Governing ‘ordinary’ uncertainty: Circulating information and everyday insecurity in Karachi

Abstract

The governing of uncertainty has been studied extensively within the interdisciplinary field of security studies. However, existing scholarship on security-related uncertainty focuses on the problem of its governance from the standpoint of Western-political macro-governmental regulatory regimes. To both rescale as well as decolonize existing scholarship on governing security-related uncertainty, this article brings security studies scholarship in conversation with ethnographic accounts of everyday uncertainty in Global South contexts. As a concept tied to unpredictable security futures, it introduces ‘ordinary’ uncertainty as a routinized experiential terrain of insecurity. One that is anticipatorily navigated by social actors operating at the micro-social scale. Drawing on fieldwork on ordinary uncertainty in Karachi, this article calls attention to the incredible amount of time and energy spent by urban residents who try to ‘stay updated’ with the ever-shifting security situation in the Pakistani megacity. They do this by gathering, exchanging and making sense of information circulating in their social circles, on the street, news channels and/or on social media platforms. By critical practices of information production and exchange this article reveals the politics of governing ordinary uncertainty in an unequal sociopolitical context.