Format:
1 online resource (293 pages)
ISBN:
9789401204873
Series Statement:
Studia Imagologica Ser. v.v. 12
Content:
Chasing Tales is the first exclusive study of journalism, travel writing and the history of British ideas about Afghanistan. It offers a timely investigation of the notional Afghanistan(s) that have prevailed in the popular British imagination. Casting its net deep into the nineteenth century, the study investigates the country's mythologisation by scrutinising travel narratives, literary fiction and British news media coverage of the recent conflict in Afghanistan. This highly topical book explores the legacy of nineteenth-century paranoias and prejudices to contemporary travellers and journalists and seeks to explain why Afghans continue to be depicted as medieval, murderous, warlike and unruly. Its title, Chasing Tales , conveys the circulation, and indeed the circularity, of ideas commonly found in British travel writing and journalism. The 'tales' component stresses the pivotal role played by fictionalised sources, especially the writing of Rudyard Kipling, in perpetuating traumatic nineteenth-century memories of Afghan-British encounter. The subject matter is compelling and its foci of interest profoundly relevant both to current political debates and to scholarly enquiry about the ethics of travel.
Content:
Intro -- Chasing Tales Travel Writing, Journalism and the History of British Ideas about Afghanistan -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Preface -- Introduction -- Part One: Hanging old stories on the necks of new characters1: the legacy of nineteenth-century Afghan-British encounters -- Afghanistan in the writing of Rudyard Kipling, and Kipling in travel writing about Afghanistan -- The problem of absentee authority: the case of Nuristan -- Rudyard Kipling and British news media coverage of Operation Enduring Freedom -- Mythologising Afghanistan -- Homicidal Nuristanis -- The Wild Westification of Afghanistan -- Medievalising Afghanistan -- Medievalisation in news media coverage of Operation Enduring Freedom -- Conclusion -- Part Two: Where ethnographers fear to tread: the counter-influence of classical ethnography on travel writing and journalism about Afghanistan -- Ethnography as travel writing -- The 'crisis' in socio-cultural ethnography -- Ethnography about Afghanistan -- The counter-influence of classical ethnographies on the travel writing of journalists Christopher Kremmer and Christina Lamb -- Buzkashi as synecdochic metaphor -- Children's games as an explanatory metaphor -- Implied insight: synecdoche and journalism's pseudo-ethnographic content -- Travel writing, ethnography and Afghan agency in Christopher Kremmer and Christina Lamb -- Gender, genre and authorial agency -- Conclusion: textual negotiations and anthropological solutions -- Part Three: Retailing insight: reporting Operation Enduring Freedom -- Travel writing and journalism: a meeting on the road -- Reading news media coverage in times of war -- The absence of context in British news media coverage of Operation Enduring Freedom -- Revisiting Afghanistan: the resurgence of nineteenth-century themes in news media coverage of Afghanistan.
Note:
Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources
Additional Edition:
ISBN 9789042022621
Additional Edition:
Erscheint auch als Druck-Ausgabe ISBN 9789042022621
Language:
English
URL:
https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kxp/detail.action?docID=556661
