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Saad Lakhani

Field of Interest(s)
Political Anthropology
Marxian Value Theory
Anthropology of Islam
Populism
Violence
Masculinity Studies
Ethics

I am a PhD candidate in Cultural and Social Anthropology at Stanford University, focusing on the anthropology of ethics, religion, and political violence in South Asia and the Muslim World. My research explores the relationship between structural violence and the collective imagination, or how marginalized people oppose dehumanization and oppression by creating cultural worlds for the pursuit of dignity and value. 

 

My dissertation is an ethnography of the Tehrik Labaik Pakistan (TLP), a new and growing anti-blasphemy movement in Pakistan led by working-class Muslim men and small-time mosque clerics. For its supporters, the anti-blasphemy movement is an opportunity for the ‘poor masses’ to reclaim their lost dignity and achieve glory by taking violent action against ‘blasphemers’ and their co-conspiring elites. Through fourteen months of ethnographic research, my dissertation explores how it becomes possible for ordinary people to link their everyday experiences of disrespect—across class, caste, gender, and sect—to the political imperative to punish the blasphemers of the prophet.