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‘What You See is What You Get’: Local journalism and the search for truth in Lyari, Karachi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2019

LAURENT GAYER  and
NIDA KIRMANI
LAURENT GAYER
Affiliation:
CNRS/CERI-Sciences Po Email: [email protected]
NIDA KIRMANI
Affiliation:
Lahore University of Management Sciences Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Situations of internecine warfare have in common to question the transitivity of everyday life—that is, its capacity to be taken for granted, to flow without any need for explication. These wars within the familiar generate specific anxieties about where to look at and what to believe. Events, persons, places, or objects whose status seemed hitherto undeniable become less predictable, while their worth comes into question. As individuals’ ontological security is threatened, the need for new monitoring devices and authentication procedures arises. Drawing on the phenomenology of civil wars and the anthropology of fakes, this contribution proposes to explore one such crisis of evidence: the nexus of political, ethnic, and criminal violence raging in Karachi's inner-city area of Lyari. Through the lens of local journalism, it reflects upon the tactics of social navigation deployed by residents confronted with chronic uncertainty in all sectors of life. Janbaz, the Urdu newspaper examined here, provides an opportunity to move beyond functionalist readings of the press in conflict situations. While insisting upon the pleasure derived by Janbaz’s readers from the sensationalized rendering of Lyari's predicament, we argue that the newspaper is the site of a continuous series of ‘reality tests’ and the focal point of private and collective investigations, pooling knowledge in an increasingly undecipherable environment. More than through its information, it is through its shortcomings that Janbaz has helped to recreate social ties in a world plagued by discord and uncertainty.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 5 , September 2020 , pp. 1483 - 1525
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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Footnotes

The authors would like to thank Sameer Mandhro, Zia ur Rehman, and Mahim Maher for their help during fieldwork in Lyari, and Karachi more generally. They are also indebted to all their friends and respondents in Lyari, who agreed to share some of their time to discuss their engagement with local politics and its representation in the media.

References

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3 ‘Lyari UC2 Niazi Chowk mein Piracha Kabristaan se Akar Murde bhi Vote Daal Gaye. Sunsuni Khez Inkashafat’, Janbaz, 16 September 2015, p. 1.

4 ‘Liaquatabad Daak-khana: Rickshaw pe Firing. Driver Golion se Chalni ho Gaya’, Janbaz, 2 March 2015, p. 1.

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9 Reality testing was originally a therapeutic method devised by Sigmund Freud, whereby the patient is encouraged to reflect upon his or her place and relationships in the social world, and contrast them with his or her internal world of thoughts and feelings. The way in which we understand this notion here is slightly different; for us, it consists of a series of everyday trials, through which information about one's immediate environment is being questioned, cross-checked, and analysed in light of past experiences.

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38 The disaggregated results for the latest census, conducted in 2017, are not yet available. The previous census was conducted in 1998 and showed that Urdu-speakers (also known as Mohajirs) made up 49 per cent of the city's total population. This share has probably declined to 40 to 45 per cent today, following a massive influx of Pakhtun internally displaced persons in recent years.

39 This figure was calculated for 2012 on projected growth figures according to the 1998 Census; see ‘Lyari, Who Controls What?’, The Herald, June 2012, pp. 42–43. The same calculations suggest that Urdu-speakers constituted 15.1 per cent of Lyari's population, Sindhi-speakers and Punjabi-speakers 14,3 per cent each, and Pashto-speakers 6.4 per cent, with the rest of the population (24.5 per cent) claiming to have another language as their mother tongue. The main concentrations of Baloch population are in Miranpir (with 62.8 per cent of the population), Nawa Lane (76 per cent), Singu Lane (55.6 per cent), Kalakot (42.8 per cent), and Chakiwara (48 per cent).

40 Province-wise Provisional Results of Census—2017, p. 11; URL: http://www.pbs.gov.pk/sites/default/files/PAKISTAN%20TEHSIL%20WISE%20FOR%20WEB%20CENSUS_2017.pdf (accessed 11 November 2019). It should be noted that the results of the 2017 Census have been widely contested and that the actual population of Lyari might be much higher (possibly above 1 million).

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101 Vigh, Navigating Terrains of War, p. 151.

102 See, for instance, the conclusions of the first major quantitative study on ‘fake-news’ consumption in the United States of America, which suggests that ‘fact-checks of fake news almost never reached its consumers’; A. Guess, B. Nyhan, and J. Reifler, ‘Selective Exposure to Misinformation: Evidence from the Consumption of Fake News during the 2016 U.S. Presidential Campaign’; URL: https://www.dartmouth.edu/~nyhan/fake-news-2016.pdf (accessed 11 November 2019).