A classic and highly influential ethnography, which explores political leadership among Swat Pathans - and which emphasizes the importance of individual decision-making for wider social processes.

By the turn of the nineteenth century, the Durrani Empire established by Ahmad Shah Abdali in 1747 had fallen into definitive disarray. The Afghans, who had long terrorized the north Indian plain as marauders and helped sack Delhi on more than one occasion, could no longer mount raids into this once rich reservoir of plunder. Their fall from political grace coincided with the rise of a new power whose growing influence over the Gangetic Plain was to be the story of the new century — the English East India Company (EIC). As the Company filled the vacuum of authority created by the decline, and in some cases defeat of South Asia’s post-Mughal successor states, it found itself coming into more regular contact with the political entities inhabiting the lands beyond the Sutlej and the Indus rivers. When these forces began to intrude into the Company’s conceptual universe, Company servants recognized the need to construct a framework within which these newly encountered entities could be understood and dealt with. This framework would transform the raw information the Company was beginning to accumulate about these powers into knowledge of the colonial state. Such colonial knowledge could then be deployed to relate with, if not directly influence, indigenous powers to the advantage of the Company state. Yet more profound than the exercise of power through the deployment of information, the colonial state was in the process of conceptualizing, and thus defining those with whom it dealt.

Political leadership among Swat Pathans

The Power of Colonial Knowledge

As an anthropologist, I intend to develop some reflections over the field of study of political science, in dialogue with the intellectual horizon set by Eric Voegelin and in a critical relation with the ideas expressed about political science in the recent publications, of professors Andres Casas and Rodrigo Losada, whom represent an important school of thought in the study of the political phenomena. The debate is framed in terms of dialogue between reductive visions and heuristic approaches. It is stated the importance of the theoretical category of experience of order as a connecting pattern between anthropology and political science and allowing them to enrich their rhetorical scientific universe in terms of identifying the complexity of the political phenomenon.

Reconstitución de la antropologia política. heteronomías entre la ciencia política y la antropología

The commercialization of hospitality established arguably the oldest profession. Historically small commercial hospitality establishments, known as inns in the western world, were of ill repute. Perhaps connected to their reputation, this category of accommodation facility has been seriously neglected as an area of academic inquiry, particularly from the perspective of the host. While there has been a huge growth in the interdisciplinary field of tourism studies in recent decades, little attention has been paid to the role of the host in the host-guest relationship at whatever level of analysis. This thesis seeks to redress the balance. Hospitality is a basic form of social bonding. This type of bonding, where a hierarchy between strangers is implicit (as with hosts and guests), may be termed ‘nexilitas’; nexilitas is a form of social bonding in liminal circumstances. To that extent it is comparable to ‘communitas’ which describes social bonding between equals in certain liminal circumstances. The difference is that nexilitas is a form of bonding between individuals in a complex power relationship. The host controls the hospitality space, but custom also empowers the guest with certain expectations, especially in the commercial context. The thesis identifies the various forms of hospitality – traditional ‘true’ or ‘pure’ hospitality, social hospitality, cultural hospitality and commercial hospitality – and discusses these critically in their historical and cross-cultural contexts, with emphasis on the perspective of the host. The passage of hospitality is then traced through the three phases of preliminality, liminality and post-liminality and discussed along the themes anticipation, arrival and accommodation and finally departure of the guest. While the historical and ethnographic review is mainly based on written histories and the experiences of other anthropologists as guests as well as ethnographers, the passage of hospitality draws on the multi-sited auto-anthropological experiences of the author, both as host and as ethnographer of contemporary South African hosts in small owner-managed commercial hospitality establishments.

background

The nexilitas factor: host-guest relationships in small owner managed commercial accommodation facilities in contemporary South Africa

/pdf/who-s-helping-who-ngo-coordination-of-humanitarian-2kectpvpjh.pdf

Who's helping Who? NGO Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance

: The Pashtun are an ethnic group that straddles the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and are the largest group in Afghanistan. Pashtun social structure is what anthropologists term a segmentary lineage system. In such a system, there is a hierarchy of social groupings starting at the local level, then proceeding upward through various levels to an entire ethnic group. These relationships are based on kinship and shared culture. Segmentary lineage organization presents outsiders with both opportunities and challenges. It is highly important to understand this in such areas as economic development, Taliban force composition, negotiation, and the establishment of friendships and alliances. The report discusses these topics in some detail. The Pashtun on the one hand, and Western interveners on the other, are likely to have fundamentally different understandings in these and other areas, including conceptualization of time and events.

/pdf/pashtun-social-structure-cultural-perceptions-and-segmentary-242c0v36ip.pdf

Political leadership among Swat Pathans

Citations

The Power of Colonial Knowledge

Reconstitución de la antropologia política. heteronomías entre la ciencia política y la antropología

The nexilitas factor: host-guest relationships in small owner managed commercial accommodation facilities in contemporary South Africa

Who's helping Who? NGO Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance

Pashtun Social Structure: Cultural Perceptions and Segmentary Lineage Organization

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