Ethics of Staying

Mubbashir A. Rizvi is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Georgetown University.

"A forgotten struggle; a glorious but fated political moment in which peasants took on Pakistan's military might and for more than a decade seemed to be winning. Rizvi tells this complex story with a lot of flare and feeling, providing historical and social context for a remarkable movement with the most unlikely of heroes."—Mohammed Hanif, The New York Times "In this incisive study Rizvi blends history and ethnography to analyze the continuing impacts of colonial land colonization on relationships between state and society, city and country. Theoretically sophisticated, the book represents a milestone in reorienting how we think about contemporary, agrarian Pakistan."—David Gilmartin, North Carolina State University "[The Ethics of Staying] addresses urgent questions, such as: How did sharecroppers disarm the Pakistani Army in the midst of dictatorial rule? Why and on what basis did they risk their lives for land they didn't legally own? How have they managed to survive in the context of extreme repression?....[This] book is a hopeful and necessary read."—Mel Gurr, PoLAR "[An] engaging ethnographic account....The Ethics of Staying is a fascinating read and should be of interest to scholars of rural social movements, subaltern studies, and development."—Kurt Schock, Mobilization "[Rizvi's] detailed and nuanced engagement with an immensely important movement is the real strength here, and readers are left with a convincing picture of claims that exceed legal property rights."—Humeira Iqtidar, Pacific Affairs "The Ethics of Staying is a valuable contribution to ongoing debates on land conflicts and popular politics in South Asia. Rizvi's account of the [Punjab Tenants Association's] successful mobilisation for rights to land and livelihood also offers a glimmer of hope at a conjuncture where both Pakistan and India are turning increasingly authoritarian and display ever-decreasing tolerance for the rights-based claims of subaltern movements."—Kenneth Bo Nielsen, Journal of Contemporary Asia "In The Ethics of Staying, Mubbashir Rizvi provides an immense depth of ethnographic detail surrounding a farmers' movement that captured the national imagination during a time of military rule. In its endeavour to examine the many internal and external dynamics that shaped the biography of a social movement, it also speaks to the future of any politics against commodification and dispossession. As such, it forms an extremely important contribution to scholarship on civil-military relations, social movements, and land in contemporary Pakistan."—Aisha Ahmad, Bloomsbury Pakistan

• 1. Introduction2. Politics as Process in Okara Military FarmsChapter 3: The Afterlife of Colonial InfrastructureChapter 4: What Remains Buried Under Property?5. Movement and Mobilization6. Solidarities, Fault Lines, and the Scale of Struggle7. Coda