Narrating Trauma and Reconstruction in Post-conflict Karachi: Feminist Liberation Psychology and the Contours of Agency in the Margins

Abstract

The article examines poor women's responses to direct and structural violence in Karachi, Pakistan, by combining goals and themes from liberation psychology with transnational feminism. We draw on interviews with Mohajir women survivors to analyse constructions of psychosocial trauma and attempts to rebuild post-conflict life-worlds, in a bid to understand the scope and contours of their agency within their `limit situations'. Although agency, resistance, and critical consciousness remain constrained by multi-layered power relations, women's narratives reflect crucial insights about social structures impacting their lives, and point to the need for interventions that integrate trauma alleviation and opportunities for local, national, and transnational grassroots activism, advocacy and policy initiatives.