Celebrating 20 years of the Lake District Pakistan Workshop

Abstract

This special issue of Contemporary South Asia celebrates 20 years of the annual Pakistan Workshop held in the Lake District of England. This event, the primary raison d'être for the Pakistan Studies Group, has consistently provided a forum for researchers of Pakistan, the Pakistani Diaspora, and Muslim groups of other South Asian countries to meet and exchange ideas. The main impetus for the Workshop has always come from anthropologists, but representatives from other disciplines have been an integral part of what makes it both successful and worthwhile. This issue brings together some important papers on Pakistan and the Pakistani Diaspora from recent participants in the Workshop. One of the dominant themes that emerge from this collection is that Pakistan is complex, and defies simple categorisation. The country is conservative and traditional while being modern and progressive. It is a wealthy nation in some ways, although it is impossible to deny its overwhelming poverty. There are horrendous acts of violence in a country that is by and large very peaceful. This is not to say that there are not clear patterns that emerge, nor that it is impossible to make any generalisations about Pakistan. However, this issue does suggest that a crude superficial characterisation of Pakistan, at best, is probably unhelpful. Hence the need for edited volumes, monographs, and articles that address Pakistan's diversity and vibrancy, and situate the country appropriately within its role in the wider world stage.

Notes

1. For more information, see the Pakistan Studies Group website, 〈http://psg.anthropology.ac.uk〉, accessed 1 September 2006.

2. See, for instance, Y. Saika, ‘The subcontinental human and the study of East–East encounters’, paper presented at the 2005 Pakistan Workshop, held at the Rock How, the Lake District, UK, 9–11 May 2003.

3. See, for instance, W. Wardak, ‘Post-conflict adjustment among Afghan refugee children in Peshawar’, paper presented at the 2003 Pakistan Workshop, held at the Rock How, the Lake District, UK, 6–8 May 2005.

4. S.P. Huntington, ‘The clash of civilizations,’Foreign Affairs, Vol 72, No 3, Summer 1993, pp 22–28.

5. H. Donnan and P. Werbner, ‘Introduction’, in H. Donnan and P. Werbner (eds), Economy and Culture in Pakistan: Migrants and Cities in a Muslim Society (London: MacMillan, 1991).

6. R.D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).

7. For an account of the religion versus culture debate, see, for example, S. McLoughlin, ‘“An under-class in Purdah?” Discrepant representations of identity and the experiences of Young-British-Asian-Muslim-Women’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, Vol 80, 1998, p 3.

8. See Michael Fischer, ‘Arranging marriage in an urban community in Pakistan, 1982–2000’, Contemporary South Asia, Vol 14, No 3, September 2006, pp 339–353; and M. Bolognani, ‘The myth of return: dismissal, revival or survival?’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, forthcoming 2007.

9. See O. Noman, ‘The impact of migration on Pakistan's economy and society’, in H. Donnan and P. Werbner (eds), Economy and Culture in Pakistan: Migrants and Cities in a Muslim Society (London: MacMillan, 1991); and A. Lefebvre, Kinship, Honour and Money in Rural Pakistan: Subsistence Economy and the Effects of International Migration (Richmond: Curzon, 1999).

10. S.M. Lyon, An Anthropological Analysis of Local Politics and Patronage in a Pakistani Village (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004).