The Carpetbaggers of Kabul and Other American-Afghan Entanglements: Intimate Development, Geopolitics, and the Currency of Gender and Grief

188 Pages·2017·4.035 MB·English

by  Jennifer Fluri, Rachel Lehr, Nik Heynen, Mathew Coleman, Sapana Doshi

The Carpetbaggers of Kabul and
Other American- Afghan Entanglements
geographies of justice and social transformation
Series editors
Nik Heynen, University of Georgia
Mathew Coleman, Ohio State University
Sapana Doshi, University of Arizona
Advisory board
Deborah Cowen, University of Toronto
Zeynep Gambetti, Boğaziçi University
Geoff Mann, Simon Fraser University
James McCarthy, Clark University
Beverly Mullings, Queen’s University
Harvey Neo, National University of Singapore
Geraldine Pratt, University of British Columbia
Ananya Roy, University of California, Berkeley
Michael Watts, University of California, Berkeley
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, CUNY Graduate Center
Jamie Winders, Syracuse University
Melissa W. Wright, Pennsylvania State University
Brenda S. A. Yeoh, National University of Singapore
The Carpetbaggers of Kabul
and Other American- Afghan
Entanglements
intimate development, geopolitics,
and the currency of gender and grief
jennifer l. fluri
rachel lehr
The University of Georgia Press
Athens
© 2017 by the University of Georgia Press
Athens, Georgia 30602
www .ugapress .org
All rights reserved
Set in 10/12.5 Minion Pro by Graphic Composition, Inc., Bogart, Georgia
Most University of Georgia Press titles are
available from popular e-book vendors.
Printed digitally
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016955269
ISBN: 9780820350349 (hardcover: alk. paper)
ISBN: 9780820350356 (paperback: alk. paper)
ISBN: 9780820350332 (ebook)
Dedicated to the memory of my foremothers
Sonia Tave Lehr, Luba Tave Hurwitz,
and Bertha Brod Kanare. (R. L.)
Dedicated in memory of my mother,
Mary Dinofrio Fluri. (J. L. F.)
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
chapter 1 Introduction 1
chapter 2 The Carpetbaggers of Kabul 21
chapter 3 Gender and Grief Currency 43
chapter 4 “Conscientiously Chic”
The Production and Consumption of
Afghan Women’s Liberation 53
chapter 5 “We Should Be Eating the Grant,
but the Grant Eats Us” 65
chapter 6 “Saving” Soraya 86
chapter 7 “Our Hearts Break”
9/11 Deaths, Afghan Lives,
and Intimate Intervention 104
chapter 8 Gender Currency and the
Development of Wealth 117
Notes 133
Glossary 141
Works Cited and Consulted 145
Index 161
This page intentionally left blank
PrefaCe
The idea for writing this book began in 2007 when Jennifer was an assistant
professor at Dartmouth College researching international assistance in Afghani-
stan. At that time Rachel was executive director of Rubia, Inc., a U.S.-based
nonprofit organization. This organization worked in partnership with the Rubia
Organization for the Development of Afghanistan, a local nongovernmental
organization (ngo) in Afghanistan.
This partnership grew from a long- term personal relationship Rachel had es-
tablished with Afghans in the early 1980s. In 2007 Rubia, Inc. began the registra-
tion process for becoming a 501c3 nonprofit with a board of directors. Jennifer
became an active board member and met with and visited Rubia’s programs and
participants in Afghanistan. Over the course of these experiences we (Jennifer
and Rachel) began to work together on a number of different academic projects.
One of our collaborative efforts included developing and presenting a series of
lectures about everyday life in Afghanistan and the geopolitics of conflict, aid,
and development, titled Rediscovering Afghanistan: Lessons from the Home. We
presented these lectures during 2007– 12 throughout New Hampshire (nh), in
partnership with the Arts Alliance of Northern New Hampshire and funded by
the nh Humanities Council.1
We developed these lectures from Rachel’s ethnographic research and expe-
riences living and working with Afghans, and Jennifer’s research on geopoli-
tics and international aid and development in Afghanistan (Fluri 2006, 2008a,
2008b, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c, 2011a, 2011b, 2012). Jennifer’s research included
questionnaires and interviews with Afghans and international workers primar-
ily living and working in Kabul, Afghanistan. Rachel’s research was gathered
while she was completing her doctoral dissertation in linguistics on Pashai, a
language spoken by a minority population in Afghanistan. Pashai was the lan-
guage spoken by the founders of Rubia. Our lectures attempted to provide a
complex and complicated view of both international geopolitics and daily life
ix