Topic of Research Seminar: Language and Development: How Language Help the Realization of the Dream of Development

Abstract: No other concept has such a contested history and resilience as development. In the aftermath of the second world war, development is given a central position in the reordering of the world under the leadership of the USA. Development is not a set of performative actions. Rather, it is produced and reproduced over the years as a discourse (in the Foucauldian sense) that operates through a variety of categories of knowledge. In this way, development is not taken as a political program but as a set of beliefs. This set of beliefs, an undeniable truth, is exported to Pakistan, like the rest of the global south, through international institutions and technocrats. This paper attempts to understand the dissemination of development in Pakistan by focusing on the constructivist tendencies of development that employ various discursive strategies and language techniques to naturalize the socio-economic and political restructuring of societies like Pakistan. Taking planning and development of Islamabad as the case study, this research finds that various labels, linguistics contrasts, othering, and social-economic identities were employed to construct the socio-materiality of development as a natural order of things.

Subject Field of Topic: Development Studies

Name of Speaker: Dr Arslan Waheed

Professorial Rank of Speaker: Assistant Professor

University Email of Speaker: [email protected]

Affiliation of Speaker: NUST School of Social Sciences and Humanities (S3H)

Date of seminar: April 12, 2022 at 1215 hrs

Venue of Seminar: NUST School of Social Sciences and Humanities (S3H) Conference Room, National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), H-12 Campus