Narrating marriage: negotiating practices and politics of belonging of Afghan return migrants

ABSTRACT

This article explores Afghan return migrants’ strategies and constraints to identify with the different spaces of belonging they encountered, through their expressions and practices of marriage. We take an in-depth approach to the life histories of 35 voluntary and involuntary Afghan returnees from European countries. We find that in narrating and performing different marriage practices, some Afghan return migrants construct fixed boundaries between different spaces of belonging, while others try to construct these boundaries as permeable and hybrid. Gender and mobility strongly define the way in which return migrants narrate and perform marriage as a cultural practice that determines who belongs, who wants to belong and who is able to belong. We conclude that while openly negotiating hybrid practices within a delicate theme such as marriage requires careful negotiation of boundaries, mobility can improve the extent to which return migrants can apply inventive and hybrid identifications for their personal needs and desires.     

From the private to the public sphere: new research on women's participation in peace-building

Despite the United Nation's landmark Security Council Resolution on women, peace and security in 2000 which highlighted the importance of women's participation in peace-building, only one in 40 peace treaty signatories over the last 25 years has been a woman. Yet evidence from non-government organisations and women's rights organisations shows that women are active agents of peace, resolving conflicts at all levels of society with little or no recognition. This article discusses new research which tracks women's roles in building peace at local levels in five conflict-affected contexts: Afghanistan, Liberia, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sierra Leone. The article highlights the significance of violence against women as a barrier to peace-building, and explores how and why women's exclusion and marginalisation from peace processes tends to increase the more formal the processes become. The article uses two case studies of women's rights organisations in Afghanistan and Nepal to illustrate the research findings and demonstrate how communities can mobilise to promote gender equality and fulfil women's rights.     

Potential Lives,Impossible Deaths

The number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan has increased dramatically in recent years as the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has tried to put down the Taliban insurgency. Reports of civilian casualties are, however, frequently dismissed as being examples of Taliban propaganda or blamed on the actions of enemy fighters, while the tragic loss of civilians is rarely marked or even acknowledged within the dominant frames of war. At first glance, the fact that civilians are so easily expendable appears to be at odds with the humanitarian intentions underpinning the war. However, I argue that the rhetoric of humanitarianism operates to preclude Afghans from appearing as recognizable human beings, foreclosing the possibility that they possess a life worthy of protection. Drawing on the work of Judith Butler, I will trace the ways in which Afghans have been reduced to the status of absolute victims, denied the very essence of their humanity and therefore a publically grievable death. By effectively constructing them as the living-dead, existing in a state of abeyance, Afghans have been exposed to a deathly logic in which their lives are expendable in the quest to make them liveable once again.     

Exile,gender and identity: the short stories of Afghanistani author Maryam Mahboob

The last two decades of the twentieth century witnessed the largest migration of the Afghanistani population in modern history. More than six million people migrated to neighbouring countries, and to North America, Europe and Australia. Among them were almost all of Afghanistan's female authors; some eventually returned, but others chose to remain in diaspora. Some stopped writing, while others have continued. Maryam Mahboob was the first Afghanistani female author to leave Afghanistan (in 1981). Her major works since then have dealt chiefly with the issues of women living in ‘Outlandia’. Having been treated as second-class citizens in Afghanistan, how do Afghanistani migrant women perceive their social status in a new environment? How has migration affected the lives of Afghanistani women of different generations? Have they assimilated with the new culture and adopted new identities, or have they retained their cultural identities and stayed in closed communities? How do these women perceive their ‘new home’ vis-à-vis the ‘old home-land’. What does it mean to be a female author from a Third World Islamic society living and writing in the First World? Why does Mahboob still write overwhelmingly about themes from her place of origin and in her native language, after so much time abroad?     

土耳其在阿富汗重建进程中的作用和影响探析

2001年美国主导的阿富汗战争取得阶段性胜利之后,阿富汗的重建工作就被提到了议事日程之上。作为北约成员国,土耳其凭借与阿富汗传统的亲密关系、相同的宗教信仰以及同时拥有阿富汗和巴基斯坦的好感等优势,积极参与阿国重建并发挥了有效作用。当然,在这一过程中土耳其也面临着自身经济实力限制、国内安全隐患牵制以及其它地区强国挑战等困难,但是未来积极参与阿富汗重建进程的态度和政策不会发生大的改变。     

巧实力理念与美国“阿富巴战略”评析

奥巴马政府上台后,为了打开美国外交的新局面,修正了小布什政府的新保守主义外交路线,推出了具有自由国际主义特色的巧实力外交战略。本文评析了美国"阿富巴战略",指出它正是依循巧实力理念而制定的,旨在实现美国反恐重心的转移和彻底铲除各种暴力极端势力。阿富汗大选是对这一新战略的考验,也折射出新战略所面临的困境。受制于诸多因素,新战略的走向和阿富汗战争的前景都不容乐观。     

Engaging men for gender justice: Overcoming barriers to girls' education in the Pashtun tribes of Pakistan

Resistance to girls' education is a social justice and human rights issue in many countries. In Pakistan, where the lowest school enrollment for girls is in Pashtun areas bordering Afghanistan, it is especially problematic. Pashtun society is patriarchal: Men have the power to construct obstacles to girls' education, and to remove them. This article therefore explores a different way of overcoming barriers to gender justice, namely through the participation of men. A qualitative Delphi process and in‐depth interviews with Pashtun men led to their consensus on seven key points of leverage where action could be taken. Participants agreed that progress toward gender parity could be achieved only by making allies of powerful community leaders, especially religious leaders, and by utilizing existing institutions, such as the mosque, Jirga (council of elders), and the men's guest house. For each point of leverage, a policy recommendation is made for increasing girls' participation in education.     

Gender,visuality and violence: visual securitization and the 2001 war in Afghanistan

Visual securitization (the discursive processes by which images are assigned security implications) is integral to understanding how war and political violence is made possible. However, its insights have yet to be coupled with feminist international relations (IR) scholarship, which is alert to the connections between gender and (in)security. This article synthesizes these two research areas through Lene Hansen’s (2011) framework of visual securitization to investigate the gendered logics that underpinned the 2001 war in Afghanistan. By analyzing 123 photojournalistic images alongside American media texts and foreign policy discourse, I argue western images of Afghan women enacted a specific visuality through which they became constructed as a legitimate matter of security. The article makes two important contributions through this analysis. Firstly, it extends feminist understanding of the war in Afghanistan by demonstrating how the interplay between the visual and textual, and the gendered and racial logics operating within such interplay, visually produced Afghan women as a referent object of security. Secondly, this argument illustrates how gender can be critical in enabling the acceptance of visual securitizations, and how such securitizations can be enacted through gendered representations of insecurity and threat.     

Intercultural teaching through translation: an Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) literacy course case in Afghanistan

The purpose of this study was to teach and evaluate the effectiveness of an Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) course through translation to students in Afghanistan. First, an interview was conducted to determine students’ computer skills. It was concluded that the students had almost no computer skills. The course was delivered to two groups of first-year students for 14 weeks during one semester. In group one, students were taught by a Turkish instructor through a translator. The course was delivered to group 2 by a native-language speaking teacher. At the end of the semester, students of both groups were given a final exam and were asked to comment about teaching speed, overall satisfaction, teacher reactions, course materials and future improvements to the course. Statistically, there was no significant difference between the final performances of students in both groups. The students also declared that they wanted to greatly improve their computer skills and use the Internet to make use of digital ICT resources for other courses, too. An additional finding was that there was a 20-min time-delay between the Turkish and native groups due to the translation process throughout each course session.     

XI. Neurotic children: Mandel clinic Michael Reese Hospital 1

Social workers who treat children of deployed servicemembers may feel poorly prepared to work competently with military families and will benefit from understanding the immediate and long-term effects of parental deployment upon children. This review consolidates a substantial, shifting knowledge base and establishes a coherent theoretical framework for social workers to learn about the effects of war-specific deployment cycles for servicemembers, and the relationship among family members' and children's experiences with deployment separation. The author considers important lessons learned during the Vietnam War and the unique experiences specific to current wars. This article compares the Vietnam War and the more recent wars' characteristics of military deployment, demographic characteristics of service members, servicemembers' family characteristics, and research findings about the psychosocial effects of deployment on children. A case vignette is presented to clarify how an understanding of deployment and reintegration is necessary for the treatment of servicemembers, families, and children by social workers.