%0 Journal Article
%T The Imperial Sociology of the ¡®Tribe¡¯ in Afghanistan
%A Nivi Manchanda
%J Millennium
%@ 1477-9021
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/0305829817741267
%X The ¡®tribe¡¯ is a notion intimately related to the study of Afghanistan, used as a generic signifier for all things Afghan, it is through this notion that the co-constitution of coloniser and colonised is crystallised and foregrounded in Afghanistan. By tracing the way in which the term ¡®tribe¡¯ has been deployed in the Afghan context, the article performs two kinds of intellectual labour. First, by following the evolution of a concept from its use in the early 19th century to the literature on Afghanistan in the 21st century, wherein the ¡®tribes¡¯ seem to have acquired a newfound importance, it undertakes a genealogy or intellectual history of the term. The Afghan ¡®tribes¡¯ as an object of study, follow an interesting trajectory: initially likened to Scottish clans, they were soon seen as brave and loyal men but fundamentally different from their British interlocutors, to a ¡®problem¡¯ that needed to be managed and finally, as indispensable to a long-term ¡®Afghan strategy¡¯. And second, it endeavours to describe how that intellectual history is intimately connected to the exigencies of imperialism and the colonial politics of knowledge production
%K tribes
%K empire
%K Afghanistan
%K tribus
%K empire
%K Afghanistan
%K tribus
%K imperio
%K Afganist¨¢n
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0305829817741267