Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

State, Security, and People along Urban Frontiers: Juxtapositions of Identity and Authority in Quetta

State, Security, and People along Urban Frontiers: Juxtapositions of Identity and Authority in... Quetta is a postcolonial city in Pakistan on the frontiers of global warfare where terrorism—as an extreme or extraordinary condition—is juxtaposed alongside “ordinary” urban social and political dynamics. This combination shapes the nature of and relationships between space, state, and citizens. Unprecedented violence, targeted at the city’s Hazara population, coexists and combines with inefficiencies and informalities in urban governance to create the ultimate juxtacity: one where state institutions engage in power struggles among themselves as security and administration fail, where individually motivated state agents try to work within the constraints of an inefficient political system, where policing involves both public distrust and a constant threat to life, and where life as a Hazara includes both elaborate security arrangements for trips outside Hazara areas and insecurity even inside people’s homes. Identity—religious and ethnic—assumes center-stage in contentious local politics even as activists devise creative and unifying yet disruptive strategies to exert pressure and achieve political goals. The paper studies how these strategies transform and/or reinforce complex juxtapositions of state authority, public space, and grassroots organization. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Urban Forum Springer Journals

State, Security, and People along Urban Frontiers: Juxtapositions of Identity and Authority in Quetta

Qayyum, Faizaan
Urban Forum , Volume 31 (3) – Sep 2, 2020
Download PDF
23 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/springer-journals/state-security-and-people-along-urban-frontiers-juxtapositions-of-R4QTlWBOvG

References (45)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
ISSN
1015-3802
eISSN
1874-6330
DOI
10.1007/s12132-020-09395-4
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Quetta is a postcolonial city in Pakistan on the frontiers of global warfare where terrorism—as an extreme or extraordinary condition—is juxtaposed alongside “ordinary” urban social and political dynamics. This combination shapes the nature of and relationships between space, state, and citizens. Unprecedented violence, targeted at the city’s Hazara population, coexists and combines with inefficiencies and informalities in urban governance to create the ultimate juxtacity: one where state institutions engage in power struggles among themselves as security and administration fail, where individually motivated state agents try to work within the constraints of an inefficient political system, where policing involves both public distrust and a constant threat to life, and where life as a Hazara includes both elaborate security arrangements for trips outside Hazara areas and insecurity even inside people’s homes. Identity—religious and ethnic—assumes center-stage in contentious local politics even as activists devise creative and unifying yet disruptive strategies to exert pressure and achieve political goals. The paper studies how these strategies transform and/or reinforce complex juxtapositions of state authority, public space, and grassroots organization.

Journal

Urban Forum – Springer Journals

Published: Sep 2, 2020

There are no references for this article.