Rebuilding in Afghanistan

In the first half of 2011, I deployed as a civilian to help Afghan faculty build postsecondary English writing curricula. Over months, a series of activities: travel, the shape of a workday, negotiations over textbooks, costs of laptops and graduate study, the tea and talk that keep institutions moving. The events prompt inquiries into the politics of teaching English, the economics behind the spring 2011 revolutions, literacy training as immaterial labor, mobility as privilege, colonial intellectual property relations, and the hidden labor costs of technology.

  1. From There to Here

    Travel via cargo flight and an armored convoy; first impressions of the city.

  2. Negotiating the Administratosphere

    Early meetings with the academy’s languages department prompt reconsiderations of how writing courses should open.

  3. Interlingualism's Terms

    Afghan English pedagogy treats the language as transactional; translingual scholarship supports Afghan sovereignty on language policy.

  4. The Value of Stability Operations

    Reading the training mission’s mass literacy programs as immaterial labor raises the question of what stability operations produce, and makes a case for measuring economic value in labor as well as commodities.

  5. Textbooks Turned at the Border

    Export restrictions on American ESL textbooks to Afghanistan connect English-only rhetoric and composition concerns to intellectual property regimes.

  6. Everywhere It Looks

    Early missteps with Afghan colleagues; composition scholarship on globalization that sees reflected privilege.

  7. A Day

    A workday at the military academy; worries whether reforms will outlast the mentors.

  8. Egypt and Afghanistan, Part 1

    Egypt’s 2011 uprising, often told as a Facebook revolution, has deep roots in food prices, wheat imports and class; the economic counter-narrative offers a perspective on Afghanistan’s struggles.

  9. Egypt and Afghanistan, Part 2

    The Facebook-revolution story hides a revolt over bread, driven partly by U.S. aid policy; the parallels to Afghanistan argue against techno-utopianism that ignores economic context.

  10. Downtime

    Away from home and family, the team copes through restaurant meals, the gym, swap-shelf paperbacks and pirated DVDs from the bazaar.

  11. The Felt Bonds of the Social

    Tea, family talk, face-saving; a memorial service in a hangar.

  12. Hope When the Roads Turn Black

    Tightened security and armored convoys and a day when Kabul’s roads go black frame an argument about mobility as privilege.

  13. Your Afghan Playlist?

    A call for English-language songs and films to play for Afghan students sets out the rules: no alcohol, drugs, sex, misogyny or non-Islamic proselytizing.

  14. Inside, Outside

    An academy meeting wrangles over a costly laptop shipment and an embassy meeting weighs English curricula; neither takes up the patchy power and internet Afghans live with.

  15. On Receiving a Shipment of Computers

    Unloading a laptop shipment grounds an argument about the occulted labor and particular culture behind technological devices.

  16. The Labor of Being Social

    An inter-agency meeting planning graduate study for Afghan instructors excludes Afghan stakeholders by violating protocol.