When originally published in 1984, Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan provided the first focused consideration of the 1978 Saur Revolution and the subsequent Soviet invasion and occupation of the country. Nearly four decades later, its conclusions remain crucial to understanding Afghanistan today.

In this much-anticipated re-release, Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan offers an opportunity for fresh insight into the antecedents of the nation's enduring conflicts. A new foreword by editors M. Nazif Shahrani and Robert L. Canfield contextualizes this collection, which relies on extensive fieldwork in the years leading up to the Soviet invasion. Specific tribal, ethnic, and gender groups are considered within the context of their region, and contributors discuss local responses to government decrees, Islamic-inspired grassroots activism, and interpretations of jihad outside of Kabul.

Long recognized as a vital ethnographic text in Afghan studies, Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan provides an extraordinary chance to experience the diversity of the Afghan people on the cusp of irrevocable change and to understand what they expected of the years ahead.

About the Author

M. Nazif Shahrani is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Indiana University.

Robert L. Canfield is Professor Emeritus of Sociocultural Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis.

Reviews

While there is no question of the authors' sympathies, this is a reasoned and objective treatment of how specific groups responded to what they perceive to be illegitimate rule. The volume makes a significant contribution to understanding state-local political relations in Afghanistan, the dynamics of political leadership and mobilization, and the role of Islamic ideology in local political processes.

-- Daniel G. Bates, American Anthropologist

This volume, the definitive anthropological statement on the current protracted conflict in Afghanistan, brings together the work of various scholars, many of whom engaged in extensive field research among the diverse peoples of Afghanistan during the 1970s. As a whole, the volume amounts to a scathing, although controlled, indictment of Western ethnocentrism regarding the nature of Islam and the Islamic insistence on the inseparability of religion, morality, politics, and community.

-- Audrey Shalinsky, Middle East Journal

The crisis in Afghanistan is by no means over; and one hopes that the importance of the rebellions, the 'revolution' in effect, will become still more evident to the West. The geopolitical implications of the Soviet presence in Afghanistan are certainly ominous; and the situation cannot be resolved ultimately without the active participation of the people of Afghanistan. But a final solution will also require a knowledge and understanding of local realities, and this volume adds much to such insights.

-- Hirsch Lazaar Silverman, International Journal on World Peace



Book Information
ISBN 9780253066770
Author M. Nazif Shahrani
Format Paperback
Page Count 404
Imprint Indiana University Press
Publisher Indiana University Press