This article questions the privileging of gender as the primary axis along which the
experience of being a woman in Afghanistan can be understood and attended to. I
argue that the privileging of gender is part of a two-pronged problem: first, there
is a substantial lack of current knowledge on everyday life and subjectivity of
Afghans, and second, this lack of knowledge is held in abeyance, while a limited set
of analytical concepts and clichés—especially gender and
Islamic fundamentalism—occupy the respective discursive space. My claim is
that knowledge of Afghanistan that lays emphasis on a limited set of analytical
parameters ultimately results in an impossibility of acknowledging the experiences
of Afghans—men and women alike. A discussion of ongoing ethnographic work
in a widow-run bakery in Kabul will serve as an entry point to reconsider the ways
in which Afghanistan may inhabit our imagination.
Abbasi-Shavazi, Mohammad Jalal
,
Diana Glazebrook
,
Gholamreza Jamshidiha
,
Hossein Mahmoudian
and
Rasoul Sadeghi
(2005) Return to Afghanistan? A Study of Afghans Living in
Tehran.
Kabul and Tehran: Afghanistan Research and
Evaluation Unit and Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran
.
2.
Abu-Lughod, Lila
(1990)
‘The Romance of Resistance: Tracing Transformations of Power
through Bedouin Women’
, American Ethnologist17(1):
41–55
.
3.
Abu-Lughod, Lila
(2002)
‘Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections
on Cultural Relativism and its Others’
, American Anthropologist104(3):
783 –90
.
4.
Ahmed, Leila
(1998) Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a
Modern Debate.
Cairo: American University in Cairo Press
.
5.
Asad, Talal
(2003) Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam,
Modernity.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press
.
6.
Azarbaijani-Moghaddam, Sippi
(2004) ‘Afghan Women on the Margins of the
Twenty-First Century’, in
A. Donini
,
K. Wermeister
, and
N. Niland
(eds) Nation-Building Unraveled: Aid, Peace and Justice in
Afghanistan, pp. 95–116.
Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press
.
7.
Butler, Judith
(2004) Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and
Violence.
London and New York: Verso
.
8.
Cavell, Stanley
(1969) Must We Mean What We Say?Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
.
9.
Centlivres, Pierre
and
Micheline Centlivres-Demont
(1988)
‘Afghan Refugee in Pakistan: An Ambiguous Identity’
, Journal of Refugee Studies1(2):
141–152
.
10.
Centlivres-Demont, Micheline
(1994) ‘Afghan Women in Peace, War and
Exile’, in
Myron Weiner
and
Ali Banuazizi
(eds) The Politics of Social Transformation in Afghanistan, Iran, and
Pakistan, pp. 333–365.
Syracuse: Syracuse University Press
.
11.
Clark, Kate
(2004) ‘The Struggle for Hearts and Minds: The
Military, Aid and the Media’, in
A. Donini
,
K. Wermeister
and
N. Niland
(eds) Nation-Building Unraveled: Aid, Peace and Justice in
Afghanistan, pp. 83–94.
Bloomfi eld, CT: Kumarian Press
.
12.
Daniel, E. Valentine
(1996) Charred Lullabies: Chapters in an Anthropography of
Violence.
Princeton: Princeton University Press
.
13.
Das, Veena
(1995a) Critical Events: An Anthropological Perspective on
Contemporary India.
Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press
.
14.
Das, Veena
(1995b)
‘Voice as Birth of Culture’
, Ethnos60 (3–4):
159–181
.
15.
Das, Veena
(1998)
‘Wittgenstein and Anthropology’
, Annual Review of Anthropology27:
171– 95
.
16.
Das, Veena
(2000) Violence and Subjectivity.
Berkeley: University of California Press
.
17.
Daulatzai, Anila (2004) ‘The Silent Residue of Politics: Afghan
Refugees and the Pakistani State’, unpublished paper presented to the 33rd
Annual South Asia Conference, Madison, 15 –17 Oct.
18.
Donini, Antonio
,
Karin Wermester
and
Norah Niland
(2004) Nation-Building Unraveled: Aid, Peace and Justice in
Afghanistan.
Bloomfi eld, CT: Kumarian Press
.
19.
Dupree, Nancy
(1990) ‘A Socio-Cultural Dimension: Afghan Women
Refugees in Pakistan’, in
Ewan Anderson
and
Nancy Hatch Dupree
(eds) The Cultural Basis of Afghan Nationalism, pp.
121–133.
Oxford: University of Oxford, Refugee Studies Program
.
20.
Dupree, Nancy
(1998) ‘Afghan Women under the
Taliban’, in
W. Maley
(ed.) Fundamentalism Reborn? Afghanistan and the Taliban, pp.
145–159.
New York: New York University Press
.
21.
Edwards, David B.
(1994)
‘Afghanistan, Ethnography, and the New World Order’
, Cultural Anthropology9(3):
1–16
.
22.
Feldman, Allen
(1991) Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and
Political Terror in Northern Ireland.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press
.
23.
Fielden, Matthew
(1998)
‘The Geopolitics of Aid: The Provision and Termination of Aid to
Afghan Refugees in North West Frontier Province, Pakistan’
, Political Geography17(4):
459–487
.
24.
Hirschkind, Charles
and
Saba Mahmood
(2002)
‘Feminism, the Taliban and Politics of Counter-Insurgency’
, Anthropological Quarterly75(2):
337–354
.
25.
Hoodfar, Homa
(2004)
‘Families on the Move: The Changing Role of Afghan Refugee Women
in Iran’
, HAWWA: Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World2(2):
141–171
.
26.
Jackson, Michael
(2004) In Sierra Leone.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press
.
27.
Khan, Ayesha
(2002)
‘Afghan Refugee Women's Experience of Conflict and Disintegration’
, Meridians3(1):
89–121
.
28.
Khattak, Saba Gul
(2004)
‘Adversarial Discourses, Analogous Objectives: Afghan's
Women's Control’
, Cultural Dynamics16(2/3):
213 –36
.
29.
Kleinman, Arthur
,
Veena Das
and
Margaret M. Lock
(1997) Social Suffering.
Berkeley: University of California Press
.
30.
Lévinas, Emmanuel
(1985) Ethics and Infinity.
Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press
.
31.
Mahmood, Saba
(2004) Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the
Feminist Subject.
Princeton: Princeton University Press
.
32.
Marsden, Peter
(1999) ‘Repatriation and Reconstruction: The
Case of Afghanistan’, in
Richard Black
and
Khalid Koser
(eds) The End of the Refugee Cycle, pp.
56–68.
Oxford: Berghahn Books
.
33.
Nordstrom, Carolyn
and
Antonius C. G. M. Robben
(1995) Fieldwork under Fire: Contemporary Studies of Violence
and Survival.
Berkeley: University of California Press
.
34.
Povey, Elaheh Rostami
(2003)
‘Women in Afghanistan: Passive Victims of the Borga or Active
Social Participants?’
, Development in Practice11(2/3):
266–277
.
35.
Rajasingham-Senanayake, Darini
(2004)
‘Between Reality and Representation: Women's Agency in
War and Post-Conflict Sri Lanka’
, Cultural Dynamics16(2/3):
141–168
.
36.
Rubin, B.
(1988)
‘Lineages of the State in Afghanistan’
, Asian Survey28:
1188–1209
.
37.
Rubin, B.
(1995) The Search for Peace in Afghanistan: From Buffer State
to Failed State.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press
.
38.
Rubin, B.
(2000)
‘The Political Economy of War and Peace in Afghanistan’
, World Development28:
1789–1803
.
39.
Rubin, B.
(2002a) Blood on the Doorstep: The Politics of Preventive
Action.
New York: Century Foundation
.
40.
Rubin, B.
(2002b) The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and
Collapse in the International System, 2nd edn.New Haven, CT: Yale University Press
.
41.
Rubin, B.
,
Abby Stoddard
,
Humayun Hamidzada
and
Adib Farhadi
(2004) Building a New Afghanistan: The Value of Success, the
Cost of Failure.
New York: Center on International Cooperation,
New York University
.
42.
Stockton, Nicholas
(2004) ‘Afghanistan, War, Aid and International
Order’, in
A. Donini
,
K. Wermeister
and
N. Niland
(eds) Nation-Building Unraveled: Aid, Peace and Justice in
Afghanistan, pp. 9–38.
Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press
.
43.
Tober, Diane
,
Mohammad-Hossein Taghdisi
, and
Mohammad Jalali
(2006)
‘“Fewer Children, Better Life” or
“As Many as God Wants?” Family Planning among Low-Income
Iranian and Afghan Refugee Families in Isfahan, Iran’
, Medical Anthropology Quarterly20(1):
50–71
.
44.
Turton, David
and
Peter Marsden
(2002) Taking Refugees for a Ride? The Politics of Refugee
Return to Afghanistan.
Kabul: Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit Publication
.
45.
UNFPA
(2002) Kabul Maternity Hospitals Lack Equipment and
Supplies.
New York: United Nations
.
46.
WFP
(2002) Working Against the Rules: Women Aid Workers under the
Taliban 1996–2001.
Rome: World Food Program
.
47.
WFP
(2004) A Report from the Office of Evaluation.
Rome: World Food Program
.
