The Power of Lists: IDPs and Disaster Governmentality After the Attabad Landslide in Northern Pakistan

Sökefeld, Martin (2020): The Power of Lists: IDPs and Disaster Governmentality After the Attabad Landslide in Northern Pakistan. In: Ethnos

Abstract

This article analyses the political consequences of a large-scale landslide that hit Gojal in the high-mountain region of northern Pakistan in 2010. It destroyed parts of several villages and impeded access to the area for years. The article follows a list of internally displaced persons (IDPs) that was created as part of disaster governance. The list separates some affected persons from others, allocating them particular resources. Drawing on James Scott and Veena Das’ concepts of legibility, I argue that while these lists make some people legible for the state as disaster victims, people ‘read back’, developing their own strategies of appropriating such lists for their own purposes. While the concept of legibility rests on the distinction of state and society, it is argued in consonance with the recent ethnography of the state that instead we find a fragmented assemblage of criss-crossing relationships in disaster governmentality that produce enduring social friction.

• Item Type: Journal article
• Keywords: Disaster governmentality, state, (il)legibility, lists, northern Pakistan
• Faculties: Cultural Studies > Department of Ancient and Modern Cultures > Ethnology
• Subjects: 300 Social sciences > 300 Social sciences, sociology and anthropology; 300 Social sciences > 360 Social problems and social services
• ISSN: 1469-588X
• Language: English