Book Review: Insecure Guardians: Enforcement, Encounters and Everyday Policing in Postcolonial Karachi
| Published date | 01 June 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/09646639231214248 |
| Author | SOBIA AHMAD KAKER |
| Date | 01 June 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Book Reviews
ZOHA WASEEM, Insecure Guardians: Enforcement, Encounters and Everyday Policing in Postcolonial
Karachi. London: Hurst Publishers, 2022, pp. 328, ISBN 978-1-787-38688-4, £40 (hbk).
Zoha Waseem’sInsecure Guardians: Enforcement, Encounters and Everyday Policing
in Postcolonial Karachi is a compelling addition to sociological and criminological
scholarship on police and policing. I also imagine this book to be of significant interest
to urban studies scholars, given its examination of messy intersections between police
work, urbanisation, and urban governance. Insecure Guardians is a well-detailed ethnog-
raphy of the complex dynamics that shape law enforcement in Karachi, Pakistan. Situated
in an otherwise understudied postcolonial context within policing studies, the book stands
out as a critical scrutiny of policing institutions, practices, and cultures in postcolonial
contexts. It outlines how political turmoil, ethnic diversity, and pervasive insecurity
shape contemporary policing practices in the Pakistani megacity, remaining mindful of
the police institutions colonial past. In discussing complex challenges such as underfund-
ing of the institution, its politicisation, and the public’s lack of trust in it, the book demon-
strates how the postcolonial condition continues to structure and shape the relationship
between the police, state, and society in present-day Karachi. The findings are rich and
presented in vivid detail. They are based on prolonged ethnographic engagement with
Sindh police, through participant observations and qualitative interviews with a wide
range of law enforcement officers, state representatives, political workers, lawyers, jour-
nalists, and members of the public. The author’s positionality as a Karachiite and a
member of the ‘police family’is of crucial significance. It provides a unique insider per-
spective on the subject matter through exceptional access to a range of officials. It not
only allows insight to inner workings and reception to candid opinions, but also gives
room to a critical empathy that helps situate the workings of policing institutions
within the context of everyday personal and professional challenges of doing police
work in a complex environment.
The core arguments of Insecure Guardians are first that the colonial foundations of
Sindh police have continuities in present-day institutional relationships between the
police, the state, and society. Second, that social and political inequalities within the insti-
tution, and between the police and other law enforcement agencies shape both police
practices, but also procedures. And finally, the police is both an extension of a society
that survives through navigating uncertainty through informality and mobilisation of
patronage networks. At the same time, it is also an institution that legitimates its
actions through an environment of uncertainty and a product of patronage. These
Book Reviews
Social & Legal Studies
2024, Vol. 33(3) 467–475
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/09646639231214248
journals.sagepub.com/home/sls
To continue reading
Request your trial