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UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title A Spiritual Development : Islam, Volunteerism and International Development in the Hunza Valley, Northern Pakistan Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/69v8w8x2 Author Miller, Katherine Joanne Ledbetter Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO A Spiritual Development: Islam, Volunteerism and International Development in the Hunza Valley, Northern Pakistan A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology by Katherine Joanne Ledbetter Miller Committee in charge: Professor Rupert Stasch, Chair Professor Joel Robbins, Co-Chair Professor Huma Ahmed-Ghosh Professor Richard Biernacki Professor Kathryn Woolard 2015 Copyright Katherine Joanne Ledbetter Miller, 2015 All rights reserved. The Dissertation of Katherine Joanne Ledbetter Miller is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Co-Chair Chair University of California, San Diego 2015 iii DEDICATION For my father and mother. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page .............................................................................................................. iii Dedication ..................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents .......................................................................................................... v List of Abbreviations ................................................................................................... vi List of Figures .............................................................................................................. vii Note on Language ..................................................................................................... viii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………….......ix Vita ............................................................................................................................... xi Abstract of the Dissertation. ........................................................................................ xii Introduction.. ............................................................................................................... ..1 Chapter One. Context .................................................................................................. 37 Chapter Two. Histories of Labor in the Twentieth Century…………………..…….. 47 Chapter Three. Sharing Shade: Labor, Embodiment and Reflexivity………………..82 Chapter Four. Gifts to God: Religious Volunteerism ...................................... ……. 109 Chapter Five. Schooling Virtue …………………………………………………….141 Chapter Six. The Future in Place ............................................................................... 165 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 185 References ................................................................................................................ 196 v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AKCSP Aga Khan Cultural Services, Pakistan AKDN Aga Khan Development Network AKES Aga Khan Education Services AKESP Aga Khan Education Services, Pakistan AKHS Aga Khan Health Services AKTC Aga Khan Trust for Culture AKRSP Aga Khan Rural Support Programme ATMS Altit Town Management Society DJ Diamond Jubilee FMU Field Management Unit ICT4D Information and Communication Technology for Development ITREB Isma'ili Tariqah and Religious Education Board KADO Karakoram Area Development Organization KKH Karakoram Highway NGOs Non-governmental Organizations PPI Productive Physical Infrastructure TMS Town Management Society VO Village Organization WASE P Water and Sanitation Extension Programme WO Women’s Organization vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Altit khun with Altit Fort in the background…………………….…….... 173 Figure 2: The restored Baltit Fort seen from the Altit link road…………………... 173 Figure 3: Altit village seen from the summer village of Duikar…………………....174 Figure 4: Pitting apricots and readying them for drying……………………………174 vii NOTE ON LANGUAGE Words in languages other than English appearing in this text are primarily in Burushaski (Bu.) or Urdu (U.). Terms of religious (either specifically Isma‘ili or generally Islamic) significance also appear throughout the text; these words and phrases are of Arabic and/or Persian origin and are commonly used in both Burushaski and Urdu speech. I have left them unattributed. For Burushaski terms, I have followed the orthography used by Stephen Willson in Basic Burushaski Vocabulary (1999) with very few exceptions. viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe thanks to more people thank I can name for making possible this dissertation and the research on which it is based. Those who deserve my deepest gratitude are the most difficult, for many reasons, to name in full, but I thank all the people in Hunza who let me into their lives, put up with my questions, accepted my clumsy attempts to insert myself into their routines, and let me work alongside them for a while. Several families took me in: I thank the family of Sultan Ishaq and his wife Shameem, in particular, for giving me a roof and a place in the community during my first months of research. Auntie Marina and Uncle Manaf always held a spot by the stove for me. Rozina and her family were the best possible neighbors, generously sharing their work, their lives and their stories. Salma, Saima and Shaqilla of AKCSP were excellent roommates and offered valuable perspectives. My small group of English learners was a constant source of information and humor. Other friends and teachers of particular note are Javaid and Salma, Didar and Saleem. Many members of staff at AKCP, AKRSP and KADO were extremely generous with their time and knowledge, particularly Safiullah Baig and Ghulam Ali. I thank all the members of my committee for their insights and their patience during the long preparation of this dissertation. I thank Kit Woolard for both her generosity and her rigor as a teacher and mentor. I am deeply fortunate in having had both intellectual and moral support of two generous mentors for longer than this project has been in existence: Rupert Stasch and Joel Robbins. I cannot express what an honor it has been to see this dissertation through to the end with their guidance. ix Many colleagues and intellectual interlocutors at UCSD, Reed and elsewhere have offered support, feedback and inspiration that have deepened my thinking about Hunza, ethics and anthropology. An incomplete list includes: Naomi Haynes, Jon Bialecki, Jeff Wescott, Halima Welji, LaShandra Sullivan, China Scherz, Megan Sijapati, David Strohl, Arsalan Khan, Nicholas Evans and Zirwat Chowdhury (to whom I also owe great thanks for seeing me through the last weeks of writing with humor and home-cooked meals). I am also grateful to my colleagues and students at Reed College for providing such a supportive and stimulating environment in which to think and write. My graduate work and preparation for this research were generously supported by a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship and my writing by a Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowship; I thank the U. S. Department of Education and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. Most important of all have been my parents, Pam Ledbetter and Peter Miller. They have supported this project in every possible way since the beginning. This work would not have been possible without them. A version of the material in Chapter Five will appear as “Schooling Virtue: Education for ‘Spiritual Development’ in Northern Pakistan,” in the forthcoming volume Religion and Modernity in the Himalaya, Megan Adamson Sijapati and Jessica Vantine Berkenholtz, eds., Routledge, 2015. The dissertation author was the primary researcher and author of this paper. x VITA 2001 Bachelor of Arts, Reed College, Portland, Oregon 2004 Master of Arts, University of California, San Diego 2013-15 Visiting Professor, Department of Anthropology, Reed College, Portland, Oregon 2015 Doctor of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego xi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION A Spiritual Development: Islam, Volunteerism and International Development in the Hunza Valley, Northern Pakistan by Katherine Joanne Ledbetter Miller Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology University of California, San Diego, 2015 Professor Rupert Stasch, Chair Professor Joel Robbins, Co-Chair In this dissertation I approach international development ethnographically as an ongoing fact of life for its subjects in the Hunza Valley of Northern Pakistan. Development in this context is not only a top-down project or set of institutions but as an arena for individual and collective critical and ethical engagement with a set of material possibilities and moral ideals. Through ethnographic examinations of particular ethical practices of giving or sharing labor in the context of the village, neighborhood and religious community; seeking education; and producing locality in the context of material heritage, I explore the ongoing, active negotiation of diverse temporalities, agencies, demands and possibilities associated with development. These practices offer sites to address questions central to the anthropology of ethics, including questions of freedom and reproduction; ethical subjects and their relations xii with others; and the