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1. Ruinous Records: The Horizon of E-governance in Urban Pakistan

   Rahman, Tariq (March 2020, Everyday Life in Times of Ruination Workshop)

   null (Ed.)

   In 2016, the Government of Punjab (GoP) launched an effort to digitize land records in the city of Lahore. Recalling development economist Hernando de Soto’s view of land in the Global South as “dead capital,” at the heart of project was the belief that local empowerment hinged on establishing modern property rights in land. Traditionally functioning as inherited wealth, land in Lahore is often entangled with colonial property regimes, undocumented transfers after partition, and generations of dispute and subdivision—issues that are magnified by the city’s dense residential settlements. By establishing clear ownership boundaries, the GoP project aimed to make land liquid, or an asset that could be leveraged for future profit. The centerpiece of the GoP project was the removal of the patwari, the traditional land revenue official. Patwaris maintain manually drafted spreadsheets and maps pertaining to landownership in a given area, records dated as early as the 19th century. In the eyes of the GoP, patwaris played a traditional but ultimately obstructive human role. Framed in official reports as “predatory middlemen,” patwaris were accused of reducing the liquidity of land. Under the GoP project, millions of pages of records were scanned, centuries-old maps were converted into GIS data, and new computerized land record centers were opened throughout Lahore. However, the work of patwaris continues to be fundamental to the new digital database. Establishing the rightful ownership of land continues to require visiting homes, consulting with neighbors, and tracing kinship lineages, labor that depends upon the local and specialized knowledge of patwaris. In this paper, I follow the path of landed property from inherited wealth to liquid asset in Lahore. If the GoP’s digital database continues to rely upon its analog counterparts, then how are land records produced in the interplay between digitization and sociomaterial practices? 

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2. Extending mammal specimens with their essential phenotypic traits

   https://doi.org/10.1093/jmammal/gyaf062  

   McLean, Bryan S; Bloom, David; Davis, Edward B; Guralnick, Robert P; Santana, Sharlene E; Allen, Julie M; Amarilla-Stevens, Heidi; Bell, Kayce C; Blackburn, David C; Bradley, Jeffrey E; et al (July 2025, Journal of Mammalogy)

   Abstract Natural history collections are repositories of biodiversity specimens that provide critical infrastructure for studies of mammals. Over the past 3 decades, digitization of collections has opened up the temporal and spatial properties of specimens, stimulating new data sharing, use, and training across the biodiversity sciences. These digital records are the cornerstones of an “extended specimen network,” in which the diverse data derived from specimens become digital, linked, and openly accessible for science and policy. However, still missing from most digital occurrences of mammals are their morphological, reproductive, and life-history traits. Unlocking this information will advance mammalogy, establish richer faunal baselines in an era of rapid environmental change, and contextualize other types of specimen-derived information toward new knowledge and discovery. Here, we present the Ranges Digitization Network (Ranges), a community effort to digitize specimen-level traits from all terrestrial mammals of western North America, append them to digital records, publish them openly in community repositories, and make them interoperable with complimentary data streams. Ranges is a consortium of 23 institutions with an initial focus on non-marine mammal species (both native and introduced) occurring in western Canada, the western United States, and Mexico. The project will establish trait data standards and informatics workflows that can be extended to other regions, taxa, and traits. Reconnecting mammalogists, museum professionals, and researchers for a new era of collections digitization will catalyze advances in mammalogy and create a community-curated trait resource for training and engagement with global conservation initiatives. 

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3. Dispossession without displacement: Producing property through slum redevelopment in Bengaluru, India

   https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X221073988  

   Upadhya, Carol; Rao, Deeksha M. (February 2022, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space)

   The paper examines the role of slum redevelopment in the production of private property in land in a fast-growing city of southern India. Drawing on an in-depth case study in Bengaluru, we show that the tenurial rights of slum residents were eroded when the contested land on which they lived – which was layered with multiple rights and claims of various actors – was confirmed by the court as the sole property of an individual who claimed to be its owner. The transformation of the plot into private property and therefore into a fungible asset, free of encumbrances, allowed the landowner, the political entrepreneurs who spearheaded the redevelopment project, and various intermediaries to capture most of the rapidly escalating value of the land. The exchange of recognized land tenure rights for small flats carrying conditional titles further excluded slum residents from ‘proper’ urban citizenship based on property ownership and exacerbated the precarity of their lives in the city. In this case, in-situ (on the same site) slum redevelopment is shown to operate as a modality of enclosure in which the urban poor are displaced even while remaining in place – or a process of dispossession without displacement. 

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4. Landscapes of Rizq: Islam, Masculinity, and Speculative Real Estate in Lahore

   Rahman, Tariq (January 2021, Society for Economic Anthropology Annual Meeting)

   Landscapes of Rizq: Islam, Masculinity, and Speculative Real Estate in Lahore The city of Lahore, Pakistan has expanded by 20% in the past 20 years alone. Lahore’s exponential growth is fueled by a financialized real estate market that facilitates speculative trading of plots of land rather than constructed buildings. At the city’s ever-expanding periphery, real estate developers armed with drones and legal teams scout for cheap land while agricultural landowners collaborate to resist these efforts by refusing to sell or inflating prices. In WhatsApp groups, local and overseas Pakistani investors carefully monitor these events by sharing rumors, leaked documents, Google satellite images, and personal photos and videos in order to make their own assessments about the value of land. In the struggle to keep, buy, and sell land, several different approaches to placemaking collide—land as generational wealth; land as expansion of the modern city; land as entry to the middle class; and land as return to the homeland. Meanwhile, the financialization of land has taken a devastating toll on urban development, leading to the displacement of tenant farmers, unprecedented deforestation, and Lahore becoming the second most polluted city in the world. At the same time, speculative real estate in Lahore exists against the backdrop of Pakistan’s longstanding political and economic instability, which includes a largely unregulated economy, dramatic policy changes imposed by international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the Financial Action Task Force, and unpredictable currency fluctuations during the 2020 pandemic. While real estate is the most popular form of financial activity in Lahore, it is also extraordinarily risky. Developers routinely sell land before they possess it even though acquisition attempts often fail and government planning permissions to convert agricultural land into urban land are not always received. Local and overseas Pakistanis regularly invest in land despite the long history of fraud and turmoil in the market. Based on 24 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Lahore with developers, investors and landowners, this paper analyzes how these actors navigate risk through the concept of rizq, or the Islamic belief that despite one’s best efforts, their material possessions are ultimately provided by God. I show how rizq and real estate constitute dual economies between which all debts are eventually settled. Attending to the role of masculinity in this male-dominated market, I also examine how rizq entangles with financialization through the male archetypes of the patron, the patriarch, and the adventurer. At the intersection of Islam, masculinity, and speculative real estate, I argue that rizq enables an audacious mode of speculation that has devastated the landscape of Lahore. This paper presentation will be pre-recorded and read over drone footage collected during fieldwork that highlights the speculative landscape of Lahore. 

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5. Racial Disparities in Cognitive Health Among Older Americans: The Role of Debt–Asset Profiles During Preretirement Age

   https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbae014  

   Lee, Chioun; Glei, Dana_A; Park, Soojin; Kelley, ed., Jessica_A (February 2024, The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences)

   Abstract ObjectivesLow-cost debt can potentially enhance wealth and indirectly benefit health, yet Black Americans disproportionately lack this type of debt, which may constrain their ability to accumulate wealth throughout their lives and across generations. Our objectives are to develop a novel debt–asset measure, use it to quantify the Black–White differential in debt–asset profiles, and estimate its contribution to the racial gap in cognition. MethodsUsing the Health and Retirement Study (1998–2020), we grouped individuals based on debt and asset information during the preretirement period of ages 55–61, including the absence of debt and the relative amount of debt compared to assets. Linear mixed models were used to examine the extent to which cognition in later life (ages 62–80) differs across these debt–asset profiles and its role in explaining the racial disparity in cognition. ResultsCompared with Whites, Blacks were more likely to fall into categories characterized by high debt-to-asset ratio (DAR) or limited asset ownership. Low-asset nonborrowers displayed the poorest cognition, followed closely by high-DAR borrowers. The Black–White differential in debt–asset profiles contributed to the racial gap in cognition. DiscussionThere were 2 unfavorable debt–asset profiles: high debt relative to assets and little or no debt due to a lack of assets, which was more prevalent among Blacks than Whites. We discuss how institutional and structural racism shapes Black–White disparities in debt–asset profiles, such as limited access to borrowing opportunities, thereby contributing to health inequalities, including cognition. 

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