Browsing by Subject "Afghanistan"
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Item Afghanistan- Sustainable horticulture crop production(2010-11-28) Heuring, ErikItem Policy Brief: National Guard and Reserves. The Burden On U.S. Army Reserves and Army National Guard(2004-08-01) Jacobs, LawrenceItem “Queering Borders”: War, Diaspora, Gender And Sexuality Among Afghans In The United States(2019-08) Munhazim, Ahmad QaisHow did a nation known for a gender-neutral language and celebration of same-sex love through literature and poetry became a masculinist landscape as it learned to live through wars, and how do these wars continue in people’s lives thousands of miles away from their homeland? How was the sense of community and safety created by Afghans who settled in the United States during the political turmoil of the Cold War crushed by the US’s “War on Terror”? How did the lives of Afghans become engulfed by a continuous regime of surveillance that produces unsettling conditions; temporary and fragile homes marked by frequent violence; subjects defined by mistrust, anxieties and fears, and ultimately vigilant masculinities where the surveilled subjects surveil themselves? In this dissertation, I address these and many other entangled questions through stories of people who have lived through multiple wars and displacements, and who have actively refused imposed borders. Through these stories of lived experiences and border crossings, this work asks that we rethink rigid meanings of wars, diasporas and their complex relationships with gender and sexuality, while also complicating the imaginary borders between the researcher and research subjects. My particular contribution is a rich ethnographic study of gendered subjectivities among war diasporas. I argue that it is not possible to adequately understand the norms and performances of gender and sexuality and the profound ways in which they shape the lived experiences of diasporas, without first learning to listen carefully to the nuanced stories of these diasporic communities. These narratives offer complex ways to understand performances of gender and sexuality in the context of war and displacement. Grappling with these stories and narratives of many Afghans in diaspora, I use the pages of this dissertation to queer stable borders of nations, war, peace, gender and sexuality both methodologically and conceptually. Through a critical ethnography of war, diaspora and performances of gender and sexuality, this work strives to become deeply attentive to a wide variation of experiences and differences that accompany people’s lives as they become displaced, as they cross borders, and as they form a diaspora out of these ever-unfolding events and processes. I hope that this dissertation will help to strengthen the foundation for interdisciplinary scholars who are interested in advancing this critical and desperately needed research.Item “Surviving Our History”: A Qualitative Examination of Continuous Traumatic Stress in a Sample of Afghan Women(2017-11) Newton, SandraFor decades, Afghanistan has been considered among the most dangerous places to be a woman. While attention in the psychological literature to Afghan women’s experiences has increased during the past 20 years, Afghan women’s voices are rarely privileged within this body of literature. The present study qualitatively explored the nature of threats to Afghan women. This study also aimed to explore the extent to which Kaminer, Eagle, and Crawford-Browne’s (2016) conceptual framework for continuous traumatic stress resonated with Afghan women’s lived experiences. A sample of 105 Afghan women identified by pseudonyms wrote a total of 345 nonfiction pieces; an additional 23 pieces were written anonymously. All were participants in the Afghan Women’s Writing Project (AWWP). From a total of 816 nonfiction works, 368 were selected through the application of five inclusion criteria. Data were analyzed through a two-stage process comprising an initial inductive thematic analysis of the essays and stories and subsequent mapping of emergent themes onto Kaminer et al.’s description of continuous traumatic stress. Forty-four themes contained within 12 domains were extracted from the data. The results, further grouped into three overarching areas, provide nuanced descriptions of threats to Afghan women as: 1) gender-based and pervasive across vital dimensions of personal and societal functioning; 2) primarily experienced as continuous, layered, and interactive, thereby making them dynamic in nature; and 3) profoundly impactful on Afghan women’s well-being. Findings suggest substantial congruence between the traumatic conditions many Afghan women experience on a continuous basis and Kaminer et al.’s characterization of continuous traumatic stress. Results also suggest continuous traumatic oppression further captures Afghan women’s experiences of structural forms of gender-based violence that are inherently dehumanizing. Practice implications include honoring (as opposed to pathologizing) ways Afghan women adapt to contexts of continuous trauma and supporting their adaptive, proactive ways of coping with ongoing traumatic stress and/or oppression. Research recommendations include the need for further study of writing as an effective method for coping with exposure to continuous traumatic stress and continuous traumatic oppression.