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

The governing of uncertainty has been extensively studied 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 re-scale as well as decolonise 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 routinised experiential terrain of insecurity. One that is anticipatorily navigated by social actors operating at the micro-social scale. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on ordinary uncertainty in Karachi, this article calls attention to the incredible 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 critically analysing the politics of information production and circulation, this article reveals the politics of governing ordinary uncertainty in the unequal, conflict-ridden Pakistani megacity.