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Accepted Paper:
Culture, heritage and gender in Afghanistan
Carol Mann (SOAS, University of London)
Paper short abstract:
This paper seeks to map out the main problems concerning the definition of cultural heritage and its preservation in Afghanistan and examines how these are linked to constructs of gendered identity.
Paper long abstract:
This paper seeks to map out the main problems regarding the preservation of heritage in Afghanistan, taking into account various local constructs of genealogy and gendered identity. Basing myself on Charles Lindholm's and Akbar S. Ahmed's pioneering articles, I will argue that colonial policies of the British Raj helped mould a contradictory Afghan model, interiorised by the Afghans themselves, quite in the keeping of imperial politics elsewhere as described by Benedict Anderson. The icons produced by the Empire contributed to a set of impracticable founding myths in which women are conspicuously absent, with far reaching consequences today, even within World Heritage policies of which a critique will be offered in the present paper.
In Afghanistan, it is very hard to talk about a national culture in an essentially pre-state tribal society where ethnic allegiance far dominates any identification with some kind of nebulous nation and its still more incomprehensible past. The vast rural majority of its population (some 80%) feel completely excluded by the dominant discourse on culture, which goes long way in explaining the Taliban reaction at Bamyan. Furthermore, any contribution of women to the various cultures in Afghanistan has always been overlooked and/or ignored. This paper reviews attitudes to female creativity and explains propositions on how to include women in a wider definition of culture as well as heritage policies in this area. The management of the Anatolian site of Çatalhöyük will be offered as a possible example to follow in the region. The political limitations of museumification' policies will be described in relation to the destruction of the statues at Bamyan and how World Heritage strategists need to display greater sensitivity to local issues and values.
This article is based on field work intermittently carried out in Pakistan and Afghanistan between 2001 and 2006.
E-paper: this Paper will not be presented, but read in advance and discussed
Heritage and art between state ideology and grassroots activism
EPapers