Longing for Love in Karachi, Individuals and Global Cultural Discourses. A Case of Cultural Isomorphism?

• In Event: 352 - Theory Section Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 06. Epistemology and Discourse

Abstract

This paper focuses on the discursive strategies middle class Pakistani women across two cohorts employ when contending with conflicting global cultural discourses about partnered relationships with men. Examining the schemas that women bring to bear in discussing their romantic relationships with men I shed light on the way in which individuals’ strategies are embedded in and informed by the dynamic interplay between global discourses and state power. Older participants’ narratives reflected a binary that mimicked the 1970s state framing of globalization in binary terms. Younger participants’ narratives reflected the Musharraf government’s framing of globalization to favor neoliberalism. Thus both participants narratives imply that Global discourses need to be concretized through state policy and institutional structures before they are reflected in individual subjectivities and that modernization does not advance in fixed stages. Sociological work in new institutionalism suggests that over time the practices of individual institutions tend towards isomorphism, which is structured by considerations of legitimacy. This paper explores the possibility that there a cultural or a discursive isomorphism. Put another way this paper investigates whether individual discourses mimic institutional structures?

Author

• Fauzia Husain, University of Virginia