Guest Lecture Session on Delusional States: Suspicion and Social Justice in the Making of Gilgit-Baltistan

September 27, 2019: The Department of Social Sciences and Liberal Arts (SSLA) held a guest lecture by Development Sociologist Dr. Nosheen Ali titled, Delusional States: Suspicion and Social Justice in the Making of Gilgit-Baltistan. The talk was based on Dr. Ali’s book which was published by Cambridge University Press in June 2019 and generated a lot of enthusiastic discussion and praise from the audience.

There is very little academic research on the region now known as Gilgit-Baltistan and previously labeled as the Northern Areas, which is appreciated and appropriated only for its natural beauty among the dominant discourse in Pakistan. Dr. Ali is a sociologist who spent extended periods of time conducting ethnographic fieldwork and interviews among the people of Gilgit-Baltistan and sought to understand the fraught relationship between the state and its citizens.

In the talk, Dr. Ali supported the theoretical concept of the ‘delusional state’, ruling through suspicion and paranoia, by using data from her interviewees and marked four particular turning points in this history: 1947, 1970, 1988 and 2009. She also documented how local citizens seek inclusion and demand social justice through activism around three main issues: education and textbooks, the poetic public sphere, and ecological sovereignty.

The talk was attended by a large number of students and faculty from the SSLA department as well as from other departments at IBA and members of the public. Executive Director IBA Karachi, Dr. Farrukh Iqbal also attended the talk and lauded the research presented by Dr. Ali for its relevance and academic contribution.