The history of industrial capitalism and its modes of domination is intimately linked to that of violent
entrepreneurs deploying their coercive resources at the service of workplace discipline, the extraction
of surplus value and the securitization of the accumulation cycle. The relationship between capital
and coercion is always fraught with tensions, though, and sustains new vulnerabilities among securityconsuming elites. The manufacturing economy of Karachi is a particularly fertile ground for studying
this endogenous production of insecurity by security devices. The relations between Karachi’s factory
owners and their guards have generated their own economy of suspicion. Various attempts to conjure
this shaky domination have generated new uncertainties, calling for new methods of control to keep
the guards themselves under watch.
Topic:
Security, Political Violence, Corruption, Crime, Political Economy, Sociology, Urbanization, Material Culture, and Political Science