Portrayed in Western discourse as tribal and traditional, Afghans have in fact intensely debated women's rights, democracy, modernity, and Islam as part of their nation building in the post-9/11 era. Wazhmah Osman places television at the heart of these public and politically charged clashes while revealing how the medium also provides war-weary Afghans with a semblance of open discussion and healing. After four decades of gender and sectarian violence, she argues, the internationally funded media sector has the potential to bring about justice, national integration, and peace.
Fieldwork from across Afghanistan allowed Osman to record the voices of many Afghan media producers and people. Afghans offer their own seldom-heard views on the country's cultural progress and belief systems, their understandings of themselves, and the role of international interventions. Osman analyzes the impact of transnational media and foreign funding while keeping the focus on local cultural contestations, productions, and social movements. As a result, she redirects the global dialogue about Afghanistan to Afghans and challenges top-down narratives of humanitarian development.
Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1. Legitimizing Modernity: Indigenous Modernities, Foreign Incursions, and Their Backlashes Chapter 2. Imperialism, Globalization, and Development: Overlaps and Disjunctures Chapter 3. Afghan Television Production: A Distinctive Political Economy Chapter 4. Producers and Production: The Development Gaze and the Imperial Gaze Chapter 5. Reaching Vulnerable and Dangerous Populations: Women and the Pashtuns Chapter 6. Reception and Audiences: The Demands and Desires of Afghan People Conclusion: The Future of Media, the Future of Afghanistan Appendix A: Ethnic Groups Table Appendix B: Media Funding Sources and Recipients Table Appendix C: TV Stations and Affiliations Table Notes References Index
"This is the first richly observed ethnographic account of the landscape of media in post-US invasion Afghanistan. Osman’s self-reflexive voice in telling the story of the dynamic media field in Afghanistan is in and of itself of import. The limited scholarship that exists on media and democracy under occupation in the Global South tends to reproduce paternalistic narratives of development. In contrast, this critical work foregrounds the geopolitical context that leads to a television 'boom,' highlighting the important role of women and ethnic minority communities in Afghani media production and consumption. Television and Afghan Culture Wars is a must read for scholars and students of global media and American empire."--Paula Chakravartty, coeditor of Race, Empire and the Crisis of the Subprime
