Book Review: Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan (2nd Edition)

Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan (2nd Edition) on amazon.com


Book Review: Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan (2nd Edition)

Reader Rating: 9/10

Salaams! This book by G. Whitney Azoy, Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan (2nd Edition), was an excellent read; not an easy read, but a very insightful and illuminating one. Azoy is an anthropologist who first served a 2-year stint at the US Embassy in Kabul back in the early 1970s, when developed a deep interest in buzkashi. Actually, his interest in buzkashi was first piqued before he ever got to Afghanistan: it was during his 6-month Dari language program in the US when their Afghan teacher took them to see a new film called "The Horsemen," starring Omar Sharif. By the end of the movie, Azoy had determined that "there's the Afghanistan I'd like to know."

Azoy's anthropological perspective on the game of buzkashi--and its various associated levels of power/control display--are fascinating for the insights they give into the culture as a microcosm--as buzkashi is such a quintessentially Afghan activity (and so much more than "just a game"). He examines both the various technical aspects of the game--"for fun"--as well as all the associated and extended components of the game and its multiple implications on a person's place and name in wider society ("for real"). He dissects what he sees as the four different orders, or dimensions, that are intricately connected and built one upon the other, exploring the way they extend beyond the actual "for fun" part of the game into real life (both local and national). Buzkashi is very much a metaphor for insights into a wide range of cultural patterns; it is a prism that magnifies so much of what is going on behind what is going on across Afghan life.

Two key statements, made by Afghan acquaintances at very different times, helped frame Azoy's explorations:
1. "If you want to know what we're really like, go to a buzkashi game" (1972)
This is one of the early comments the author heard in response to his expressed desire to really get to know Afghans beyond the polite surface-level, sophisticated, urbane level of interaction. As he says, this suggestion "might better have been prefaced, 'If you want to know what we're really like sometimes but almost never admit to openly.' Here is the second dimension of social significance to buzkashi: it acts as a metaphor for the particular sort of unbridled competition--chaotic, uninhibited, and uncontrollable--that lurks below the apparently cooperative surface."
2. "Now the real buzkashi has begun" (1978)
This later comment, following the April 1978 Saur Revolution that brought the Afghan Communist Party (the PDPA) into power by deposing the King's uncle, Daoud, helped Azoy see the much wider applications of buzkashi as metaphor for power and control in the Afghan pysche. Here, finally, "with the coup of April 1978, the largest buzkashi of all began: handshakes became clenched fists, and Their Excellencies were executed...At a buzkashi no one knows who will score next or fall flat. Indeed, the problematic quality of this particular game can extend well beyond the calf carcass struggle and into politics."

Azoy's treatment of the game of buzkashi is a great example of someone asking and investigating, at a deep level, "What's really going on behind what's going on." So often, what appears to be "going on" at a surface level is not the full picture of what is really going on behind the symbolic imagery of the surface happenings.

Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan (2nd Edition)
by G. Whitney Azoy
Editorial Reviews
Product Description:
Much has happened since this book first appeared, almost all of it horrific for Afghanistan. The past quarter century devastated this country more than any other on earth. No country in all history has proven more resilient. No people alive today are more worthy of admiration, respect, and support. Now available from Waveland Press as an updated Second Edition, Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan is not only the first full-scale anthropological examination of a single sport, but also a beautifully written case study about a place and a people that have been largely ignored in the social science literature. Buzkashi, perhaps the wildest game in the world and a vivid feature of Afghan life, entails the aggressive struggle of hundreds of horsemen over a mutilated calf carcass. Shortly after the first appearance of Azoy's book, the world press came to use the actual play of buzkashi in print as a metaphor for Afghan politics. Azoy's incisive analysis of Afghan political dynamics demonstrates how play and politics, ordinarily perceived as separate activities, can interpenetrate one another. Sadly but truly, buzkashi continues to prove itself to be an apt metaphor for ongoing Afghan political control and chaos. The Waveland edition includes two new chapters: "For Real (1978 2002)," which describes buzkashi as played over the past twenty years in new places by new people, and a chapter serving as a personal tribute to the author's friend and field informant.

Product Details
Paperback: 176 pages
Publisher: Waveland Press; 2nd edition    (July, 2002)
ISBN: 1577662385

=============================
"If you're not standing on the Edge,
you're taking up too much room."
=============================