Thomas Barfield, Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History

The destabilization and military occupation of Afghanistan by the United States over the past three decades has triggered the hasty production of a large corpus of writings about the political and socio-cultural dynamics of the country by Euro-American academics, travellers, journalists, and aid and development workers. Anthropologists who have contributed to these writings have become instant ‘authorities’, ‘experts’, ‘specialists’, and ‘old hands’ about the country. Thomas Barfield is one o...