Paper short abstract:

This article examines the role of food markets in shaping the “moral ecology” of Karachi in providing economic livelihood, as well as affordable and accessible food [bazaars] to the poor in Karachi.

Paper long abstract:

This article examines the role of food markets in shaping the “moral ecology” of Karachi in providing economic livelihood, as well as affordable and accessible food [bazaars] to the poor in Karachi. The food pathways shape the rhythms of the city, the identity of a neighborhood, and the politics of place. The literature on food studies has focused on production and consumption, but less so on the labor and logistics of provisioning . Karachi’s street food economy provides the migrant poor with a foothold in the city and a path to survival in the city. Hawkers and street vendors in Karachi claim their right to encroach on public land [in many poor/lower middle-class sections of the city] by invoking the right to feed their families even when in clear violation of the law. This article offers a granular ethnographic analysis of food markets to understand how retailers, traders navigate risk, balance their slim margins of profits and keep sight of the general social welfare of their suppliers and consumers in times of hyperinflation. A focus on the food geographies of Karachi reveals the central role of food provisioning shaping the mechanics of informal urbanism and markets [bazaars] in Karachi that allow the poor to defy and define spatial settlement, administration (in terms of the degrees of planning, or improvisation) and the question of law (licit/illicit, corruption/ legal regulation and illegal encroachments) and generate social surplus (effervescence) as well as the social-cultural costs that comes with it.