IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envirc/v38y2020i5p938-957.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sindh in Karachi: A topography of separateness, connectivity, and juxtaposition

Author

Listed:
  • Nichola Khan

Abstract

From imperial ‘unhappy valley’, to decapitated province, commercial capital, and 21st century megacity, this article reflects on relations of separateness and connectivity between Sindh and its capital city Karachi. These culminated in Pakistan’s post-Independence years, in official and political language, governances of national, provincial and city division, and political rhetoric and violence. The article asks what else might be uncovered about their relationship other than customary alignments and partitions between an alien urban behemoth and a provincial periphery. It develops a topographical view to refer to the physical arrangement of environments but also people’s profane, spiritual and political connections and losses involving place and dwelling. This is expanded through examples of land appropriations involving urban real-estate development, environmental migrations and displacement, the idiom of the hijra and Sufistic devotion, and ethnic nationalist and religious extremism. The article questions ways losses of ground and attachment might unite people across provincial divides in an alternative, forward motion of cohabitation. It reveals a multi-layered historical tracing of ways that Sindh, as it is lived in Karachi and vice versa, digresses and wanders through deep cross-regional dynamics and developments. These create new departures from self and place, and rebuff the tendency to centre ‘other’ knowledges as the starting-point and epistemology for studies of Karachi and Sindh. Last, Karachi is a useful optic for thinking about continuities of colonialism and postcolonialism, crisis and fracture in South Asia; ways these are infused with planetary urbanization dynamics, and local, regional and national developments that resist easy universalism.

Suggested Citation

  • Nichola Khan, 2020. "Sindh in Karachi: A topography of separateness, connectivity, and juxtaposition," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 38(5), pages 938-957, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:envirc:v:38:y:2020:i:5:p:938-957
    DOI: 10.1177/2399654420909395
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2399654420909395
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/2399654420909395?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Romola Sanyal, 2014. "Urbanizing Refuge: Interrogating Spaces of Displacement," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(2), pages 558-572, March.
    2. Sanyal, Romola, 2014. "Urbanizing refuge: interrogating spaces of displacement," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 52160, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Nichola Khan, 2012. "Between Spectacle and Banality: Trajectories of Islamic Radicalism in a Karachi Neighbourhood," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(3), pages 568-584, May.
    4. Hasan, Arif & Ahmed, Noman & Raza, Mansoor & Uddin Ahmed, Saeed & Sarwar, Moizza B. & Sadiq-Polack, Asiya, 2015. "Karachi: The Land Issue," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199402083.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kazi Nazrul Fattah & Peter Walters, 2020. "“A Good Place for the Poor!” Counternarratives to Territorial Stigmatisation from Two Informal Settlements in Dhaka," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(1), pages 55-65.
    2. Abdon Dantas & David Banh & Philip Heywood & Miguel Amado, 2021. "Decoding Emergency Settlement through Quantitative Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(24), pages 1-20, December.
    3. Jutta Bakonyi, 2021. "The Political Economy of Displacement: Rent Seeking, Dispossessions and Precarious Mobility in Somali Cities," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 12(S2), pages 10-22, April.
    4. Kabakova, Oksana & Plaksenkov, Evgeny, 2018. "Analysis of factors affecting financial inclusion: Ecosystem view," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 198-205.
    5. Amin Y Kamete, 2020. "Neither friend nor enemy: Planning, ambivalence and the invalidation of urban informality in Zimbabwe," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(5), pages 927-943, April.
    6. Thomas Swerts, 2017. "Creating Space For Citizenship: The Liminal Politics of Undocumented Activism," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(3), pages 379-395, May.
    7. Lucas Oesch, 2020. "An Improvised Dispositif: Invisible Urban Planning in the Refugee Camp," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(2), pages 349-365, March.
    8. Ayham Dalal & Amer Darweesh & Philipp Misselwitz & Anna Steigemann, 2018. "Planning the Ideal Refugee Camp? A Critical Interrogation of Recent Planning Innovations in Jordan and Germany," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 3(4), pages 64-78.
    9. Hannah Sender, 2022. "Young people’s perspectives of inequitable urban change in Lebanese towns affected by mass displacement," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(2), pages 293-306, April.
    10. Goreau-Ponceaud, Anthony, 2024. "Lives in exile? Perspectives on the resettlements of Sri Lankan refugees in Tamil Nadu, India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).
    11. Mohammed, Abubakar Sadiq & Abbas, Jannat & Dzimale, Augustine, 2023. "Navigating Land Acquisition Hurdles in Ghana’s Real Estate Development," International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS), vol. 7(12), pages 1084-1098, December.
    12. Antonia C. Settle, 2018. "The Informal Economy as a Site of Liquidity: Pakistan's Land Market," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 49(5), pages 1291-1313, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envirc:v:38:y:2020:i:5:p:938-957. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.