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Book Review: Insecure Guardians: Enforcement, Encounters and Everyday Policing in Postcolonial Karachi by Zoha Waseem
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In Serious Money, Caroline Knowles presents a guided tour of the spaces and lifestyles of London's super-rich. Written in an engaging and accessible manner that draws the reader into spaces and conversations otherwise out of bounds,... more
In Serious Money, Caroline Knowles presents a guided tour of the spaces and lifestyles of London's super-rich. Written in an engaging and accessible manner that draws the reader into spaces and conversations otherwise out of bounds, Knowles subtly exposes the paradoxes inherent within the life and politics of the super-rich in London. She asks simple questions: Who are plutocrats? How do they think about themselves, other people, London? Where does their money come from? How do they spend it? How do they live with their money, and how does money live with them?
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Research Interests: Urban Geography, Climate Change, Urban History, South Asian Studies, Global cities, and 15 moreGovernance, South Asia, Politics, Pakistan, Urban Studies, Ecology, Negotiation, Sustainable Water Resources Management, Urban Sociology, Urban Environmental History, Urban And Regional Planning, Cities, Urban Design, Sustainable Cities, and Urban Development and Urban Governance
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Karachi is not only the largest metropolis of Pakistan and its commercial hub, it is also known as a ‘mini-Pakistan’. This is a reference to the ethnic and religious diversity of Karachi’s population. It has been a city of migrants for as... more
Karachi is not only the largest metropolis of Pakistan and its commercial hub, it is also known as a ‘mini-Pakistan’. This is a reference to the ethnic and religious diversity of Karachi’s population. It has been a city of migrants for as long ago as anyone cares to remember. Until the 1980s it also shared, along with Lahore, the status of the political pulse of the country, or at least of the urban parts of Pakistan. To succeed nationally, movements had to make a mark on the city, and currents that emerged in Karachi frequently influenced the national mainstream. The very features of Pakistani society that are represented so prominently in Karachi are the ones that are often thought to challenge the coherence and stability of the nation state. Foremost, of course, are ethnic and religious sectarian heterogeneity. But there is also political fragmentation, economic disparity, demographic pressures, steady erosion of the state’s institutional capacity and the heavy footprint of inter...
Over the years karachiites have developed a sensibility- a learning of the city- based on patterns of past events. They use these past experiences to think one step ahead and to anticipate the next unknowns, knowing that official... more
Over the years karachiites have developed a sensibility- a learning of the city- based on patterns of past events. They use these past experiences to think one step ahead and to anticipate the next unknowns, knowing that official authorities are unable to do so or protect them in times of crisis. As a result, Karachiites are naturally oriented to staying up to date with information relating to pasts, presents and unknown futures. This is essential for helping them navigate the spatio-temporal uncertainties of life in Karachi. This article highlights how such processes of managing uncertainty are political in nature, and how they in turn exacerbate uncertainties over Karachi's insecurity and urban future.
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Book Review of Karachi: Ordered Disorder and the Struggle for the City, by Laurent Gayer, London, C. Hurst & Co., 2014, 256 pp., £25.00 (paperback), ISBN 9781849043113
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The Lyari district of Karachi has been in the headlines for quite some time. Politically protected criminal reportedly operate out of this ramshackle district. Considered one of the most volatile districts in violence-hit Karachi in... more
The Lyari district of Karachi has been in the headlines for quite some time. Politically protected criminal reportedly operate out of this ramshackle district. Considered one of the most volatile districts in violence-hit Karachi in southern Pakistan, Lyari has recently witnessed pitched battles between members of alleged criminal syndicates and paramilitary forces. CRSS visiting research fellow herewith provides a brief insight into the embattled Lyari.
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Quetta is a city with many identities. It is the provincial capital and the main urban centre of Balochistan, the largest but least populous of Pakistan’s four provinces. Since around 2003, Balochistan’s uneasy relationship with the... more
Quetta is a city with many identities. It is the provincial capital and the main urban centre of Balochistan, the largest but least populous of Pakistan’s four provinces. Since around 2003, Balochistan’s uneasy relationship with the federal state has been manifested in the form of an insurgency in the ethnic Baloch areas of the province. Within Balochistan, Quetta is the main shared space as well as a point of rivalry between the two dominant ethnic groups of the province: the Baloch and the Pashtun.1 Quite separately from the internal politics of Balochistan, Quetta has acquired global significance as an alleged logistic base for both sides in the war in Afghanistan. This paper seeks to examine different facets of Quetta – buffer zone, colonial enclave and urban hub − in order to understand the city’s significance for state building in Pakistan. State-building policy literature defines well functioning states as those that provide security for their citizens, protect property right...
Sobia Ahmad Kaker describes Karachi’s enclaves and considers implications for security in one of the world’s ‘most dangerous’ cities.
The very features of Pakistani society that are represented so prominently in Karachi - ethnic and sectarian heterogeneity, political fragmentation, economic disparity, demographic pressures, steady erosion of the state's... more
The very features of Pakistani society that are represented so prominently in Karachi - ethnic and sectarian heterogeneity, political fragmentation, economic disparity, demographic pressures, steady erosion of the state's institutional capacity and the footprint of international conflict - are the ones that challenge the stability of the nation state. From being the national political pulse, the city withdrew into its own violent politics in the 1980s - development that paralleled a wider process of political disarticulation in Pakistan. This paper provides a perspective on institutional breakdown, using political violence as an index. The analysis of conflict and violence in Karachi presented here focuses on the processes that made Karachi an open city - openness to migration and informality. The informalisation of public provisioning, which was often aided and abetted by state organisations, was premised on the legitimisation of private non-state arrangements for contract enfo...
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Karachi is widely regarded as one of the most dangerous cities in the world. Its residents are frequent victims of crime, terrorism, and other forms of urban violence. In her recent article titled ‘Enclaves, Insecurity, and Violence in... more
Karachi is widely regarded as one of the most dangerous cities in the world. Its residents are frequent victims of crime, terrorism, and other forms of urban violence. In her recent article titled ‘Enclaves, Insecurity, and Violence in Karachi’, Sobia Ahmad Kaker uncovers the paradox of Karachi’s enclavisation, where insecurity and violence motivates the creation of defensive enclaves but these in turn perpetuate the violence and reinforce the sense of insecurity amongst urban residents.
Like many of the enclaves used by elites and foreign visitors in this troubled megacity of over 20 million, the Karachi Sheraton Hotel is increasingly fortified off from its immediate environment. Blast walls, checkpoints, surveillance... more
Like many of the enclaves used by elites and foreign visitors in this troubled megacity of over 20 million, the Karachi Sheraton Hotel is increasingly fortified off from its immediate environment. Blast walls, checkpoints, surveillance systems, and armies of police and security guards continually work to try and control how the hotel’s commodious internal spaces relate to an outside street deemed deeply insecure and prone to unpredictable moments of violence. Today, a widespread logic of military securitization—which Stephen Graham has termed the “new military urbanism”—exists in many of the world’s cities, even those that are not formal war zones. In those cities, an obsession with attaining total security—especially around financial centers, ports, residential areas, embassy districts, and mega events—results in the generalization of the kind of passage-point architectures most familiar from airports to everyday urban landscapes. Enclaves such as those surrounding the Karachi Sher...
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This essay examines the influence of uncertainty on how contemporary cities are planned, built, governed, and inhabited. This influence is demonstrated through the analysis of various domains of urban planning and governance (disaster,... more
This essay examines the influence of uncertainty on how contemporary cities are planned, built, governed, and inhabited. This influence is demonstrated through the analysis of various domains of urban planning and governance (disaster, security, energy, and transportation) across four cities of the global South (Bogotá, Karachi, Accra, and Johannesburg). In each city, uncertainty is produced by historical conditions and productive of future possibilities.
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Projections of uncertain futures pervade public and political debates around the world. Spectres of natural disaster, disease outbreak, economic crisis, infrastructural breakdown and violent con ict persistently threaten to disrupt city... more
Projections of uncertain futures pervade public and political debates around the world. Spectres of natural disaster, disease outbreak, economic crisis, infrastructural breakdown and violent con ict persistently threaten to disrupt city life. Social, economic and political stability have become central concerns for urban governance, development and planning. With future projections, calculations and imaginings increasingly shaping space, politics and everyday life throughout the contemporary urban world, there is a political imperative to plan for and manage uncertainty. But with what e ects, and for whom?