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In this work, anthropologist Robert Leroy Canfield discusses several powerful social systems in central Afghanistan and their impact on the geographical distribution of religious sects in the area. Territorial groups, the kinship network, and community fission all play a part in why people live where they do. Canfield did his fieldwork among the residents of the province of Bamian during the years 1966 to 1968.
Ethnographers have observed Muslims nearly everywhere Islam is practiced. This study analyzes four seminal texts that have been read widely outside anthropology. Two are by distinguished anthropologists on either side of the Atlantic, Islam Observed (by Clifford Geertz in 1968) and Muslim Society (by Ernest Gellner in 1981). Two other texts are by Muslim scholars, Beyond the Veil (Fatima Mernissi in 1975) and Discovering Islam (by Akbar Ahmed in 1988). Varisco argues that each of these four authors approaches Islam as an essentialized organic unity rather than letting 'Islams' found in the field speak to the diversity of practice. The textual truths engendered, and far too often engineered, in these idealized representations of Islam have found their way unscrutinized into an endless stream of scholarly works and textbooks. Varisco's analysis goes beyond the rhetoric over what Islam is to the information from ethnographic research about what Muslims say they do and actually are observed to do. The issues covered include Islam as a cultural phenomenon, representation of 'the other', Muslim gender roles, politics of ethnographic authority, and Orientalist discourse.
"Contributors to the volume are established scholars in their fields and successfully focus on the pertinent issues with a good mix of facts, analysis, and theoretical orientation. The contributions are pertinent and valuable to students of comparative politics generally, as well as to specialists on the selected countries."-Choice
Afghanistan is an extremely complex and nuanced country that has been one of the centers of imperial conflict at least for 150 years. From the Czarist Russia’s march south in the 19th Century threatening British India, three Anglo-Afghan Wars, the Soviet Invasion and occupation of Afghanistan starting in December 1979 and the resulting anti-Soviet Jihad by the Afghan Mujahideen to Kabul’s and their allies’ (U.S. and NATO) conflict with the Taliban, Afghanistan has been one of the centers of important international and regional conflicts and events. Historical Dictionary of Afghanistan, Fifth Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 1,000 cross-referenced entries on important personalities as well as aspects of the country’s politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Afghanistan.
Focusing on the case of the Hazaras, a population from central Afghanistan, this book shows how migration studies and transnationalism are at the heart of theoretical and methodological debates which animate anthropology.
Memory and Commemoration across Central Asia: Texts, Traditions and Practices, 10th-21st Centuries is a collection of fourteen studies by a group of scholars active in the field of Central Asian Studies, presenting new research into various aspects of the rich cultural heritage of Central Asia (including Afghanistan). By mapping and exploring the interaction between political, ideological, literary and artistic production in Central Asia, the contributors offer a wide range of perspectives on the practice and usage of historical and religious commemoration in different contexts and timeframes. Making use of different approaches – historical, literary, anthropological, or critical heritage studies, the contributors show how memory functions as a fundamental constituent of identity formation in both past and present, and how this has informed perceptions in and outside Central Asia today.
Edwards contends that Afghanistan's troubles derive less from foreign forces and the ideological divisions between groups than they do from the moral incoherence of Afghanistan itself.
This volume examines all aspects of using agent or individual-based simulation. This approach represents systems as individual elements having their own set of differing states and internal processes. The interactions between elements in the simulation represent interactions in the target systems. What makes this "social" is that it can represent an observed society. Social systems include all those systems where the components have individual agency but also interact with each other. This includes human societies and groups, but also increasingly socio-technical systems where the internet-based devices form the substrate for interaction. These systems are central to our lives, but are among the most complex known. This poses particular problems for those who wish to understand them. The complexity often makes analytic approaches infeasible but, on the other hand, natural language approaches are also inadequate for relating intricate cause and effect. This is why individual and agent-based computational approaches hold out the possibility of new and deeper understanding of such systems. This handbook marks the maturation of this new field. It brings together summaries of the best thinking and practices in this area from leading researchers in the field and constitutes a reference point for standards against which future methodological advances can be judged. This second edition adds new chapters on different modelling purposes and applying software engineering methods to simulation development. Revised existing content will keep the book up-to-date with recent developments. This volume will help those new to the field avoid "reinventing the wheel" each time, and give them a solid and wide grounding in the essential issues. It will also help those already in the field by providing accessible overviews of current thought. The material is divided into four sections: Introduction, Methodology, Mechanisms, and Applications. Each chapter starts with a very brief section called ‘Why read this chapter?’ followed by an abstract, which summarizes the content of the chapter. Each chapter also ends with a section on ‘Further Reading’. Whilst sometimes covering technical aspects, this second edition of Simulating Social Complexity is designed to be accessible to a wide range of researchers, including both those from the social sciences as well as those with a more formal background. It will be of use as a standard reference text in the field and also be suitable for graduate level courses.
The question of individuality in non-European, and especially South Asian societies is a controversial one. Studies in anthropology and psychology undertaken in recent years on concepts of person and self approach the problem by concentrating on ideologies; the question of practice remains largely neglected. This is the first study to examine the individual-dividual debate empirically from the - emic - perspective of decision making, observed over a two-year period among the Bakkarwal, Himalayan Muslim pastoralists. Of particular significance is the fact that the author bases her approach on the life cycle and on gender and status differences.