Contested National Identity and Political Crisis in Bangladesh: Historical Analysis of the Dynamics of Bangladeshi Society and Politics

This paper develops the theme that the ongoing political polarization and political crisis in Bangladesh since its independence from Pakistan in 1971 reflect the fundamental weaknesses of the pillars of Bangladeshi society and national identity. The paper adopts an historical approach to explain why and how Muslim nationalism, which was the basis for the establishment of Pakistan, has re-emerged in contemporary Bangladeshi society and politics and is competing against Bengali ethnicity, language, culture and secularism (‘Bengali nationalism’) within an emerging ‘two-party’ political system. However, instead of establishing a stable political system following the Hotelling–Downs principle of democracy, the Bangladeshi society/polity has been polarized and divided almost vertically on the question of national identity and political philosophy and created sustained political instability and uncertainty. This has stifled the formation and consolidation of a national identity based on ethnicity/language/culture or religion/territory/political history or that have elements of both. Neither ethnicity/language/culture/secularism-based nationalism (Bengali nationalism) nor predominantly Muslim-territorial nationalism (‘Bangladeshi nationalism’) alone can dominate and flourish in Bangladeshi society and polity; instead, the objective conditions in the country dictate that a competitive democratic system of politics which accommodates aspects of secularism, language, Muslim identity and Islamic ethical–moral codes remains the feasible political discourse for forming and consolidating the country's multi-racial, multi-religious national identity over the long run and its survival as a sovereign state.     

Signifyin' and Intertextuality: Killer of Sheep and Black Independent Film *

A Very British History—Without the Whingers * * Cf. the Oxford English Dictionary: whinge /winj/ colloq. v.intr. whine, grumble peevishly, vd. gripe.

Peter Hennessy, Never Again—Britain, 1945–1951 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993).

Industrial Cities and Their Working Class: Notes on a Time Gone By

Robert A. Catlin, Black Politics and Urban Planning: Gary, Indiana 1980–1989 (The University Press of Kentucky, 1993).

Andrew Hurley, Environmental Inequalities: Class, Race and Industrial Pollution in Gary, Indiana, 1945–1980 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1994).

Anthony M. Orum, City‐Building in America (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995).

Against Green Gloom

Gregg Easterbrook, A Moment on The Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism (New York: Viking, 1995).

Talking Class(room)

Frances A. Maher and Mary Kay Thompson Tetreault, The Feminist Classroom: An Inside Look at How Professors and Students are Transforming Higher Education for A Diverse Society (New York Basic Books, 1994).

Working Out

Stanley Aronowitz and William DiFazio, The Jobless Future: Scitech and The Dogma of Work (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994).     

Pakistan: Crisis of a Frontline State

For more than 50 years, Pakistan has functioned as imperialism's “frontline state.” The military has remained the country's dominant political player and the basic precepts of bourgeois democracy remain conspicuous by their absence. Since the military coup in October 1999, the configuration of power in Pakistan has become subject to serious internal contradictions, in large part because of the “war on terror” and the loss of public prestige of the military. These contradictions have intensified in the wake of a lawyer-led street movement sparked by the military top brass' dismissal of the country's chief justice in March 2007. Since then the country's most well-known politician, Benazir Bhutto, has been assassinated and her Pakistan People's Party has swept to power in general elections held in February 2008. However, the crisis of the frontline state has not ebbed, and the oligarchic system of power remains subject to rupture.     

Islamism,secularism and post-Islamism: the Muslim world and the case of Bangladesh

This paper provides a historical overview of the emerging post-Islamist phenomenon in the Muslim world and discusses the scope for sustainable democratic politics in Bangladesh. In the process, a model is proposed that purports to exhibit a level of compatibility with the perceived political landscape in Bangladesh. The model adopts a version of the Hotelling–Downs principle of democracy and sets it within the ‘post-Islamist’ paradigm in such a way that, if it can be implemented, even if only partially, may lead to the sustained political stability of Bangladesh. The paper highlights illiberal and undemocratic practices of the two dominant Bangladeshi political parties as a major feature of the present status quo. These practices dominate Bangladeshi politics through the continuous attempts of their exponents to impose monopolistic views on the various symbols of national identity, despite the multi-racial, multi-religious nature of Bangladesh society. The paper concludes that a democratic system of politics, which accommodates aspects of secularism, language, Muslim identity and post-Islamist ‘Islamic ethical–moral–legal codes’, remains the feasible political discourse for forming and consolidating the country’s multi-racial, multi-religious national identity over the long run and its survival as a sovereign state.     

Postcolonial Nation-Making: Warfare,Jihad, Subjectivity,and Compassion in the Region of Kashmir

This is a review essay on Body of Victim, Body of Warrior: Refugee Families and the Making of Kashmiri Jihadists by Cabeiri Debergh Robinson and Counterinsurgency, Democracy, and the Politics of Identity in India: From Warfare to Welfare? by Mona Bhan. This review contains a succinct overview of the two books, followed by a discussion of the emergent subjectivities and incorporation of humanitarianism into militarism and jihad in the region of Kashmir.     

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.     

Accountability in Governance Networks: An Assessment of Public,Private, and Nonprofit Emergency Management Practices Following Hurricane Katrina

What is the most effective framework for analyzing complex accountability challenges within governing networks? Recognizing the multiscale and intersector (public, private, and nonprofit) characteristics of these networks, an accountability model is advanced organized around democratic (elected representatives, citizens, and the legal system), market (owners and consumers), as well as administrative (bureaucratic, professional and collaborative) relationships. This concept draws from 2005 events following Hurricane Katrina. Multiple failures of governing networks to plan for and respond to Katrina include a breakdown in democratic, market, and administrative accountability as well as a pervasive confusion over trade‐offs between accountability types emerging from crises. This essay offers several useful recommendations for emergency management planners as well as for those who teach and research.     

Repression,co-optation and insurgency: Pakistan’s FATA,Southern Thailand and Papua,Indonesia

Scholars have long identified state repression as playing a key role in the onset of insurgency. Violence by security forces increases anger against the state and assists with rebel recruitment. Yet scholars have also recognised that repression does not always lead to rebellion: in some cases it successfully quashes movements before they have begun. This study advances an argument for when and why repression leads to insurgency and sometimes does not. We contend that violence by state security forces can fail to trigger rebellion if local elites within the repressed community are simultaneously co-opted with political and economic opportunities. When elites are satisfied with local autonomy and patronage they deprive the dissident movement of local leadership and coordination. When the state uses repression against a community and at the same time abandons this mutually beneficial relationship, the insurgency has both the leadership and grassroots support it requires. We illustrate our argument by examining three cases of state violence in Asia. In two of our cases, Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Southern Thailand, repression led directly to insurgency. In the third, Papua in Indonesia, ongoing co-optation of local elites has left the movement factionalised and weak.     

the reinvention of feminism in Pakistan

This article argues that there has been a significant turn in the discourse of feminist politics in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The author suggests that the rise of a new feminism – rooted in Islamic discourse, non-confrontational, privatized and personalized, whose objective is to ‘empower’ women within Islam – is not a post-9/11 development but rather a result of unresolved debates on the issue of religion within the progressive women's movement. It has been due to the accommodation of religion-based feminist arguments by the stronger secular feminist movement of the 1980s that paved the way for its own marginalization by giving feminist legitimacy to such voices. The author argues that the second wave of feminism may have become diluted in its effectiveness and support due to discriminatory religious laws, dictatorship, NGO-ization, fragmentation, co-option by the state and political parties in the same way as the global women's movement has. Yet it has been the internal inconsistency of the political strategies as well as the personal, Muslim identities of secular feminists that have allowed Islamic feminists to redefine the feminist agenda in Pakistan. This article voices the larger concern over the rise of a new generation of Islamic revivalist feminists who seek to rationalize all women's rights within the religious framework and render secular feminism irrelevant while framing the debate on women's rights exclusively around Islamic history, culture and tradition. The danger is that a debate such as this will be premised on a polarized ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ Muslim woman, such that women who abide by the liberal interpretation of theology will be pitted against those who follow a strict and literal interpretist mode and associate themselves with male religio-political discourse. This is only likely to produce a new, radicalized, religio-political feminism dominating Pakistan's political future.     

The human right to marry: a refugee’s perspective

In the European Court of Human Rights cases of Muñoz Díaz v Spain in 2009 (Muñoz Díaz v Spain [2009], Application No. 49151/07) and Serife Yigit v Turkey in 2010 (Serife Yegit [2010], Application No. 3976/05), involving unregistered/informal ‘marriages’ of a Roma couple and a Muslim couple, respectively, the Grand Chamber took the position that civil marriages are available to all people in the state without distinction and therefore no breach of Article 12’s right to marry (nor Article 14’s prohibition of discrimination) had occurred when the respective states failed to recognise the informal marriages of the applicants. This article considers these two cases, and asks whether the court’s position is challenged by migrants/refugees, whose access to formal marriages maybe impeded due to a lack of identity and status documentation.