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Civil society in Pakistan: an exclusive discourse of projectization

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Abstract

This article analyzes the discourse of civil society in its actual manifestation at the societal level. In the West, civil society developed with the rise of capitalism. In a non-Western setting such as Pakistan, characterized as semi-feudal, semi-industrial, and with non-capitalist social relations still prevalent in rural and tribal areas, civil society has gained currency through the discourse of foreign-funded “NGO projectization.” Through an ethnographic account of community mobilization by seven national-level NGOs, it is demonstrated that imported concepts introduced by the development industry through projects have, at times, turned civil society into an exclusive discourse of “projectization” that does not go beyond, donors, practitioners, and consultants within transnational spaces.

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Notes

  1. Names of NGOs are not revealed due to political sensitivities and the issues of confidentiality

  2. We have used the pseudonym Kharalpur to protect the identity of the participants and because of the sensitivity of the issues discussed in this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Philosophy, Anthropology, and Social Inquiry, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia

    Nadeem Malik

  2. Suleman Dawood School of Business, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Lahore, Pakistan

    Ahsan Rana

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  1. Nadeem Malik
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  2. Ahsan Rana
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Correspondence to Nadeem Malik.

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Malik, N., Rana, A. Civil society in Pakistan: an exclusive discourse of projectization. Dialect Anthropol 44, 41–56 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-020-09581-7

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