Anthropologist Coburn author of Bazaar Politics
Bazaar Politics - Power and Pottery in an Afghan Market Town (2011, Stanford University Press), a new book by anthropologist Noah Coburn, is the
subject of a feature story in the Nov. 20 edition of The New York Times Book Review.
Currently a visiting assistant professor of anthropology at Skidmore, Coburn worked as a specialist for the United States Institute of Peace in Kabul, Afghanistan, as well as a researcher for the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. Between 2006 and 2008, he spent 18 months doing research in an Afghan village on the Shomali Plain.
His book offers the first long-term on-the-ground study since the arrival of allied forces in 2001. Coburn introduces readers to daily life in Afghanistan through portraits of local residents and stories of his own experiences. He reveals the ways in which the international community has misunderstood the forces driving local conflict and the insurgency, misunderstandings that have ultimately contributed to the political unrest rather than resolved it.
In "Applied Anthropology," senior Times Book Review editor Alexander Star asks, "Can the study of politics, power, and culture at the local level reshape efforts to rebuild Afghanistan?" For answers, he turns to Coburn's Bazaar Politics; Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History, by Thomas Barfield; and Can Intervention Work? by Rory Stewart and Gerald Knaus.
Read the full book review article here.
Read more about Coburn's book at the publisher's web site.
