‘Drawing in’ other worlds: Addressing fragile heritage landscapes through cosmopolitical maps

ABSTRACT

This paper builds on the argument that large-scale infrastructural development in remote communities poses a threat to their local heritage landscape. This is done not only through physical intervention in landscapes (through bridges, roads, pipelines or ports) but also through imaginaries projected about development that tends to re-label local landscapes as hotspots for development. This paper explores drawing as a medium to explore fragile-heritage landscapes through the stories, folklores and experiences of local communities within their landscape. It proposes a mapping strategy that attempts to grasp the diminishing heritage landscapes of Gwadar, a coastal town in Pakistan which is being re-claimed as the hub of prosperity (port) connecting two infrastructural mammoths: the BRI land routes and maritime silk roads. Together with the community, their stories and memories, we ‘draw-in’ tangible, immaterial, invisible, human, spiritual and more-than-human entities, and their worlds that are at risk of erasure in the current wave of infrastructural development.

KEYWORDS:

• Erasure
• fragile heritage
• fragile-heritage
• at-risk
• infrastructures

Acknowledgement

I would like thank the Artist Yumna Sadiq for illustrating these expressive panels that narrate the other worlds of Gwadar and for thinking through these drawing compositions with me. I am most grateful to Mahigeers and local researchers in Gwadar especially Nasir Sohrabi, Rahim Sohrabi and Farid Gwadari who gave us their time and told us these stories numerous times. I want to thank Batool Ali for helping collect and transcribe these stories. I want to acknowledge my conversations with Fatima Hussain that have inspired our strategy for characterizing entities and elements. This empirical material was gathered under Laajverd Visiting School 2019 “Fragile scapes-Fragmented lives” co-led by Nishat Awan and Zahra Hussain, supported by the Research and Enterprise Committee, GCRF Fund of Goldsmiths, University of London and the Topological Atlas project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zahra Hussain

Zahra Hussain is Post Doctoral Fellow (South Asia) on the GCRF Gender Justice and Security Hub. She also leads the ‘Academy for Democracy’ http://lvs.laajverd.org/ project which explores forms of engagement with landscapes in transition.