Energy, Governance and Security-II

The socio-cultural narrative of the discourse takes precedence over the rest of the narratives for the simple reason that it is the very raison d’être of a collective entity. I am tempted to borrow a lengthy quote from Fairclough: http://www.sfu.ca/cmns/courses/2012/801/1-Readings/Fairclough%20Dialectics%20of%20Discourse%20Analysis.pdf

We can see social life as interconnected networks of social practices of diverse sorts (economic, political, cultural, family etc). The reason for centering the concept of ësocial practiceí is that it allows an oscillation between the perspective of social structure and the perspective of social action and agency ñ both necessary perspectives in social research and analysis (Chouliaraki & Fairclough 1999). By ësocial practiceí I mean a relatively stabilized form of social activity (examples would be classroom teaching, television news, family meals, and medical consultations). Every practice is an articulation of diverse social elements within a relatively stable configuration, always including discourse. Let us say that every practice includes the following elements:

Activities

 Subjects and their social relations

Instruments

Objects

 Time and place

 Forms of consciousness

 Values

 Discourse

Almost all the components of collective existence exhibit themselves in the socio-cultural thread remaining in consonance with Nature…biological self, emotional self, historical self, intellectual self and spiritual self. This collective existence sprouts means and tools for biological, historical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual survival and continuation. This collective existence also teaches a collective entity how to learn and interact with other collective entities in the universe. The collective existence also sprouts individual and collective aesthetics, creativity and innovative evolution.

The complexity arises when the socio-cultural thread of Political Economy interacts with political power and sanctioning authority. This leads us to the core of the question as to why political movements in South and Central Asia having owned the socio-cultural narrative of the discourse have been persecuted by the sanctioning authority of the regional and international sanctioning authorities and political powers. We shall discuss this question with the case study of the Khudai Khidmatgar Movement http://pu.edu.pk/images/journal/studies/PDF-FILES/Shah-4%20new.pdf moving on to the National Awami Party and then Awami National Party   http://awaminationalparty.org/main/ to analyze marginalization of the socio-cultural discourse in the context of International, South Asian and Pakistan’s and Afghanistan’s Political Economy with special reference to the performance of Awami National Party in the elections held on May 11 2013.

To be continued