Afghanistan: Post-Modernizing a Pre-Modern Society?

Abstract:     
The defined purpose of this paper is to analyse the phenomenon of post-modernizing pre-modern societies, having as example the case of Afghanistan. Assuming that political modernity implies the existence of a centralized state, we will show that there never was a modern period in the history of Afghanistan. The last part of this paper focuses on presenting the impact that the phenomenon of post-modernization has had on Afghanistan, by analysing four characteristics of the contemporary world - the world after the collapse of the Soviet Union: the critique of the fungible character of power; the privatisation of security; the new types of wars; the regionalization and fragmentation of the world. The dilemma that needs to be solved is that of surpassing the risks brought about by the co-existence of three levels of evolution: the pre-modern level (the segmented Afghan society), the modern level (the attempt to found a centralized state), the post-modern level (the attempt to anchor the new-founded state in the global system, from a political, economic and cultural point of view).

Number of Pages in PDF File: 17

Keywords: geopolitics, International Relations, modernism, postmodernism, politics

Accepted Paper Series