Frontier Ethnographies: Deconstructing Research Experiences in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Ethnography destabilizes the notion of the frontier as merely a geographic space and conveys its limitations--that lead researchers to reflect on their methodological approaches. Frontier Ethnographies explores the ethnographic edges of contemporary anthropological inquiry in Afghanistan and Pakistan by assembling voices of emerging scholars who have conducted field research within the region in the past two decades. Through examining moments of insecurity, vulnerability, doubt, fear, failure, and daydreaming, researchers reflect on their own experiences of field research and how--faced with frontiers--they have been forced to reimagine or reconstruct their understanding of the social world.

Annika Schmeding is a Senior Researcher at the NIOD--Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam. Her previous research earned theDutch National Master Thesis Prize in Asian Studies and the Leiden University Thesis Award. Her most recent publication is Sufi Civilities: Religious Authority and Political Change in Afghanistan (Stanford University Press, 2023).