1968 Karachi : Youth, Class and Spatial Practices in Pakistan’s Largest Metropolis
BY ANAB JAFRI | 20 Feb 2024 | 6pm Gulf Standard Time (4:00 PM CET) | The talk will take place on Zoom (Webinar)
The 1968 Student and Labour Movement of Pakistan is the closest the country came to a Socialist revolution. It culminated in the overthrow of the military regime of Ayub Khan and ushered in the first free general elections of 1970. These were monumental changes for the nascent country. The capital city of Karachi, the movement's epicentre, witnessed massive and violent demonstrations.
An analysis of the spatial practices of Karachi’s youth, working classes, elites, and the state unveils the competing national imaginings, aspirations, and frustrations of this pivotal time period. This talk argues that the organization, construction, and contestation of space in Karachi in the 1950s and 1960s, and the emergence of its subsequent multiple “micro realities,” played a crucial role in the configuration of the turbulent ’68 movement.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Anab Jafri is a doctoral research fellow at the Graduate School for Global Intellectual History at Freie Universität (FU) Berlin and Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (HU) and a visiting student at New York University Abu Dhabi.
She holds an MA in History from the University of Toronto, with a Collaborative Specialization in South Asian Studies from the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and a Bachelor’s Joint Specialist in History and Political Science from the University of Toronto.
Her work explores the transnational flow and circulation of ideas, information and intellectual connections between Pakistan’s 1968 student and Labour movement within the Global South and beyond. Focusing on the port city of Karachi Anab traces global connections by recovering the under-explored social and cultural history of the city and its inhabitants.