Marta Bolognani

Star fission: Shoaib Akhtar and fragmentation as transnational celebrity strategy

If we understand ‘the making of celebrity’ as a specific cultural endeavour, transnational celebrity must be viewed as the opportunity (structure) or capacity (agency) to exercise control over fame, at a very high level of cultural complexity, across cultural borders. It would appear that the conditio sine qua non for the longevity of a star is exactly this capacity of transcending ones nations cultural specificity. In this article, the Guinness Book of Records-holder Pakistani fast-bowler Shoaib Akhtar provides a case study of someone who, rather than projecting one single image globally, has had the opportunity to ground his star persona in the Pakistani cultural milieu and at the same time the capacity, to some extent, to transcend (and transgress) multiple borders. This paper analyses his alternate fortunes as dictated by the interplay of national and international politics, religion, class and post-colonial cricket, and argues that fragmentation may be one strategy to achieve transnational celebrity, although deep cultural and political dynamics may still limit stardom to a regional dimension, in this case the South Asian diaspora.

Being a freshie is (not) cool: stigma, capital and disgust in British Pakistani stereotypes of new subcontinental migrants

ABSTRACT Intra-ethnic discrimination, in the form of stereotyping of recent migrants by settled ethnic minorities, has been interpreted as internalized racism, displacing stigma and negotiation of local hierarchies of belonging. Stereotypes of ‘Fresh off the Boat’ migrants construct cultural boundaries and assertions of belonging, offering clues to processes of identity-making where ethnicity is complicated by ongoing migration. In British Pakistani portrayals of ‘freshies’, this assertion of difference coexists with familial ties and a high incidence of transnational marriage. Analysis of the figure of the ‘freshie’ in internet comedy videos, combined with qualitative research material, provides insight into dynamics of cultural and social capital, immigration and sexuality through manifestations of difference, similarity and disgust. Together these not only reveal the weakness of recent migrants’ positions in structures of socio-economic and symbolic power, but the blurring of social categories, and the continuing importance of transnational kinship in negotiations of identity amongst British Pakistanis.

From myth of return to return fantasy: a psychosocial interpretation of migration imaginaries

By referring to the myth of return, migration literature has focused mainly on sociopolitical explanations, neglecting intersubjective dynamics. This paper operates a switch from myth of return to fantasy. This allows the analysis to be detached from the return speculation’s outcome. It also recognises the cross-generational endurance of return-thinking as functional to the process of identity-building as part of a migrant’s search for well-being. Three British Pakistani migration stories will illustrate how return fantasies are not necessarily a symptom of disengagement with the host society, but are part of a common way human beings have to imagine possible futures for themselves and make sense of their present. Fantasies have the potential to create a virtual transitional space where the individual can re-elaborate experiences in a mode that is safer than the one of reality and may have a positive effect on normalising one’s migration experience.

Virtual protest with tangible effects? An analysis of media strategies in the 2007 Pakistani anti-Emergency movement

On 3rd November 2007 General Parvez Musharraf imposed a State of Emergency on Pakistan. During the State of Emergency the judiciary was turned upside down, the media selectively censored and many lawyers and human rights activists were arrested. While the lower classes remained relatively silent and carried on with their daily routines, an unprecedented movement against Musharraf, but more so pro-democracy and pro-judiciary, swept the country. This paper analyses the interrelation between the political concerns of a specific (upper-middle class) class subculture, the extraordinary means of communication available to them and the development of the protest. The paper argues that the way in which the protest was organised and negotiated was profoundly rooted in class divisions affecting consumption and production in the field of new media, and that where convergence between new and old media occurred, this was not enough to significantly involve other classes. The paper concludes by highlighting how meta-mediatic outputs and productions aimed primarily at a foreign audience nevertheless had an important role in changing the nature of the Pakistani public sphere, although it confutes theories that new media can produce social change at a great speed. The data was collected through participant observation, monitoring of internet blogs and videos, collection of articles in the English press, and interviews with prominent figures in the protest.

Marriage Migration and Integration

In both policy and academic debates in Britain, as elsewhere in Europe, concern is increasingly expressed over the implications of spousal immigration for ‘integration’. Continued practices of ‘homeland’ transnational marriage within some ethnic minority communities, in particular, are presented as problematic, and new immigration restrictions likely to particularly affect such groups are justified on the grounds of promoting integration. The evidence base to underpin this concern is, however, surprisingly limited and analysis is based on differing and often partial conceptualisations of integration. Through an examination of the evidence in recent studies, we interrogate the impact which spousal immigration can have within differing domains of integration. Exposing the complex processes at play we demonstrate the need for future research to deploy a nuanced, more comprehensive concept of integration if it is to avoid simplistic assertions that these forms of marriage migration have a single, direct impact on integration processes.

The Mirror crack’ed: Shifting gazes and the curse of truths

Comparison is foundational to the development of the social sciences. Both sociology and anthropology have made their most important contributions after careful comparative scrutiny of related but distinct phenomena. Hence, the justification for the present volume. We have deliberately brought together scholars working in far-flung parts of the world whose connection come from the relationships that exist between the people with whom those scholars work. Pakistan and its diaspora are distinct and there are enormous differences between the lived experience of people born, brought up, and living in Pakistan and those people of Pakistani origin born, brought up, and living in Britain. It would be tempting to focus on one and neglect the other. In material terms, the flow of resources and people, however, is not unidirectional. Consequently, we have taken the position that Britain must be considered as integrally connected to South Asia and vice versa.

Conclusion: Being Pakistani beyond Europe and South Asia

The 2008 Pakistani film Khuda ke Liye (KKL) has the contemporary topical Pakistani transnational story. Mansoor, a wealthy young man, leaves Lahore for America where he studies music. He meets an American woman, marries her, and after 9/11 is arrested, tortured, and finally deported by the intelligence agencies that have come to realize he is not guilty of any terrorism-related charges (the plot of the film anticipated of a real-life situation as described by Siddiqui 2009). His brother Sarmad, who used to play in the same band in Lahore, stops doing music when he meets a mullah from the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. He also agrees to marry a distant cousin from UK to help her “revert to tradition,” and leaves with her for the tribal areas. The British cousin tries to escape, and once safe from her husband, she contacts a “modernist” imam who helps fight her case in court. She then decides not to return to the UK, but to go back to the tribal areas to help with the education of the local girls. The plot of the second highest grossing film in the history of Pakistani cinema is both a geographical triangle (Pakistan, United States, and UK), and an “identity triangle”: Islam, family traditions, gender relations (see Malik 2008: 169)

South Asian media in the Noughties

This introductory note identifies the scope of this special issue as a challenge to predominantly technology-based analysis of media in South Asia. By exploring the ways in which specific power structures, multiple cultural and social milieus, and the flourishing of technological possibilities play out in the different case studies, these authors reject the view of media as an all-encompassing power by highlighting different cases where a disjuncture between technological progress and social or political change takes place. The textual and ethnographic studies of this volume show that media groups can only be successful in participating in social change if the audiences are already responsive or ‘culturally intimate’ with their contents. We are in favour, hence, of a social analysis that accounts for technological potential (mostly borrowed by the ‘centre’ of economic and technological global power) and its localised use.