Abstract
This article presents a detailed survey of the sites of emergence and development of socio-legal research in Pakistan, locating it on a historical arc extending from the decolonisation era to contemporary times, and organically tracing its trajectory through contextual shifts in knowledge production more broadly. As such, the article takes a reflexive approach to identifying and classifying the socio-legal that eschews pre-existing benchmarks of what constitutes the field globally. In so doing, it makes the central argument that the meaning and evolution of “socio” in socio-legal is contingent on social and historical context. The article begins with a broad Pakistan-India comparison that foregrounds the salience of context in the production of socio-legal knowledge in Pakistan, exploring in particular the extent to which the norms and constraints around history-writing have impacted the integration and potentialities of humanistic methods in socio-legal work. It then traverses the early landscape of political science research on public law in Pakistan, connecting these “antecedents” to the subsequent rise and growth of the socio-legal in the legal academy. Finally, drawing on a thick analysis of the emerging trends in the understanding of the “socio” in contemporary scholarship, the article proposes a four-way conceptualisation of “interdisciplinarity” as an aid to understanding the state of the field today and the scope for future research. The core challenge for socio-legal scholars in Pakistan and the broader South Asian region, the article concludes, is to intentionally develop the field beyond elite and state-centred themes.
Custom Citation
Maryam S Khan, 'Locating Socio-Legal Research in Pakistan: A Reflexive Approach' (2024) 20(2) Socio-Legal Review 92.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
doi.org/10.55496/RDMB4295
