Beyond Swat

History, Society and Economy along the Afghanistan-Pakistan Frontier

Marsden Magnus, Hopkins Benjamin D.

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Written by anthropologists and historians with long-standing research experience in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as expertise in one or more of the region's languages, each chapter explores varying yet interconnected dimensions of the region's culture, society and politics over a broad span of history and their relevance to wider debates about the dynamics shaping this and other comparable "frontier" spaces. The parallels the authors make cross temporal, as well as spatial boundaries and, in doing so, open up theoretically innovative lines of scholarly enquiry about the Afghanistan-Pakistan Frontier, the nature of Islamic militancy, its connections to ethnicity, class and transformations in the nature of state power, and, more generally, the relationship between anthropology and history.

About the Author

Magnus Marsden is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Sussex. He has spent fifteen years conducting research in both Afghanistan and Pakistan and, with Benjamin Hopkins, is the author of "Fragments of the Afghan Frontier" and editor of "Beyond Swat: History, Society and Economy Along the Afghanistan-Pakistan Frontier".

Benjamin D. Hopkins is an Assistant Professor in History and International Affairs at the George Washington University, Washington DC and a Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

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