Victim, broker, activist, fixer: Surviving dispossession in working class Lahore

Ammara Maqsood,Fizzah Sajjad

doi:10.1177/02637758211029290

Abstract

Recent debates in urban geography and anthropology have urged a rethinking of ‘marginal’ groups, viewing them not only as intimately connected to the state and its power, but also as offering a lens into alternate modes of dwelling, endurance and political change. We reflect upon the conceptual possibilities of such forms of endurance by examining how those residing in urban margins utilise, enable and inhabit connections to centres of power when faced with dispossession. Focusing on evictions that took place in Lahore (Pakistan) between 2015 and 2017, to acquire land for the Orange Line Metro Train, we follow the actions and narrations of one interlocutor, as he confronted the loss of his home. Unravelling how survival at the margins depends upon tactility and a continuous shifting between roles and modes of actions, we highlight the unique and particular ways in which evictions are lived and embodied. Including such shifting modes of negotiating in conceptualisations of the ‘political’ in the Global South does indeed offer potentialities, but we urge caution in over-reading into these possibilities. Shape-shifting and movement in embodied roles allows for a certain kind of thriving in precarity but rarely allows inhabitants – as they so aspire – to override it altogether.

Highlights

Recent debates in urban geography and anthropology have urged a rethinking of ‘marginal’ groups, viewing them as intimately connected to the state and its power, and as offering a lens into alternate modes of dwelling, endurance and political change
Others (Lancione, 2019a, 2019b; Simone, 2016) – including in this special issue – urge us to think of endurance in marginal spaces as a form of dwelling, of inhabiting and being in the world, that often goes unnoticed in dominant narratives of political change but offers new possibilities for conceptualising politics and building horizontal solidarities
In reflections on a division between ‘dark’ and ‘good’ anthropology, Ortner (2016) argues for an ethnography that moves between, on one hand, everyday relationships, ethical dilemmas and moral concerns and, on the other hand, larger political inequalities and violence (p. 60). She calls for an anthropology of critique, resistance and activism where researchers are involved in the struggles they study to open discussions on the contradictions and conundrums experienced in fieldwork and, reflect on the ethics of possibilities that emerge in these moments

Summary

Introduction

Recent debates in urban geography and anthropology have urged a rethinking of ‘marginal’ groups, viewing them as intimately connected to the state and its power, and as offering a lens into alternate modes of dwelling, endurance and political change. We draw upon fieldwork conducted between January 2018 and April 2019 on evictions resulting from the construction of the Orange Line Metro Train, a 27-km mass transit line, to focus on the life-history, actions and narrations of one interlocutor, Hassan.1 Following his story as he confronts state-led eviction from his residence in the city of Lahore, we unravel how survival at the margins depends upon tactility and a continuous shifting between roles, methods and modes of actions. In being led by Hassan’s account, we strive for a narrative form that overcome the disconnect between the deeply personal and evocative experiences of homelessness and the impersonal metanarratives usually favoured by academic and policy research (Christensen, 2012; Lancione, 2017) Such an approach allows us to connect everyday struggles with larger structural processes and to draw attention to what it means – in an experiential or embodied sense – to survive. Both evictions and resistance take on colours and forms that encompass local histories, patriarchal modalities of homing and forms of everyday endurance (Lancione, 2019b)

Objectives

Conclusion