Kabul Carnival

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Julie Billaud. Kabul Carnival

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Kabul Carnival

Tobias Kelly, Series Editor

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The fieldwork on which this book is based is not removed from the imperial dynamics that led to the occupation of Afghanistan. There is little chance that this country would have come under my consideration before 9/11 and the subsequent military intervention that made the resources of NGOs, international organizations, and other “Aidland” subcontractors multiply in a matter of a few weeks—hence providing career opportunities for young (and often naive) graduates who want to change the world, much like the one I was when I was first sent to Afghanistan. However, the objective of this book is neither to speak for Afghan women nor to represent the culture to which they are supposed to belong. Rather, this book endeavors to tell the multifaceted story of an occupation. While seeking to define the nature of the encounters occurring in one of the world’s most important humanitarian theaters, this book illustrates the intended and unintended effects of international supervision in the everyday lives of women and its impact on their capacity to speak.

Like any research conducted in highly unstable environments, this study has been accompanied by many constraints, which have deeply influenced the design and methodology of my work. Unable to settle in one single site location in the manner classic ethnographers traditionally work, I was forced to adapt and navigate in different circles according to the opportunities that arose out of my encounters. I became a “mobile ethnographer” (Marcus 1995, 96), pushed and pulled according to circumstances over which I had little control—an experience I share with other anthropologists who have worked under similar circumstances and whose texts bear witness to life’s inherent precariousness (Nordstrom 2004; Green 1994; Taussig 2003; Aretxaga 1997; Scheper-Hughes 1992).

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