PATRONAGE AND CLASS IN URBAN PAKISTAN

Of the rich academic literature that has emerged on the growth and dynamism of the “informal economy” in South Asia in recent years very little work has focused on the Pakistani context. This article builds upon the growing body of work on “informal employment” by identifying and explaining modes of labor control in the housing construction industry in metropolitan Pakistan. The crucial role of the subcontractor and his exploitative relationship with workers is discussed in a Gramscian framework. Workers are ensconced in a hegemonic relationship with contractors due to oppressive structural conditions as well as a culture of dependency that contractors have nurtured. Against the backdrop of the shift from Fordist to flexible accumulation regimes, the author argues that the present conjuncture is marked by the prevalence of extra-economic forms of control such that workers conceive of contractors as patrons. The instrumentalization of cultural norms of reciprocity by contractors does not mean that the labor–capital relationship is unchanging and rooted in “culture.” In fact, personalized patronage networks coexist with impersonal market ethics dynamically so as to produce and sustain the hegemony of capital.     

State,Citizenship and Religious Community: The Case of Indian Muslim Women

Thos article argues that granting citizenship rights to the minorities cannot help to instil a sense of confidence in them to participate as equal citizens in the public sphere. Rather the state has to create necessary conditions both through institutional mechanisms as well as through creating a democratic and egalitarian environment where those rights can be enjoyed. A liberal democracy can accommodate both individual as well as group rights and allow for legal pluralism by desisting from imposing any law that can result in the loss of identity for a minority group. But at the same time a liberal democracy is to ensure that individual rights are not jeopardised while safeguarding the minority rights. If particularistic demands do not conflict with basic individual liberty and dignity, they can and should be accommodated within the universalistic framework of citizenship.     

Identification of Risk Factors Generating Terrorism in Pakistan

Terrorism is a complex issue and various researchers have identified numerous causes and conditions that generate or are capable of generating terrorism. In the last decade, terrorist attacks claimed 36,495 lives and injured 27,985 people in Pakistan as a result of 3,482 bomb blasts and 281 suicide attacks. The aim of this research was to establish the major risk factors generating terrorism, based on the opinions of security officials who dealt directly with the Pakistan security situation. Sixty-five causes identified from the literature and interviews with security officials were modeled and transformed into a questionnaire. A nationwide response from security officials who were directly involved in dealing with apprehended terrorists was obtained. The population was selected proportionately from high, medium, and low security zones of Pakistan. Out of 500 questionnaires sent, 103 valid responses were received. The results helped establish the 13 major risk factors associated with generating terrorism. It was observed that addressing these 13 major risk factors would mostly resolve the other minor risk factors as well. Findings of this research might be beneficial for countries affected by terrorism, and countries with prioritized and rationalized allocation of funds in their budgets for substantially overcoming terrorism.     

Fighting for the rule of law: civil resistance and the lawyers' movement in Pakistan

Pakistan, sometimes referred to as ‘the most dangerous place on earth’, is not typically thought of as a place where popular nonviolent resistance could take root, much less succeed. Citizen apathy, poor governance, and fear of regime repression and terrorist violence are barriers to effective civic activism inside Pakistan. Yet, over the past two years, Pakistan's authoritarian ruler was ousted and its independent judiciary restored following a massive grassroots campaign led by lawyers. The ‘men in black’, whose insistence on the rule of law and embrace of nonviolent struggle captured the hearts and minds of millions of Pakistanis, helped transform the country's political landscape in unexpected ways. The successes tallied by this nonviolent movement, this article will argue, can be attributed to the large-scale non-cooperation and civil disobedience that pressured two successive Pakistani regimes – one authoritarian and one democratic – to yield to its demands. Unity and mass participation, nonviolent discipline, and the creative use of nonviolent tactics were three key ingredients of success. While instability and Islamist extremism continue to plague Pakistan, the lawyers' movement highlights the steadily growing strength of Pakistani civil society have a potential to influence democratic change in the country.     

This other and other others

This paper offers an alternative understanding of the relationship between feminist ethics, time and otherness. Rather than suggesting a feminist ethics should simply be for ‘the other’, or that feminist ethics is always futural (dedicated to that which is not yet), the paper suggests that ethics involves responding to the particular other in a present that carries traces of the past, as well as opening up the future. It is through responding to particular others (where particularity is not understood as a characteristic of another, but as a mode of encounter) that we face and face up to ‘other others’. The relationship between ‘this other’ and ‘other others’ suggests an intimacy between the particular and the collective, between the face-to-face of an encounter and political economies, and between feminist ethics and politics. Indeed, the paper concludes by suggesting that the ethical and political imperatives of feminism are aligned precisely given that collectivity is an effect of the work that has to be done to get closer to this other and, with her, other others. This other and other others collect together in the making of a feminist ‘we’. Such a ‘we’ can be embraced only through a willingness to struggle with and for others who are faced in the present (a facing that is indebted to a past that cannot be left behind), and an openness to the future, as the promise and hope of what we might yet become.     

‘Strong nets catch fish’: promoting pro-poor partnerships in Bangladesh

This article describes the experiences of a small Bangladeshi NGO in using actor-oriented tools to focus on key people and partnerships in project planning, monitoring, and evaluation. The approach has helped to identify interventions that are context-specific, building on key local actors and indigenous networks, and sensitive to the constraints experienced by the poorest. As a result, the NGO has moved away from an externally driven agenda, to become a more thoughtful and responsive organisation. In developing the approach, the NGO encountered some problems due to the political sensitivity concerning the representation of linkages. This underlines the importance of using these tools in a politically aware, positive, and reflective way.     

The Failure of the Arab Court of Human Rights and the Conflicting Logics of Legitimacy,Sovereignty, Orientalism and Cultural Relativism

Netherlands International Law Review - In 2014 the League of Arab States (LAS) adopted a statute to establish the Arab Court of Human Rights (ACtHR). However, the proposed court has been strongly...     

Perceived Social Support and Early Adolescents’ Achievement: The Mediational Roles of Motivational Beliefs and Emotions

Although a bulk of literature shows that perceived social support (PSS) influences academic achievement, the mechanisms through which this effect operates received little empirical attention. The present study examined the multiple mediational effects of motivational beliefs (competence beliefs and subjective value) and emotions (anxiety and enjoyment) that may account for the empirical link between PSS (from parents, peers and teachers) and mathematics achievement. The participants of the study were 238 grade 7 students (average age = 13.2 years, girls = 54%, predominantly native Dutch middle class socioeconomic status). A bootstrap analysis (a relatively new technique for testing multiple mediation) revealed that the motivational beliefs and the emotions, jointly, partially mediated the effect of PSS on achievement. The proportion of the effects mediated, however, varied across the support sources from 55% to 75%. The findings lend support to the theoretical assumptions in the literature that supportive social relationships influence achievement through motivational and affective pathways.     

The role of parliament in South Africacs foreign policy development process: lessons from the United States' Congress

For most democracies across the world, legislative engagement in foreign policy development has traditionally been limited to ratification of international agreements and oversight of the executive. While the Parliament of South Africa tends to adhere to this traditional approach, deferring to the executive on matters of foreign policy, this paper argues that a collaborative approach between the legislative and executive branches as articulated in the South African constitution must rather form the basis of South Africa's foreign policy development process. Moreover, by comparing the parliament of South Africa, a legislature with limited policy influence, to the United States’ Congress, a policy making legislature, it becomes clear from Congress that political will in employing constitutional power is the most important factor in ensuring legislative engagement in foreign policy decision making.