Chercheur
Laurent taught at Sciences Po (1999-2002) and INALCO (2003-2005) before joining the Centre universitaire de recherches sur l’action publique et le politique (CURAPP) in Amiens in 2008 and the New Delhi based Centre de sciences humaines (CSH) and then CERI in 2013.
His most recent book, Karachi. Ordered Disorder and the Struggle for the City, was published by Hurst (London), HarperCollins (Delhi) and Oxford University Press (New York and Karachi) in 2014. The result of extensive fieldwork in Karachi between 2001 and 2013, this book defends the idea that, in contrast to the ‘chaotic’ and ‘anarchic’ city portrayed in journalistic accounts, there is indeed order of a kind in the city’s permanent civil war. Far from being entropic, Karachi’s polity is predicated upon relatively stable patterns of domination, rituals of interaction and forms of arbitration, which have made violence manageable for its population—even if this does not exclude a pervasive state of fear, which results from the continuous transformation of violence in the course of its updating.
Political and criminal violence in India and Pakistan, Relations between poetry and politics among the Urdu-speaking populations of India and Pakista
India, Pakistan, Cities and territories, Social movements, Islam
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Languages
English, Spanish

- Pulp Fusion: The Art and Politics of Karachi's Urdu Digests, 1950s-70s (Chapitre d’ouvrage)
- ‘What You See is What You Get’: Local journalism and the search for truth in Lyari, Karachi (Article dans une revue avec comité de lecture)
- Preface: Scholar with a Cause (Chapitre d’ouvrage)
- Les émotions des émeutiers (Compte rendu, critique)
- La passion des urnes : à propos de la contribution de Fariba Adelkhah à l’exposition « Images à l’appui/Visual Notes from the Field » (2017) (Article dans une revue avec comité de lecture)
- Militariser les femmes. Doctrines, pratiques et critiques du féminisme martial en Asie du Sud (Chapitre d’ouvrage)
- From Militancy to Activism? Life Trajectories of Sikh Women Combatants (Chapitre d’ouvrage)
- Qui gardera les gardiens ? Sécurité industrielle et production d’incertitude à Karachi (Direction de numéro spécial)
- Drawing the line: Bonds and bounds of civility in a Christian basti of Karachi (Article dans une revue avec comité de lecture)
- État de littérature - La « normalité de l’anormal » : recomposer le quotidien en situation de guerre civile (Article dans une revue avec comité de lecture)