Mercantile Culture
See also: Economy of PakistanPakistan's service sector accounts for 53% of the country's gross domestic product. Wholesale and retail trade is 30% of this sector. Shopping is a popular pastime for many Pakistanis, especially among the well-to-do and the thirty-million strong middle class. The cities of Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar, Islamabad, Faisalabad, and Quetta are especially known for the great contrast in shopping experiences from burgeoning bazaars to modern multi-story shopping malls. In particular, Lahore and Karachi are peppered with colourful shopping plazas. Over 1,081 patent applications were filed by non-resident Pakistanis in 2004.
Read more about this topic: Pakistani Society
Famous quotes containing the words mercantile and/or culture:
“What should I have known or written had I been a quiet, mercantile politician or a lord in waiting? A man must travel, and turmoil, or there is no existence.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“Why is it so difficult to see the lesbian—even when she is there, quite plainly, in front of us? In part because she has been “ghosted”Mor made to seem invisible—by culture itself.... Once the lesbian has been defined as ghostly—the better to drain her of any sensual or moral authority—she can then be exorcised.”
—Terry Castle, U.S. lesbian author. The Apparitional Lesbian, ch. 1 (1993)