The S. S. Pirzada Lectures on Pakistan by Dr. Zahra Hayat (UC Berkeley) and Dr. Shozab Raza (University of Toronto).
- Dr. Zahra Hayat: The Scandal of Access: Pharmaceuticals in Pakistan
Discussant: Cori Hayden, Professor of Anthropology, UC Berkeley - Dr. Shozab Raza: Theory from the Trenches: Revolutionary Decolonization in Pakistan
Discussant: Sharad Chari, Associate Professor of Geography, UC Berkeley
Event moderated by Munis D. Faruqui, Director, Institute for South Asia Studies; Sarah Kailath Chair of India Studies; Associate Professor, South & South East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley.
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This event will be live streamed on the Institute’s FB page: ISASatUCBerkeley
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DISSERTATION TITLE: The Scandal of Access: Pharmaceuticals in Pakistan (University of California Berkeley, 2022)
DISSERTATION ABSTRACT: Pakistan has among the world’s lowest drug prices, and Western multinationals rarely apply for drug patents there. Yet, despite the absence of these quintessential barriers to access, Pakistanis confront some of the highest global burdens of treatable yet untreated diseases, perpetual shortages of lifesaving drugs, and an epidemic of unpalliated pain at the end of life due to morphine scarcity. This paradox, devastating in its consequences, lies at the heart of this dissertation.
The dissertation argues that to understand the paradoxes of access in Pakistan, we must radically rethink the relationships between access and its determinants. Specifically, it demonstrates the counterintuitive relationship between access and price, showing how prices that are too low can deprive people of medicines; between access and intellectual property, showing how drug patents can exert powerful effects even in places where they do not exist—what I call “spectral property”; and between access and quality, demonstrating that despite the proliferation of several competing brands of the ‘same’ drug in Pakistani markets, these versions are in fact so different from one another that consumers cannot know what they are ingesting. The dissertation develops an analytic of ‘scandal’, departing from familiar tropes of crisis and state failure to voice an ethical-political critique of how specific instruments of global capitalism articulate with national regulatory and legal systems to hinder access in counterintuitive ways.
ZAHRA HAYAT is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Prior to earning her Ph.D. at UC Berkeley, she studied law at Oxford University (as a Rhodes Scholar) and Yale Law School. She practiced law for four years in California, working on improved access to mental health care for foster youth, as well as on intellectual property. She has been awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies and will be in residence at Harvard from 2024-26.
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DISSERTATION TITLE: Theory from the Trenches: Revolutionary Decolonization on Pakistan’s Landed Estates (University of Toronto, 2022)
DISSERTATION ABSTRACT: This dissertation explores how peasant revolutionaries in Pakistan’s South Punjab region creatively theorized to accelerate a revolutionary movement to remake the country and indeed the world. During the 1970s, many landless peasants enrolled in a communist party, the Mazdoor Kisan Party (MKP), that energized them to occupy the region’s landed estates (jagirs) and confront colonially-inherited inequalities. The party also inspired peasants to see “theory” as necessary to both their and the world’s liberation, and several peasants subsequently theorized across various local and transnational traditions to further a universal project of mazdur kisan raj worker-peasant rule).
Theory from the Trenches contributes to wide-ranging conversations – across political anthropology, South Asian studies, and post/decolonial studies – concerning decolonization. Whereas some scholars argue that various anti-imperialist movements, from the Haitian Revolution to Third World socialism, were the true harbingers of universal Enlightenment ideals, while others maintain that they were inspired by non-European indigenous epistemologies, even alternative universalisms, I explore how peasant revolutionaries theorized ideational linkages across traditions to promote a universal mazdur kisan raj. Ultimately, the dissertation recasts peasants as worldly theoretical actors, destabilizing various distinctions – like rural/urban, theory/practice and universal/particular – that have conventionally framed the study of decolonization in the global South.
SHOZAB RAZA is Assistant Professor of Social Justice Education, with a cross-appointment in Anthropology, at the University of Toronto. His research broadly focuses on imperialism, agrarian capitalism, and radical politics in the global South, especially Pakistan. His research has been published in various journals, while his public writing has appeared in venues like The Guardian and Boston Review. He is also a founding editor of Jamhoor, a progressive multimedia platform on South Asia and its diasporas.
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The Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada Endowment on Pakistan, established by Rafat Pirzada and his wife, Amna Jaffer, and named after Rafat Pirzada’s father, Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada, supports i) the Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada Dissertation Prize on Pakistan (an annual dissertation prize for the best work in the humanities, social sciences, law, or public health on Pakistan, the region that is Pakistan, or things to do with Pakistan), and ii) the Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada Lecture on Pakistan (an annual lecture that spotlights the winner of the S.S. Pirzada Dissertation Prize). Rafat Pirzada is a Silicon Valley based entrepreneur and venture capitalist.
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For DIRECTIONS to the Institute please enter “Institute for South Asia Studies” in your google maps or click this GOOGLE MAPS LINK.
PARKING INFORMATION
Please note that parking is not always easily available in Berkeley. Take public transportation if possible or arrive early to secure your spot.
Event is FREE and OPEN to the public.
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If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Puneeta Kala at pkala@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.
