Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. xi, 251 pp. (Map, B&W photos, illustrations.) US$99.99, cloth. ISBN 978-1-108-49723-5.
Nivi Manchanda is a promising social scientist in the field of politics and international relations. Imagining Afghanistan: The History and Politics of Imperial Knowledge is a dissertation work presented at the University of Cambridge, and was awarded the best PhD dissertation in the arts and sciences by Clare Hall. Manchanda takes on an arduous task from a scientific point of view: a historical analysis of interpretations and representations of Afghanistan in the Anglosphere. A rather solid source and literary base (230–249) indicates the author’s familiarity with the subject of the study, the scientific literature, and publications in the media. In the book, among other things, the narrative analysis method of scientific research was used, to positive effect. The research consists of five uniform chapters, of which the most significant intellectual effort is spent on the first three.
The primary focus of the book is a critique of the practice of producing and cultivating knowledge about the non-Western world through concrete applications in a limited space (10). The aim is not to destroy existing concepts, but rather to understand how these concepts appeared and gained strength. Manchanda takes the path of an adept of the constructivist school of international relations, noting how the entire academic and journalistic social reality about Afghanistan has been constructed by colonial and imperial knowledge production (6). Although the author denies her commitment to the constructivist concept, declaring that the idea of Afghanistan is a product of imperial knowledge production puts her in the ranks of an adept of this school. The author writes, paraphrasing the founder of constructivism, Alexander Wendt, that Afghanistan is what the great powers will make of it (44).
There are ontological differences between physical reality and the representations of it. According to Manchanda, the role assigned by the Anglosphere to the Afghans (like the assignation of the other) is a priori predetermined, and so becomes part of the colonization projects. The author concludes that the works of experts on Afghanistan have contained muted racism, and sees the task of the “decolonization of knowledge production” (64). From the perspective of the theory of constructivism, the author says that the social concept was built on the racist colonial interpretation of the Anglosphere, and many ideas are unhistorical (227). Reading the book, one may get the impression that all the problems of Afghanistan are human-made and are tricks at the hands of London and Washington, which, of course, is not the case—at least from the point of view of academic historicism. Sometimes it seems the book could have been called “Stereotypes in the works of scientists studying Afghanistan and its society” or “How everyone has explored Afghanistan incorrectly.”
Yet, the book is not devoid of academic value. Perhaps we are witnessing the discovery of a new form of research or a branch of historical science designed to examine what has already been studied, looking for errors and inaccuracies. From the perspective of humanizing scientific knowledge and consolidating a deeper connection between practices and the epistemological nature of knowledge, the Manchanda approach is valuable. The author argues that the combination of knowledge about Afghanistan reflects the elements of the episteme, and Afghanistan does indeed have a specific epistemological community that has never been fully institutionalized (13). Further, she criticizes several well-known academic works about Afghanistan, noting, from her point of view, inaccuracies and falsifications: “Experts on Afghanistan were born overnight, trying to fill the knowledge vacuum” that arose as a result of neglecting this country before the events of September 11 (8).
Afghanistan, as well as the entire region as a whole, has not, in general, been deprived of the attention of academics from various parts of the world. What exactly are the works of such scientists as M. Elphinstone (1815), L. Dupree (1973), O. Roy (1985), B. Rubin (1995, 2002), A. Rashid (2000), and A. Giustozzi (2009, 2019)? By the way, studying “the other” has also had its own traditions and successes in Western social science since I. Neumann (1999).
Of course, as is often the case, the 9/11 tragedy revived academic and practical interest in Afghanistan, which by that time had become a de facto safe haven for international terrorism. Based on archival material, Manchanda rightly points out that the first appearance of Afghanistan in the Western sphere appeared under M. Elphinstone. Then, throughout the nineteenth century, Afghanistan was viewed through the prism of military policy and the confrontation of the two empires of Great Britain and Russia in a so-called great game. The Soviet invasion put Afghanistan back on the map before it disappeared after the end of the Cold War (11), followed by the post-9/11 period. Manchanda notes that the prism of the great game is particularly characteristic of the Anglophone world, which looks at Afghanistan as exotic, ungovernable, and full of problems. Based on this, the actions of the empires to “normalize” Afghanistan seem justified (43–44).
Another vital aspect is that the author calls the US and NATO operation in Afghanistan an “intervention” (30), but from the perspective of political science, this is an incorrect term since the operation was agreed upon by the UN Security Council Resolution No. 1386, and was a legitimate defense against the 9/11 attacks. Manchanda writes that the current social concept of understanding and presenting Afghanistan has its roots in the colonial past, and even after 2001 the primary research methodologies on Afghanistan have been offered by military anthropology (24–25).
This study offers a historical approach while criticizing many academic works from the past. At once, it allows us to look at the historical, political, and social processes around Afghanistan from a new perspective; yet, the author pays too much attention to the works of other scientists, criticizing other schools and approaches, which results in an excessively abstract character. However, all said and done, this does not negate the high level of academic engagement with the topic.
Georgi Asatryan
Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, Moscow
Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences, Russian Academy of Sciences