The Carpetbaggers of Kabul and Other American-Afghan Entanglements: Intimate Development, Geopolitics, and the Currency of Gender and Grief PDF
Preview The Carpetbaggers of Kabul and Other American-Afghan Entanglements: Intimate Development, Geopolitics, and the Currency of Gender and Grief
The Carpetbaggers of Kabul and Other American- Afghan Entanglements geographies of justice and social transformation Series editors Nik Heynen, University of Georgia Mathew Coleman, Ohio State University Sapana Doshi, University of Arizona Advisory board Deborah Cowen, University of Toronto Zeynep Gambetti, Boğaziçi University Geoff Mann, Simon Fraser University James McCarthy, Clark University Beverly Mullings, Queen’s University Harvey Neo, National University of Singapore Geraldine Pratt, University of British Columbia Ananya Roy, University of California, Berkeley Michael Watts, University of California, Berkeley Ruth Wilson Gilmore, CUNY Graduate Center Jamie Winders, Syracuse University Melissa W. Wright, Pennsylvania State University Brenda S. A. Yeoh, National University of Singapore The Carpetbaggers of Kabul and Other American- Afghan Entanglements intimate development, geopolitics, and the currency of gender and grief jennifer l. fluri rachel lehr The University of Georgia Press Athens © 2017 by the University of Georgia Press Athens, Georgia 30602 www .ugapress .org All rights reserved Set in 10/12.5 Minion Pro by Graphic Composition, Inc., Bogart, Georgia Most University of Georgia Press titles are available from popular e-book vendors. Printed digitally Library of Congress Control Number: 2016955269 ISBN: 9780820350349 (hardcover: alk. paper) ISBN: 9780820350356 (paperback: alk. paper) ISBN: 9780820350332 (ebook) Dedicated to the memory of my foremothers Sonia Tave Lehr, Luba Tave Hurwitz, and Bertha Brod Kanare. (R. L.) Dedicated in memory of my mother, Mary Dinofrio Fluri. (J. L. F.) This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii chapter 1 Introduction 1 chapter 2 The Carpetbaggers of Kabul 21 chapter 3 Gender and Grief Currency 43 chapter 4 “Conscientiously Chic” The Production and Consumption of Afghan Women’s Liberation 53 chapter 5 “We Should Be Eating the Grant, but the Grant Eats Us” 65 chapter 6 “Saving” Soraya 86 chapter 7 “Our Hearts Break” 9/11 Deaths, Afghan Lives, and Intimate Intervention 104 chapter 8 Gender Currency and the Development of Wealth 117 Notes 133 Glossary 141 Works Cited and Consulted 145 Index 161 This page intentionally left blank PrefaCe The idea for writing this book began in 2007 when Jennifer was an assistant professor at Dartmouth College researching international assistance in Afghani- stan. At that time Rachel was executive director of Rubia, Inc., a U.S.-based nonprofit organization. This organization worked in partnership with the Rubia Organization for the Development of Afghanistan, a local nongovernmental organization (ngo) in Afghanistan. This partnership grew from a long- term personal relationship Rachel had es- tablished with Afghans in the early 1980s. In 2007 Rubia, Inc. began the registra- tion process for becoming a 501c3 nonprofit with a board of directors. Jennifer became an active board member and met with and visited Rubia’s programs and participants in Afghanistan. Over the course of these experiences we (Jennifer and Rachel) began to work together on a number of different academic projects. One of our collaborative efforts included developing and presenting a series of lectures about everyday life in Afghanistan and the geopolitics of conflict, aid, and development, titled Rediscovering Afghanistan: Lessons from the Home. We presented these lectures during 2007– 12 throughout New Hampshire (nh), in partnership with the Arts Alliance of Northern New Hampshire and funded by the nh Humanities Council.1 We developed these lectures from Rachel’s ethnographic research and expe- riences living and working with Afghans, and Jennifer’s research on geopoli- tics and international aid and development in Afghanistan (Fluri 2006, 2008a, 2008b, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c, 2011a, 2011b, 2012). Jennifer’s research included questionnaires and interviews with Afghans and international workers primar- ily living and working in Kabul, Afghanistan. Rachel’s research was gathered while she was completing her doctoral dissertation in linguistics on Pashai, a language spoken by a minority population in Afghanistan. Pashai was the lan- guage spoken by the founders of Rubia. Our lectures attempted to provide a complex and complicated view of both international geopolitics and daily life ix
The list of books you might like
