Urgent Pedagogies Issue #8:
Worldings

Two worlds collide in Gwadar. Photo: Miriam Iqbal Desai

IASPIS is announcing the Urgent Pedagogies Issue #8: Worldings, guest edited by Nishat Awan and Zahra Hussain. Worldings presents research and engagement carried out in Gwadar, Pakistan, as part of the long-term project, Topological Atlas. It considers the material effects of infrastructural development and its modes of worlding at different scales and through varied forms of pedagogical engagement.

In this issue of Urgent Pedagogies, we explore the practices, forms and refrains through which worlds are produced, negotiated and made legible in Gwadar, an old trading town in current day Pakistan, with historic links across the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean. Here, everyday life revolves around fishing practices, locally known as mahigeeri. But another world has intruded upon Gwadar, a world where powerful actors imagine it as a node within a global infrastructural network. Gwadar is being developed as a strategically located port city on the southern end of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), connecting China to the warm waters of the Arabian Sea. The newly introduced Gwadar City and Port Masterplan has disrupted and displaced fisherfolk communities who have for decades lived and thrived in this land and in these waters.

Contributors include Nishat Awan, Zahra Hussain, Asim Rafiqui, Tariq Faiz, Khair Jan and Maciej Moszant.