Daanish Mustafa

The Production of an Urban Hazardscape in Pakistan: Modernity, Vulnerability, and the Range of Choice

Abstract This article reconsiders vulnerability to contemporary hazards within the context of a globalizing world, characterized by the hegemony of technocratic and social modernity. It presents findings of a field study conducted on flood hazard in the Rawalpindi/Islamabad conurbation in Pakistan. Insights from three intellectual traditions within resource geography—pragmatism, political ecology, and “socionature”—are coupled with the landscape idea within cultural geography to develop the integrative concept of a “hazardscape.” This concept is defined as both an analytical way of seeing that asserts power and as a social-environmental space where the gaze of power is contested and struggled against to produce the lived reality of hazardous places. Analyses of the Lai Nullah hazardscape in the Rawalpindi/Islamabad conurbation reveal that flood victims perceive a much greater range of choice in dealing with the flood hazard than do policy makers. On the other hand, flood managers, typically state agents, see a very limited range of choice because of their modernist technocratic engagement with the Lai hazardscape. The hazardscape concept engages the social structural basis of vulnerability as well as the power/knowledge dynamic governing policy and popular discourses on flood hazard in the Lai. Analysis through the lens of the hazardscape helps expand the range of choice and suggests pragmatic solutions to hazardous situations.

Pinning down vulnerability: from narratives to numbers

Social vulnerability analyses have typically relied upon narratives to capture the nuances of the concept. While narratives have enhanced our understanding of the multiple drivers of vulnerability, they have had limited influence on hazards and climate adaptation policy. This is partially a function of the different needs and goals of the policy and research communities. The former prioritises generalised quantitative information, while the latter is more concerned with capturing complexity. A theoretically driven and empirically tested quantitative vulnerability and capacities index (VCI) for use at the local scale is presented to help connect vulnerability research and policy. There are four versions of the index for use in rural and urban contexts at the household and community levels. There can be an infinite number of drivers of vulnerability, but the VCI draws upon 12 indicators to represent material, institutional and attitudinal aspects of differential vulnerability and capacities.

Reinforcing vulnerability? Disaster relief, recovery, and response to the 2001 flood in Rawalpindi, Pakistan

Abstract The paper conducts a retrospective analysis of the relief and recovery efforts in the aftermath of the 2001 flood disaster in the Rawalpindi—Islamabad conurbation in Pakistan. The concept of recovery back to “normal” is questioned because “normal” life in the study area was characterized by extreme poverty, injustice, exposure, and vulnerability to hazards. A strong gender dimension to the experience of relief and recovery was found from the case study. It is suggested that participatory approach to needs assessment and actual relief and recovery, with special attention to gender variables, will go a long way towards linking recovery with long-term vulnerability mitigation.

Water Management in the Indus Basin of Pakistan: A Half-century Perspective

This paper surveys the past half-century of water management experiments and experience in the Indus River basin in Pakistan as a way to identify principles for long-term water planning. The survey focuses on three variables: (1) spatial scales of water management; (2) geographic regions of water management; and (3) substantive water problems. These variables help assess changes during the post-colonial transition (1947-60); Indus basin development (1960-75); and management and environmental movements (1975-2000). Taken together, these periods point toward a model of Articulated Adaptive Management, which stresses planning for economic, political and environmental crises; dynamic changes in governance; multiple scales of water management; regional diversity and innovation; and broader scientific experimentation and monitoring of water management alternatives .

To each according to his power? Participation, access, and vulnerability in irrigation and flood management in Pakistan

In this paper I draw upon a realist conceptualization of power to inform the analysis of ethnographic data on access to irrigation water and vulnerability to flood hazard in Pakistan. I undertake an integrated analysis of the role of different types of power in influencing differential vulnerability to flood hazard and access to irrigation water in four local-level villages in central Pakistan. Three modes of power are identified: the feudal mode, the bourgeoisie mode, and the communal mode. Each of the modes relies on force, socialization, and control over resources, respectively, to ensure compliance. The villages which are dominated by large landowners tend to have the feudal mode of power as the predominant power structure, whereas the villages with relatively equal property ownership tend to have the communal mode as the dominant power structure. The analyses of power suggest that the participatory reforms in the water sector of Pakistan proposed by the World Bank are unlikely to lead to gains in either equity or efficiency as long as issues of differential power remain unaddressed.

Xeriscape people and the cultural politics of turfgrass transformation

Turfgrass yards dominate the residential landscapes of St Petersburg, Florida, and much of the rest of the urban and suburban United States. Increasingly, alternatives to the resource-intensive turfgrass lawn are the focus of interest among environmentalists, state and county governments, and growing numbers of residents in cities in the water-scarce Southeast and Southwest. Drawing on ethnographic and survey field research on everyday yard practices, resource use, and landscape perceptions, we explore the environmental and cultural dilemmas presented by the choice between conventional turfgrass and the more environmentally benign xeriscaping. We engage with Bourdieus notions of habitus, field, and distinction to explore how local and personal scale yards, as produced and consumed technonatures, mediate the scales of global environmentalism, national and regional cultural identities, classed aesthetics, and personal and collective security. We find that xeriscaping does not increase proportionate to income. We argue that yards are a display of cultural capital and that xeriscapers are invested in an environmentalist field that operates at an imagined global scale as opposed to the neighborhood and national scale values invoked with the traditional turfgrass lawn. Referring to Bourdieus work on taste and distinction, we argue that xeriscaped landscapes may entail a more environmentally benign set of landscaping practices but that the adoption of xeriscaping is no less implicated in the reproduction of privilege and distinction than is the traditional turfgrass lawn.

Linking Access and Vulnerability: Perceptions of Irrigation and Flood Management in Pakistan

This article reports the results of a survey conducted in four villages in central Pakistan regarding peoples perceptions about irrigation- and flood-related issues. The article uses the perception studies methodology from the human ecology school to address the political ecology agenda in resource and hazards geography. The log-linear analysis of the survey data shows that people are knowledgeable about social power differentials and interactions between various social factors in influencing their access to resources and vulnerability to floods. The article further demonstrates that water users and vulnerable populations are much more likely to suggest social explanations than naturalistic or fatalistic explanations for their differential access to irrigation water and vulnerability to flood hazard.

Colonial law, contemporary water issues in Pakistan

Abstract The paper undertakes a legal geographical analysis of a key piece of legislation, the Canal and Drainage Act (1873), governing water resources management in the Indus basin of Pakistan from a critical legal perspective. The historical context of the Act is discussed to demonstrate the overlap between the Act and the colonial state that framed it. Textual analyses of the Act are undertaken to unpack the ideology and the functionality of the Act. Critical legal analyses of the Act reveal that the balance of legal rights enshrined in the Act is heavily in favor of the state as opposed to the water users. The overall tenor of the Act is that of a colonial document meant to facilitate control over a population than a legislation meant to facilitate efficient and equitable provision of a public service to the public. An analysis of the enforcement data about the Act demonstrate that the Canal and Drainage Act indeed lends itself to differential enforcement because of its insensitivity to issues of social power and geographical variations in the physical and social environment in the basin. The paper concludes that equity in water resources management in the Indus basin is contingent upon engagement with the issues of legal rights and geographical implications of a colonial legislation like the Canal and Drainage Act (1873). The analyses in the paper contribute to a growing literature on legal geography and engage the discourses on legal rights and issues of access to resources.

Theory versus practice: The bureaucratic ethos of water resource management and administration in Pakistan

Cooperative interaction between the state and civil society actors can be a catalyst for equity and efficiency in resource management. By analyzing the perceptions of the Pakistani water bureaucracy towards civil society-based participatory management, the present paper hopes to contribute towards practical policy discourse on narrowing the gap between the state and civil society and the prospects for participatory water resources management. Pakistani water management bureaucracy as an integral part of a bureaucratic tradition, which is a lineal descendant of the British colonial Indian Civil Service, is structurally hostile towards the civil society. A series of interviews conducted with government officials at all levels of the water management bureaucracy in Pakistan indicates that most have a patronizing and adversarial attitude towards the public. A small minority of senior level officials, however, is beginning to recognize the value of public participation in water resources management. The interviews with water managers indicate that their assumptions and management of water resources are steeped in scientific modernity, which is not necessarily consonant with the publics discourse on water management. It is suggested that theoretically grounded, non-positivist research will contribute to generating knowledge that may facilitate better state and civil society synergy, at least in the realm of resource management.

Anti)social capital in the production of an (un)civil society in Pakistan.

Abstract. Pakistan is home to some of the most widely admired examples of civil‐society‐based service‐delivery and advocacy groups. Pakistan has also spawned some much‐maligned nongovernmental actors with violent agendas. This article uses the social capital / civil society conceptual lens to view the modes of (anti)social capital mobilization that contribute to the civil and uncivil spaces of Pakistani society. The case examples of Jamaat‐e‐Islami, an Islamic revivalist organization, and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan are used to understand the geography of social and antisocial forces in Pakistan. It is argued that the processes that mobilize social capital‐whether positive or perverse‐are multiscalar and that, in the Pakistani context, no compelling cultural or religious reason exists for the ascendance of one type of social capital over the other. Positive social capital can be mobilized to contribute to a more civil social discourse in Pakistan, given the right policy choices.