In the Wake Of Disaster: Islamists, the State and a Social Contract In Pakistan

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 disaster? Along the way it delves into rich detail about people’s everyday encounters with the state in Pakistan, uncovers postcolonial 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.