Socio-Cultural Determinants of Political Change: A Case Study of NA-60, District Rawalpindi

Abstract

The overall purpose of this research was to study socio-cultural determinants of political change, in particular to investigate the political dynamics of Pakistan National Assembly constituency NA-60 district Rawalpindi. Due to the higher degrees of predominant social and cultural heterogeneities in Pakistan, there is a need to map the socio-cultural factors of political change which are propelling the new dynamics in the political process. In changing socio-cultural dynamics, political change is inevitable. The process of political change is certainly predictable owing to the change in following social institutions; family, religion, education and peer, media and key events. According to the significance and public interest, media was playing a major role transforming or triggering the political thought process of people. The central objective of this study was to examine the construction of socio-cultural meanings of politics and analyzed how it become determinant to facilitate political change. This study partially aimed to investigate the emergence and effect of media in the politics. Keeping in view the role of old media the study has explored the general perception of people and also the impact of new media (social media) in the political domain. This study has utilized mixed-methods in a qualitatively driven way, combining the quantitative approach in order to get the bigger picture of the political scenario in NA-60 through Survey. The quantitative data have collected through hundred survey forms which covered 45 residential areas of NA-60. There were fifteen families (both joint and nuclear) from NA- 60 selected for the qualitative study. The study has combined the different qualitative methods, ‘participant observation’, ‘in-depth semi-structured interviews’ and ‘focus group discussion’ to achieve more comprehensive understandings of phenomenon. Selection of the participants for this study was based on the purposive sampling technique. Politically engaged and active participants have best served the study purpose. The major findings through the thematic analysis favored objectives that the socio-cultural dimensions of the people play a significant fundamental role in political socialization. It has also identified that political events and contribution of media played considerably essential role in constructing the socio-cultural meaning of politics and also contributing to accelerate the political mobilization. The growth and diversification of media particularly, the social media creates the potential for promoting far reaching political change