Amen Jaffer, Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, at the Mushtaq Ahmad Gurmani School of Humanities and Social Sciences (MGSHSS) has published in The Drama Review, a journal published by the New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.
Dr. Jaffer’s article, titled 'A Drama of Saintly Devotion: Performing Ecstasy and Status at the Shaam-e-Qalandar Festival in Pakistan' was published in the November issue of the journal.
He is a sociologist trained in urban ethnography with a PhD in Sociology from the New School for Social Research. His teaching and research interests lie in the Sociology and Anthropology of religion, social interaction, urban communities and networks, difference and social control, social theory and the politics of space and infrastructure.
The article discusses the event of Shaam-e-Qalandar, a recent addition to Pakistan’s largest Sufi festival and represents an emerging performative religiosity characterised by a mixture of ecstatic devotion, conspicuous consumption, and aesthetic and stylistic inspirations from Lollywood films, wedding celebrations, and pop concerts. Sponsored mostly by small business owners, this new religiosity also reflects a shift in the distribution of power and authority in Pakistan’s religious communities.
For details are available here.
