Research Focus Group Talk: The Work of War: Gender and Care in Kabul, Afghanistan

Zoom attendance link: https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/84686450683

Following widows and their families in the aftermath of a suicide attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, this talk centers the lives and aspirations of widows amidst serial war and serial humanitarianism. As white sentimentality structures landscapes of care in Kabul, refusal is what remains. This research is based on more than four years of fieldwork between 2006 and 2013.

Dr. Anila Daulatzai is a sociocultural anthropologist and the Chancellor’s Fellow at UC Berkeley. She has taught in prisons and in universities across three continents. She has been conducting research in Afghanistan as well as with Afghan refugees in Pakistan since 1995. Between 2006 and 2013, she carried out ethnographic fieldwork in Kabul and taught at Kabul University and at the American University of Afghanistan. Her past and current research projects look at widowhood, heroin use, and polio through the lens of serial war. She is currently completing her book manuscript, provisionally titled “War and What Remains Everyday Life in Contemporary Kabul, Afghanistan.”

Cosponsored by the IHC’s South Asian Religions and Cultures Research Focus Group and the Department of Anthropology

Zoom attendance link: https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/84686450683