Constructing 'Pakistan' through Knowledge Production in International Relations and Area Studies

Paperback, xvii + 230 pages, NOT ex-library. Good+. Gentle cornerwear, else book is clean and bright throughout with unmarked text, free of inscriptions and stamps, firmly bound. Straight spine. -- An academic study examining how Pakistan has been constructed as an object of knowledge within the disciplines of International Relations, Asian and South Asian Studies, and Pakistan Studies. Rather than offering another analysis of Pakistani politics or foreign policy in conventional terms, Waheed steps back to interrogate the frameworks themselves - asking how the scholarly communities that study Pakistan have shaped what counts as legitimate knowledge about the country, which questions get asked, and which assumptions remain unexamined. The book traces the discourse on Pakistan across these overlapping but distinct fields, exploring how each has produced its own version of 'Pakistan' through particular methodological choices, theoretical commitments and institutional pressures. Waheed draws on poststructuralist and constructivist approaches to show how these knowledge production processes are not neutral descriptions of a pre-existing reality but active participants in defining what Pakistan means in global academic and policy discourse. The analysis pays close attention to the power dynamics embedded in area studies and IR scholarship - who produces knowledge about Pakistan, from where, for whom, and with what consequences. Published by Palgrave Macmillan as part of their international relations and security studies programme, the work speaks directly to broader debates about Eurocentrism in IR theory, the politics of area studies and the relationship between academic knowledge and foreign policy. It offers a valuable critical perspective for scholars and postgraduate students working on South Asian politics, postcolonial approaches to IR, or the epistemology of area studies more generally. Ahmed W. Waheed is an Assistant Professor at the Center for International Peace and Stability at the National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) in Islamabad, Pakistan.…