Seminar in Critical Development Studies: Hadia Akhtar Khan

About the speaker

Hadia Akhtar Khan is a feminist and economic anthropologist trained in political economy and gender studies. Her research explores the relationship between the family and capitalism in migrant-sending villages in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.

Abstract:

Rural Pakistani families send their sons to Malaysia to marry local women and acquire spousal visas. With the long-term stability that comes with legal status, men send remittances to their Pakistani wives and children, who live with the migrant's parents and brothers in a joint household. Families, including the Pakistani wife, justify marriages to Malay women as necessary for the family's upward mobility. This talk explores how families navigate the conjugal, jural and cultural dilemmas that arise from transnational polygamy.

About the series

The Critical Development Studies Seminar Series is a graduate student-led effort that aims to provide space for junior scholars to share innovative research and discuss emergent debates within critical development studies.

Invited speakers cover a range of geographical areas, disciplinary backgrounds, and research topics. Examples of potential topics include agroecology and food justice issues, state-building, land and labor, extractivist politics, the gendered and racial dynamics of ongoing capitalist development, and the political ecological histories of the global development project. The target audience for the series is graduate students and faculty interested in critical development studies both within the Cornell community as well as external scholars. 

Seminar organizers for 2025-26 are Eve Devillers, Jessie Whittaker Mayall, Aaron Benanav, and Mariah Doyle-Stephenson.