Chasing Tales: Travel Writing, Journalism and the History of British Ideas about Afghanistan. (Studia Imagologica)

294 Pages·2007·0.74 MB·English

by  Corinne Fowler

Chasing Tales
S i
tudia magologica
amSterdam StudieS on cultural identity
12
Serie editors
Hugo Dyserinck
Joep Leerssen
Imagology
, the study of cross-national perceptions and images
as expressed in literary discourse, has for many decades been one
of the more challenging and promising branches of Comparative
Literature.
In recent years, the shape both of literary studies and of international
relations (in the political as well as the cultural sphere) has taken a
turn which makes imagology more topical and urgent than before.
Increasingly, the attitudes, stereotypes and prejudices which govern
literary activity and international relations are perceived in their full
importance; their nature as textual (frequently literary) constructs
is more clearly apprehended; and the necessity for a textual and
historical analysis of their typology, their discursive expression and
dissemination, is being recognized by historians and literary scholars.
The series Studia Imagologica, which will accommodate scholarly
monographs in English, French or German, provides a forum for this
literary-historical specialism.
Chasing Tales
Travel Writing, Journalism
and the History of British
Ideas about Afghanistan
Corinne Fowler
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007
Cover image: Save Me From My Friends, Nov. 30, 1878.
Reproduced with permission of Punch Ltd., www.punch.co.uk
Cover Design: Erick de Jong
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN: 978-90-420-2262-1
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007
Printed in the Netherlands
Chasing Tales is dedicated to the memory of all the Afghans who
have lost their lives, or livelihoods, in other people’s wars. I offer this
book as a small contribution towards understanding the cultural forces
that have shaped British ideas about Afghanistan in the hope that the
history of Anglo-Afghan contact will have a slightly reduced power to
shape further misunderstandings.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface 1

Introduction 3

Part One: Hanging old stories on the necks of new characters1:
the legacy of nineteenth-century Afghan-British encounters 25
Afghanistan in the writing of Rudyard Kipling, and Kipling
in travel writing about Afghanistan 27
The problem of absentee authority: the case of Nuristan 34
Rudyard Kipling and British news media coverage of Operation
Enduring Freedom 48
Mythologising Afghanistan 51
Homicidal Nuristanis 53
The Wild Westification of Afghanistan 57
Medievalising Afghanistan 64
Medievalisation in news media coverage of Operation Enduring
Freedom 69
Conclusion 75

Part Two: Where ethnographers fear to tread:
the counter-influence of classical ethnography on
travel writing and journalism about Afghanistan 79
Ethnography as travel writing 81
The ‘crisis’ in socio-cultural ethnography 83
Ethnography about Afghanistan 86
The counter-influence of classical ethnographies on the travel
writing of journalists Christopher Kremmer and Christina Lamb 89
Buzkashi as synecdochic metaphor 94
Children’s games as an explanatory metaphor 105
viii Chasing Tales
Implied insight: synecdoche and journalism’s
pseudo-ethnographic content 112
Travel writing, ethnography and Afghan agency in
Christopher Kremmer and Christina Lamb 124
Gender, genre and authorial agency 129
Conclusion: textual negotiations and anthropological solutions 139

Part Three: Retailing insight: reporting Operation Enduring
Freedom 147
Travel writing and journalism: a meeting on the road 147
Reading news media coverage in times of war 149
The absence of context in British news media coverage
of Operation Enduring Freedom 164
Revisiting Afghanistan: the resurgence of nineteenth-century
themes in news media coverage of Afghanistan 185
Men and women reporting Afghan women 189
Conclusion 205

Conclusion:
De-mining the terrain of Afghan-British encounter 213

Endnotes 220
Appendices
1. Buzkashi in Whitney Azoy’s 2003 Buzkashi. Game and Power
in Afghanistan 247
2. Veronica Doubleday’s Three Women of Herat 248
3. Margaret Mills’s Rhetorics and Politics in Afghan Traditional
Storytelling 251
4. Nazif Shahrani’s The Khirghiz and Wakhi of Afghanistan
Adaptation to Closed Frontiers and War 252
5. Nancy Tapper’s Politics, gender and marriage in an Afghan
tribal society 254
6. Interview with Christina Lamb 256

Bibliographies: Primary 261
Secondary 263

Index 279
Acknowledgements
Written with thanks for assistance, friendship and support of a number
of people who deserve special thanks. To Angela Smith, who offered
wise and constructive advice throughout the writing of this book.
Most particularly I wish to thank Bethan Benwell, Fiona
Chalamander, Fiona Darroch, Timothy Fitzgerald, Adrian Hunter,
Michelle Keown, Brian MacNair and Mark Nixon for offering to read
drafts or discuss ideas despite their busy schedules. Also to James
Procter, for continual generosity and encouragement. I am also
grateful to David Richards, Manuel Hernandez, Mohammed Naguib,
Shuruq Naguib, Sahar Saba and Payam Shalchi for their willingness to
discuss ideas with me. I am also extremely thankful to those who have
provided valuable feedback to my conference papers, particularly
Charles Forsdick, John Eade, Ludmilla Kostova, Garry Marvin,
Alasdair Pettinger, Kristi Siegel, and Tim Youngs. This book would
not have been possible without the financial support of the Arts and
Humanities Research Board, which included an additional grant for a
study trip to the British Film Institute. The study would also have been
impossible to complete without the generous cooperation of the
Glasgow Media Group, particularly Greg Philo, who provided access
to the Group’s extensive archives for weeks on end. Finally, I am
deeply grateful for the sustained support and interest of my close
friends David Harley, Jane Baron, Steve Baron and my family
Yvonne, Malcolm, Naomi and Jairo.
Note: An earlier, shorter version of Part Two appeared as ‘Where
ethnographers fear to tread: the counter-influence of ethnography on
Christopher Kremmer’s The Carpet Wars (2002) and Christina
Lamb’s The Sewing Circles of Herat (2002)’ in Journeys4:1, 2003.