IBA Hosts Talk On Dr. Ayesha's Book

The Social Sciences and Liberal Arts Department at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) Karachi on Thursday hosted a talk by scholar and researcher Dr. Ayesha Siddiqi on her book titled "In the Wake of Disaster

KARACHI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 19th Dec, 2019 ) :The Social Sciences and Liberal Arts Department at the Institute of business Administration (IBA) Karachi on Thursday hosted a talk by scholar and researcher Dr. Ayesha Siddiqi on her book titled "In the Wake of Disaster: Islamists, the State and a Social Contract in Pakistan." Dr. Siddiqi -- who is visiting from Royal Holloway, University of London is trained in the discipline of human geography but described her work as being very inter-disciplinary in nature. Her talk presented key findings from the book.

The book is based on Dr. Siddiqi's doctoral dissertation research conducted in the aftermath of the massive floods that devastated parts of Pakistan in 2010 and 2011. She spent seven months in lower Sindh doing ethnographic fieldwork in three districts including Thatta, Badin, and Tharparkar to understand how natural disasters leave a political impact.

Most communities devastated by the flooding continued to have high expectations from the state and expressed their belief that only the state is responsible for helping them, rather than local power-brokers and traditional sources of authority, she said in here book.

She also showed how the government's cash disbursement to flood-affected communities created a sense of entitlement and further strengthened citizens' claims on the state. The language of citizenship forged by Enlightenment-era European thinkers like Rousseau and Voltaire does not apply to these communities. Instead, they use words like "huqooq" to express their sense of civic belonging.