by Haris Gazdar
This blog is an excerpt from a talk given at the meeting
of the American Institute of Pakistan Studies on 4 April 2015 at the University
of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
I wish to speak about two aspects of conducting
applied social science research on the city by reflecting on some work on
Karachi that I have been involved with in the last few years, hopefully as a
way of thinking about the broader question of engagement in the production of
knowledge. Of the two things I want to
speak about the first is methodological.
I will show, through illustration, the value of working across
disciplines on urban themes. The second
is political, about how actions and actors would like to make use of knowledge
and knowledge producers, and how this is both energizing and frustrating.
