Abstract
This chapter begins by summarizing the research in the book which sought out to problematize the notion of Pakistan’s widely circulated identity, especially among policy-makers. The chapter further explains how the book, rather than focusing inward, follows an outward approach in that it seeks to understand how the ‘international’ comes to know Pakistan and how this particular knowledge directs decision-making processes. The chapter argues that the power of western discourse to determine what interpretations of knowledge are privileged, who the authoritative subject is, and how the subject is positioned in the discursive field, continues to legitimize a specific interpretation of Pakistan’s identity and its actions. This chapter concludes that, understanding how discourse structures our political ‘reality’, it is time that questions such as ‘What do we know about Pakistan?’ or ‘Why Pakistan is the way it is?’, be replaced by questions such as ‘How do we know about Pakistan?’.
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Notes
- 1.
Jacob N. Shapiro and C. Christine Fair, “Understanding Support for Islamist Militancy in Pakistan,” International Security 34, no. 3 (January 2010): 79, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec.2010.34.3.79.
- 2.
Vipin Narang, “Posturing for Peace? Pakistan’s Nuclear Postures and South Asian Stability,” International Security 34, no. 3 (2010): 39, https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/files/publication/Narang.pdf.
- 3.
Roxanne Lynn Doty, “Foreign Policy as Social Construction: A Post-positivist Analysis of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy in the Philippines,” International Studies Quarterly 37, no. 3 (September 1993): 298, https://doi.org/10.2307/2600810.
- 4.
For a detailed understanding of the link between power and knowledge, see Roxanne Lynn Doty, Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Representation in North-South Relations (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1996); David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (University of Minnesota Press, 1992); Stuart Hall, ed., Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (Sage in association with the Open University, 1997); Stuart Hall, “The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power,” in The Indigenous Experience: Global Perspectives (Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2006), 165–73; Richard Jackson, “Constructing Enemies: ‘Islamic Terrorism’ in Political and Academic Discourse,” Government and Opposition 42, no. 3 (March 28, 2007): 394–426, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-7053.2007.00229.x; Richard Jackson, “The Ghosts of State Terror: Knowledge, Politics and Terrorism Studies,” Critical Studies on Terrorism 1, no. 3 (December 10, 2008): 377–92, https://doi.org/10.1080/17539150802515046.
- 5.
For a more comprehensive view of the debate between the various ontological and epistemological factions, see Lene Hansen, Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War (Routledge, 2006); Jeffrey Checkel, “Review: The Constructivist Turn in International Relations Theory,” World Politics 50, no. 2 (1998): 324–48, https://doi.org/10.2307/25054040; Steve Smith, “The United States and the Discipline of International Relations: ‘Hegemonic Country, Hegemonic Discipline,’” International Studies Review 4, no. 2 (2002): 67–85, https://doi.org/10.2307/3186354; Ted Hopf, “The Promise of Constructivism in International Relations Theory,” International Security 23, no. 1 (July 27, 1998): 171–200, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec.23.1.171; Ronen Palan, “A World of Their Making: An Evaluation of the Constructivist Critique in International Relations,” Review of International Studies 26, no. 31 (2000): 575–98; Maja Zehfuss, Constructivism in International Relations: The Politics of Reality (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
- 6.
Livio Nimmer, “De-contextualization in the Terrorism Discourse: A Social Constructionist View,” ENDC Proceedings 14 (2011): 229.
- 7.
This follows the logic that all International Relation is ‘area’ studies and because the developmental trajectory of Area Studies as a disciplinary enterprise was based on a need to inform the policy-maker’s decisions, it follows that ‘area’ studies is also International Relations.
- 8.
For example, see Daniel Maliniak et al., “International Relations in the US Academy,” International Studies Quarterly 55 (2011): 437–64, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2478.2011.00653.x; Arlene B. Tickner and Ole Wæver, International Relations Scholarship Around the World (New York and London: Routledge, 2009); Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan, eds., Non-Western International Relations Theory: Perspectives on and Beyond Asia (New York: Routledge, 2010).
- 9.
Robbie Shilliam, ed., International Relations and Non-Western Thought: Imperialism, Colonialism, and Investigations of Global Modernity (Routledge, 2011); David L. Blaney and Arlene B. Tickner, “Worlding, Ontological Politics and the Possibility of a Decolonial IR,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 45, no. 3 (June 12, 2017): 293–311, https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829817702446; Arlene B. Tickner, “Core, Periphery and (Neo)Imperialist International Relations,” European Journal of International Relations 19, no. 3 (2013): 627–46, https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066113494323; Branwen Gruffydd Jones, ed., Decolonizing International Relations (Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).
- 10.
For an overview of various perspectives on the development of Area Studies as an enterprise, see Vicente L. Rafael, “The Cultures of Area Studies in the United States,” Social Text 41, no. 41 (1994): 91–111, https://doi.org/10.2307/466834; Malini J. Schueller, “Area Studies and Multicultural Imperialism: The Project of Decolonizing Knowledge,” Social Text 25, no. 1 90 (March 1, 2007): 41–62, https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-2006-016; Katja Mielke and Anna-Katharina Hornidge, eds., Area Studies at the Crossroads: Knowledge Production After the Mobility Turn (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); David Ludden, “Area Studies in the Age of Globalization,” Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad 6 (2000): 1–22; Peter J. Katzenstein, “Area and Regional Studies in the United States,” PS: Political Science and Politics 34, no. 4 (2001): 789–91, https://doi.org/10.2307/1350268.
- 11.
This is the general perception about International Relations scholars, especially in the US academe. See Joseph S. Nye Jr., “Scholars on the Sideline,” Washington Post, April 13, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/12/AR2009041202260.html?noredirect=on; Paul C. Avey and Michael C. Desch, “What Do Policymakers Want from Us? Results of a Survey of Current and Former Senior National Security Decision Makers,” International Studies Quarterly 58, no. 2 (June 1, 2014): 227–46, https://doi.org/10.1111/isqu.12111; Peter Campbell and Michael C. Desch, “Rank Irrelevance,” Foreign Affairs, September 15, 2013, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2013-09-15/rank-irrelevance; Bruce W. Jentleson, “The Need for Praxis: Bringing Policy Relevance Back In,” International Security 26, no. 4 (April 29, 2002): 169–83, https://doi.org/10.1162/016228802753696816; Stephen M. Walt, “The Relationship Between Theory and Practice in International Relations,” Annual Review of Political Science 8, no. 1 (June 15, 2005): 23–48, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.7.012003.104904; John J. Mearsheimer, “A Self-Enclosed World?” in Problems and Methods in the Study of Politics, ed. Ian Shapiro, Rogers M. Smith, and Tarek E. Masoud (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 388–94, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492174.
- 12.
See Peter A. Jackson, “The Neoliberal University and Global Immobilities of Theory,” in Area Studies at the Crossroads: Knowledge Production After the Mobility Turn, ed. Katja Mielke and Anna-Katharina Hornidge (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 27–44, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59834-9_1; Kwang-Yeong Shin, “Globalization and the National Social Science in the Discourse on the SSCI in South Korea,” Korean Social Science Journal, XXXIV 34, no. 1 (2007): 93–116; Henry Wai-Chung Yeung, “Redressing the Geographical Bias in Social Science Knowledge,” Environment and Planning A 33, no. 1 (2001): 1–9, https://doi.org/10.1068/a33181; Sari Hanafi, “University Systems in the Arab East: Publish Globally and Perish Locally vs Publish Locally and Perish Globally,” Current Sociology 59, no. 3 (May 28, 2011): 291–309; Fernanda Beigel, “Publishing from the Periphery: Structural Heterogeneity and Segmented Circuits—The Evaluation of Scientific Publications for Tenure in Argentina’s CONICET,” Current Sociology 62, no. 5 (September 3, 2014): 743–65; Frederick H. Gareau, “Another Type of Third World Dependency: The Social Sciences,” International Sociology 3, no. 2 (June 29, 1988): 171–78; A. Suresh Canagarajah, “‘Nondiscursive’ Requirements in Academic Publishing, Material Resources of Periphery Scholars, and the Politics of Knowledge Production,” Written Communication 13, no. 4 (1996): 435–72, https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088396013004001; Syed Hussein Alatas, “Intellectual Imperialism: Definition, Traits, and Problems,” Asian Journal of Social Science 28, no. 1 (January 1, 2000): 23–45; Syed Farid Alatas, “Academic Dependency and the Global Division of Labour in the Social Sciences,” Current Sociology 51, no. 6 (November 30, 2003): 599–613.
- 13.
See, for instance, Alastair Pennycook, The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language (Routledge, 1994); Robert Phillipson, Linguistic Imperialism (Oxford University Press, 1992); Robert Phillipson, Linguistic Imperialism Continued (London and New York: Routledge, 2009); Po King Choi, “‘Weep for Chinese University’: A Case Study of English Hegemony and Academic Capitalism in Higher Education in Hong Kong,” Journal of Education Policy 25, no. 2 (March 2010): 233–52; A. Suresh Canagarajah, A Geopolitics of Academic Writing (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002).
- 14.
N. Behera, “South Asia: A ‘Realist’ Past and Alternative Futures,” in International Relations Scholarship Around the World, ed. A Tickner and O. Wæver (London: Routledge, 2009).
- 15.
Ahmed Waqas Waheed, “State Sovereignty and International Relations in Pakistan: Analysing the Realism Stranglehold,” South Asia Research 37, no. 3 (2017): 277–95, https://doi.org/10.1177/0262728017725624.
- 16.
Doty, Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Representation in North-South Relations.
- 17.
Jennifer Milliken, “The Study of Discourse in International Relations: A Critique of Research and Methods,” European Journal of International Relations 5, no. 2 (1999): 225–54, https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066199005002003.
- 18.
Jackson, “Constructing Enemies: ‘Islamic Terrorism’ in Political and Academic Discourse.”
- 19.
Neta C. Crawford, “Costs of War Project,” 2018, https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2018/HumanCosts%2CNov82018CoW.pdf.
- 20.
Hafiz A. Pasha, Growth and Inequality in Pakistan: Volume I (Islamabad: Freidrich Ebert Stiftung, 2018), https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/pakistan/14113.pdf; Abdul Qadir, “Growth and Inequality in Pakistan: Interview with Economist Hafiz A. Pasha,” Freidrich Eber Stiftung Connect, 2018, https://www.fes-connect.org/people/growth-and-inequality-in-pakistan/.
- 21.
For a more comprehensive comparison between ‘benevolent’ US aid and Pakistan’s economic losses, see Muhammad R. Shahid, “Pakistan’s Economic Aid and Losses in the War on Terror,” Counter Terrorist Trends and Analysis 6, no. 5 (2014): 10–15.
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Waheed, A.W. (2020). Conclusion. In: Constructing 'Pakistan' through Knowledge Production in International Relations and Area Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0742-7_6
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