The lactosocial at Data Saheb ’s Shrine (Lahore-Pakistan)

Piety, flows, commons, and the community

Bibliographic Data

ID12979402
AuthorsAsif Mehmood (0000-0002-2101-4116, State University of New York, corresponding author), Sajjad Hasnain (0000-0002-6796-5988, Bahauddin Zakariya University)
Year2024
Volume17
Issue1
Pages108-115
Publication date2024-02-19
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHuman Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1942-7786 • E-ISSN: 2633-674X
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/19427786241228496
OpenAlexW4391983830
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited14

In this visual intervention, we show how a traditional community ( Gujjars) associated with livestock and dairy business enables and sustains milk commons as an articulation of their devotion to Lahore's city saint Data Ganj Bakhsh. We argue that the flows of milk at the shrine (monthly/annually) operate not only as a special purpose vehicle of piety for centuries but also as a device for Gujjar identity formation. The commoning practices reveal that identity, spirituality, and rituals are key cultural drivers of the urban commons and associated metabolic circulations, therefore, establishing themselves as important markers and analytical categories within the broader urban-nature-society debates. We seek to foreground constituent elements of the local commoning and the socio-nature at the shrine—milk, community, identity, and rituals of piety. We call their interplay the “ lactosocial” and show that it goes beyond the shrine, and its monthly/annual assemblies, and manifests itself throughout the year in other places, representations, and portrayals vis-à-vis Gujjar community. Through this work, we suggest that the lactosocial may be taken as a broader theoretical trope. It essentially moves our focus towards more-than-humans and the forms of power and social differentiation that cut across, inter alia, animal lifeworlds, traditional ecological knowledge, and neoliberal food policy domain

Aesthetics · Art · Articulation (sociology · Commons · Emic and etic · Geography · Identity (music · Piety · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · Spirituality · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Water Governance and Infrastructure

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