| |
Contributions from
the Column
Books and Media
Worlds Apart: Local and Global Villages
Periphery and globalised capitalism
Ethnicity and ethnic conflicts in Afghanistan
Partnership for International Development
World Bank’s water policy
04/2005 |
|
Afghanistan: successful analysis
Conrad Schetter:
Ethnizität und ethnische Konflikte in Afghanistan (Ethnicity and ethnic conflicts in Afghanistan).
Berlin, Dietrich Reimer 2003, 641 pages,
Euro 82.00, ISBN 3-496-02750-9
The collapse of the Soviet bloc has triggered the outbreak of new types of conflict. As if frozen in time and held captive for decades, ethnicity is now bubbling up. Depending on one’s point of view, it is either an epidemic that threatens globalisation, or an antitoxin serum that fights, postpones and prevents it. Taking Afghanistan as an example, Conrad Schetter pursues a no lesser goal than to interpret this phenomenon at a theoretical level, drawing on an extremely wide range of sources. He is, no doubt, focussing on recent history’s most obvious case (apart from the Balkans) of “ethnicisation”.
Schetter understands ethnicity as a “recent phenomenon, linked to the formation of modern nation-states and in stark contrast to the historical continuity it suggests“. He defines it as “acts of individuals in the name of an ethnic group” or “acts of the members of an ethnic group”, “who legitimise these acts by referring to certain traditions”.
The distinction between “ethnic category” and “ethnic group” proves to be very productive for the analysis. Unfortunately, the author does not always succeed in deducing unambiguous material from the mass of his very diverse sources. In general, he confronts “etic“ and “emic” views. The first term refers to views from outside a specific culture while the second refers to those from within. The sources used differ significantly in quality, intention and soundness. The ethnicity theory Schetter discusses over a hundred pages is nonetheless a useful reference for interpreting past events on Afghanistan territory in a way which serves to understand the present. That the war which started in 1978/79 was of particular importance, corresponds to the historically-induced link of ethnicity the author wants to establish.
The transcription of Afghanistan names and terms unfamiliar to the lay reader should not deter a wider public. Unfortunately some transcription errors may distract professionl readers from what the book has to offer: An analysis of Afghanistan’s history from the point of view of a geographer interested in ethnology, who not only argues for interdisciplinary research, but actually does carry it out. Schetter has understood that the comprehensiveness of the subject matter demands an equally-inclusive contemplation.
Lutz Rzehak
|
