Amen Jaffer is a sociologist whose teaching, research and advising interests lie in the fields of religion, urban studies, everyday life, difference and social control, social theory, political economy of waste and recycling, and the politics of space and infrastructure.
He is currently working on three projects. One is a a comparative ethnography of urban citizenship in low-income neighborhoods of Lahore which explores poor residents' engagements with the infrastructures of their neighborhoods as practices of forging political communities.
The second project is a book manuscript that explores practices of sociality in South Asian Sufi shrines. It focuses on ordinary social practices in these spaces - conversations, humor, collective preparation and consumption of food and drugs, etc - to demonstrate how an everyday spirituality is constructed through routine social engagements in this institution.
The third project, for which he is currently conducting fieldwork, investigates the social organization of the waste and recycling economy in Lahore by focusing on scrapyards run by Afghan refugees and jhuggi settlements of low-caste nomadic communities.
His co-edited volume, State and Subject Formation in South Asia, has been just published by OUP. For more information, visit:
https://oup.com.pk/state-and-subject-formation-in-south-asia.html
Jaffer, A. (2025) The Social Life of Islam: Sufi Shrines in Urban Pakistan. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press.
Jaffer, A. (2017). "Spiritualizing Marginality: Sufi Concepts and the Politics of Identity in Pakistan". Society and Culture in South Asia, 3(2), 175-197. https://doi.org/10.1177/2393861717706294
Jaffer, A. (2018). "A Drama of Saintly Devotion: Performing Ecstasy and Status at the Shaam-e-Qalandar Festival in Pakistan." The Drama Review, 62(4), 23-40. https://doi.org/10.1162/dram_a_00791
Jaffer, A., & Saif, M. (eds.). (2022). State and Subject Formation in South Asia. Karachi: Oxford University Press.
Jaffer, A. (2023). "Gatherings of Commemoration: Producing Histories in Pakistan s Sufi Shrines" in K. A. Ali and A. Ahmed (eds). Towards Peoples Histories in Pakistan: (In)audible Voices, Forgotten Pasts (pp. 155-169). London: Bloomsbury.
Jaffer, A. (2023). "Afterword: The Space of Living" in C. Moffat. The Time of Building: Kamil Khan Mumtaz and Architecture in Pakistan (pp. 189-197). Lahore: Folio Books.
Jaffer, A and Saif, M. (2022). "Introduction". In A. Jaffer and M. Saif (eds.). State and Subject Formation in South Asia (pp. 1-15). Karachi: Oxford University Press.
Jaffer, A. (2025). "Lakshmi Chowk" in A. Maqsood, C. Moffat and F. Sajjad (eds). Lahore in Motion: Infrastructure, History and Belonging in Urban Pakistan (pp. 111-116). London: UCL Press.
Jaffer, A. and Cheema, H. (2021). "The Production of Muslim Space: Celebrating the Prophet in Pakistan s Urban Neighborhoods". In I. Keul (Ed.) Spaces of Religion in Urban South Asia (pp. 72-86). London: Routledge.
Jaffer, A. (2023). "Urban Development for Religious Equality: The Case of Youhanabad in Pakistan" in K. Cheeseman, P. Mader and M. Tadros (eds.) Poverty and Prejudice: Religious Equality and Sustainable Development (pp. 201-208). Bristol University Press
Jaffer, A. (2025). "The Politics of Life as a Colonial Governmentality: The Bakshi Regime and the Indi-an Occupation of Kashmir" Blog Post for Contending Modernities. https://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/theorizing-modernities/politics-life-colonial-govt/
Jaffer, A. (2022). "Embodying Sufism: The Spiritual Culture of Third Gender (Khwaja Sira) Communi-ties in Pakistan" Blog Post for South Asia @ LSE. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/southasia/2022/04/08/sufi-spiritualism-as-a-vehicle-and-ally-for-third-gender-khwaja-siras-communities-in-pakistan/
Jaffer, A. (2017). "The Politics of Infrastructure in Pakistan". Global Dialogue Magazine of International Sociological Association, 7(2), 15-16.
Jaffer, A. (2018). "In Search of the Political: Social Life in Pakistan s Sufi Shrines". Jamhoor, Vol. 1. https://www.jamhoor.org/read/2018/5/25/in-search-of-the-political-social-life-in-pakistans-sufi-shrines
Jaffer, A. (2022). Book Review of We are Lovers of the Qalandar: Piety, Pilgrimage, and Ritual in Paki-stani Sufi Islam by J?rgen Wasim Frembgen. Bloomsbury Pakistan (online). https://bloomsburypakistan.org/book-review-we-are-lovers-of-the-qalandar/
"Liberating the Desi Woman on our Screens." Annual Fulbright and Humphrey Alumni Conference, Islamabad. December, 2015
"The Sacred Urban: Marginalization and Sufi Shrines in Lahore." Rethinking Cities of the Global South: Urban Violence, Social Inequality and Spatial Justice, Tata Institute of Social Sciences. January, 2016
"Spaces of Fantasy: Celebrating the Prophet in Lahore" Realities & Fantasies: Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis Annual Workshop, University of Amsterdam. April, 2019.
"Performing Shahbaz Qalandar: The Marketization of Public Religion in Pakistan" XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology, Toronto. July, 2018.
"Mega Infrastructures and the Ecology of Recycling in Pakistan s Informal Economy" AAS Annual Conference, Denver. March, 2019.
"Politics of Citizenship in Pakistan: Land and Urban Desires in Lahore." Urbanism, Exclusion and Change Conference, LUMS. March, 2016
"The Sociality of Islam: Everyday Life in South Asian Sufi Shrines" IV ISA Forum of Sociology. Virtual. March, 2021.
"The Struggles for Citizenship in Pakistan." Annual Fulbright and Humphrey Alumni Conference, Lahore. December, 2014
"Made from Waste: Labor, Life and Value in Lahore s Recycling Economy" Coming out of Crisis Workshop at WiSER, University of the Witwatersrand. May, 2019.
"Opportunity and Stigma: The Paradoxes of Working with Waste in Lahore" AAS-in-Asia 2019 Annual Conference. Bangkok. July, 2019.
"Women Networks and the Politics of Infrastructure in Lahore." Right to the City in the South, Everyday Urban Experience and Rationalities of Government Conference, Universite Paris Diderot - Cessma. November, 2017.
"New Claims to the City: Women s Interventions in the Politics of Urban Infrastructure in Pakistan." XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology, Toronto. July, 2018
"The Infrastructures of Urban Citizenship in Lahore." Penn State Global Asias Summer Institute on Infrastructure. June, 2018
"The Graves that come Alive: Shrines and Social Life in Pakistan. Sixth Annual Global South Asia Conference, New York University. February, 2014
"Democratizing Development: Urban Integration and Sufi Shrines in Pakistan." Fourth Annual Conference of American Sociological Association s Sociology of Development Section, Brown University. March, 2015
"Impact of Consuming Mobile Phones on the Social Constructions of Public and Private Spaces." Critical Themes in Media Studies Conference, New York. April, 2009
"Social Sciences in the Global South: Crisis, Pandemic Experiences and Aporia" LASA/Asia 2022: Rethinking Trans-Pacific Ties: Asia and Latin America. Virtual. February, 2022
"In Search of the Political: Social Life in Pakistan s Sufi Shrines." Summer Program in Social Sciences at the Institute of Advanced Studies. June, 2018
"Cosmopolitan Traditions and Karachi s Imaginaries." Second Annual Karachi Conference, Karachi. November, 2014.
Jaffer, A. "Made of Waste: Labor and Life in Pakistan s Recycling Economy" In preparation, 50% complete. Revising first draft.
Jaffer, A. (Under Review) "The Social World of Waste in Lahore - A Photo Essay. Comparative Urbanisms: The Changing Urban in the Global South (edited volume).
Jaffer, A. (Under Review) "Making Sacred Heritage: Discursive and Material Interventions in Lahore s Sufi Worlds". Religion
Jaffer, A. "The Infrastructures of Urban Citizenship in Lahore". In preparation, 75%. Revising first draft.