New Perspectives on Pakistan's Political Economy

State, Class and Social Change

Matthew McCartney, S. Akbar Zaidi

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781108486552
• eBook ISBN:
  9781108763097
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Global Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume makes a major intervention in the debates around the nature of the political economy of Pakistan, focusing on its contemporary social dynamics. This is the first comprehensive academic analysis of Pakistan's political economy after thirty-five years, and addresses issues of state, class and society, examining gender, the middle classes, the media, the bazaar economy, urban spaces and the new elite. The book goes beyond the contemporary obsession with terrorism and extremism, political Islam, and simple 'civilian–military relations', and looks at modern-day Pakistan through the lens of varied academic disciplines. It not only brings together new work by some emerging scholars but also formulates a new political economy for the country, reflecting the contemporary reality and diversification in the social sciences in Pakistan. The chapters dynamically and dialectically capture emergent processes and trends in framing Pakistan's political economy and invite scholars to engage with and move beyond these concerns and issues.

Table of contents

• Cover
• New Perspectives on Pakistan’s Political Economy
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 In a Desperate State: The Social Sciences and the Overdeveloped State in Pakistan, 1950 to 1983
• 2 The Overdeveloped Alavian legacy
• 3 Institutions Matter: The State, the Military and Social Class
• 4 Class Is Dead but Faith Never Dies: Women, Islam and Pakistan
• 5 The Amnesia of Genesis
• 6 The Political Economy of Uneven State-Spatiality in Pakistan: The Interplay of Space, Class and Institutions
• 7 An Evolving Class Structure?: Pakistan’s Ruling Elites and the Implications for Pakistan’s Political Economy
• 8 The Segmented ‘Rural Elite’: Agrarian Transformation and Rural Politics in Pakistani Punjab
• 9 Ascending the Power Structure: Bazaar Traders in Urban Punjab
• 10 Democracy and Patronage in Pakistan
• 11 From Overdeveloped State to Praetorian Pakistan: Tracing the Media’s Transformations
• About the Contributors
• Index