Constructing 'Pakistan' through Knowledge Production in International Relations and Area Studies

This chapter establishes the theoretical and methodological basis that informs the study of the discursive construction of Pakistan’s representational identity. Within the International Relations literature purporting to understand Pakistan’s reality, there is a propensity to intellectually secure Pakistan within a resolute system of ontological ‘truths’. These debates then depend on, produce and reproduce knowledge on Pakistan which consequently generates Pakistan’s ‘reality’. In essence then, Pakistan is what we know about it. Considering that knowledge does not exist independently of our theories, concepts, ideas and language, the ‘reality’ of Pakistan does not exist outside our appropriations and interpretations. The chapter moves on to explore the interplay between knowledge and power and provides a comprehensive theoretical understanding of the relationship between discourse and representational practices. The chapter argues that knowledge production is not a neutral, value-free, ‘objective’ exercise and discourse is never impartial, rather knowledge constructs ‘truths’. Consequently, within the ‘truths’ constructed by a western-dominated International Relations, Pakistan’s ‘reality’ is produced and circulated. The chapter finally explores the three main tentacles of the International Relations community namely, the disciplines of International Relations and Area Studies and the think tanks.

This chapter begins by exploring the development of the Area Studies enterprise beginning in the Cold War. The chapter argues that during the Cold War, Pakistan caught the attention of western policy-makers for primarily security reasons and continues to do so, for this reason most of the scholarship on Pakistan is largely focused on Pakistan’s security and Pakistan’s relationship with ‘international’ security. The chapter further explores Area Studies centers for their potential in producing knowledge on Pakistan. The data on Area Studies centers unveils two distinct patterns. First, it has unveiled the endemic lack of interest on the part of western knowledge producers in knowing Pakistan and the other states that make up the South Asian region. Secondly, while true to their proposed research ambit, South Asian area study centers across the West have intellectually explored India across the depths and breadths of various disciplines, so that the study of India has become a truly multidisciplinary enterprise, in the case of Pakistan, most of the research, however marginal, remains centered on matters of its security and international affairs. Finally the chapter analyzes the contributions on Pakistan in Area Studies journals to observe how Pakistan’s representational identity is discursively constructed.

The feeble and marginal participation of Pakistani scholars and academics in the processes of international knowledge production cannot be left alone to publishing processes which are tacitly exclusionary and grant more credibility to knowledge produced in the western ‘intellectual’ centers. In this regard, a study of how International Relations scholarship is produced from Pakistan requires more insight into the exogenous and endogenous processes through which scholars and academics produce knowledge about Pakistan. This chapter firstly analyzes the exogenous factors responsible for inhibiting periphery scholars from challenging the dominating discourse. These dominant exogenous factors include the prevalence of academic capitalism and the mercantilization of higher education that followed as a consequence of academic ‘yardsticks’, and the imposition of English as a Lingua Franca for publishing in internationally reputable journals. Secondly, the chapter explores endogenous factors specific to Pakistan because of which Pakistani academics are impeded and implicitly discouraged to produce alternative discourse not only domestically but also internationally. This analysis is based on a detailed exposition of the policies of the Pakistan Higher Education Commission on promotions and incentives to publish.