historical actor-oriented approach, Verkaaik discusses how this change of identity had altered mohajirs' interpretation of both pre- and post-independence history of Pakistan. Their claim to be a separate people calls for a new culture, a new set of traditions, symbols, heroes, as well as a revised reading of religion. He argues that this construction of a culture is an eclectic process that can only be understood by taking into account the modern, political context of Karachi and Pakistan.
The symposium "Sleepers, Moles, and Martyrs: Secret Identifications, Societal Integration, and the Differing Meanings of Freedom" held in Reinhausen, 2002, formed the basis of this publication. Occasioned by the social, political and mass media discourses after the bombings of New York's World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, an interdisciplinary group of scholars came together to explore the connotations and implications of the term "sleeper". The biographies of terrorist perpetrators are but one of many permutations of sleeper-like phenomena in late modern polities. Clandestine operatives of the state are sleepers, and both willing and unwilling victims of terrorism are discursively tra...