Contested Content: A Catholic Organization’s Efforts for Textbook Reform in Pakistan

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper attempts to demonstrate how the lobbying efforts to reform textbook content in Pakistan, employed by a Catholic organization called National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP), are embedded in an existing discourse of textbook reform. Various actors involved in textbook reform shape this discourse. These actors interact and cooperate with each other and advance various interpretations of, and objections to, the textbook content. Through these social relations and discursive aspects NCJP’s interpretation of textbook reform is shaped as matter of national security, educational quality, and legality. On the one hand, NCJP’s interactions with different actors enable the organization to adopt and appropriate an established discourse in its own interpretations. On the other hand, NCJP’s perception of its own religious identity and of its relations to the other actors restricts its interpretive space and its participation in public debates about the textbooks.