Suchergebnisse

Afghanistan is a key region in and from which scholars can reflect on the potentials and challenges of anthropology. Structured chronologically and analytically, this review analyzes the persistence up to present day of the colonial image of an inward-looking society without, however, equating the current interplay of states and nonstate actors to the international context of the nineteenth century or the Cold War. The 1960s and 1970s were a productive period for research on the country focusing on pastoral nomadism, ethnicity, state, and tribe. When the opportunity for long-term fieldwork in Afghanistan was temporary interrupted in the 1980s with the Soviet occupation, anthropologists were forced to shift focus. Many worked among Afghan refugees in Pakistan as well as on the diaspora, including on the transnational networks of migrants. The international intervention in late 2001 incited an academic scramble for Afghanistan. The article reflects on the deontological challenges of research in an environment characterized by the demand for immediate policy-relevant knowledge while arguing that the study of the overlapping sovereignties linked to the interplay of international and nongovernmental organizations with the state and military forces in Afghanistan contribute to larger current debates in anthropology.

AbstractThis paper contributes to the study of new forms of transnational power constituted by the action of international and nongovernmental organizations, to which gravitate loose networks of activists variously promoting democracy, human rights, the empowerment of women, and environmental conservation. The paper's focus is impacts that the massive reconstruction effort is having on Afghan society, examined through a case study of The National Solidarity Programme (NSP), the main project of rural rehabilitation underway in the country. Launched in 2003, its objective is to bring development funds directly to rural people and to establish democratically elected local councils that will identify needs, and plan and manage the reconstruction. Although the NSP's political significance faded in the context of the presidential elections of 2009, which were characterized by quickly evolving alliances, the program illustrates how reconstruction funds are an integral part of Afghanistan's social and political landscape. My arguments are four-fold: First, the NSP subtly modifies participants' body gestures and codes of conduct. Second, the program's fundamental assumptions are at odds with the complex social fabric and the overlapping sources of solidarity and conflict that characterize rural Afghanistan. Third, the ways in which political actors use material and symbolic resources channeled through the NSP mirror national struggles for power. Finally, such programs are one element in a much larger conceptual and bureaucratic apparatus that promotes new forms of transnational governmentality that coexist with and sometimes challenge the more familiar, territorialized expressions of state power and sovereignty.

This article seeks to illustrate the virtues of taking a transnational approach by drawing upon the ethnography of the social networks that the Hazaras, a group originating in central Afghanistan, have created between their country of origin, Pakistan, Iran, North America & Australia. Several theories are advanced. The social life of the Hazaras is not structured by reference to a common place of residence but rather by effective ties of solidarity & mutual aid that cut across international frontiers. The phenomenon of mobility is constitutive of their way of life at both the socio-cultural & economic levels. Even in time of war, the flight from violence is not always incompatible with a genuine migratory strategy. Dispersal can be the result of a planned choice by which members of family groups seek to diversify their means of subsistence while diminishing the risks attendant upon uncertainty. Describing the circulatory territories of the Hazaras thus allows one to put the distinction between forced & voluntary migration into context. Adapted from the source document.