Customer Reviews

Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan (Symbol and culture)

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The question is "can two large mobs of men on horseback fighting over a dead calf be considered a significant cultural event" ? The answer, after reading Azoy's book,is definitely "yes". Azoy lived and researched in Afghanistan during the 1970s, just before that country's agony of civil war excluded foreign scholars (and almost everyone else) for good. He was attracted to the ancient game of buzkashi as a metaphor for the "inner nature of Afghans" as suggested by Afghan acquaintances of his. The resulting study is a most excellent portrait of social and political competition taking dramatic form on a playing field. Though Azoy refers to Geertz only once in his book (p.15), the whole study can be read as a companion volume to Geertz' famous article on the Balinese cockfight. Buzkashi can be seen as a kind of text in which the Afghans are saying something about themselves TO themselves. While everything seemed polite and restrained on the surface in Afghan society, there was a violent, chaotic underpinning that became evident in buzkashi matches. As Azoy says, "With the coup of April, 1978, the largest buzkashi of all begins". It has not yet ended. For an interesting, well-written ethnography that can be extremely useful in teaching anthropology---draws comparisons to bullfights, American or Australian football, etc.---not to mention it being a book that gives an insight into Afghan society and politics like few others, you could do far worse than read BUZKASHI: GAME AND POWER IN AFGHANISTAN.

Azoy's book is an essential key to understanding the social and political underpinnings of events that have drawn our own country--and much of the world--into a conflict we are ill-equipped to manage. Readers may wish to locate the 2003 Second (updated) Edition published by Waveland Press (www.waveland.com), ISBN 1-57766-238-5, which includes an additional chapter covering 1978-2002, as well as an epilogue. Strongly recommended.