The New Pakistani Middle Class
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.16 (578 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0674280032 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 168 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2018-01-16 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
It is rare to see such a nuanced and thoroughly contextualized analysis of Muslim belonging and politics. A much-needed counterpart to what we know about the Indian middle class and its religiosity. This intelligent book makes an invaluable contribution toward shifting our perception of Pakistan as a place of absolutes. (Faisal Devji, author of Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea)I couldn't put down Ammara Maqsood’s incisive and empathetic ethnography of Lahore’s rising middle classshe carefully constructs a varied picture of what it is to be modern, authentic, and Islamic. (Kamran Asdar Ali, author of Communism in Pakistan: Politics and Class Activism 1947-1972)A fascinating study of the rise of Paki
Ammara Maqsood is ESRC Future Research Leaders Fellow at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology and Junior Research Fellow at St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford.
The religious sensibilities of this new middle-class group are often portrayed as Saudi-inspired and Wahhabi.Through a focus on religious study gatherings and also on consumption in middle-class circlesranging from the choice of religious music and home décor to debit cards and the cut of a woman’s burkhaThe New Pakistani Middle Class untangles current trends in piety that both aspire toward, and contest, prevailing ideas of modernity. Pakistan’s presence in the outside world is dominated by images of religious extremism and violence. For this traditional middle class, a Muslim identity is about being modern, global, and on the same footing as the West. Recently, however, a more visibly religious, upwardly mobile social group has struggled to distinguish itself against this backdrop of conventional middle-class modernity, by embracing Islamic culture and values. Maqsood probes how the politics of modernity meets the practices of piety in the struggle among different middle-class groups for social recognition and legitimac