نوع مقاله : مقاله پژوهشی
موضوعات
عنوان مقاله English
نویسنده English
This article revisits one of the most enduring paradigms in the ethnography of Afghanistan—the segmentary lineage model—and examines its limitations in accounting for the historical processes that shaped the modern Afghan state. While classic anthropological theories often treat tribal structures and state authority as separate domains, this article argues that the Afghan state emerged not from the decline of tribal structures, but through an intensification of their internal hierarchies. Focusing on the mass displacement and marginalization of Hazara Shi’as under Abdur Rahman Khan in the late nineteenth century, the article contends that these acts of violence were not breakdowns of order but state-making practices rooted in sectarian, territorial, and ethnic reconfigurations.
Drawing on archival materials, colonial texts, and critical anthropological theory, the article shows how Hazara displacement functioned as a constitutive technique of sovereignty. The first section critiques the segmentary lineage theory, engaging scholars such as Akbar Ahmad, Talal Asad, and Michael Meeker. The second examines Abdur Rahman’s cartographic imagination and the spatialization of sectarian difference through forced migrations and land redistribution.
Ultimately, the article challenges binaries such as tribe/state and custom/law by demonstrating how state formation in Afghanistan was deeply embedded in tribal logics. Displacement, it argues, should be understood not as a sign of failure, but as a foundational technique in the historical construction of Afghan sovereignty.
کلیدواژهها English
