동아시아의 평화와 화해의 정치학 Scrapbook: Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics Book 36) eBook : Barfield, Thomas: Amazon.com.au: Kindle Store

2021-08-25

Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics Book 36) eBook : Barfield, Thomas: Amazon.com.au: Kindle Store

A major history of Afghanistan and its changing political culture

Afghanistan traces the historic struggles and the changing nature of political authority in this volatile region of the world, from the Mughal Empire in the sixteenth century to the Taliban resurgence today. Thomas Barfield introduces readers to the bewildering diversity of tribal and ethnic groups in Afghanistan, explaining what unites them as Afghans despite the regional, cultural, and political differences that divide them. He shows how governing these peoples was relatively easy when power was concentrated in a small dynastic elite, but how this delicate political order broke down in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when Afghanistan's rulers mobilized rural militias to expel first the British and later the Soviets. Armed insurgency proved remarkably successful against the foreign occupiers, but it also undermined the Afghan government's authority and rendered the country ever more difficult to govern as time passed. Barfield vividly describes how Afghanistan's armed factions plunged the country into a civil war, giving rise to clerical rule by the Taliban and Afghanistan's isolation from the world. He examines why the American invasion in the wake of September 11 toppled the Taliban so quickly, and how this easy victory lulled the United States into falsely believing that a viable state could be built just as easily.

Afghanistan is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how a land conquered and ruled by foreign dynasties for more than a thousand years became the "graveyard of empires" for the British and Soviets, and what the United States must do to avoid a similar fate.

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Review

""[I]mpressive.""---Christopher de Bellaigue, New York Review of Books

""This book is an authoritative and well-written summary of what we might call the majority view. There is a streak in this book, however, of more radical thinking. . . . It leads him near the end of the book to some startling predictions for Afghanistan's possible futures.""---Gerard Russell, Foreign Policy

""Thomas Barfield's new book offers a remedy for Americans' pervasive ignorance of Afghanistan. . . . Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History is an invaluable book. Mr. Barfield does not give the United States a way out of Afghanistan, but he does provide the context necessary for good policymaking.""---Doug Bandow, Washington Times

""A brilliant book to educate all of us about a country we should know and appreciate. . . . Thomas Barfield's book on Afghanistan is likely to become the first source that serious students turn to as a guide to this complicated country. His comprehensive portrait of Afghanistan is a stunning achievement.""---Joseph Richard Preville, Saudi Gazette

""Barfield, an anthropologist and old Afghanistan hand, has written a history of Afghanistan that weaves in geography, economics, and culture (think tribes, rural-urban dichotomies, value systems) while maintaining a focus throughout on Afghan rulers' relations with their own people and the outside world. [The book] is lightened by many breaks in the narrative to address broad themes or make intriguing comparisons, such as likening patrimonial Afghanistan to medieval Europe.""

""In this riveting study, Barfield does a splendid job of informing us why Afghanistan is the way it has always been.""

""Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History by Thomas Barfield is a primer for anyone seeking to understand the region, its cultural and political underpinnings.""---Raghu Mohan, BusinessWorld

""Barfield shows how Afghan notions of political legitimacy and social organization are eerily timeless. . . . This book may change the way you think about Afghanistan.""---Brian Kappler, Montreal Gazette

""Impressive. . . . Barfield traces much of what Afghanistan is about to its geography and to developments from thousands of years ago, but he also asserts that the decade of Russian occupation changed Afghanistan permanently.""---Harry Eagar, Maui News

""Despite a plethora of books about Afghanistan in the last few years, a good book on the country has not been published since Louis Dupress's 1973 Afghanistan. Maybe the long wait is over. Barfield's new book . . . comes close to matching Dupree's sweeping sense of Afghanistan's complicated history and culture. An anthropologist, as was Dupree, who personally visited most areas of Afghanistan, Barfield is able to put the bewildering complexity of tribes, ethnic groups, religious sects, warlords, and political feuds that is Afghanistan into a coherent whole that is both readable and informative.""

""Thomas Barfield . . . has provided a rich discussion of the anthropological and historical context for developing such a formula, which is a critical missing piece in the Obama Administration's policy in Afghanistan. . . . Barfield has given us a valuable effort by a Westerner to decode a very foreign society--never an easy task. As a prism through which to understand the current conflict in Afghanistan, this book reminds us that war is about politics and that policies is about who rules and how rule is legitimated.""---Marin Strmecki, American Interest

""[Barfield's] deep knowledge brings clarity to a frightfully complicated region that has been and will continue to be of extraordinary importance to policy debates. Scholarly experts in search of an exhaustive reference to the region and those seeking an introduction to the ins and outs of Afghan history will find this book of interest.""---Malou Innocent, CATO Journal

""Anyone who wishes to comprehend the intricacies of this complex and mysterious country would be wise to consult this exceedingly valuable book.""---Raphael Israeli, Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs

""Overall, Barfield is successful in his attempts to render the history of Afghanistan legible to the trained or casual reader. His clear and approachable writing style, use of narrative, metaphor and personal stories to illustrate his arguments, thoroughness and quickness of pace, and his clear personal joy, investment and fascination with the country make this a highly readable--and more--digestible, historical account. . . . It is, in the end, a fascinating read and a tremendous resource.""---Rebecca Gang, Jura Gentium

""Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History makes a serious attempt to survey and analyze the changing political, cultural, and social landscapes of the country from the ancient time to the present. It provides meaningful and objective insights into governance, state legitimacy, social and economic development, and foreign interventions, and Afghan responses to them, with an admirable degree of thoughtfulness and fluency.""---Amin Saikal, Marine Corps University Journal

""Barfield has written a magnificent, learned, provoking book. He knows Afghanistan better than almost anyone writing on the topic today. He matches that knowledge with keen insight into how human societies grow and change. Barfield helps us think well about a complex and distant land, which is no small achievement.""---Paul D. Miller, Books and Culture

""Barfield offers a critique of U.S. and Western strategy in Afghanistan that will likely generate controversy, but strategists, planners, and those on missions in Afghanistan ignore them at their peril. Highly recommended.""---Prisco R. Hernandez, Military Review

""In his admirable volume on Afghanistan, Thomas Barfield has written a real tour de force. . . . No one should venture today into Afghanistan, in whatever capacity, without first reading this guide for the perplexed.""---Raphael Israeli, European Legacy

""Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand either the history of Afghanistan or what is happening there now.""---Danny Yee, Danny Reviews

""This fascinating survey of Afghanistan is an excellent book for those wanting to go beyond headlines. Written by an expert, with the stylistic flair to be savored by the nonexpert, Afghanistan also has judgments worthy of scholarly reflection. Barfield has captured political, social, and cultural insights of extraordinary importance to the policy arguments of today and tomorrow. Deploying diplomats, soldiers, and aid workers in particular should pay attention.""—Ronald E. Neumann, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, 2005-2007

""Barfield's book will become the single best source on Afghan history and politics virtually overnight. His deep knowledge of Afghanistan enables him to range widely and knit together a very coherent narrative with a conceptual clarity that is pretty rare. A great deal of learning is evident here, but Barfield wears it lightly.""—James C. Scott, author of Seeing Like a State

""Barfield's book is an excellent general introduction to the country and will be a source of wider debate within and beyond the scholarly community. I am not aware of a history of this kind that explores governance and state legitimacy as its organizing themes.""—Magnus Marsden, author of Living Islam: Muslim Religious Experience in Pakistan's North-West Frontier --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

From the Back Cover

"This fascinating survey of Afghanistan is an excellent book for those wanting to go beyond headlines. Written by an expert, with the stylistic flair to be savored by the nonexpert, "Afghanistan" also has judgments worthy of scholarly reflection. Barfield has captured political, social, and cultural insights of extraordinary importance to the policy arguments of today and tomorrow. Deploying diplomats, soldiers, and aid workers in particular should pay attention."--Ronald E. Neumann, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, 2005-2007

"Barfield's book will become the single best source on Afghan history and politics virtually overnight. His deep knowledge of Afghanistan enables him to range widely and knit together a very coherent narrative with a conceptual clarity that is pretty rare. A great deal of learning is evident here, but Barfield wears it lightly."--James C. Scott, author of "Seeing Like a State"

"Barfield's book is an excellent general introduction to the country and will be a source of wider debate within and beyond the scholarly community. I am not aware of a history of this kind that explores governance and state legitimacy as its organizing themes."--Magnus Marsden, author of "Living Islam: Muslim Religious Experience in Pakistan's North-West Frontier" --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

===

September/October 2010

Those who have suspected that the "graveyard of empires" label does not quite capture Afghanistan in international politics past and present will find in this book the comprehensive coverage they seek. Barfield, an anthropologist and old Afghanistan hand, has written a history of Afghanistan that weaves in geography, economics, and culture (think tribes, rural-urban dichotomies, value systems) while maintaining a focus throughout on Afghan rulers' relations with their own people and the outside world. The many peoples, places, and dates cited make for a dense book. (Although there are useful maps, a timeline would have helped.) But it is lightened by many breaks in the narrative to address broad themes or make intriguing comparisons, such as likening patrimonial Afghanistan to medieval Europe. Barfield's Afghanistan is not frozen in amber. He describes a country whose state-building efforts were not unlike those of other Muslim polities in modern times but came later and produced less change. It is a country whose ruler must "convince the Afghans that he is not beholden to foreigners, even as he convinces these very same foreigners to fund his state and military."

===

About the Author

Thomas Barfield is professor of anthropology at Boston University. His books include "The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China, 221 BC to AD 1757"; "The Central Asian Arabs of Afghanistan"; and "Afghanistan: An Atlas of Indigenous Domestic Architecture". --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

From the Inside Flap

"This fascinating survey of Afghanistan is an excellent book for those wanting to go beyond headlines. Written by an expert, with the stylistic flair to be savored by the nonexpert,Afghanistan also has judgments worthy of scholarly reflection. Barfield has captured political, social, and cultural insights of extraordinary importance to the policy arguments of today and tomorrow. Deploying diplomats, soldiers, and aid workers in particular should pay attention."--Ronald E. Neumann, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, 2005-2007

"Barfield's book is an excellent general introduction to the country and will be a source of wider debate within and beyond the scholarly community. I am not aware of a history of this kind that explores governance and state legitimacy as its organizing themes."--Magnus Marsden, author of Living Islam: Muslim Religious Experience in Pakistan's North-West Frontier

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B003ODIRLY

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Princeton University Press; 1st edition (29 March 2010)

Language ‏ : ‎ English

File size ‏ : ‎ 1543 KB

Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled

Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled

X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled

Print length ‏ : ‎ 400 pages

Best Sellers Rank: 3,395 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)

1 in Central Asian History

1 in Religious Studies - Church & State

1 in History of Ethnic & Tribal Religions

Customer Reviews: 4.5 out of 5 stars 155 ratings

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Average rating4.04 · Rating details · 891 ratings · 74 reviews

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Russ

Nov 13, 2020Russ rated it liked it

I read one book about Afghanistan annually, and found this one to be among the most informative. I'd long understood that Afghanistan never quite fit into other categories--too far east to be in the Middle East, too southern to be in Central Asia, too northern to be part of South Asia--but it had not fully sunk into me the extent to which Afghanistan has served as a buffer state between neighboring powers. Persians, India, and Russia being the main but not the only ones over the centuries.

Relatedly, I did not appreciate how the old Afghan heads of state, particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, tended to partner with one of the neighboring powers (most often the British via India) and fall under their foreign policy umbrella in exchange for copious aid money. These arrangements also helped the Afghan leaders domestically because it meant a lighter tax burden on the population and increased the subjects' political acceptance of the king.

I also learned about the Swiss cheese model of nationhood/governance. Imagine a map of a country governed by a king. Then imagine that there are bands of isolated people in the mountains or other remote places that basically keep to themselves and do not live along major routes. These are like the holes in Swiss cheese. The old Afghan chiefs and kings recognized that, and were content not to have 100 percent overlordship of each little pocket of territory. They understood that that's what Swiss cheese looks like.

The book also debunks the myth that the country has always been in a state of war. That has been true since the 1970s but before that there were long stretches of decades when the country was at peace. The real problems started when Afghan Communists took over and then the Soviets invaded to prop them up, destroying opposition political parties and setting the stage (once the Soviet Union could no longer aid Afghanistan) for a power vacuum to be filled in the 1990s by Pakistan-backed jihadists.

The early sections of the book helped show that the concept of splitting the country apart into smaller countries along ethnic lines is as unlikely as it is inadvisable. There's a lot of demographic overlap and blurring throughout the country, and that's never really been the driving force behind the "ungovernability" of Afghanistan. The issue seems to be more that people in the countryside resent it when some muckety muck in Kabul tries to tell them how to live their lives.

The format and tone of the book could have stood some improvement. A lot of instruction about journalism and nonfiction writing tells authors to assume that their audience is intelligent but uninformed. But in this book the writer seems to assume historical knowledge about Afghanistan that I simply did not have. Sometimes I wished it would have started out a chapter with a straightforward, linear description of how a particular king rose and fell from power. But there tended to be some jumping around and explanations of trends over dynasties, so it could be a little annoying to follow.

The book was pretty much stuck to the facts when describing the foreign policy of Disraeli and Brezhnev. But once we get to the 2000s there was a lot of negative opinion and ascribing of motives to Bush. At that point the book became more assertion-based than fact-based. (less)

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Kate

May 03, 2011Kate rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Ed

Shelves: new-history, afghanistan, new-in-2010, library, title-gangers

Thomas Barfield is an anthropologist and professor of anthropology at Princeton whose experiences in Afghanistan stretch back to the 1960s, when he travelled overland through the country as a student. He began ethnographic field studies there in the 1970s and witnessed the overthrow of the Afghan King Zahir Shah in 1973.

In his own words "Critics of the university tenure system undoubtedly put me among those useless faculty who purveyed esoteric and irrelevant knowledge to the young wihtout fear of termination. Wise policymakers had already determined that such remote places and people could be safely excluded from America's New World Order. . . . On September 11, 2001, Afghanistan suddenly became relevant" and Barfield became one of the few Americans who had the intimate knowledge of the country, its people and its history that we so desperately needed.

Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History is a broad overview of the history of Afghanistan and its culture. For a reader like myself, who reads the New York Times daily and a couple of other works on the country, namely Rory Stewart's The Places In Between and thinks they know everything, this book was a much needed corrective to my cultural biases, misunderstandings and creative ignorance of the country that we went to war with almost ten years ago. Afghanistan is blessedly well organized, with a clear goal set out in the introduction: to answer for the reader the following questions:

1. How did Afghanistan, which was overrun and ruled by a series of foreign dynasties for more than a thousand years, become renowned as the "graveyard of empires" in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries after forcing the withdrawal of both the British and Russians in a series of wars?

2. Why did the U.S. invasion of 2001 that toppled the Taliban not immediately set off a similar national insurgency (as it did in Iraq), and despite that, still fail to bring stability to the country?

3. Why have foreign attempts to change Afghanistan's politics, social structures, and government proved so ineffective?

4. How did a ruling dynasty established in 1747 manage to hold power over such a fractious people until 1978, and why has the afghan state since them experienced such difficulties in reestablishing a legitimate political order?

5. Why did a country for which the term"Balkanized" appeared ideally suited show so few signs of disintegration as a national state in spite of its many divisions?

6. How and why have splits in Afghan society since the 1920s over the structure of government and its policies led to so many periods of state collapse?

The chapter on the American-led invasion of Afghanistan was particularly enlightening. There are so many cliches about Afghanistan - that it can't be governed effectively because of its warring tribal factions won't allow it, the belief that it would become a new Yugoslavia, fracturing along ethnic lines that its history is one of constant insurgency and the belief that the country is mired in a medieval mindset are all simply untrue. Barfield demonstrates for the reader that Afghanistans long political history gives the lie to these suppositions and shows how a Western mindset regarding political intstitutions might lead us to believe them anyway.

I have two small gripes:1. There are typos. I feel like an academic press shouldn't have any 'teh's in their text. 2. There isn't much cultural history here. While I disagree with other reviewers who say that this is a dry read, I will add that it is an extremely dense one, packed with a lot of information in a relatively small number of pages. With that said, however, I highly highly recommend this book for anyone looking to educate themselves on Afghanistan's history and its current political climate. As Barfield says in his closing, Afghanistan is becoming more than just a backwater where the US fought the Taliban; with its rich mineral deposits and border with Pakistan (a soon-to-be-failed state with nuclear capabilities. Aside: I am scared shitless by Pakistan.) and other central Asian powers like Iran, Afghanistan will continue to be a focus of international interest for generations to come. I have, through reading this book, gained a tremendous amount of respect for Afghanistan and its people. I wish the country the best and hope that the US, Russia, China, India and whoever else can behave themselves there and work with the Afghan people to achieve the rich future that they deserve. (less)

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Lis

May 23, 2018Lis rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reviewed, 2018, nonfiction

I was assigned this book for a class I took, Development and Change in Iraq and Afghanistan with a great professor, and I could not recommend this book ENOUGH for how much it taught me about recent Afghan history, the impact of the U.S. intervention, and the nuances of Afghan identity and cultural history.

It's a seriously comprehensive, thoroughly researched and very readable book, and definitely a must-read for people who are interested in learning more about Afghanistan. (less)

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Amy

Jul 27, 2010Amy rated it really liked it

Ever since The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and Three Cups of Tea, I’ve found Afghanistan to be a strangely compelling region. In those books, there was a different sense of the humanity of the people compared to what is seen on the nightly news, and it was difficult to align the two in my mind. Mention Afghanistan to someone and all they usually come up with is the notorious Taliban or the crumbling ruins that appear on the news. How accurate is that image?

When I first received Afgha ...more

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Joseph

May 13, 2012Joseph rated it really liked it

Shelves: asian-history-thought

Excellent study by an scholar who actually lived in Afghanistan for a long time. Love his use of Medieval scholars like Ibn Khaldun. His work is detailed, but his writing is very readable. His discussion of ethnic groupings is excellent as is his analysis of the situation there now. Wish our politicos would read this book.

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K.M. Weiland

Sep 22, 2019K.M. Weiland rated it really liked it

Overall, an excellent and insightful glimpse through some of the misconceptions surrounding this country of unlikely significance.

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Dolf Haven

Sep 24, 2019Dolf Haven rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history

This was my first experiment listening to an audio book on my commute to work, and I am happy to say I survived without problems! Robin Bloodworth is a fantastic narrator, who manages to navigate through complex Afghan names (some patchwork due to corrections is audible) and manages to make a relatively dry book an interesting listen.

As a history of Afghanistan, this book is solid. That said, the balance between the cultural and political sides of history is heavily on the political side, which is a pity, for culturally (apart from history being dominated by religious concerns) there is much more to say about Afghanistan. Also, oddly, the role of foreign influences in Afghanistan, such as the CIA support in the rise of the Taliban, is mysteriously missing or only touched on in a general sense.

I actually became mesmerised with Afghanistan by the 2001 movie Kandahar by Mohsen Makhmalbaf and have been waiting for an opportunity to visit ever since. The current situation in the country has sadly made that impossible. I'll take this book as some consolation for not being able to go there. (less)

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Wendy

Feb 08, 2020Wendy rated it really liked it

Wholly appreciate the different perspective of this book, written by an anthropologist with extensive experience in Afghanistan. It's easy to get bogged down in millennia of history, constant invasions or occupations, internal intrigue, and wind up with an impression that Afghanistan is a place to which military things happen, the end. Yeah, there's plenty of war and intrigue to go around still, but this book does a wonderful job of zooming out to understand the social, cultural, ethnic dynamics that generate and influence the politics (and fighting). If you're diving into Afghan history, I think this really is a great primer to start with; it will breathe much more sense and understanding into your read of more unruly histories down the road. (less)

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Andrew Jose

Jun 26, 2021Andrew Jose rated it it was amazing

A must read for anyone seeking an introduction into the distant and recent past of the country to better comprehend present events and the trajectories Afghanistan's future heads along (less)

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James S

Aug 08, 2018James S rated it it was amazing

I approached this book with a near to non-existent knowledge of Afghanistan and it’s history. I chose the book based on several recommendations due to Barfield’s renown in the field of Afghanistan’s anthropology and politics. His credibility also takes another big boost due to the fact he actually worked there for several years in the 70’s. The man knows what he’s talking about!

I’d recommend the book to anyone wanting an in-depth introduction to Afghanistan, even if you already have some background knowledge. It is absolutely fascinating and Barfield manages to make a subject that I was expecting to be quite dry a very accessible and enjoyable read. He describes the multitude of tribes, ethnic groups and their politics at great lengths before even delving into the countries history of nearly continual wars. Which really provides you with the context required to understand something so alien to Westerners.

After reading this book I can really see why American (like so many others) has failed so spectacularly in Afghanistan. Just like in Iraq after the war (during the creation of the CPA), they have put so little importance on understanding the culture, and the tribal politics of Afghanistan. Through this blindness to tribal politics they helped create the Taliban, as they did with ISIS. The U.S. government would have done well to make this book mandatory to any personnel on the ground there. (less)

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Tim

Aug 14, 2011Tim rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Anyone with an interest in Afghanistan

Shelves: afghanistan

I pre-ordered this book before it was published specifically because Barfield is one of the most legit Afghan experts in the west. I read this after having done substantial research on Afghanistan, but nonetheless found this to be an engaging read that would also be accessible for someone who is just beginning to learn about Afghanistan.

The book begins with a thorough overview of the ethnic groups, settlement patterns, religion, and geography. It then discusses the social structures of the dominant Pashtun tribes and traces their rise as the power brokers of Afghanistan from the 1700s onward. He then narrates enough history, in sufficient detail, to help the reader understand current events in context. He offers plausible explanations for the failure in state building that has occurred since 2001, spreading blame around liberally but fairly. In my opinion, the only weakness in the book concerns military specific criticisms. For about 4 pages, he strays outside of his area of expertise and offers assertions regarding military operations, but offers no references to support those assertions. That is really the only criticism that I can muster - 4 pages out of nearly 400.

This is a very insightful book. It is a good first start in beginning further research on the country. But, even people well acquainted with Afghanistan will find this to be a very good read. (less)

2021-08-25

Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics Book 36) eBook : Barfield, Thomas: Amazon.com.au: Kindle Store

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