Crafting Masculine Selves : culture, war, and psychodynamics in afghanistan.

Crafting Masculine Selves represents a journey into the culture and psychological dynamics of a select group of Afghan Pashtun men. The book is based on eighteen months of fieldwork in a volatile area of Afghanistan, adjoining the border with Pakistan, carried out between 2009 and 2013. In addition to participant observation, the author employed a person-centered ethnographic methodology, wherein he conducted long-term, one-on-one interview sessions with four male individuals, and analyzed four additional life trajectories. The book unveils and chronicles how the creation and use of multiple subjectivities, and the unconscious, dissociative interplay that the individual maintains between them, is one of the “stratagems” with which individuals manage to make sense of what happens to them in real life, and to pragmatically inhabit personal circumstances that are often marred by conflict and violence, both at the interpersonal and at the political level. The main cultural thread the book investigates is that of masculinity, a crucial idiom in a very androcentric Pashtun society. Virtually all the interlocutors the book presents have to navigate deep private conflicts and contradictions related to how society expects them to be appropriate, proper men, against the backdrop of a sociopolitical Afghan context heavily impacted by almost forty years of uninterrupted war. Feeling constrained by the strict norms about a severe and honor-bound masculinity in a quickly changing Afghanistan, but equally striving to be culturally validated by their own peers, these men struggle to create and publicly legitimize their own, idiosyncratic way of being appropriate men. While they suffer at times the stern rebuke of their social environment, all the same they represent the seeds for a change of those very cultural norms. Against the backdrop of four decades of continuous conflict in Afghanistan, the Pashtun male protagonists of this book carry out their daily effort to internally negotiate, adjust (if at all), and respond to the very strict cultural norms and rules of masculinity that their androcentric social environment enjoins on them. Yet, in a widespread context of war, displacement, relocation, and social violence, cultural expectations and stringent tenets on how to comport oneself as a "real man" have a profound impact on the psychological equilibrium and emotional dynamics of these individuals. This book is a close investigation into these private and at times contradictory aspects of subjectivity. Stemming from five years of research in a southeastern province of Afghanistan, it presents a long-term, psychodynamic engagement with a select group of male Pashtun individuals, which results in a multilayered dive not only into their inner lives, but also into the cultural and social environment in which they live and develop. Behind the screen of what often seems like outward conformity, Andrea Chiovenda is able to point to areas of strong inner conflict, ambivalence, and rebellion, which in turn will serve as the seeds for cultural and social change. These dynamics play out in a setting in which what was considered legitimate and justifiable violence on the battlefield has now spilled over into everyday life, even among non-combatants. Based on five years of ethnographic research among Pashtun men in Afghanistan, this text presents a psychological study of adjustment and adaptation (or lack thereof) to cultural norms and rules of masculinity, and of how social expectations impact the subjectivity and inner lives of the protagonists. It chronicles Afghan Pashtun men's private conflicts, contradictions, and ambivalences just as much as it shows how three decades of continuous conflict have exacerbated and deepened the place and role of violence in Pashtun society, where what was considerate legitimate and justifiable behaviour in the battlefield has spilled over into everyday life among non-combatants Based on five years of ethnographic research among Pashtun men in Afghanistan, this book presents a psychological study of adjustment and adaptation (or lack thereof) to cultural norms and rules of masculinity, and of how social expectations impact the subjectivity and inner lives of the protagonists. It chronicles Afghan Pashtun men's private conflicts, contradictions, and ambivalences just as much as it shows how three decades of continuous conflict haveexacerbated and deepened the place and role of violence in Pashtun society, where what was considerate legitimate and justifiable behavior in the battlefield has spilled over into everyday life among non-combatants Crafting Masculine Selves 2 Contents 6 Acknowledgments 8 Introduction 12 1 Historical and Ethnographic Background 42 2 Rohullah 63 3 Umar 93 4 Baryalay 122 5 Rahmat 172 6 Between What “Was” and What “Is” 206 Conclusion 241 Bibliography 250 Index 262 Crafting,Masculine,Selves