M. Nazif Shahrani Professor of Anthropology Professor of Central Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the CVs. If Acrobat Reader is not installed on your computer, you can download it free from here. M. Nazif Shahrani's Biography and Curriculum Vita (summary) download M. Nazif Shahrani's Brief Biography download M. Nazif Shahrani's Curriculum Vita download
Education: B.A. University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI., 1970 M.A. University of Washington, Seattle, WA., 1972 Ph.D. University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 1976 Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University (1976-1977) Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship, Stanford Humanities Center, Stanford University (1984-1985) Woodrow Wilson Fellowship for International Scholars, Smithsonian Institute (1997-1998)
Two facts have shaped my career as a "native" anthropologist. My personal conviction, formed in the mid-1960's as a college student in Afghanistan, that anthropology was a discipline relevant to the future development of countries such as my own homeland. Sociocultural anthropology in particular, I believed, offered analysis of, and remedies for, contemporary social problems -- grinding poverty, injustice, inequality, socioeconomic and technological under-development. And a second set of events, utterly beyond my control and entirely external to anthropology, tested my understanding of the purpose and relevancy of anthropology--i.e., the Soviet inspired military coup and the subsequent establishment of a Communist government in Kabul (1978), the rise of popular Islamist resistance, a jihad, the direct Soviet military intervention, the perpetuation of an intense armed struggle and a devastating civil war in Afghanistan, my homeland and chosen place of ethnographic research. My initial field research (1972-1974) was a study of the cultural ecological adaptation of a small Turkic-speaking Kirghiz pastoral nomadic group and their sedentary neighbors, the Wakhi, in northeastern Badakhshan, Afghanistan, the province of my birth and early education. I collected ecological, economic, demographic, social organizational and historical data pertaining not only to the Kirghiz and Wakhi adaptation to high altitude and severe climatic conditions, but also to the constraints of a politically induced social and economic realities of closed frontier conditions imposed by Communist China and Soviet Russia in the region. My first book, The Kirghiz and Wakhi of Afghanistan: Adaptation to Closed Frontiers (1979) adhered to all the long-held conventions of scientific ethnographic presentation--i.e. ethnographic truth, objectivity and impartiality (indifference?). It was the onset of the prolonged tragic war in Afghanistan that effectively robbed me of the opportunity to return home to work or do fieldwork, thus radically altering the trajectory of my personal and professional life, including the nature of my long-term personal and professional involvement with the Kirghiz and with Afghanistan. During this century of wars (colonial, anti-colonial, nationalist, revolutionary, interventionist, and war on terrorism) producing economic devastation, ethnocide, genocide, and massive displacement of peoples as internal and external refugees--all in the name of freedom and liberty--it seems that anthropology and anthropologist have historically managed to ignore these painful and pervasive sociopolitical issues of our time. Hence, Afghanistan was lost to anthropology after April, 1978, because it was no longer safe for traditional ethnographic research. However, unlike most of my non-Afghan colleagues, I could not in good conscience abandon research on my homeland. Morally, emotionally and intellectually I could not ignore the war in Afghanistan. My commitment to studying the conflict had an urgency I had not felt about my earlier research. My new interest in the so called “low-intensity” wars and their human consequences was a problem generally avoided by anthropology and anthropologists. It directly raised the prickly question about what practical relevance did the kind of anthropology I had learned and practiced have when addressing the situation facing the Kirghiz, Wakhi and the rest of the peoples of Afghanistan? Why was the future of these communities and the nation not a subject of anthropological inquiry? Why had I and other researchers only tried to deal with the present in terms of the past without considering the thoughts and imaginations of these peoples about their future? What was my moral responsibility as an individual, a native, and an anthropologist toward the communities I had studied? I continued my long-term research on the Kirghiz (who fled to northern Pakistan and were later resettled as refugees in eastern Turkey), not simply as exotic tribal ethnographic specimens, but as an historically, socially and culturally constituted community long embedded within the body politics of the Afghan nation-state, and currently gripped by a complex, national and international ideological-political-military conflict of major local, national, and global proportions. My central research inquiries since the early 1980's have been directed toward an understanding of the impact of Islam upon the social imagination of the people of Afghanistan concerning their future, and the impact of such images of the future upon their present actions and activities. Some of the issues addressed include problems of state-building, nationalism, and social fragmentation in multi-ethnic nation-states such as Afghanistan; the political economy of international assistance to modern states and the politicization of ethnic identities; the role of Central Asian vernacular didactic literature in the social production of local knowledge and practices of Islam, and in contemporary educational and Islamist political movements; and the conception, nature and styles of traditional local leadership in Central Asia based on analyzing the life histories of Kirghiz khans and other Central Asian leaders. More recently, I have also examined the reasons for the failure of Afghan Mujahideen groups to form a viable government following their stunning military victory against former Soviet military occupation forces of the 1980s. The political failure of Afghan Mujahideen resulted in devastating inter-ethnic wars (1990s), culminating to the Rise of Taliban and Al-Qaeda terrorist rule and the current US led international war on terrorism in Afghanistan. Since the collapse of the former Soviet Union and opening new research opportunities in the newly independent nations of Muslim Central Asia I have begun fieldwork in Uzbekistan. The impact of Soviet rule upon traditional Muslim Central Asian societies and cultures in general, and its effects upon the structure and functions of Uzbek oyila (family/household) constitute a major focus of my current and future research. More specifically, I am examining how former Soviet Central Asian Uzbek have experienced and managed their lives and careers as individual members of Uzbek Muslim families within the broader context of Soviet colonial rule, and the particular demands of the dominant Soviet "political culture of scientific atheism." So far, I have attempted to address these issues through detailed investigation and reconstruction of the social history of about thirty carefully selected Uzbek oyila in both rural and urban areas (1994). In addition, I have also studied Islamic movements in post-Soviet Central Asia and how the anti-Islamic policies of newly independent regimes in the region have contributed to the rise of Muslim militancy in the region. Teaching areas of interest include: History of anthropological theories and methods; anthropology of religion; political anthropology; social change; comparisons of filmed and written ethnographic representations; and seminars on approaches to the study of Islam and Muslims; states and societies; cultural ecology of pastoral nomads and nomadism; family, gender and population dynamics; and Islam and politics in Muslim societies of Middle East and former Soviet Central Asia from a comparative perspective. Selected Publications: Books: 2002. The Kirghiz and Wakhi of Afghanistan: Adaptation to Closed Frontiers and War. Seattle & London: University of Washington Press, pp. xli + 302. 1984. Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan: Anthropological Perspectives, M. Nazif Shahrani and Robert L. Canfield, eds. Berkley, Institute of International Studies, University of California, pp. xiv + 394. (Research Series #57). 1979. The Kirghiz and Wakhi of Afghanistan: Adaptation of Closed Frontiers, Seattle, University of Washington Press, pp. xxiii + 263 . Articles: 2002. “War, Factionalism, and the State in Afghanistan. American Anthropologist, 104(3)September 2002:715-722. 2001. “Pining for Bukhara in Afghanistan: Poetics and politics of Exilic Identity and Emotions”. In Reform Movements and revolutions in Turkistan 1900-1924: Studies in Honour of Osman Khoja, edited by Timur Kocaoglu. Haarlem, Netherlands: SOTA, pp. 369-391. 2001. “Afghanistan can Learn from Its Past”, New York Times, Op-Ed Page 13, Sunday October 14, 2001. 2001. "Not 'Who?' but 'How?': Governing Afghanistan after the Conflict,"In Federations (special issue on Afghanistan), editor Karl Nerenberg; October 2001, pp. 7-8. 2000. “The Taliban Enigma: Person-Centered Politics & Extremism in Afghanistan” in ISIM Newsletter, 6:20-21. Published by International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World, University of Leiden, The Netherlands. 2000. “Resisting the Taliban and Talibanism in Afghanistan: Legacies of A Century of Internal Colonialism and Cold War Politics in A Buffer State” Perceptions: Journal Of International Affairs, V(4):121-140. Published by the Center for Strategic Research, Ankara, Turkey. 1998. The Future of the State and the Structure of Community Governance in Afghanistan. In Fundamentalism Reborn?: Afghanistan and the Taliban. William Maley, ed. London & New York: Hurst & Co. and Columbia University Press; pages 212-242. [Translated in Arabic and published in serial form in a monthly paper Sada El-Mashrek, beginning with No. 15, Feb. 1998; Montreal, Canada 1998. The State and the Future of Local Self-Governance in Afghanistan: A Peaceful Strategy for Structural Resolution. In Critique & Vision: An Afghan Journal of Culture, Politics & History. Nos. 7 & 8 (Spring and Autumn 1998):7-64 1998. Make Afghanistan Part of the “Silk Road Strategy Act of 1997". In Silk Road: A Journal of West Asian Studies. 1 (5): 18-21. 1996. Articles on "Afghanistan", "Islamic Movements", "Sardar Muhammad Daoud", "Muhammad Zahir Shah", and "Uzbek". In the Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East. Richard Bulliet, Philip Mattar and Reeva Simon, General Editors. New York: Macmillan. 1996. Afghanistan's Muhajirn (Muslim `refugee-warriors') in Pakistan: Politics of Mistrust and Distrust of Politics. In Mistrusting the Refugees, edited by E. Valentine Daniel & John Chr. Knudsen. Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press. pp.187-206. 1995. Islam and the Political Culture of "Scientific Atheism" in Post-Soviet Central Asia: Future Predicaments. In The Politics of Religion in Russia and the New States of Eurasia. Michael Bourdeaux ed., M.E. Sharpe, Inc. publisher. pp. 273-292. 1995. "Afghanistan. In The Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World." John Esposito, Editor in Chief. New York: Oxford University Press. I:27-32 1995. "Durrani Dynasty. In The Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World." John Esposito, Editor in Chief. New York: Oxford University Press. I:390-392. 1994. "Honored Guest and Marginal Man: Long-Term Field Research and Predicaments of a Native Anthropologist." In Others Knowing Others: Perspectives on Ethnographic Careers, edited by Don D. Fowler and Donald L. Hardesty. Washington D.C. and London: Smithsonian Institution Press. pp. 15-67. 1993. "Central Asia and the Challenge of the Soviet Legacy." Central Asia Survey. 12(2): 123-135. 1991. "Local Knowledge of Islam and Social Discourse in Afghanistan and Turkistan in the Modern Period." In Turko-Persia in Historical-Perspective, edited by Robert L. Canfield. (A School of American Research Book), Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 161-188. 1990. "Afghanistan: State and Society in Retrospect." In The Cultural Basis of Afghan Nationalism, edited by Edwan W. Anderson and Nancy Hatch Dupree. London and New York: Pinter Publishers, pp. 41-49. 1986. "The Kirghiz Khans: Styles and Substance of Traditional Local Leadership in Central Asia." Central Asian Survey, 5(3/4): 255-271. 1986. "State Building and Social Fragmentation in Afghanistan: A Historical Perspective." In The State, Religion, and Ethnic Politics: Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan. Ali Babuazizi and Myron Weiner, eds. Syracuse, N.Y., Syracuse University Press, pp. 23-74. 1984. "From Tribe to Umma: Comments on the Dynamics of Identity in Muslim Soviet Central Asia." Central Asian Survey, 3(3):27-38. 1984. "Kirghiz" In Muslim Peoples: A World Ethnographic Survey. (2nd Ed.) Edited by R. V. Weekes. Westport, CT.: Greenwood Press, pp. 405-411. 1984. "Introduction: Marxist 'Revolution' and Islamic Resistance in Afghanistan." In Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan: Anthropological Perspectives. Edited by M. N. Shahrani and R. L. Canfield. Berkley, Institute of International Studies, University of California, pp. 3-57. 1984. "Causes and Context of Responses to the Saur Revolution in Badakhshan." In Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan: Anthropological Perspectives. Edited by M.N. Shahrani and R.L. Canfield. Berkley, Institute of International Studies, University of California, pp. 139-169. 1981. "Growing in Respect: Aging Among the Kirghiz of Afghanistan." In Other Ways of Growing Old. Edited by Pamela Amoss and Steven Harrell. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, pp. 175-191. 1981. "The Kirghiz Odyssey." In Odyssey: The Human Adventure. Edited by Jane E. Aaron. Boston: Public Broadcasting Associates, pp. 16-19. 1979. "Ethnic Relations Under Closed Frontier Conditions: Northeast Badakhshan." In Soviet-Asian Ethnic Frontiers. Edited by W. McCagg, Jr. and B. Silver. New York: Pergamon Press, pp. 174-192. 1978. "The Retention of Pastoralism Among the Kirghiz of the Afghan Pamirs." In Himalayan Anthropology: The Indo-Tibetan Interface. Edited by J.F. Fisher. The Hague, Mouton Publishers, pp. 233-250. 1976. "Kirghiz Pastoralists of the Afghan Pamirs: An Ecological and Ethnographic Overview." Folk, 18:129-143. Top