In this impressive and challenging study, Andrea Chiovenda draws on extensive dialogues with a range of Pashtun men in Afghanistan to show how alternative masculine identities are constructed and transformed within their violent cultural and political milieu. His book not only gives the reader a deep understanding of the vicissitudes of masculinity in Afghanistan, it also provides a much-needed new paradigm for integrating contemporary psychoanalytic theory with
ethnographic practice. It has the potential to be a game-changer for both fields.
Andrea Chiovenda is a post-doctoral research associate in the department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and an affiliated faculty member at Emerson College, Boston. He received his PhD in anthropology from Boston University, and his doctoral fieldwork was carried out in Afghanistan, where he investigated the psychological impact of strict cultural idioms and norms of masculinity among Afghan Pashtun men. His new,
ongoing ethnographic project is taking place in Greece, where he is studying the psychological consequences of displacement and migration among Afghan refugees.