Preliminary research problem and question
Rachel L. Murray
My research examines how farmers in Gilgit-Baltistan maintain access to and control of land and water,
amidst a changing geopolitical and ecological environment. Federally administered by Pakistan yet still
claimed by India, Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) borders Kashmir to the south, Afghanistan to the north, and
China to the east. Although historically distinct from Kashmir, GB’s fate has been tied to it since 1947,
when India claims the region acceded to India, a claim which Pakistan and the people of Gilgit-Baltistan
(who largely identify as Pakistani) dispute. While ethnically and tribally diverse, the majority of the
people in the five districts that make up Gilgit-Baltistan would like Pakistan to grant GB provincial
status. Pakistan refuses to do so, fearing it would compromise their position in the Kashmir dispute.
Gilgit-Baltistan is of critical geopolitical and ecological importance, as both the headwaters of the Indus
River System (the largest irrigated river basin in the world) and the most direct route for China to reach
European markets. Its steep glacial rivers hold great (though highly unstable) hydropower and water
storage potential, while its forests and pastures filter glacial silt that would otherwise clog dams and
pollute irrigation and drinking water supplies downstream. As a strategic part of China’s Belt and Road
Initiative, GB is facing an enormous influx of infrastructure projects, including highways, pipelines,
railways, and a cascade of mega dams.
In recent decades, In an attempt to maintain governability and control over Gilgit-Baltistan and mollify
Chinese concerns about the disputed nature of the territory, without compromising its position in the
Kashmir dispute, Pakistan has passed various federal acts and orders to give the appearance of
providing the region with both provincial autonomy and inclusion into Pakistan. A growing number of
political and other groups both inside and outside of the state oppose these executive orders and acts,
claiming that they are actually increasing federal power over GB while giving an illusion of control to the
people of Gilgit-Baltistan.
Land tenure in GB is tied to access to water, and is a mosaic of overlapping formal and informal
patterns, much of which has no record. The indeterminate legal status of the area (in addition to the
marginalization, environmental hazards, and high poverty rates typical of peripheral mountain
communities), has enormous implications for how people maintain access to land and water. The
massive influx of foreign infrastructure investment further complicates and mutates the internal power
dynamics regarding this access. While researchers have noted that land tenure insecurity is
problematic in this region, there is a knowledge gap with respect to what mechanisms of land and water
access GB farmers are employing, how these mechanisms are changing, and what opportunities may
exist for greater tenure security. I will use an access analysis to identify and map processes and actors
that determine how access to land and water is gained, maintained, and managed. I plan to combine
GIS methodology with geo-ethnography and socio-institutional network analysis to create a rich,
prismatic picture of the processes and relationships of power through which people gain access to land
and water, and how it is changing over time.
I'd like to draw on Bourdieu's notion of fields to decipher the structural embeddedness of access and
the role of power relations in shaping access opportunities. A Bourdieusian approach could use “fields”
as an analytical tool, inclusive of broader social and economic structures and power relations that
influence farmers in their effort to access land and water tenure. I think that field analysis would be a
useful approach for studying access, because access is never neutral, but is forged through processes
of inclusion and exclusion embedded in conflicting arenas.
Broader impacts
Many areas of the world remain disputed territory, and even parts that aren’t officially disputed
experience the challenges of ambiguous and overlapping legal pluralities. For example, Federal
Indian Law in the United States is wrought with historically contradictory legislation and ad hoc,
inconsistent judicial precedent, to the extent that sovereignty is undermined and differentially defined
by both civilians and government leaders. The proposed research will contribute to institutional
understanding of the impacts of lack of secure citizenship rights combined with insecure land tenure,
on access to water and livelihood possibilities. Furthermore, building on Ferguson’s (1990) concept
of the “anti-politics machine” this research aims to challenge the development community to
acknowledge how segregating development practice from deeply entrenched politics both within and
outside the state may have the unintended side-effect of reproducing or even intensifying existing
social inequalities.