Introduction — Urban Charisma Blom Hansen, Thomas; Verkaaik, Oskar
Critique of anthropology,
03/2009, Letnik:
29, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Cities are charismatic entities. Both in and of themselves by virtue of their history and their mythologies, but also as sites where charismatic figures emerge on the basis of their capacity to ...interpret, manage and master the opacity of the city. The specificity of the urban can neither be understood through the city's functions nor the dynamics of its social networks. The urban is also a way of being in the world and must be understood as a dense and complex cultural repertoire of imagination, fear and desire. We propose to understand the urban and its charismatic potential through three registers: the sensory regimes of the city; the specific forms of urban knowledge and intelligibility; and the specific forms of power, connectivity and possibility which we call urban infra-power.
Years before the so-called 'War of Terror' in which Pakistan has played a significant role, representations of terrorism and sacrifice already influenced political conflict in the country, ...particularly in Karachi and other parts of urban Sindh. This article focuses on the process of representation through which political violence comes to be interpreted in the symbolic terms of culture and religion. Criticizing Orientalist notions that ascribe certain violent mentalities and practices to religious or ethnic groups in an essentialist manner, I argue that (self-)representations of sublime violence are nonetheless important to analyze for their an escalating effect on the political conflict. By examining the ways in which religious and ethnicized traditions of solidarity, justice and sacrifice have framed the representation of political violence in Sindh, I explore the interplay between the media, intelligence agencies of various state authorities, as well as political parties and their militants, focusing on their mutual interest in producing a visual culture of heroic violence and martyrdom.
At Home in Karachi Verkaaik, Oskar
Critique of anthropology,
03/2009, Letnik:
29, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Cities are difficult to control. The moral panic that is part of much social scientific and military research on cities for more than a century is still manifest today. In Pentagon sources Karachi is ...mentioned as one of those `feral, failed cities' that are expected to become the sites of future conflicts that will take the form of asymmetric combat within non-nodal, non-hierarchical urban terrains. But the strategies proposed by the US army have already been put into practice by the Pakistani military for several decades. This article looks at what these military measures do to people living in the city. It does so by focusing on the concept of `home' or `quasi-domesticity', and distinguishes three phases in patterns of how Karachiites felt at home in their city: the postcolonial period, when it was still possible to feel `at home' in the city as a whole; the time of mass migration, when `home' retreated into bastis and neighbourhoods; and the more recent times of ethnic and religious conflict, when `home' became a deterrorialized, mobile and ethnicized form of local cosmopolitanism.
In 2006, the Dutch government introduced a naturalization ceremony for foreigners wishing to become Dutch citizens. Local bureaucrats who organize the ceremony initially disapproved of the measure as ...symbolic of the neonationalist approach to migration. I analyze how their criticism is undermined in the process of designing the ritual, the form of which continues to express a culturalist message of citizenship, despite organizers' explicit criticism or ridicule. Using the concept of "cultural intimacy," I show how nationalism builds on a shared embarrassment among local bureaucrats, from which the new citizens are excluded by way of the ceremony.
The MQM has many faces and can be described in many ways. Many social scientists, for instance, see the party as a remarkable phenomenon of mass mobilization. From this perspective, an interesting ...aspect of the MQM is the sudden reformulation o f Muhajir identity from one derived from the notions of Muslim brotherhood and Pakistani nationhood to one based on the exclusiveness of ethnicity. Foreshadowed by the founding of the All Pakistan Muhajir Student Organization (APMSO) in 1978, the MQM was established in 1984 by a group of friends who had met in educational institutions in Karachi. They declared Muhajirs
Making Martyrs Verkaaik, Oskar
Migrants and Militants,
06/2018, Letnik:
13
Book Chapter
Violence, then, was to some extent the byproduct of the paramount role within the MQM of peer groups, bound together by a subculture in which competitive masculinity, physicality, andfunwere key ...values. But that was not what violence looked like in May 1990. In May 1990, Pakka Qila was besieged by the police, a protest march led by women ended in a massacre, and the weeks that followed can perhaps best be described as a period of ethnic cleansing in anticipation o f a new partition. This was no longer a period of irreverent rebellion by groups of young
Ethnicizing Islam Verkaaik, Oskar
Migrants and Militants,
06/2018, Letnik:
13
Book Chapter
This chapter discusses the story of state nationalism in Pakistan, which is an ongoing and complex project rather than a completed and unilinear achievement. The relationship between Islam and ...ethnicity is probably the most problematic and paradoxical aspect of this process of nation building. Pakistan is a peculiar case o f “ethnonationalism” (Tambiah 1996: 11—12). Rather than in the state, the Pakistani nation is rooted in refashioned primordial attachments or, in the words of Clifford Geertz (1993: 259), “assumed givens” of social existence. Yet these assumed givens are not congruities of blood, speech, or custom, but primarily of religion.
Terrorism and the State Verkaaik, Oskar
Migrants and Militants,
06/2018, Letnik:
13
Book Chapter
Nostalgia looms large in Muhajir identity. But it is not primarily a longing for a place left behind in India. I t is rather nostalgia for the early years of arrival and settlement, the 1950s and ...1960s, which are remembered as years of hope, progress, and peace. I n retrospect, the ideal of Pakistan as a place of social equality and solidarity seemed to make sense then. There was some discussion in Pakka Qila about when the years of optimism ended. Some said it was the loss of East Pakistan in 1971. Others mentioned the language riots between Sindhis and
