‘We are your brothers, we will know where you are at all times’: risk, violence and positionality in Karachi

This article foregrounds some of the challenges and risks involved in fieldwork in what is often perceived as a contested and violent political environment. In conducting an ethnography of public spaces in Karachi's inner city, I frequently encountered risky situations. These led to a critical examination of popular and normative discourses around risk and violence. Using this critique as a foundation, I examined aspects of my positionality that either hindered or aided my fieldwork – namely gender and ethnicity. Thus in this article, I explore how my own ethnic and gender identity both foreclosed as well as created opportunities in the field while at the same time examining how risk and violence need to be constantly reconceptualised and reframed. These two levels of critique, one practical and the other conceptual, provide a useful vantage point to re-evaluate our role as ethnographers in contested environments.