Karachi : Ordered Disorder and the Struggle for the City.

Cover -- Contents -- List of Figures, Tables and Maps -- List of Images -- Acknowledgements -- Note on Transliteration -- Frequently Used Abbreviations -- Select Glossary of Urdu Terms -- Introduction -- The Enigma of Karachi's 'Ordered Disorder' -- Scope, Sources and Structure of the Book -- 1. A Contested City -- A City Up for Grabs -- An Arena for National Conflicts -- The Normalisation of the Unofficial -- The Burden of Geography -- A Palimpsest of Sovereignties -- Conclusion -- 2. From Student Brawls to Campus Wars -- Discontent Central: The Student Movement and Political Change in West Pakistan (1947-1979) -- The Facilitating Factors of Political Violence -- Predictable but Contingent: The First 'Political' Killing at Karachi University -- Conclusion -- 3. 'The Mohajirs Have Arrived!' -- The Unremarkable Beginnings of Mohajir Nationalism -- The MQM, Between Party and Movement -- The MQM's Challenged Predominance -- Conclusion -- 4. The Bandits Who Would Be Kings -- Lyari and Its Dacoits -- The Volatility of Politico-Criminal Configurations -- Rehman Dakait's Failed Transition from Crime to Politics -- Bis Repetita? The PAC 2.0 and Rehman's Legacy -- Conclusion -- 5. Jihad Comes to Town -- A Secular City? -- Sectarian Turf Wars -- Towards the 'Talibanisation' of Karachi? -- Conclusion -- 6. A City on the Edge -- The Institutional Fabric of Karachi's Armed Conflicts -- The Limits of Control -- Conclusion -- 7. Geographies of Fear -- City of Fear -- Everyday Geographies of Fear -- The Architecture of Safety -- Conclusion -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Selective Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- S -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- W -- Z.

With an official population approaching fifteen million, Karachi is one of the largest cities in the world. It is also the most violent. Since the mid-1980s, it has endured endemic political conflict and criminal violence, which revolve around control of the city and its resources (votes, land and bhatta-"protection" money). These struggles for the city have become ethnicized. Karachi, often referred to as a "Pakistan in miniature," has become increasingly fragmented, socially as well as territorially. Despite this chronic state of urban political warfare, Karachi is the cornerstone of the economy of Pakistan. Gayer's book is an attempt to elucidate this conundrum. Against journalistic accounts describing Karachi as chaotic and ungovernable, he argues that there is indeed order of a kind in the city's permanent civil war. Far from being entropic, Karachi's polity is predicated upon organisational, interpretative and pragmatic routines that have made violence "manageable" for its populations. Whether such "ordered disorder" is viable in the long term remains to be seen, but for now Karachi works despite-and sometimes through-violence.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.