Between the metropole and the postcolony

On the dynamics of rights' machinery from the northwestern tribal belt to the "mainland" Pakistan

Bibliographic Data

ID4476155
AuthorsMuhammad Ali Nasir (0000-0001-9878-9430, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume33
Issue6
Pages1003-1021
Publication date2015-12-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0263775815595815
OpenAlexW2252338672
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited31

Recent analyses have critically evaluated the connection of abstract rights with territorial nation-states. This article extends those findings by analyzing the way discourses of rights (human, political, national) are interconnected. It is argued that the system of relations that rights establish between their norms and concrete sociopolitical practices allows rights to function as overall machinery, one that both produces and governs subjects. From this perspective, this article establishes that: (a) since rights depend for their legal guarantee on the power of nation-states, they are a normative standard which coincides with the political power of a nation-state; (b) since rights require a certain ethic from subjects in order that their exercise of rights be legally protectable, they govern subjects through inclusion, that is, by structuring fields of action in order that a certain "proper" conduct may take place; (c) since the nation-state framework with which rights are connected operates in a postcolonial order, the functioning of rights is also connected with the discursive dynamics of postcoloniality. The empirical focus of the discussion is on Pakistan. The first section focuses on the use of human rights' discourse in order to counter drone attacks in Pakistan's tribal belt. The conundrums that human rights in this context generate are then filled in by acknowledging "rights" of a state (i.e. political sovereignty and territorial integrity), which is the focus of second section. The third section comments on the way national and political rights correspond to the notions of "citizenship" and "belongingness," which in turn shapes the conduct of subjects in a contextually apt manner

Citizenship · Context (archaeology · Fundamental rights · Geography · Human rights · International human rights law · Law and economics · Linguistic rights · Political science · Politics · Right to property · Sociology · Sovereignty · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Peacebuilding and International Security · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East

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