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Tuesday 26 May 2015

Engaging Disciplines



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.