[Linganth] Wazmah Osman on her new book

[Ilana Gershon]

Dear Colleagues,
Today Narges Bajoghli interviews Wazmah Osman about her new book, 
Television and the Afghan Culture Wars: Brought to you by Foreigners, 
Warlords and Activists.

See it on the CaMP anthropology blog:
https://campanthropology.org <https://campanthropology.org>

Best,
Ilana

Press blurb:

Portrayed in Western discourse as tribal and traditional, Afghans have 
in fact intensely debated women's rights, democracy, modernity, and 
Islam as part of their nation building in the post-9/11 era. Wazhmah 
Osman places television at the heart of these public and politically 
charged clashes while revealing how the medium also provides war-weary 
Afghans with a semblance of open discussion and healing. After four 
decades of gender and sectarian violence, she argues, the 
internationally funded media sector has the potential to bring about 
justice, national integration, and peace.

Fieldwork from across Afghanistan allowed Osman to record the voices of 
Afghan media producers and people from all sectors of society. In this 
moving work, Afghans offer their own seldom-heard views on the country's 
cultural progress and belief systems, their understandings of 
themselves, and the role of international interventions. Osman looks at 
the national and transnational impact of media companies like Tolo TV, 
Radio Television Afghanistan, and foreign media giants and funders like 
the British Broadcasting Corporation and USAID. By focusing on local 
cultural contestations, productions, and social movements,/Television 
and the Afghan Culture Wars/redirects the global dialogue about 
Afghanistan to Afghans and thereby challenges top-down narratives of 
humanitarian development.

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