Gender issues in the Afghanistan diaspora: Nadia's story

Frontiers

Volumn 17, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 102-123

  Shalinsky, Audrey C ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0039469772     PISSN: 01609009     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3346882     Document Type: Article

References (26)

1. Kamala Visweswaran, Fictions of Feminist Ethnography (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 109-13, is extremely critical of those like Arjun Appadurai who valorize "placelessness" and concludes with the rhetorical question, "Is it coincidence, then, that while many feminist theorists identify home as the site of theory, male critics write to eradicate it?" (111).
2. One of the best theoretical accounts of transnationalism is Nina Glick Schiller, Linda Basch, and Cristina Blanc-Szanton, Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Nationalism Reconsidered (New York: New York Academy of Science, 1992). Despite their inclusion of various case studies that include women's experiences, they ignore gender as a crucial intervening variable within their conceptual framework.
3. See James Clifford, "Diasporas," Cultural Anthropology 9 (1994): 313-14.
4. For an excellent example of an anthropologist/ethnographer reflecting back on her old fieldnotes and how she herself has changed, see Margery Wolf, A Thrice-Told Tale: Feminism, Postmodernism, and Ethnographic Responsibility (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1992). I concur with Wolf, who notes that she is still more interested in the Chinese villagers than in writing about herself (1). This is Nadia's story and not mine.
5. Compare the different forms of transnational experience that are possible. My Afghan friends find their homeland destroyed and themselves literally and figuratively "displaced." I seek out "displacement" as part of the ethnographic enterprise but am then ambivalent upon finding the field intersecting home. For an interesting addition, see Visweswaran, who argues that she, born in the United States of Indian descent and thus "displaced," through traveling to India for anthropological fieldwork was returning home (Fictions, 109).
6. On the significance of writing individual's stories, my perspective is similar to Lila Abu-Lughod, Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 13-15, 18-22. Abu-Lughod writes about how arranged marriage, for example, conjures up all sorts of images of oppression, the control of women's sexuality and lives, in the minds of western readers and yet the practice as it is realized in the lives of individuals does not foreclose opportunity for choice or struggles to influence or oppose.
7. Eventually two more children were born into this family, the youngest in 1981.
8. The ethnic group under study originated in Uzbekistan. The people were bilingual in Persian, an Indo-European language, and Uzbek, a language related to Turkish. For general information about the group, see Audrey Shalinsky, Long Years of Exile, (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1993).
9. When I discussed writing this essay with her, she agreed because she thought I should change the focus of my research to her generation rather than her parents'. However, she did not think there was anything special about her life or words. Obviously, this essay would not exist without the cooperation of Nadia and her family, although I am solely responsible for its contents.
10. See Audrey Shalinsky, "Learning Sexual Identity: Parents and Children in Northern Afghanistan," Anthropology and Education Quarterly 11 (1980): 258.
11. For the most complete account of the women's community, see Audrey Shalinsky, "Women's Relationships in Traditional Northern Afghanistan," Central Asian Survey 8 (1989): 117-29.
12. I explain the context of their emigration to the United States in Audrey Shalinsky, "The Aftermath of Fieldwork in Afghanistan: Personal Politics," Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly 16 (1991): 2-9. In that essay, Nadia's father discusses his reasons for applying to come to the United States rather than move to Saudi Arabia as his mother desired. The ethnic group has a long standing emigre community in Saudi Arabia.
13. Shalinsky, "Aftermath," 6.
14. Marriage to non-Muslims even by women is now increasing, and living together without marriage now also exists. However, most people in the community feel that such behavior reflects on the family and brings them dishonor; it is considered a major tragedy.
15. For a comparative example in which women strategically lay claim to certain control over their situation using a gendered discourse, indicating both the structural limitations of this deployment and the possibility of fulfillment and strength, see Dorinne K. Kondo, Crafting Selves: Power, Gender and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 259.
16. Pashtuns, who were dominant politically in the national government of Afghanistan and locally in Kunduz, were the objects of ethnic animosity by other groups. Afghanistan's political ethos contains important themes of interethnic competition for economic resources.
17. For a discussion of the way marriages were arranged by this group in Kunduz, Afghanistan, see Shalinsky, Long Years of Exile, 68-69.
18. See Audrey Shalinsky, "Battle for the Bride: The Wedding as Rite of Passage in Northern Afghanistan," The Eastern Anthropologist 37 (1984): 3-4.
19. Wedding videos are important for many Afghan ethnic groups. David Edwards in "Afghanistan, Ethnography, and the New World Order," Cultural Anthropology 9 (1994): 354, reports on one that he viewed with some Pashtun men in Washington, D.C., that included only the men's celebration in Peshawar, Pakistan. As Margaret Mills, "Response to David B. Edward's Afghanistan, Ethnography, and the New World Order,'" Cultural Anthropology 9 (1994): 363, points out in commenting on Edwards, some ethnic communities do allow mixed sex viewing. She notes that the diversity of the interpretations of these electronic texts provides perpetually emergent retextualizations.
20. Wedding videos are important for many Afghan ethnic groups. David Edwards in "Afghanistan, Ethnography, and the New World Order," Cultural Anthropology 9 (1994): 354, reports on one that he viewed with some Pashtun men in Washington, D.C., that included only the men's celebration in Peshawar, Pakistan. As Margaret Mills, "Response to David B. Edward's Afghanistan, Ethnography, and the New World Order,'" Cultural Anthropology 9 (1994): 363, points out in commenting on Edwards, some ethnic communities do allow mixed sex viewing. She notes that the diversity of the interpretations of these electronic texts provides perpetually emergent retextualizations.
21. There are also events in these wedding celebrations similar to marriage rituals in Uzbekistan. An example is the singing of the wedding song, "Yar Yar." Visitors from Uzbekistan occasionally are invited to attend weddings of the community in the United States. Likewise, wedding celebrations among the community members who live in Saudi Arabia also have similar practices. A discussion of all the variants of wedding customs in their different locations is beyond the scope of this essay.
22. For an analysis of the traditional marriage rituals in a rites of passage framework, see Shalinsky, "Battle for the Bride," 1-13.
23. As indicated, dance and music are a part of the traditional wedding celebration. However, indulgence in such activities was considered to promote sexual immorality. See Shalinsky, Long Years of Exile, 91, for a specific example. The general ideology is that the arousing of passion and selfishness leads to the lack of community responsibility, especially for women who then tempt men away from their duties also. The most complete analysis of this is provided in Audrey Shalinsky, "Reason, Desire and Sexuality: The Meaning of Gender in Northern Afghanistan," Ethos 14 (1986): 223-43.
24. As indicated, dance and music are a part of the traditional wedding celebration. However, indulgence in such activities was considered to promote sexual immorality. See Shalinsky, Long Years of Exile, 91, for a specific example. The general ideology is that the arousing of passion and selfishness leads to the lack of community responsibility, especially for women who then tempt men away from their duties also. The most complete analysis of this is provided in Audrey Shalinsky, "Reason, Desire and Sexuality: The Meaning of Gender in Northern Afghanistan," Ethos 14 (1986): 223-43.
25. Clifford called attention to gender renegotiation in immigration situations in his essay, "Diasporas," 314.
26. As for many communities of exile, there is some nostalgia as a mode of discourse and representation. However, this is not as institutionalized as for Iranians in the United States. See Hamid Naficy, "The Poetics and Practice of Iranian Nostalgia in Exile," Diaspora 1 (1991): 285-301, for the Iranian case.