Cityscapes of Violence in Karachi

Published in 2017 

Cityscapes” examines some of the controversies that understanding, writing about and publishing on violence in Karachi entails. It brings into conversation some prominent academics—including anthropologists and political scientists—journalists, writers and activists. This diverse coalition provokes shifts away from recursive academic and media scripts of the city toward a different “counter-public” of cultural and political commentary, as the contributors critically unpack the constitutive relation of violence to personal experience and also seek to create new understandings that are tentatively shared.

The approach to counterpublicking is organised around three overlapping schema. These are: social science and ethnography; epochal or historical transformation; and oral history and personal memoir. Drilling down into Karachi’s city neighbourhoods, the chapters examine the ways that violence is textured locally and citywide and investigate violence in the context of protest drinking, social and religious movements, class and cosmopolitanism, gang wars, the fractured lives of militants, press censorship and the effects on journalists, uncertain continuua between state political and individual madness, and ways the painful shattering of some worlds produces dreams of others.

While the individual chapters each provide fresh insights, the collective ethics of rewriting, rethinking or cajoling Karachi’s landscape into other forms is more dynamic and unclear, and one being worked out in public. Chapters are by Nadeem F. Paracha, Laurent Gayer, Zia Ur Rehman, Nida Kirmani, Nichola Khan, Oskar Verkaaik, Arif Hasan, Razeshta Sethna, Asif Farrukhi, Kausar S. Khan, Farzana Shaikh, and Kamran Asdar Ali. Collectively, they comprise a singular and important contribution for all those spirited to understand what went wrong with Karachi.

Karachi, Pakistan

Book launch at Karachi Literature Festival (KLF) 2018.

Speaker at first KLF-London in 2017, Royal Festival Hall. Reviews in Karachi media. 

Editorial reviews:

“This wonderful volume offers a vivid palimpsest of perspectives that brilliantly unpack how urban violence structures people’s lives and relations in both contested and contradictory ways. It will undoubtedly become ‘the’ reference point for understanding Karachi, as well as a model for exploring other violent cityscapes around the world.” —Dennis Rodgers, Professor of International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam

“A mesmerising read, presenting original, provocative prose about a city that defines Pakistan in more ways than one…Khan has done a phenomenal job of weaving together the themes in these brilliant essays.’ —Professor Hassan Abbas, Chair of the Department of Regional and Analytical Studies, National Defense University, Washington, D.C.

“This unusual book does full justice to a dynamic, diverse and troubled metropolis. Each chapter brims with insight, knowledge and affection for Karachi, and sensitive portraits of its residents. Khan’s volume strikingly depicts how violence, spectral and real, frames Karachi life, from ethnic fissures and poetry to masculine labour and alcohol.’ — Thomas Blom Hansen, Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University.

“Karachi, currently numbering over 23m people, is projected to be the world’s largest city by 2030. Khan has marshalled leading authorities to examine from different disciplinary perspectives why violence is integral to the city’s workings...’ — Francis Robinson, Professor of the History of South Asia, Royal Holloway University of London.

Media reviews in Dawn, Herald, The Friday Times.Yusuf, Ahmed. 2017. “Karachi Conversations”. Dawn, 13 August 

“a conversation between the gods of scholarly writing on Karachi.”
Academic reviews- Urban Geography 2017 “It covers a huge gap in the body of knowledge on peculiarities of Asian cities” (2017 online, Sana Iqbal)