Essays
Decolonizing (applied) linguistics in Pakistan
There is a growing tendency globally that suggests decolonizing the social sciences by disrupting colonial legacies. It is argued that the social sciences, including the field of linguistics, are heavily influenced by Eurocentric Enlightenment thinking.1 In the words...
On White Ignorance and being a security problem
What happens… when the researched become the researchers?1 W. E.B. Du Bois, in his celebrated work ‘The Souls of Black Folk’, articulates a question that persists between him and the other world, ‘how does it feel to be a problem?’ The question elucidates the...
Hegemony of Media Misrepresentation: New York Times’ Representation of the Israel-Palestine Conflict
The media does not operate in a vacuum from social, cultural, and political contexts. Its visualizations, texts, and reporting cannot be considered an isolated activity.1 Journalists are social actors who frequently negotiate and respond to a variety of political,...
Western hegemonic discourse on ‘Pakistan’ and the absence of counter-discourse from Pakistan: An introspective study
Disciplines entail power relations. In the discipline of International Relations, power, which is exercised in the form of ‘epistemic privilege’ by the West, ensures that only the West’s self-centered imaginaries of domination over the ‘rest’ are served.1 The...
The Intellectual Market is Rigged: Militarized Knowledge and the US Elite Think-Tank Network
Readers interested in global politics can be divided into two categories: those who are generally interested in the affairs of the world and want to keep themselves current with emerging geopolitical developments and then those who have more defined specific research...
A Critical Security Studies approach to Regional Security: SAARC during COVID 19 Crisis
Abstract Due to the global and transverse dimension of the COVID-19 pandemic, the human security approach has found relevance in the policy corridors and prompted interest in regional cooperation. The growing consideration of the human security paradigm is a welcome...
Institutionalizing Women in Peace and Security within Pakistan: Challenges and Prospects
All societies recovering from conflicts or natural disasters face adverse long-term effects. The process of rehabilitation and rebuilding society from scratch holds multiple obstacles. However, the experience and the process of recovery are not particularly the same...
Narratives, Information Disorder and Strategic Communication: The Case of EU Disinfo Lab and Pakistan’s Policy Response
A narrative is a story, a story that resonates with people. We identify with the stories that are contextualized in some sort of believability and relevance. The more the stories are embedded in our frame of reference, the more we find them acceptable, tolerable,...
The Non-Traditional Security Threat of Climate Change in South Asia
The new security agenda that emerged towards the end of the Cold War allowed a reconfiguration of the concept of security. There was a shift from traditional to non-traditional security dimensions. This approach shifts away from the state-level perspective in...
Reorienting Pakistan’s Foreign Policy: From Multilateralism to Bilateralism
Pakistan’s threat perception has overshadowed its foreign policy. Since independence, Pakistan has adopted a security-centric foreign policy.1 Another feature of its foreign policy has been the fixation on multilateral diplomacy. This preference for multilateral...