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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 424-444). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Los Angeles, 1995. / Thesis prepared for Dept. of Music. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references ((leaves 192-205)).

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The dissertation focuses on the shaping of merchants’ subjectivity in Karachi’s contemporary marketplace. It does this by placing human experience within the matrix of the cosmological value system, driven to a large extent by Islamic moral and ethical principles, as well as everyday material conditions, determined by economic activity. In doing so, it brings together the material and spiritual in conversation with each other. This dissertation particularly focuses on the convergence of Sufi moral discourse and meditative practices of zikr/dhikr with globalized technologies of finance capitalism. It seeks to answer: How do the two seemingly different practices converge? Modern financial practices aim to discipline merchants into becoming economic subjects accumulating capital. In contrast, the spiritual tradition of Sufi techniques shapes this excessive desire for accumulating, through the meditation (zikr/dhikr), molding the merchants into charitable subjects. Being a self-maximizing as well as a self-annihilating individual in the market, the merchant is able to contain the larger structuring of money and moral universes in everyday life. The experience generated at the threshold of accumulation and charity, I argue, gives rise to an affirmative subjectivity, which perceives the unity of existence the way it is. / text

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This investigation into embodied female spirituality clearly required an approach which was able to holistically engage all human faculties - different aspects of mind, body, spirit, intuition and memory. Consequently it was essential to use my creative practice as an integrative aspect of the research. I have used my creative practice across health and healing, Sufi processes and light based media to investigate, develop and practice 'embodied female spirituality'. A shamanic-performance paradigm and feminism have been central, philosophically, to the study. In addition I have chosen to explicate the connections between these discourses of the body, the text and the imagery through my own story, my autobiography. The methodology involves two research strategies; the use of creative practice as research and the use of autobiography as a research tool. The creative practice can be seen as a continuum of modalities, extending from the private to the public. Three dimensions of the practice will be discussed. The following is a description of the dimension of a typical session in (1) a body-based natural therapy treatment I deliver (2) a group-body-based Sufi session I deliver and (3) a brief outline of the approach I have taken to the research within light based media and a list of the works.