The first Social Sciences Winter School in Karachi, jointly organized by the Centre for South Asian Studies in Paris (CEIAS, CNRS-EHESS) and the Institute of Business Administration Karachi (IBA), will be held in Karachi in November 2022. It will address issues at the interface between cities, urban change, and heritage management with different thematic focus, scales of interpretation, theoretical questioning and methodological frameworks, and in interaction with various local and international stakeholders. The theme chosen for this first edition in Karachi is at the intersection of the multidisciplinary field of urban studies and heritage studies. Furthermore, the innovative character of the Winter School comes from the emphasis on the use of advanced methodological and technological tools which are described below.
Within the framework of this intensive training in social sciences, the urban question will be approached more particularly from the angle of the relations between heritage and territory. By heritage, we mean all tangible and non-material assets, with a double dimension, both individual and collective, public and private, which can be appropriated and mobilized by various segments of society for their own qualities. Heritage is increasingly seen as a territorial resource at the service of local development projects, urban and regional planning policies, 
as well as broader identity-based undertakings. What is the nature and scale of the social, spatial and political processes of heritage development in the Pakistani context? What are the social and institutional arrangements involved in the process of heritage development? How is the “architectural space” articulated with a networked “heritage territory”? Does the territorialization of religious heritage nourish a wider process of urban heritage development and tourism enhancement on a regional and/or national scale? How does the management of these urban legacies relate to the duty to remember? How is the heritage of the colonial building conceived by the institutions, the elites and the popular classes? How does the reflection on this question fit into the major contemporary debates, such as postcolonial or subaltern studies? Finally, how do these positions relate to nationalism?
These are only a few issues that we intend to explore during the plenary sessions and to operationalize during the workshops by training students, emerging scholars and young professionals in the use of innovative methodological tools. Indeed, three workshops will pull different threads of the nexus between cities, urban change and heritage management issues, by mobilizing various approaches and disciplines, as well as geotechnologies and digital humanities.
The Winter School will be organized as follows:
- [DAY 1] Training in plenary sessions at the beginning of the school: presentations will introduce various thematic and methodological aspects of research and field practices.
- [DAY 2 to 5] Three methodological and multidisciplinary workshops lasting each four days will address these issues from various cross-cutting perspectives, and will discuss theoretical models, case studies, analytical tools, survey methods, data collection, etc.
- [DAY 5] Knowledge-restitution and debate: participants of each workshop will work on a mock research project based on the four days of training and make their oral presentation before receiving their training certificate.
Each student will have to choose at the time of registration on a workshop among the three proposed below:
- Workshop 1 – Heritage, public space and collaborative mapping: conceptions, practices and appropriations
- Workshop 2 – City, architectural space and monuments: heritage perceptions, uses and management
- Workshop 3 –Interrogating the city from document to archive
Thanks to all the sponsors and partners:
