We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 August 2009
Aims and circumstances
The fieldwork on which this study is based began when RLT and I travelled in western Afghan Turkistan for a month in 1968. When we returned to Afghanistan in 1970–1972, our primary aims were ethnographic. The first was to describe a people (the Durrani Pashtun) and an area (western Afghan Turkistan) little known to anthropologists or other scholars (see Map 1). I was keen to examine further the role and organization of women in sexually segregated societies (see N. Tapper 1968; 1978), while RLT was particularly interested in aspects of the pastoral economy and in the forms and contexts of inter-ethnic contact between the Pashtuns and others in the region. The present study reflects our initial intentions, and its focus — the construction and meaning of marriage — has proved one way of uniting our interests in terms of an institution of central concern to the Durrani Pashtuns themselves.
Late in 1970 we travelled overland to Kabul and soon acquired permits to begin a one-month survey in Afghan Turkistan. Our object was to visit sections of the Ishaqzai, who were politically and numerically the dominant Durrani tribe in Jouzjan and Faryab provinces, with a view to finding one group with whom it would be convenient (for us, for them and for the authorities) to settle.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
