In this commentary, we wish to draw from Kathryn's experience in Askole to complicate the argumen... more In this commentary, we wish to draw from Kathryn's experience in Askole to complicate the argument we developed in favor of an autoethnographic sensibility in the earlier article in this issue (Butz and Besio 2004). Just as we used David's first-person singular voice in much of that article, we use Kathryn's voice here to reflect the central influence of her research circumstances on the points that we make. We will return to the first-person plural voice in the commentary's conclusion where we attempt to synthesize the lessons of our two sets of research experiences. * Many thanks to the people in Askole village, all of whom contributed to ''my'' research. Second, the National Science Foundation (SBR-9712017) and the Social Sciences Research Council (Pre-dissertation Fellowship) provided generous support to the project. Finally, thanks to David Butz for continuing our conversations, and to Paul Berkowitz, a sometimes reluctant but always insightful reader.
BioOne Complete (complete.BioOne.org) is a full-text database of 200 subscribed and open-access t... more BioOne Complete (complete.BioOne.org) is a full-text database of 200 subscribed and open-access titles in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences published by nonprofit societies, associations, museums, institutions, and presses.
The purpose of this note is to describe and explain the distribution of crops within the terraced... more The purpose of this note is to describe and explain the distribution of crops within the terraced and irrigated areas of two adjoining Karakoram mountain villages, especially as that distribution relates to microenvironmental conditions. The information offered here supports no immediate conclusions, except the obvious ones that farmers consider the physical attributes of their plots when they decide where to grow what crops, and intervene where they can to increase the potential of a plot to support the crop it bears (Saunders, 1984; Whiteman 1985, 1988). Frequency of irrigation is the main intervention discussed in this note. Agriculture in Holshal and Ghoshushal, as in other communities in the Karakoram, depends on meltwater irrigation (Whiteman, 1985, 1988; Butz, 1987, 1989; Kreutzmann, 1988, 1993; Vander Velde, 1989); in these villages potential evaporation exceeds precipitation by almost 450% during the growing season (Butz, 1987). It is anticipated that the findings presented here will supplement the currently meager corpus of information on indigenous agriculture in the Karakoram (but see also, Saunders, 1984; Whiteman, 1985, 1988; Conway et
Mary Louise Pratt uses the term autoethnography to refer to those instances in which members of c... more Mary Louise Pratt uses the term autoethnography to refer to those instances in which members of colonized groups strive to represent themselves to their colonizers in ways that engage with colonizers' terms while also remaining faithful to their own self-understandings. This paper extends Pratt's conceptualization of autoethnography and describes how it may be used to inform field research in transcultural settings in the formerly colonized world. Drawing from research in a village in northern Pakistan, we argue that approaching fieldwork with an ''autoethnographic sensibility'' can yield important epistemological, methodological, and political insights into our research practices. The paper concludes by suggesting that these insights extend beyond a postcolonial, or even cross-cultural, research context, to inform more general debates in human geography about how to achieve a critical and reflexive research practice.
BioOne Complete (complete.BioOne.org) is a full-text database of 200 subscribed and open-access t... more BioOne Complete (complete.BioOne.org) is a full-text database of 200 subscribed and open-access titles in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences published by nonprofit societies, associations, museums, institutions, and presses.
Researchers experience increasing pressures to connect with bodies that finance their projects. I... more Researchers experience increasing pressures to connect with bodies that finance their projects. In this climate, critical scholars face many obstacles as they seek to navigate the treacherous waters of securing external funds. To debate these challenges, the ACME Editorial Collective organized a panel for the 2009 Annual
Throughout the global South road construction is a favoured mechanism of rural development, yet l... more Throughout the global South road construction is a favoured mechanism of rural development, yet little attention has been given to the implications of new roads for everyday life in the communities to or through which they are routed. Road Construction, Mobility & Social Change offers an intimate glimpse of these implications for residents of Shimshal, a small agro-pastoral community in the Karakoram Mountains of Northern Pakistan, who in 2003 completed construction of a 60km jeep road linking the village to the regional road network. In 2011 and 2012 Shimshal residents were invited to create photos and provide accompanying verbal narratives that evoke the importance of the Shimshal road for their everyday lives. Fifty-seven community members submitted 402 photos with narratives. Approximately 130 of these photos are reproduced here (at least one from each photographer), each with a paragraph-length summary of its associated narrative in three languages: English, Wakhi, and Urdu. The photographs and captions are organized to express six main ways that Shimshalis understand their everyday lives to be affected by the road’s existence: spaces and social contexts; artifacts and visible traces; mobile activities and embodied practices; social relations; identities; and meanings and interpretive frames. Considered together, these photographic and textual materials provide a rare and richly-detailed insiders’ perspective on road construction, changing mobility practices, and daily life in Shimshal
Acme: An International E-Journal for Critical …, 2002
This paper examines how inhabitants of Shimshal, a small mountain community in northern Pakistan,... more This paper examines how inhabitants of Shimshal, a small mountain community in northern Pakistan, resist their subordination in two realms of interaction with outsiders: (a) as porters for Western tourists, and (b) as animal herders whose pastures have been placed within the boundaries of a limited-use national park. I describe a shift in emphasis from mainly material forms of everyday resistance, to resistances aimed at negating the discourses that legitimise Shimshalis' continued subordination in these realms. I argue that community members' efforts to involve non-locals in their representational struggles effectively reconstitute some of the physical terrain of those struggles -specifically trekking trails and pastures -as third spaces, provisionally beyond dualistic understandings of porter/trekker, global/local, and self/other. The paper concludes by considering the hybridity implicit in this form of resistance; specifically, that to move beyond a dualistic understanding of self/other is to practice the hybridization of self.
Abstract Shimshal is the most recent village in the Gojal region of northern Pakistan to gain roa... more Abstract Shimshal is the most recent village in the Gojal region of northern Pakistan to gain road access to the Karakoram Highway. This paper analyzes relational reconfigurations of gendered mobilities, spaces and subjectivities in the community that are contoured by the ensuing shift in local mobility system, in which vehicular mobility replaces walking as the means to access the highway. Drawing on longitudinal ethnographic data, we describe pedestrian-era gendered movement patterns and spaces, and the ways in which modernizing road infrastructure has reorganized mobilities and regendered village spaces. We then analyze changes in gender performances and self-representations that are commensurate to the modernized spaces in which they are enacted. We conclude by assessing the uneven and unanticipated consequences of these mobility-inflected processes for gendered futures in the community.
This paper contributes to the critical mobilities literature by analysing local mobilities in Goj... more This paper contributes to the critical mobilities literature by analysing local mobilities in Gojal, northern Pakistan in the aftermath of the 2010 Attabad Landslide, in order to develop new insights regarding the dialectical relationship between mobility and immobility. The landslide destroyed a large section of the Karakoram Highway, the region's arterial roadway. Among its disastrous effects was prolonged disruption of the accustomed movements of 20,000 villagers stranded north of the slide. To show how mobility is constituted dialectically in relation to immobility in this context, we detail the social and economic demobilisations Gojalis faced when the highway became impassable, and outline new mobilities they developed to mitigate the disaster of protracted strandedness. Gojalis responded to demobilisation by remobilising, at different scales, along new routes, in different directions and via new mobility platforms, thereby re-establishing circulation as a paradigm of everyday life and demonstrating the paper's argument that disasters are social processes that have simultaneously demobilising and remobilising effects. We conclude that nurturing a multiplicity of mobile relations and practices in several directions and across scales during the disaster recovery process will help Gojalis avoid a similar mobility disaster in the future.
BioOne Complete (complete.BioOne.org) is a full-text database of 200 subscribed and open-access t... more BioOne Complete (complete.BioOne.org) is a full-text database of 200 subscribed and open-access titles in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences published by nonprofit societies, associations, museums, institutions, and presses.
ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical …, 2011
ACME seeks to publish work in "alternative presentation formats" as part of its editorial policy,... more ACME seeks to publish work in "alternative presentation formats" as part of its editorial policy, so I received Kafui Attoh's submission of a written poem and sound recording called "The Bus Hub" with enthusiasm. As I set out to organize the review process questions surfaced in relation to another aspect of the journal's editorial mandate: to publish "critical and radical analyses of the social, the spatial and the political". The word that preoccupied me was "analyses". What place does a submission that operates evocatively rather than analytically have in a journal dedicated to analysis? How should it be presented? More immediately, what criteria for evaluation should such a piece's reviewers be given? I dealt with the latter question by asking reviewers to apply ACME's standard review guidelines, as well as to address the following question: if the submission merits publication, should it be published on its own, or does it need some accompanying, more clearly analytical, discussion? The piece went to three reviewers, all of whom recommended publication.
In this commentary, we wish to draw from Kathryn's experience in Askole to complicate the argumen... more In this commentary, we wish to draw from Kathryn's experience in Askole to complicate the argument we developed in favor of an autoethnographic sensibility in the earlier article in this issue (Butz and Besio 2004). Just as we used David's first-person singular voice in much of that article, we use Kathryn's voice here to reflect the central influence of her research circumstances on the points that we make. We will return to the first-person plural voice in the commentary's conclusion where we attempt to synthesize the lessons of our two sets of research experiences. * Many thanks to the people in Askole village, all of whom contributed to ''my'' research. Second, the National Science Foundation (SBR-9712017) and the Social Sciences Research Council (Pre-dissertation Fellowship) provided generous support to the project. Finally, thanks to David Butz for continuing our conversations, and to Paul Berkowitz, a sometimes reluctant but always insightful reader.
In this commentary, we wish to draw from Kathryn's experience in Askole to complicate the argumen... more In this commentary, we wish to draw from Kathryn's experience in Askole to complicate the argument we developed in favor of an autoethnographic sensibility in the earlier article in this issue (Butz and Besio 2004). Just as we used David's first-person singular voice in much of that article, we use Kathryn's voice here to reflect the central influence of her research circumstances on the points that we make. We will return to the first-person plural voice in the commentary's conclusion where we attempt to synthesize the lessons of our two sets of research experiences. * Many thanks to the people in Askole village, all of whom contributed to ''my'' research. Second, the National Science Foundation (SBR-9712017) and the Social Sciences Research Council (Pre-dissertation Fellowship) provided generous support to the project. Finally, thanks to David Butz for continuing our conversations, and to Paul Berkowitz, a sometimes reluctant but always insightful reader.
BioOne Complete (complete.BioOne.org) is a full-text database of 200 subscribed and open-access t... more BioOne Complete (complete.BioOne.org) is a full-text database of 200 subscribed and open-access titles in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences published by nonprofit societies, associations, museums, institutions, and presses.
The purpose of this note is to describe and explain the distribution of crops within the terraced... more The purpose of this note is to describe and explain the distribution of crops within the terraced and irrigated areas of two adjoining Karakoram mountain villages, especially as that distribution relates to microenvironmental conditions. The information offered here supports no immediate conclusions, except the obvious ones that farmers consider the physical attributes of their plots when they decide where to grow what crops, and intervene where they can to increase the potential of a plot to support the crop it bears (Saunders, 1984; Whiteman 1985, 1988). Frequency of irrigation is the main intervention discussed in this note. Agriculture in Holshal and Ghoshushal, as in other communities in the Karakoram, depends on meltwater irrigation (Whiteman, 1985, 1988; Butz, 1987, 1989; Kreutzmann, 1988, 1993; Vander Velde, 1989); in these villages potential evaporation exceeds precipitation by almost 450% during the growing season (Butz, 1987). It is anticipated that the findings presented here will supplement the currently meager corpus of information on indigenous agriculture in the Karakoram (but see also, Saunders, 1984; Whiteman, 1985, 1988; Conway et
Mary Louise Pratt uses the term autoethnography to refer to those instances in which members of c... more Mary Louise Pratt uses the term autoethnography to refer to those instances in which members of colonized groups strive to represent themselves to their colonizers in ways that engage with colonizers' terms while also remaining faithful to their own self-understandings. This paper extends Pratt's conceptualization of autoethnography and describes how it may be used to inform field research in transcultural settings in the formerly colonized world. Drawing from research in a village in northern Pakistan, we argue that approaching fieldwork with an ''autoethnographic sensibility'' can yield important epistemological, methodological, and political insights into our research practices. The paper concludes by suggesting that these insights extend beyond a postcolonial, or even cross-cultural, research context, to inform more general debates in human geography about how to achieve a critical and reflexive research practice.
BioOne Complete (complete.BioOne.org) is a full-text database of 200 subscribed and open-access t... more BioOne Complete (complete.BioOne.org) is a full-text database of 200 subscribed and open-access titles in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences published by nonprofit societies, associations, museums, institutions, and presses.
Researchers experience increasing pressures to connect with bodies that finance their projects. I... more Researchers experience increasing pressures to connect with bodies that finance their projects. In this climate, critical scholars face many obstacles as they seek to navigate the treacherous waters of securing external funds. To debate these challenges, the ACME Editorial Collective organized a panel for the 2009 Annual
Throughout the global South road construction is a favoured mechanism of rural development, yet l... more Throughout the global South road construction is a favoured mechanism of rural development, yet little attention has been given to the implications of new roads for everyday life in the communities to or through which they are routed. Road Construction, Mobility & Social Change offers an intimate glimpse of these implications for residents of Shimshal, a small agro-pastoral community in the Karakoram Mountains of Northern Pakistan, who in 2003 completed construction of a 60km jeep road linking the village to the regional road network. In 2011 and 2012 Shimshal residents were invited to create photos and provide accompanying verbal narratives that evoke the importance of the Shimshal road for their everyday lives. Fifty-seven community members submitted 402 photos with narratives. Approximately 130 of these photos are reproduced here (at least one from each photographer), each with a paragraph-length summary of its associated narrative in three languages: English, Wakhi, and Urdu. The photographs and captions are organized to express six main ways that Shimshalis understand their everyday lives to be affected by the road’s existence: spaces and social contexts; artifacts and visible traces; mobile activities and embodied practices; social relations; identities; and meanings and interpretive frames. Considered together, these photographic and textual materials provide a rare and richly-detailed insiders’ perspective on road construction, changing mobility practices, and daily life in Shimshal
Acme: An International E-Journal for Critical …, 2002
This paper examines how inhabitants of Shimshal, a small mountain community in northern Pakistan,... more This paper examines how inhabitants of Shimshal, a small mountain community in northern Pakistan, resist their subordination in two realms of interaction with outsiders: (a) as porters for Western tourists, and (b) as animal herders whose pastures have been placed within the boundaries of a limited-use national park. I describe a shift in emphasis from mainly material forms of everyday resistance, to resistances aimed at negating the discourses that legitimise Shimshalis' continued subordination in these realms. I argue that community members' efforts to involve non-locals in their representational struggles effectively reconstitute some of the physical terrain of those struggles -specifically trekking trails and pastures -as third spaces, provisionally beyond dualistic understandings of porter/trekker, global/local, and self/other. The paper concludes by considering the hybridity implicit in this form of resistance; specifically, that to move beyond a dualistic understanding of self/other is to practice the hybridization of self.
Abstract Shimshal is the most recent village in the Gojal region of northern Pakistan to gain roa... more Abstract Shimshal is the most recent village in the Gojal region of northern Pakistan to gain road access to the Karakoram Highway. This paper analyzes relational reconfigurations of gendered mobilities, spaces and subjectivities in the community that are contoured by the ensuing shift in local mobility system, in which vehicular mobility replaces walking as the means to access the highway. Drawing on longitudinal ethnographic data, we describe pedestrian-era gendered movement patterns and spaces, and the ways in which modernizing road infrastructure has reorganized mobilities and regendered village spaces. We then analyze changes in gender performances and self-representations that are commensurate to the modernized spaces in which they are enacted. We conclude by assessing the uneven and unanticipated consequences of these mobility-inflected processes for gendered futures in the community.
This paper contributes to the critical mobilities literature by analysing local mobilities in Goj... more This paper contributes to the critical mobilities literature by analysing local mobilities in Gojal, northern Pakistan in the aftermath of the 2010 Attabad Landslide, in order to develop new insights regarding the dialectical relationship between mobility and immobility. The landslide destroyed a large section of the Karakoram Highway, the region's arterial roadway. Among its disastrous effects was prolonged disruption of the accustomed movements of 20,000 villagers stranded north of the slide. To show how mobility is constituted dialectically in relation to immobility in this context, we detail the social and economic demobilisations Gojalis faced when the highway became impassable, and outline new mobilities they developed to mitigate the disaster of protracted strandedness. Gojalis responded to demobilisation by remobilising, at different scales, along new routes, in different directions and via new mobility platforms, thereby re-establishing circulation as a paradigm of everyday life and demonstrating the paper's argument that disasters are social processes that have simultaneously demobilising and remobilising effects. We conclude that nurturing a multiplicity of mobile relations and practices in several directions and across scales during the disaster recovery process will help Gojalis avoid a similar mobility disaster in the future.
BioOne Complete (complete.BioOne.org) is a full-text database of 200 subscribed and open-access t... more BioOne Complete (complete.BioOne.org) is a full-text database of 200 subscribed and open-access titles in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences published by nonprofit societies, associations, museums, institutions, and presses.
ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical …, 2011
ACME seeks to publish work in "alternative presentation formats" as part of its editorial policy,... more ACME seeks to publish work in "alternative presentation formats" as part of its editorial policy, so I received Kafui Attoh's submission of a written poem and sound recording called "The Bus Hub" with enthusiasm. As I set out to organize the review process questions surfaced in relation to another aspect of the journal's editorial mandate: to publish "critical and radical analyses of the social, the spatial and the political". The word that preoccupied me was "analyses". What place does a submission that operates evocatively rather than analytically have in a journal dedicated to analysis? How should it be presented? More immediately, what criteria for evaluation should such a piece's reviewers be given? I dealt with the latter question by asking reviewers to apply ACME's standard review guidelines, as well as to address the following question: if the submission merits publication, should it be published on its own, or does it need some accompanying, more clearly analytical, discussion? The piece went to three reviewers, all of whom recommended publication.
In this commentary, we wish to draw from Kathryn's experience in Askole to complicate the argumen... more In this commentary, we wish to draw from Kathryn's experience in Askole to complicate the argument we developed in favor of an autoethnographic sensibility in the earlier article in this issue (Butz and Besio 2004). Just as we used David's first-person singular voice in much of that article, we use Kathryn's voice here to reflect the central influence of her research circumstances on the points that we make. We will return to the first-person plural voice in the commentary's conclusion where we attempt to synthesize the lessons of our two sets of research experiences. * Many thanks to the people in Askole village, all of whom contributed to ''my'' research. Second, the National Science Foundation (SBR-9712017) and the Social Sciences Research Council (Pre-dissertation Fellowship) provided generous support to the project. Finally, thanks to David Butz for continuing our conversations, and to Paul Berkowitz, a sometimes reluctant but always insightful reader.
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Papers by David Butz