Wednesday, February 8, 2017
12:00pm – 1:00pm
McKinney Conference Room, Watson Institute
Registration is required and is at capacity. Unclaimed seats will be given to those on standby upon start of the event.
Anila Daulatzai, Louise Lamphere Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies, presents, "Remaining Undone: Heroin in the Time of Serial War"
Abstract: This paper will follow the trajectory of Aisha, a widow and heroin user in Kabul, Afghanistan who chooses not to accept humanitarian aid and refuses to undergo addiction treatments.The paper will foreground Aisha’s life and relationship to heroin amidst serial war while unsettling etiologies of addiction and critiquing liberal imaginaries of resilience. By ethnographically exploring Aisha’s refusals, this paper, based on four years of anthropological fieldwork, asks us to consider the serial nature of war and humanitarianism in the lives of Afghans.
Bio: Anila Daulatzai is a socio-cultural anthropologist with active research projects in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. She has graduate degrees in public health and Islamic studies, and completed her PhD in socio-cultural anthropology. Daulatzai is writing a book based on her ethnographic research with widows and their families in Kabul. It explores everyday life amidst a current war and occupation with a backdrop of prior wars, occupation, and humanitarianism. In her current research projects, Daulatzai is exploring the lives of heroin users as intersected with war and militarization, as well as studying polio and global health initiatives, also as related to serial war and militarization. She is currently the Louise Lamphere Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Brown University.