Contribution short abstract:

In this paper, I draw on 18 months of anthropological fieldwork in Karachi to trace the “activist becomings” of women leaders belonging to religious minority communities. My case study expands existing theoretical conceptions of the activist beyond a (male) figure of deliberative democracy.

Contribution long abstract:

In Pakistan, as in much of the Global South, the state and its social safety nets are weak. Since the 1980’s, alliances between national governments and neoliberal credit institutions like the World Bank and IMF have resulted in large swaths of Pakistan’s social services sector being outsourced to NGOs. Significant portions of the policy-making process, too, come under the purview of paid consultants and lobbying groups. All of this contributes to what I call the “activism industry,” which has been lucrative for a certain subset of activist entrepreneurs—but also disrupts existing (and deeply gendered) notions of samaji kam (social work), unpaid efforts in service of humanity.

In this paper, I draw on 18 months of anthropological fieldwork in Karachi to trace the “activist becomings” of women leaders belonging to religious minority communities. I analyze how Christian and Hindu women fighting for change narrate the arc of their journeys into activist worlds. I pay special attention to the role of class in determining who can be considered an activist and how these monikers create and feed into notions of in/authenticity. Finally, I explore how social media performances undergird individuals’ claims to be a “real” lady activist in the Pakistani context.

Ultimately, I hope my case study expands existing theoretical conceptions of the activist as an (implicitly male-coded) figure of deliberative democracy (e.g. protesting in the public sphere, etc.) to include the kind of (traditionally female-coded) care work undertaken by lady activists on behalf of their communities in the Global South.