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- All Subjects: South Asian studies
- Creators: Feldhaus, Anne
- Creators: Bokenkamp, Stephen R
- Creators: Catlaw, Thomas
Description
This dissertation discusses the processes of post-colonial minoritization of Hindus in Pakistan from the inception of the state in 1947 to the secession of the eastern wing (former East Pakistan, now Bangladesh) from the country after a civil and international war in 1971. The dissertation analyzes the emergence and development of the minority question in Europe and connects it with Colonial India, where it culminated into Partition of British India and emergence of Pakistan in 1947. The dissertation analyzes post- Colonial minoritization of Pakistani Hindus as a gradual process on three different but interconnected levels: 1. the loss of Hindu life from Pakistan, 2. the transference of Hindu property and 3. the political minoritization of Pakistani Hindus. The dissertation does so by approaching the history of Pakistani Hindus in two distinct geographical locations, Sindh and the ex-Pakistani province of East Bengal. It also includes discussion on Pakistani Scheduled Castes and Tribes. The dissertation is based on indepth, detailed fieldwork in Tharparkar district of Sindh province and archival research in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
ContributorsMahmood, Sadia (Author) / Feldhaus, Anne (Thesis advisor) / Eaton, Richard (Committee member) / Henn, Alexander (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This dissertation is a study and translation of the Hereditary Household of the Han Celestial Master (Han tianshi shijia 漢天師世家), a hagiographical account of successive generations of the Zhang family patriarchs of Celestial Masters Daoism (Tianshi dao 天師道) at Dragon and Tiger Mountain (Longhu shan 龍虎山) in Jiangxi province that was compiled in stages between the late fourteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Zhang family emerged in the late Tang or early Five dynasties period and rose to great prominence and power through the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties on the basis of the claim of direct and unbroken lineal descent from Zhang Daoling 張道陵 the ancestral Celestial Master whose covenant with the deified Laozi in 142 C.E. is a founding event of the Daoist religion. In this study I trace the lineal history of the Zhang family as presented in the Hereditary Household in chronological parallel to contrasting narratives found in official histories, epigraphy, and the literary record. This approach affords insight into the polemical nature of the text as an assertion of legitimacy and allows for a demonstration of how the work represents an attempt to create in writing an idealized past in order to win prestige in the present. It also affords the opportunity to scour the historical record in an attempt to ascertain a plausible timeframe for the origin of the movement and to explore the relationship of the Hereditary Household to earlier hagiographic works that may have informed it. This study also contextualizes the Hereditary Household in the post-Tang religious climate of China. In that period the establishment of lineal authenticity and institutional charisma through narratives of descent became a widespread tool of legitimation employed by Buddhists, Daoists, and Confucians in hopes of obtaining imperial recognition and patronage.
ContributorsAmato, Paul (Author) / Bokenkamp, Stephen R (Thesis advisor) / Chen, Huaiyu (Committee member) / Feldhaus, Anne (Committee member) / West, Stephen H. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
Social equity research in public administration (PA) investigates different ways in which the practices of government intersect with the lives of socially marginalized individuals. However, due to limited direct engagement with marginalized groups; a predominant focus on formal state policies and institutions; and a lack of context-specific analyses of marginalization, there remain significant limitations in the existing PA research on social equity.
To address these theoretical gaps, this dissertation focuses on the Khawaja Sira of Pakistan – a marginalized group culturally defined as neither men nor women – to empirically investigate the multiple intersections between government and life on margins of the state. Specifically, this dissertation explores research questions related to legal and self-identity of the Khawaja Sira, impact of their changed legal status, their informal institutional experiences, and their interaction with front-line government workers through an interpretive research methodology.
The research design consisted of a ten-month long person-centered ethnography in Lahore, Pakistan during which in-depth person-centered interviews were conducted with 50 Khawaja Sira. I also conducted semi-structured interviews with 19 frontline workers from National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), social welfare department, and a local NGO and a group interview with 12 frontline workers of police. I coded the data collected from the fieldwork using qualitative thematic content analysis in MAXQDA. I then analyzed the main themes from the data using multiple theoretical perspectives to develop my findings.
My analysis shows that the legal identity of the Khawaja Sira, as conceived by the Supreme Court of Pakistan, has limited relevance and benefits for the Khawaja Sira most of whom instead choose to register as men. The analysis of administrator-citizen interactions reveals that the Khawaja Sira are exposed to hyper-surveillance, moral policing and higher administrative burden during these interactions. These interactions are also strongly mediated by formal public policy, social discourses about gender identity and informal institutions. I discuss the implications of my analysis that can contribute to a more inclusive society for the Khawaja Sira. In doing so, my research makes important contributions to research on administrative burden, everyday citizenship, and social equity in public administration.
To address these theoretical gaps, this dissertation focuses on the Khawaja Sira of Pakistan – a marginalized group culturally defined as neither men nor women – to empirically investigate the multiple intersections between government and life on margins of the state. Specifically, this dissertation explores research questions related to legal and self-identity of the Khawaja Sira, impact of their changed legal status, their informal institutional experiences, and their interaction with front-line government workers through an interpretive research methodology.
The research design consisted of a ten-month long person-centered ethnography in Lahore, Pakistan during which in-depth person-centered interviews were conducted with 50 Khawaja Sira. I also conducted semi-structured interviews with 19 frontline workers from National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), social welfare department, and a local NGO and a group interview with 12 frontline workers of police. I coded the data collected from the fieldwork using qualitative thematic content analysis in MAXQDA. I then analyzed the main themes from the data using multiple theoretical perspectives to develop my findings.
My analysis shows that the legal identity of the Khawaja Sira, as conceived by the Supreme Court of Pakistan, has limited relevance and benefits for the Khawaja Sira most of whom instead choose to register as men. The analysis of administrator-citizen interactions reveals that the Khawaja Sira are exposed to hyper-surveillance, moral policing and higher administrative burden during these interactions. These interactions are also strongly mediated by formal public policy, social discourses about gender identity and informal institutions. I discuss the implications of my analysis that can contribute to a more inclusive society for the Khawaja Sira. In doing so, my research makes important contributions to research on administrative burden, everyday citizenship, and social equity in public administration.
ContributorsNisar, Muhammad Azfar (Author) / Catlaw, Thomas (Thesis advisor) / Feeney, Mary (Committee member) / Maroulis, Spiro (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
This study offers a genealogical investigation of the modern manufacture of the Buddha’ birthplace at Lumbini, in Nepal’s rural Terai region. Throughout the twentieth century, Asian and non-Asian actors employed the cross-cultural prestige of Lumbini in their overlapping agendas. These efforts emerged in response to the Buddhism’s disembedding from traditional socio-political institutions under colonial governance across South and Southeast Asia and were further spurred by the rapid globalization characteristic of the mid-twentieth century. Lumbini was conscripted into colonial regimes of power, and also emerged as symbolic capital in the formation of national narratives within post-colonial India and Nepal. I argue that Lumbini presents a unique and interesting case of a protracted process of “heritagization” that is both multivalent and multivocal. As Buddhists have sought to ensure the survival of the Buddha’s dispensation (śāsana) in modernity, they have mobilized Lumbini as a powerful symbol of peace, brotherhood, and global connectivity in conjunction with the prevailing logics of their non-Buddhist contemporaries. Focusing on Lumbini's modern (re)discovery and its successive development highlights conjunctures between “Buddhist modernism” and the secularizing processes of heritage conservation and display. This study finds that trans-Asian flows of investment in reconstituting the Buddha’s birthplace throughout the twentieth century are antecedents to emergent forms of geopolitical and “geo-cultural” (Winter 2019) imaginations in the contemporary, as evidenced by Lumbini’s inclusion in China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
ContributorsHarcey, Blayne Kevin (Author) / Schober, Juliane (Thesis advisor) / Feldhaus, Anne (Committee member) / Emmrich, Christoph (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024