In this book, Iftikhar Dadi traces the development of modernism in 20th century South Asian art through a series of case studies of Muslim artists, including Abdur Rahman Chughtai, Sadequain, and a number of other important Pakistani artists. Modernism in art, as Dadi acknowledges, is a world-wide phenomenon, and yet, as he shows with careful research and analysis, the particularities of the development and evolution of modernist art in Pakistan have been closely tied to its particular historical context. Pakistan’s art, he argues, cannot be understood except in relationship to the broader social, political and intellectual frameworks in which it developed. Dadi’s exposition of the tensions between self and society, between the traditional and the cosmopolitan, and between the past and the present provides a dense backdrop for confronting and interpreting Pakistan’s modern art and the artists who produced it. His book is critically important for bringing Pakistan’s art squarely into the framework of wider international discussions about modernist art. Perhaps more important, this book brings the study of art into larger debates about Pakistan’s history and culture.
Ayesha Siddiqa's Military Inc. is a courageous work exposing the Pakistan military's largely invisible parallel economy; one that siphons off a sizable share of the Pakistani state's resources to benefit a select few. The work goes beyond the "national security" analysis of Pakistan's military's reluctance to relinquish control; it shows that the defense service's motivations for dominance are rather parochial. Siddiqa's theoretical framework also analyzes the role of the Turkish and Indonesian militaries, showing how other "professional" militaries can have "unprofessional" interests; this impedes the development of a vibrant democracy. Written in lucid prose, this work charts new ground in its analysis of how the Pakistan military's economic interests contribute to its imperative to gain state power while providing a theoretical framework that engages broader questions of the relationship between militaries and state power. In doing so, Military Inc. makes an important contribution to the comparative study of military-state-society relations while providing for Pakistan--both through its empirical depth and cogent analysis--a critical history of the present. It is a new and innovative work that invites exploration of the Pakistan project that extends beyond the "Muslim question" and probes the institutions that failed in delivering the promise of improvement to the people in the newly found Muslim homeland.
Living Islam is both a "classically" ethnographic and vividly fresh study of intellectual and moral life in Chitral that successfully highlights the cultural,intellectual and moral strategies Chitralis resort to in order to negotiate the stresses and challenges of modernization and the Islamist-inspired volatile political situation surrounding their region. What is remarkable is that Marsden manages to bring the ideas and self-representations of the Rowshanis out so plausibly and uncomplicatedly.
While there are many studies of the Islamist challenge to traditional Muslim societies, few have looked beyond the national or state level and the urban milieu. By situating his work in small towns and villages in an ethnically and religiously diverse region, and by trying to understand and explain the ways in which rural people use their cultural resources to intellectually and morally engage with serious, and often dangerous and violent, geo-political phenomena, Marsden has produced a study that is not only relevant to anthropologists but also political scientists and those interested in political Islam.
Making Lahore Modern is a theoretically informed and archivally grounded tour de force that blends cultural history, urban studies, architectural history, colonial history and the study of modernity. In writing a "history of the present" for the city of Lahore in Making Lahore Modern, William Glover does far more than historically analyze the city's urban landscape. His multidimensional work describes the physical changes brought to the city's landscape by the British Raj, the closely related cultural, social and aesthetic changes, and various responses to these changes as well.
In so doing, his work is as much about colonial governmentality as architecture, as much about conceptions of history as urban planning. Making Lahore Modern also points out the limits of the colonial enculturation project by showing how Indian colonial subjects were often active participants in the colonial projects of urban renewal. They brought their own set of meanings to them, and so appropriated them to their own ends.
As one would expect from such a rich study, Glover's work is not only relevant to urban studies but also studies of colonialism, govenmentality and the development of non-western modern aesthetics. It will make for delightful, informative reading for scholars, urban planners and Lahoris who love to love their city.