In the Wake of Disaster

Key information

Date
Time
5:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Venue
Paul Webley Wing (Senate House)
Room
Alumni Lecture Theatre

About this event

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED

CANCELLED

Dr Ayesha Siddiqi
Due to unforeseen circumstances, this event has been cancelled. Apologise of any inconvenience caused.

Abstract

In the Wake of Disaster is the first book to seriously engage with the everyday state through a devastating disaster in Pakistan. It explores post-disaster politics in the aftermath of large-scale flooding of the Indus River that affected millions of people in 2010 and 2011. The way this disaster was lived, experienced and politically constructed tells a vivid and illustrative story about the social contract between the state and its citizens and Islamists in Pakistan. This book tells that story.

It sets out to examine a seemingly simple question: what is the responsibility of the state to its people in the aftermath of a natural hazard based disaster? Along the way it delves into rich detail about people’s everyday encounters with the state in Pakistan, uncovers post-colonial discourses on rights of citizenship and dispels mainstream understanding of Islamist groups as presenting an alternative development paradigm to the state. Based on detailed ethnographic fieldwork, it forces the reader to look beyond narratives of Pakistan as the perennial ‘failing state’ falling victim to an imminent ‘Islamist takeover’. It shifts the conversation from hysteria and sensationalism surrounding Pakistan to the everyday. In doing so it transforms our understanding of contemporary disasters.

Panelists:

  • Prof Ed Simpson, Professor of Social Anthropology, SOAS
  • Dr Majed Akhtar, Lecturer in Environment and Society, King’s College London
Biography

Dr. Ayesha Siddiqi is University Lecturer in Human Geography at University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on disasters and political space in postcolonial states. Her book “In the Wake of Disaster: Islamists, the State and a Social Contract in Pakistan” was published by Cambridge University Press in 2019 and has been called “by far the most important book on the subject written since 9-11” by reviewers. It is an ethnographic exploration into the state-citizenship relationship in Lower Sindh after the Indus Floods of 2010 and 2011. Her work has been particularly influential in policy circles and until recently Ayesha was on a part-time secondment with the International Development Select Committee at the House of Commons. She has also published papers for the United Nations office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and for think tanks such as the Overseas Development Institute (ODI).

Organiser: SOAS South Asia Institute

Contact email: ssai@soas.ac.uk

Contact Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4390