Markus Daechsel (Magister Artium, PhD, FRAS, FRHistSoc)

Research Interests

My research interest concerns the social, cultural and political worlds of 'new' middle class formations in Muslim South Asia, and from a comparative perspective also in other parts of the Muslim world such as Turkey. In the past I have worked on popular literature, material culture, conceptions of the body and political ideology in mid-20th century North India. A monograph bringing some of these themes together within a 'post'-post-colonial theoretical framework has appeared in 2006 as The Politics of Self-Expression: the Urdu middleclass milieu in mid-20th century India and Pakistan, Routledge, Royal Asiatic Society Series. My major concern as a scholar has been to come to grips with the social causes of a pathological political culture and to critique not only an unduly optimistic view of globalised commodity culture and middleclass development but also class-blind forms of post-colonial theory.

At present, I have started a new research project on the intellectual and political history of 'development' in the 1950s and 60s. I am particularly interested in how international ideas of urban development and city planning have played themselves out in the local context of Pakistan and shaped the nature of the post-colonial state.

As part of my academic work I have travelled or lived in most parts of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh) and the wider Muslim world.

• Click here to view current research students
• Click here to view recent publications