Majed Akhter
Biographic Data
| ID | 169761 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Majed Akhter |
| GIVEN NAMES | Majed |
| FAMILY NAME | Akhter |
| SIGNATURE | AKHTER M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Indiana University Bloomington |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1415-3249 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 177 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 23 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Authoritarian urbanism in Pakistan and Indonesia
This paper conducts a conjunctural comparison of two planned new cities in Asia: Ravi City in Pakistan, and Nusantara in Indonesia. Planned urbanization, and infrastructure-led development (ILD) more broadly, has been connected in the literature to a rise in authoritarian urbanism. This paper analyses legal sources to situate the historical-geographical trajectories of Ravi City and Nusantara within the global conjunctural moment of ILD. Our lega…
Muslim peripheries
This commentary flags three key themes related to Muslim geographies. The first is the diversity and interconnectedness of Islam across regions, and the way Muslim practice is formed through a sense of place. The second is the need to rethink the spatial categories of core and periphery across Muslim space. Lastly, the third suggests that the contextualized study of Muslim geographies should reshape geographical knowledge, especially with respect…
The Spatial Politics of Infrastructure‐Led Development
This essay introduces the Symposium on the spatial politics of infrastructure‐led development in Pakistan. It situates the Symposium (and the research site of Pakistan) with respect to the geographical literature on infrastructural politics more broadly, and the Belt and Road Initiative specifically. The essay also previews the seven contributing articles of the Symposium through a discussion of three cross‐cutting themes: securing the periphery,…
Dams, Development, and Racialised Internal Peripheries
Dams and other large water infrastructures are more than mere technical projects in Pakistan. They carry a special symbolic burden and are understood by the state as vectors of modernisation. This paper interrogates the making of a statist hydraulic imaginary in Pakistan in the 1960s and its continued relevance today. This imaginary posits a technocratic state as the protagonist in a national narrative of hydro‐modernisation. I argue that the pro…
Walking the talk” in land management
Adjudicating infrastructure
In 2013, an international Court of Arbitration delivered a two-part decision on the legality of the Kishenganga Hydro-Electric Plant, located in the internationally disputed territory of Kashmir. The court was convened under procedures detailed in the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, a landmark international water treaty between Pakistan and India mediated by the World Bank in the 1950s. The Kishenganga case is part of the ongoing hydropolitical comp…
The prose of passive revolution
During the Cold War, a barrage of globally mobile development professionals proliferated throughout the decolonizing Third World to both assist in economic development and to constrain the geopolitical spread of communist-sympathetic regimes. This paper considers a document authored by one such professional, Albert Winsemius, and draws on Antonio Gramsci's concept of passive revolution to theorize the process of state formation in Singapore. By e…
Geopolitics of the Belt and Road
Life in the Age of Drone Warfare
Concrete Revolution
Singapore’s Permanent Territorial Revolution
Reading Ian Shaw's Predator Empire
The proliferation of peripheries
By situating drones in a lineage of colonial technologies of pacification, the critical literature on militarized drones suggests a revised concept of peripheries and global space. This paper engages this literature to argue for a conception of peripheries as spaces of colonial state power at multiple scales. It does so by arguing for a distinction between proliferation to the global periphery and the proliferation of peripheries at multiple scal…
Desiring the data state in the Indus Basin
The distribution of water between co‐riparian regions in the Indus Basin has been an extremely contentious issue since at least the early 20th century. The reliability of water measurements, in particular, has caused much controversy at multiple scales. This hydropolitical tension has catalysed a key social group – the hydraulic bureaucracy or ‘hydrocracy’ – to enact strategies of depoliticisation. These strategies aim to suppress political conte…
Infrastructure redux
Infrastructure redux: crisis, progress in industrial Pakistan and beyond." Contemporary South Asia, 23(4), pp. 487–488
Infrastructure Nation
Large-scale infrastructures are often understood by state planners as fulfilling a national integrative function. This paper challenges the idea of infrastructures as national integrators by engaging theories of state/nation formation and infrastructure in a postcolonial context. Specifically, I put Lefebvre's characterization of the production of state space as a homogenization-differentiation dialectic in conversation with Gramsci's understandi…
The irrigation technozone
The hydropolitical Cold War
Geoff Mann'sDisassembly Required
Writing neoliberal waters
The Dronification of State Violence
This article explores the shifting methods of U.S. state violence. Building on their earlier work, the authors focus on the use of drones for targeted killings in Pakistan, but here they tease out the wider implications for the future of “warfare”—particularly the meaning and extent of sovereignty and territory. The authors argue that drone strikes both emerge from and feed back into a series of evolutions in the nature of state violence, centere…
Connecting high school and university teachers in national and international contexts
This paper focuses on the Center for Global Geography Education teaching workshop held in Bangalore, India, in March 2012 which served as a collaborative forum linking geography teachers in secondary and higher education in the USA and India. It considers the inclusion of the Advanced Placement Human Geography teachers from the USA and the building of global teaching content in collaborative teams as a useful way to connect geography teachers acr…
The Unbearable Humanness of Drone Warfare in Fata, Pakistan
This paper provides a critical analysis of how and why US‐led drone warfare is conducted in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. First, we provide detailed statistics on the scale and funding of US drone operations, noting a rapid acceleration of its adoption by the military. This is then situated within an overarching narrative of the logic of “targeting”. Second, we study a legal document called the “Frontier Crimes Regul…
Infrastructure Nation
Large-scale infrastructures are often understood by state planners as fulfilling a national integrative function. This paper challenges the idea of infrastructures as national integrators by engaging theories of state/nation formation and infrastructure in a postcolonial context. Specifically, I put Lefebvre's characterization of the production of state space as a homogenization-differentiation dialectic in conversation with Gramsci's understandi…
The Unbearable Humanness of Drone Warfare in Fata, Pakistan
This paper provides a critical analysis of how and why US‐led drone warfare is conducted in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. First, we provide detailed statistics on the scale and funding of US drone operations, noting a rapid acceleration of its adoption by the military. This is then situated within an overarching narrative of the logic of “targeting”. Second, we study a legal document called the “Frontier Crimes Regul…
The hydropolitical Cold War
The proliferation of peripheries
By situating drones in a lineage of colonial technologies of pacification, the critical literature on militarized drones suggests a revised concept of peripheries and global space. This paper engages this literature to argue for a conception of peripheries as spaces of colonial state power at multiple scales. It does so by arguing for a distinction between proliferation to the global periphery and the proliferation of peripheries at multiple scal…
The irrigation technozone
Dams, Development, and Racialised Internal Peripheries
Dams and other large water infrastructures are more than mere technical projects in Pakistan. They carry a special symbolic burden and are understood by the state as vectors of modernisation. This paper interrogates the making of a statist hydraulic imaginary in Pakistan in the 1960s and its continued relevance today. This imaginary posits a technocratic state as the protagonist in a national narrative of hydro‐modernisation. I argue that the pro…
Desiring the data state in the Indus Basin
The distribution of water between co‐riparian regions in the Indus Basin has been an extremely contentious issue since at least the early 20th century. The reliability of water measurements, in particular, has caused much controversy at multiple scales. This hydropolitical tension has catalysed a key social group – the hydraulic bureaucracy or ‘hydrocracy’ – to enact strategies of depoliticisation. These strategies aim to suppress political conte…
Muslim peripheries
This commentary flags three key themes related to Muslim geographies. The first is the diversity and interconnectedness of Islam across regions, and the way Muslim practice is formed through a sense of place. The second is the need to rethink the spatial categories of core and periphery across Muslim space. Lastly, the third suggests that the contextualized study of Muslim geographies should reshape geographical knowledge, especially with respect…
The Spatial Politics of Infrastructure‐Led Development
This essay introduces the Symposium on the spatial politics of infrastructure‐led development in Pakistan. It situates the Symposium (and the research site of Pakistan) with respect to the geographical literature on infrastructural politics more broadly, and the Belt and Road Initiative specifically. The essay also previews the seven contributing articles of the Symposium through a discussion of three cross‐cutting themes: securing the periphery,…
Adjudicating infrastructure
In 2013, an international Court of Arbitration delivered a two-part decision on the legality of the Kishenganga Hydro-Electric Plant, located in the internationally disputed territory of Kashmir. The court was convened under procedures detailed in the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, a landmark international water treaty between Pakistan and India mediated by the World Bank in the 1950s. The Kishenganga case is part of the ongoing hydropolitical comp…
Authoritarian urbanism in Pakistan and Indonesia
This paper conducts a conjunctural comparison of two planned new cities in Asia: Ravi City in Pakistan, and Nusantara in Indonesia. Planned urbanization, and infrastructure-led development (ILD) more broadly, has been connected in the literature to a rise in authoritarian urbanism. This paper analyses legal sources to situate the historical-geographical trajectories of Ravi City and Nusantara within the global conjunctural moment of ILD. Our lega…
The prose of passive revolution
During the Cold War, a barrage of globally mobile development professionals proliferated throughout the decolonizing Third World to both assist in economic development and to constrain the geopolitical spread of communist-sympathetic regimes. This paper considers a document authored by one such professional, Albert Winsemius, and draws on Antonio Gramsci's concept of passive revolution to theorize the process of state formation in Singapore. By e…
Writing neoliberal waters
The Unbearable Humanness of Drone Warfare in Fata, Pakistan
This paper provides a critical analysis of how and why US‐led drone warfare is conducted in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. First, we provide detailed statistics on the scale and funding of US drone operations, noting a rapid acceleration of its adoption by the military. This is then situated within an overarching narrative of the logic of “targeting”. Second, we study a legal document called the “Frontier Crimes Regul…
Connecting high school and university teachers in national and international contexts
This paper focuses on the Center for Global Geography Education teaching workshop held in Bangalore, India, in March 2012 which served as a collaborative forum linking geography teachers in secondary and higher education in the USA and India. It considers the inclusion of the Advanced Placement Human Geography teachers from the USA and the building of global teaching content in collaborative teams as a useful way to connect geography teachers acr…
The Dronification of State Violence
This article explores the shifting methods of U.S. state violence. Building on their earlier work, the authors focus on the use of drones for targeted killings in Pakistan, but here they tease out the wider implications for the future of “warfare”—particularly the meaning and extent of sovereignty and territory. The authors argue that drone strikes both emerge from and feed back into a series of evolutions in the nature of state violence, centere…
Infrastructure redux
Infrastructure redux: crisis, progress in industrial Pakistan and beyond." Contemporary South Asia, 23(4), pp. 487–488
Infrastructure Nation
Large-scale infrastructures are often understood by state planners as fulfilling a national integrative function. This paper challenges the idea of infrastructures as national integrators by engaging theories of state/nation formation and infrastructure in a postcolonial context. Specifically, I put Lefebvre's characterization of the production of state space as a homogenization-differentiation dialectic in conversation with Gramsci's understandi…
The irrigation technozone
The hydropolitical Cold War
Geoff Mann'sDisassembly Required
Writing neoliberal waters
Desiring the data state in the Indus Basin
The distribution of water between co‐riparian regions in the Indus Basin has been an extremely contentious issue since at least the early 20th century. The reliability of water measurements, in particular, has caused much controversy at multiple scales. This hydropolitical tension has catalysed a key social group – the hydraulic bureaucracy or ‘hydrocracy’ – to enact strategies of depoliticisation. These strategies aim to suppress political conte…
The proliferation of peripheries
By situating drones in a lineage of colonial technologies of pacification, the critical literature on militarized drones suggests a revised concept of peripheries and global space. This paper engages this literature to argue for a conception of peripheries as spaces of colonial state power at multiple scales. It does so by arguing for a distinction between proliferation to the global periphery and the proliferation of peripheries at multiple scal…
Geopolitics of the Belt and Road
Life in the Age of Drone Warfare
Concrete Revolution
Singapore’s Permanent Territorial Revolution
Reading Ian Shaw's Predator Empire
Adjudicating infrastructure
In 2013, an international Court of Arbitration delivered a two-part decision on the legality of the Kishenganga Hydro-Electric Plant, located in the internationally disputed territory of Kashmir. The court was convened under procedures detailed in the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, a landmark international water treaty between Pakistan and India mediated by the World Bank in the 1950s. The Kishenganga case is part of the ongoing hydropolitical comp…
The prose of passive revolution
During the Cold War, a barrage of globally mobile development professionals proliferated throughout the decolonizing Third World to both assist in economic development and to constrain the geopolitical spread of communist-sympathetic regimes. This paper considers a document authored by one such professional, Albert Winsemius, and draws on Antonio Gramsci's concept of passive revolution to theorize the process of state formation in Singapore. By e…
Walking the talk” in land management
The Spatial Politics of Infrastructure‐Led Development
This essay introduces the Symposium on the spatial politics of infrastructure‐led development in Pakistan. It situates the Symposium (and the research site of Pakistan) with respect to the geographical literature on infrastructural politics more broadly, and the Belt and Road Initiative specifically. The essay also previews the seven contributing articles of the Symposium through a discussion of three cross‐cutting themes: securing the periphery,…
Dams, Development, and Racialised Internal Peripheries
Dams and other large water infrastructures are more than mere technical projects in Pakistan. They carry a special symbolic burden and are understood by the state as vectors of modernisation. This paper interrogates the making of a statist hydraulic imaginary in Pakistan in the 1960s and its continued relevance today. This imaginary posits a technocratic state as the protagonist in a national narrative of hydro‐modernisation. I argue that the pro…
Muslim peripheries
This commentary flags three key themes related to Muslim geographies. The first is the diversity and interconnectedness of Islam across regions, and the way Muslim practice is formed through a sense of place. The second is the need to rethink the spatial categories of core and periphery across Muslim space. Lastly, the third suggests that the contextualized study of Muslim geographies should reshape geographical knowledge, especially with respect…
Authoritarian urbanism in Pakistan and Indonesia
This paper conducts a conjunctural comparison of two planned new cities in Asia: Ravi City in Pakistan, and Nusantara in Indonesia. Planned urbanization, and infrastructure-led development (ILD) more broadly, has been connected in the literature to a rise in authoritarian urbanism. This paper analyses legal sources to situate the historical-geographical trajectories of Ravi City and Nusantara within the global conjunctural moment of ILD. Our lega…
Political science (19 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Law (15 works) · Politics (14 works) · Economics (12 works) · Law (10 works) · Political economy (10 works) · Water Governance and Infrastructure (9 works) · Geography (8 works) · Archaeology (5 works)