Hasan H Karrar
Biographic Data
| ID | 269367 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Hasan H Karrar |
| GIVEN NAMES | Hasan H |
| FAMILY NAME | Karrar |
| SIGNATURE | KARRAR H H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Lahore University of Management Sciences |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0682-3345 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 98 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Small businesses and new adaptation capacities in Georgia and Kazakhstan
A Dubai and a Shenzhen in Gwadar
The new Gwadar port, at the far end of Pakistan's Balochistan province, has for two decades been the site of two development models promising miraculous growth: a "Dubai model" of cascading investments in real estate, and a "Shenzhen model" of infrastructure-based, service and logistics delivery. In this essay, the author asks: How did these models forecast miraculous transformation of Gwadar? What motivated the choice of these models at the turn…
The Politics of Land and Belonging in North Pakistan
Pakistan’s mountainous north borders China. Deepening bilateral ties, together with increasing investments from within Pakistan, have amplified local anxiety over loss of control over resources. A complicated history left the area with multiple land tenure systems. Much of this region, today known as Gilgit-Baltistan, is disputed with India. Consequently, it has a constitutionally liminal status and its people do not enjoy equal citizenship right…
Highways to the End of the World. Roads, Roadmen and Power in South Asia Highways to the End of the World
Informal Markets and Trade in Central Asia and the Caucasus
The Geopolitics of Infrastructure and Securitisation in a Postcolony Frontier Space
Infrastructure has played an agential role in the securitisation of everyday life in the Karakoram high mountains of north Pakistan. Geopolitics bear heavily on this region where Pakistan shares borders with China, with whom it has aligned its foreign and security policy, and with India, with whom Pakistan remains embroiled in a long‐standing territorial dispute. Consequently, in the Karakoram, geopolitical anxieties have reflected inwards onto l…
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,…
A cautionary tale
In the three decades since the Soviet Union, bazaars have enabled self-employment for large segments of the population in the Caucasus and Central Asia. In this article, we analyse data collected through 1200 structured interviews with bazaar traders in 2016 and 2017 in Georgia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, where we inquired about money, organization and support. These data allow us to draw empirically grounded conclusions about the daily operation…
The Power of Money
In February 2002, a Chinese State-Owned Enterprise (SOE), Sinotrans Xinjiang, partnered with a local Pakistani collective, the Silk Route Dry Port Trust, to finance and operate a dry port in mountainous north Pakistan. Given minimal overland trade between China and Pakistan, this was an unlikely place for investment by a subsidiary of one of China's largest SOEs. Individuals who commanded extensive social networks and possessed local knowledge we…
The Indus Delta Between Past and Future
The Indus delta, at the terminus of the Indus river system, is presently home to 300,000 residents. Over the last century, upriver hydrology has reduced the flow of water through the river. The result is salination and seawater incursion that has led to the loss of arable land and with it, agriculture as a sustainable livelihood. This has created precarious livelihoods, as people are forced either into the informal fishing sector, or to migrate; …
Caravan Trade to Neoliberal Spaces
Located along Pakistan's central Asian margins, the high mountain region of Gilgit-Baltistan borders Afghanistan and India, and since 1969 has connected Pakistan to China. In this article, I argue that over the last 50 years, expanding forms of connectivity between Pakistan and China were localized in Gilgit-Baltistan through three processes: (1) from 1969, overland connectivity between Gilgit-Baltistan and western China has enabled Pakistan to i…
The Belt and Road as political technology
While celebrated as a new ‘win-win’ initiative, Belt and Road narratives sidestep the fact that current investment regimes originating in China must contour to existing political economies in host countries. Drawing on the examples of Pakistan and Tajikistan, both of which share land borders with China, and both of which have been eager recipients of recent Chinese investments, we forward two arguments: (1) In both countries the narrative of conn…
The bazaar in ruins
Since 2013, there have been multiple fires in bazaars in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Most of these fires have occurred in Barakholka, the largest bazaar in Central Asia, known for wholesaling in apparel, shoes and low-quality household and office supplies. Ownership of Barakholka is opaque. Using recurrent Barakholka fires as my point of departure, this article contributes to scholarship by describing how the clearing of old bazaars is followed by new pr…
Negotiating state and society
This special issue introduces new research on informal markets and trade in Central Asia and the Caucasus. The research presented here was conducted in Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as Beijing, Guangzhou, Yiwu and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. The following eight articles illustrate how informal markets and trade in Central Asia and the Caucasus provided spaces for people across the region to negotiate sta…
In the Shadow of the Silk Road
This article asks, (1) Why did Afiyatabad, a nondescript bazaar along the Pakistan-China border, emerge along an uninhabited stretch of the Karakoram highway?, and (2) How did Afiyatabad adapt—through bazaar infrastructure, local capital investment, and labor migration—first to state-led development, and more recently, to the promise of economic corridor development? The article illustrates how Afiyatabad emerged from unfolding border regimes on …
Between Border and Bazaar
The disintegration of the Soviet Union spurred a transnational trade in consumer goods. Bazaars, which proliferated across the former Soviet Union, including in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan that is the focus of this article, became nodes in this informal trade. This article makes three arguments: (i) Soviet successor states capitalised on the new informal economy which provided employment to millions when economies were in decline. Conversely, ongoi…
Assembling marginality in northern Pakistan
Resistance to state-orchestrated modernization in Xinjiang
This article seeks to explain periodic unrest in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the years immediately following the Third Plenum. This unrest fractured along ethnic lines between the non-Han and the Han, and in so doing, threatened to unravel Deng Xiaoping's modernization efforts. Simultaneously, the unrest challenged Beijing's self-projection as a unitary multiethnic state, and singular Chinese nation. Beijing's anxiety was evident…
Shanghai spirit two decades on
This article explores some of the ways in which language was central to the construction of
The resumption of Sino–Central Asian trade, c. 1983–94
The resumption of trade across the Sino–Central Asian border in 1983 accompanied a gradual thaw in relations between China and the Soviet Union. This paper argues that: (1) Economic liberalization in China (alongside the Soviet Union) created a climate encouraging cross-border exchange. (2) Starting in 1983, improving relations between China and the Soviet Union permitted cross-border exchange in Central Asia; over the subsequent decade, trade vo…
Kyrgyzstan's Dordoi and Kara-Suu Bazaars
Despite modest economic indicators, Kyrgyzstan boasts two of Eurasia's largest bazaars: Dordoi bazaar in the capital city Bishkek, and Kara-Suu bazaar in southern Kyrgyzstan. Combined, the 2 bazaars provide employment to approximately 75,000 people and serve as entrepôts for foreign merchandise into Central Asia and Russia. This paper makes three arguments: (i) mobility of people, merchandise, capital, and information became a defining feature of…
Polio, public health, and the new pathologies of militancy in Pakistan
Since 2005, Pakistan has witnessed a net increase in polio, reaching a 15-year crest in 2014 when 306 cases were reported. Pakistan, along with Afghanistan, is one the remaining two polio-endemic countries. The numbers of cases reported in Pakistan in 2014 were far in excess of Afghanistan (28) and Nigeria (6). This paper focuses on the endemic militancy plaguing the country that has recently created grave obstacles for countrywide polio eradicat…
Capitalism, Nature, and Socialism in South Asia
A curious transformation has occurred along Pakistan's highways in the last ten years or so: where previously highway travel entailed dodging an armada of cars, busses, trucks, tractors and the occ
Assembling marginality in northern Pakistan
Between Border and Bazaar
The disintegration of the Soviet Union spurred a transnational trade in consumer goods. Bazaars, which proliferated across the former Soviet Union, including in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan that is the focus of this article, became nodes in this informal trade. This article makes three arguments: (i) Soviet successor states capitalised on the new informal economy which provided employment to millions when economies were in decline. Conversely, ongoi…
The Geopolitics of Infrastructure and Securitisation in a Postcolony Frontier Space
Infrastructure has played an agential role in the securitisation of everyday life in the Karakoram high mountains of north Pakistan. Geopolitics bear heavily on this region where Pakistan shares borders with China, with whom it has aligned its foreign and security policy, and with India, with whom Pakistan remains embroiled in a long‐standing territorial dispute. Consequently, in the Karakoram, geopolitical anxieties have reflected inwards onto l…
Kyrgyzstan's Dordoi and Kara-Suu Bazaars
Despite modest economic indicators, Kyrgyzstan boasts two of Eurasia's largest bazaars: Dordoi bazaar in the capital city Bishkek, and Kara-Suu bazaar in southern Kyrgyzstan. Combined, the 2 bazaars provide employment to approximately 75,000 people and serve as entrepôts for foreign merchandise into Central Asia and Russia. This paper makes three arguments: (i) mobility of people, merchandise, capital, and information became a defining feature of…
Negotiating state and society
This special issue introduces new research on informal markets and trade in Central Asia and the Caucasus. The research presented here was conducted in Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as Beijing, Guangzhou, Yiwu and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. The following eight articles illustrate how informal markets and trade in Central Asia and the Caucasus provided spaces for people across the region to negotiate sta…
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,…
In the Shadow of the Silk Road
This article asks, (1) Why did Afiyatabad, a nondescript bazaar along the Pakistan-China border, emerge along an uninhabited stretch of the Karakoram highway?, and (2) How did Afiyatabad adapt—through bazaar infrastructure, local capital investment, and labor migration—first to state-led development, and more recently, to the promise of economic corridor development? The article illustrates how Afiyatabad emerged from unfolding border regimes on …
Caravan Trade to Neoliberal Spaces
Located along Pakistan's central Asian margins, the high mountain region of Gilgit-Baltistan borders Afghanistan and India, and since 1969 has connected Pakistan to China. In this article, I argue that over the last 50 years, expanding forms of connectivity between Pakistan and China were localized in Gilgit-Baltistan through three processes: (1) from 1969, overland connectivity between Gilgit-Baltistan and western China has enabled Pakistan to i…
The resumption of Sino–Central Asian trade, c. 1983–94
The resumption of trade across the Sino–Central Asian border in 1983 accompanied a gradual thaw in relations between China and the Soviet Union. This paper argues that: (1) Economic liberalization in China (alongside the Soviet Union) created a climate encouraging cross-border exchange. (2) Starting in 1983, improving relations between China and the Soviet Union permitted cross-border exchange in Central Asia; over the subsequent decade, trade vo…
The Indus Delta Between Past and Future
The Indus delta, at the terminus of the Indus river system, is presently home to 300,000 residents. Over the last century, upriver hydrology has reduced the flow of water through the river. The result is salination and seawater incursion that has led to the loss of arable land and with it, agriculture as a sustainable livelihood. This has created precarious livelihoods, as people are forced either into the informal fishing sector, or to migrate; …
The Power of Money
In February 2002, a Chinese State-Owned Enterprise (SOE), Sinotrans Xinjiang, partnered with a local Pakistani collective, the Silk Route Dry Port Trust, to finance and operate a dry port in mountainous north Pakistan. Given minimal overland trade between China and Pakistan, this was an unlikely place for investment by a subsidiary of one of China's largest SOEs. Individuals who commanded extensive social networks and possessed local knowledge we…
The Belt and Road as political technology
While celebrated as a new ‘win-win’ initiative, Belt and Road narratives sidestep the fact that current investment regimes originating in China must contour to existing political economies in host countries. Drawing on the examples of Pakistan and Tajikistan, both of which share land borders with China, and both of which have been eager recipients of recent Chinese investments, we forward two arguments: (1) In both countries the narrative of conn…
A cautionary tale
In the three decades since the Soviet Union, bazaars have enabled self-employment for large segments of the population in the Caucasus and Central Asia. In this article, we analyse data collected through 1200 structured interviews with bazaar traders in 2016 and 2017 in Georgia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, where we inquired about money, organization and support. These data allow us to draw empirically grounded conclusions about the daily operation…
The bazaar in ruins
Since 2013, there have been multiple fires in bazaars in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Most of these fires have occurred in Barakholka, the largest bazaar in Central Asia, known for wholesaling in apparel, shoes and low-quality household and office supplies. Ownership of Barakholka is opaque. Using recurrent Barakholka fires as my point of departure, this article contributes to scholarship by describing how the clearing of old bazaars is followed by new pr…
Polio, public health, and the new pathologies of militancy in Pakistan
Since 2005, Pakistan has witnessed a net increase in polio, reaching a 15-year crest in 2014 when 306 cases were reported. Pakistan, along with Afghanistan, is one the remaining two polio-endemic countries. The numbers of cases reported in Pakistan in 2014 were far in excess of Afghanistan (28) and Nigeria (6). This paper focuses on the endemic militancy plaguing the country that has recently created grave obstacles for countrywide polio eradicat…
Capitalism, Nature, and Socialism in South Asia
A curious transformation has occurred along Pakistan's highways in the last ten years or so: where previously highway travel entailed dodging an armada of cars, busses, trucks, tractors and the occ
The resumption of Sino–Central Asian trade, c. 1983–94
The resumption of trade across the Sino–Central Asian border in 1983 accompanied a gradual thaw in relations between China and the Soviet Union. This paper argues that: (1) Economic liberalization in China (alongside the Soviet Union) created a climate encouraging cross-border exchange. (2) Starting in 1983, improving relations between China and the Soviet Union permitted cross-border exchange in Central Asia; over the subsequent decade, trade vo…
Kyrgyzstan's Dordoi and Kara-Suu Bazaars
Despite modest economic indicators, Kyrgyzstan boasts two of Eurasia's largest bazaars: Dordoi bazaar in the capital city Bishkek, and Kara-Suu bazaar in southern Kyrgyzstan. Combined, the 2 bazaars provide employment to approximately 75,000 people and serve as entrepôts for foreign merchandise into Central Asia and Russia. This paper makes three arguments: (i) mobility of people, merchandise, capital, and information became a defining feature of…
Shanghai spirit two decades on
This article explores some of the ways in which language was central to the construction of
Assembling marginality in northern Pakistan
Resistance to state-orchestrated modernization in Xinjiang
This article seeks to explain periodic unrest in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the years immediately following the Third Plenum. This unrest fractured along ethnic lines between the non-Han and the Han, and in so doing, threatened to unravel Deng Xiaoping's modernization efforts. Simultaneously, the unrest challenged Beijing's self-projection as a unitary multiethnic state, and singular Chinese nation. Beijing's anxiety was evident…
In the Shadow of the Silk Road
This article asks, (1) Why did Afiyatabad, a nondescript bazaar along the Pakistan-China border, emerge along an uninhabited stretch of the Karakoram highway?, and (2) How did Afiyatabad adapt—through bazaar infrastructure, local capital investment, and labor migration—first to state-led development, and more recently, to the promise of economic corridor development? The article illustrates how Afiyatabad emerged from unfolding border regimes on …
Between Border and Bazaar
The disintegration of the Soviet Union spurred a transnational trade in consumer goods. Bazaars, which proliferated across the former Soviet Union, including in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan that is the focus of this article, became nodes in this informal trade. This article makes three arguments: (i) Soviet successor states capitalised on the new informal economy which provided employment to millions when economies were in decline. Conversely, ongoi…
The Belt and Road as political technology
While celebrated as a new ‘win-win’ initiative, Belt and Road narratives sidestep the fact that current investment regimes originating in China must contour to existing political economies in host countries. Drawing on the examples of Pakistan and Tajikistan, both of which share land borders with China, and both of which have been eager recipients of recent Chinese investments, we forward two arguments: (1) In both countries the narrative of conn…
The bazaar in ruins
Since 2013, there have been multiple fires in bazaars in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Most of these fires have occurred in Barakholka, the largest bazaar in Central Asia, known for wholesaling in apparel, shoes and low-quality household and office supplies. Ownership of Barakholka is opaque. Using recurrent Barakholka fires as my point of departure, this article contributes to scholarship by describing how the clearing of old bazaars is followed by new pr…
Negotiating state and society
This special issue introduces new research on informal markets and trade in Central Asia and the Caucasus. The research presented here was conducted in Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as Beijing, Guangzhou, Yiwu and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. The following eight articles illustrate how informal markets and trade in Central Asia and the Caucasus provided spaces for people across the region to negotiate sta…
The Indus Delta Between Past and Future
The Indus delta, at the terminus of the Indus river system, is presently home to 300,000 residents. Over the last century, upriver hydrology has reduced the flow of water through the river. The result is salination and seawater incursion that has led to the loss of arable land and with it, agriculture as a sustainable livelihood. This has created precarious livelihoods, as people are forced either into the informal fishing sector, or to migrate; …
Caravan Trade to Neoliberal Spaces
Located along Pakistan's central Asian margins, the high mountain region of Gilgit-Baltistan borders Afghanistan and India, and since 1969 has connected Pakistan to China. In this article, I argue that over the last 50 years, expanding forms of connectivity between Pakistan and China were localized in Gilgit-Baltistan through three processes: (1) from 1969, overland connectivity between Gilgit-Baltistan and western China has enabled Pakistan to i…
Informal Markets and Trade in Central Asia and the Caucasus
The Geopolitics of Infrastructure and Securitisation in a Postcolony Frontier Space
Infrastructure has played an agential role in the securitisation of everyday life in the Karakoram high mountains of north Pakistan. Geopolitics bear heavily on this region where Pakistan shares borders with China, with whom it has aligned its foreign and security policy, and with India, with whom Pakistan remains embroiled in a long‐standing territorial dispute. Consequently, in the Karakoram, geopolitical anxieties have reflected inwards onto l…
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,…
A cautionary tale
In the three decades since the Soviet Union, bazaars have enabled self-employment for large segments of the population in the Caucasus and Central Asia. In this article, we analyse data collected through 1200 structured interviews with bazaar traders in 2016 and 2017 in Georgia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, where we inquired about money, organization and support. These data allow us to draw empirically grounded conclusions about the daily operation…
The Power of Money
In February 2002, a Chinese State-Owned Enterprise (SOE), Sinotrans Xinjiang, partnered with a local Pakistani collective, the Silk Route Dry Port Trust, to finance and operate a dry port in mountainous north Pakistan. Given minimal overland trade between China and Pakistan, this was an unlikely place for investment by a subsidiary of one of China's largest SOEs. Individuals who commanded extensive social networks and possessed local knowledge we…
Highways to the End of the World. Roads, Roadmen and Power in South Asia Highways to the End of the World
The Politics of Land and Belonging in North Pakistan
Pakistan’s mountainous north borders China. Deepening bilateral ties, together with increasing investments from within Pakistan, have amplified local anxiety over loss of control over resources. A complicated history left the area with multiple land tenure systems. Much of this region, today known as Gilgit-Baltistan, is disputed with India. Consequently, it has a constitutionally liminal status and its people do not enjoy equal citizenship right…
Small businesses and new adaptation capacities in Georgia and Kazakhstan
A Dubai and a Shenzhen in Gwadar
The new Gwadar port, at the far end of Pakistan's Balochistan province, has for two decades been the site of two development models promising miraculous growth: a "Dubai model" of cascading investments in real estate, and a "Shenzhen model" of infrastructure-based, service and logistics delivery. In this essay, the author asks: How did these models forecast miraculous transformation of Gwadar? What motivated the choice of these models at the turn…
Political science (19 works) · Economics (17 works) · Geography (13 works) · Law (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Politics (12 works) · Economy (11 works) · Business (9 works) · China (8 works) · China's Global Influence and Migration (8 works)