Katja Mielke

Order, stability, and change in Afghanistan: from top-down to bottom-up state-making

This article presents findings from long-term empirical fieldwork and archival research into current and historical patterns of governance in north-eastern Afghanistan, conducted between 2006 and 2009. Despite the long civil war, striking continuities have been found in the make-up and functioning of the local social order. Patron–client relations, eldership, and related practices of mediation are crucial structuring principles of rural society. They have dominated Afghan politics over centuries and still do today. Viewed from a long-term perspective, this continuity, related patterns of representation, and the role of middlemen and brokers suggest a certain degree of stability, in contrast to the popular perception of instability and disorder in this country. Whilst in the past the expansion of the state relied on tacit agreement between government administrators and local elites, resulting in state-making from above, the war broadly changed actors, regimes, and coalitions, but not the underlying mechanisms of the social order. Hence, today, the failure of the current state-building project can be attributed to the fact that the effects of these mechanisms are insufficiently recognized and grasped by Western actors and state-builders. We argue that local Afghan actors have captured the intervention from below. Instead of state-building, we are dealing here with state-making dominated by patronage networks.

Introduction: Knowledge Production, Area Studies and the Mobility Turn

Calls for interdisciplinary and transregional Area Studies research have become ever more pressing. They are necessary to address the fact that the geographically fixed categories in which our world operates are increasingly characterized by degrees of dynamism that no longer justify a division of the world into territorially fixed units. By considering the current debate on Area Studies, as well as comparative insights, recent reinterpretations and innovations in the field, the introduction provides a frame for the subsequent ontological, theoretical, methodological and pedagogical reflections on Area Studies at the Crossroads. Indicative of this rethinking process are various forms of mobility and mobilization processes, borders and boundaries, processes of boundary production, weakening and crossing, as well as a deepened emphasis on reflexivity and considerations of positionality. This process is then conceptualized as part of a larger ethical-pzolitical project that Area Studies should take on in challenging science policy and academic power structures.

Concluding Reflections: The Art of Science Policy for 21st Century Area Studies

The neoliberalization of the system of scientific production lays parallel to a content-driven realization for the need to overcome disciplinary boundaries, and boundaries between different socio-politically contextualized science systems. Area Studies so far have little engaged in this discussion on inter- and transdisciplinary forms of knowledge production that increasingly scrutinize the role of science and its disciplines in and for society. The conclusion reflects on what role Area Studies can and should play in a system of scientific knowledge production continuously gearing towards greater integration—across disciplinary divides, as well as across divides between different science systems and their respective epistemologies. It points out that the often-heard claim for mainstreaming Area Studies to exploit their suitability for context-sensitive research and their inherent awareness of entanglements and increasing global connectedness falls short of the actual potential of Area Studies for knowledge production after the mobility turn. Instead, and concluding the volume, the chapter argues for science policymaking for (a) analytical, emancipatory Area Studies, (b) mobile, transregional Area Studies and (c) Area Studies in and for interdisciplinarity in the twenty-first century.

The Role of Area Studies in Theory Production: A Differentiation of Mid-Range Concepts and the Example of Social Order

The chapter discusses the relevance of area studies as a potential field of theory production and argues for mid-range concept development as an important contribution of and for Area studies in social theorizing and knowledge production. A differentiation of three categories of mid-range concepts, each with a different scope and implicit underlying methodologies, is introduced. Given that mid-range concept development relies on the long-term immersion of individual researchers in the social context or the textual sources and archives from which the data originates, the enabling conditions and necessary skills for mid-range concept development are discussed. The potential of mid-range concept development is illustrated with the example of Social Order as a third type of mid-range concept, which can serve as an epistemological lens to facilitate reflective exploratory data generation and theorizing.