Modern South Asian Studies Seminar: Economic Mobility, Islamic Piety and Caste: Ashrafization in Pakistani Punjab
Conveners: Matthew McCartney, Mallica Kumbera Landrus and Rosalind O'Hanlon
Speaker: Muhammad Ali Jan
Despite the non-recognition of caste identity by the Pakistani state, caste relations are a pervasive feature of everyday life, particularly in small-town and rural Pakistan. Using the case of the transformation of a formerly lower caste of potters into an important mercantile group in Pakistani Punjab, the speaker argues how changes in caste relations manifest themselves as processes of cultural change occurring at an everyday level. These changes are best understood through the intersection of processes of economic mobility, Islamic piety and emulation of certain high caste practices, encapsulated in the concept of Ashrafization, the Muslim equivalent of Sanskritization.
Muhammad Ali Jan is currently a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, University of Oxford who works on the rural sociology of Pakistan and in particular on Pakistani Punjab. He is also an adjunct faculty member of the Contemporary South Asian Studies Programme at the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies.
PLEASE NOTE CHANGE OF DATE
Further Information
The South Asia Seminar is co-funded by the Ashmolean Museum, the Asian Studies Centre of St Antony’s College, the Contemporary South Asian Studies Programme at the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, the Department for International Development and Faculty of History and the Faculty of Oriental Studies. Picture: The Lahore Badshahi Masjid at night, Creative Commons Ali Imran 2005.
