The Association of Social Anthropologists Greece (SKAE) invites you to the online workshop
Afghan Women beyond Victimization and Orientalism: Anthropological Perspectives
on Wednesday,
Nov. 3, 17:30-20:00 EET.
Four women anthropologists who have conducted long-term fieldwork in Afghanistan will discuss about the war, the military-humanitarian intervention, and women in Afghanistan.
Invited speakers: Sonia Ahsan-Tirmizi (Πανεπιστήμιο Columbia) Julie Billaud (Geneva Graduate Institute), Anila Daulatzai (Berkeley University) and Nancy Lindisfarne (SOAS)
The online workshop will be held in English and it is open to the public.
Registration required: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEtcOCsrjIuHdRqlGxvyRuntc3VJTSCeuEk
* Registration to attend the online seminar at zoom is now closed. However, the event will be livestreamed on SKAE’s channel on YOU TUBE at the following link: https://youtu.be/MKTIc0ljC7k
Description
With the withdrawal of US-led military forces from Afghanistan in August and the Taliban’s return to power, Afghanistan and in particular Afghan women have once again gained public attention. In various – media or other – reports and coverage from the region and in the resounding calls to the West to protect Afghan women and girls, one encounters familiar and simplified representations and tropes – orientalism, exoticism, women’s victimization, the demonization of Islam. After all, it was the western crusade to save and liberate Muslim women, and in this case, Afghan ones from the Taliban, that served as justification for the long-term imperial military intervention and presence in the region. At the same time, Afghan women, both in Afghanistan and abroad, voice their concerns and protest with emancipatory and feminist demands.
The Association of Social Anthropologists Greece (ΣΚΑΕ) invites female anthropologists and researchers with long research experience in Afghanistan to present their work in a webinar addressed to the wider audience in Greece (and beyond). Presenters will introduce the audience to ethnographically informed in-depth research and complex anthropological approaches of Afghanistan with a special focus on Afghan women’s perspectives and experiences. The aim of the webinar is to address and highlight the importance of perspectives that take into account the broader historical and socio-political context, the effects of war and militarization as well as issues of class and ethnicity.
Invited speakers
“Pedagogies of Piety and Promiscuity”
Sonia Ahsan-Tirmizi | Columbia University
Sonia Ahsan-Tirmizi received her PhD from Columbia University in 2015. She is the author of Pious Peripheries: Runaway Women in Post-Taliban Afghanistan published by Stanford University Press in May 2021. Her other publications include “Engendering the Taliban” and “When Muslims become Feminists.”
“Afghan women and the global war on terror”
Julie Billaud | Graduate Institute Geneva
Julie Billaud is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Sociology. A legal and political anthropologist, she joined the Graduate Institute in 2019, where she teaches Human Rights and the Politics of Culture (ANSO) and Comparative Humanitarianisms: Anthropological Perspectives (MINT). She earned her PhD from the University of Sussex and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. She is the author of Kabul Carnival: Gender Politics in Postwar Afghanistan (2015, Pennsylvania University Press). Her current research interests span from the relationship between ethics and politics in humanitarian action to the transformations of global governance processes resulting from the encroachment of neoliberal forms of management in public affairs.
“Women and then End of the American Occupation in Afghanistan”
Nancy Lindisfarne-Tapper | SOAS
Nancy Lindisfarne-Tapper taught social anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, UK for many years. She has carried out fieldwork in Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Wales and the USA. Her books include Bartered Brides: Politics, Gender and Marriage in an Afghan Tribal Society (1991), Dancing in Damascus (2000) and Dislocating Masculinity (2016) and most recently, Afghan Village Voices: Stories from a Tribal Community, with Richard Tapper. Nancy blogs with Jonathan Neale at AnneBonnyPirate.org. (https://annebonnypirate.org/)
“War, occupation and everyday life of women in Afghanistan”
Anila Daulatzai | UC Berkeley
Anila Daulatzai is a socio-cultural anthropologist and Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley. She has taught in prisons, and in universities across three continents. She has been conducting research in Afghanistan as well as with Afghan refugees in Pakistan since 1995. Between 2006 and 2013 she carried out ethnographic fieldwork in Kabul and taught at Kabul University and at the American University of Afghanistan. Her past and current research projects look at widowhood, heroin use, and polio through the lens of serial war. She is currently completing her book manuscript provisionally titled War and What Remains. Everyday Life in Contemporary Kabul, Afghanistan, based on ethnographic research based on ethnographic research with widows and their families in Kabul. In her book she explores everyday life amidst a current war and occupation with a backdrop of prior wars, occupation, and humanitarianism.