Notes on Afghanistan.

So what's been going on lately? Not much. I've gotten into a self-absorbed headspace since I've started this essay, and I always get this way. The outside world tends to blur and spiral away, leaving me with a laptop and some books.

The essay is coming along just fine. Some facts I uncovered during my research on forced marriage in Afghanistan: 54 per cent of girls under 18 are married and the women’s rights organization Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) reported that there has been an increase of girls under the age of 18 victimized by rape or forced into a marriage to an older man, with some girls being as young as eight years old. Only half of the girls under 18 years old living in Kabul attend school, and the school attendance in rural areas is as little as nine percent. Also, of the 1,038 hospitals and clinics in Afghanistan, only 40 percent have women working on staff. It's pretty damn depressing, and I'm shocked at the lack of funding and support from higher-income countries. I may be wrong about that, so perhaps a lone voice from the intrawebbs can correct me?

At this point I'm going to draw in some theory to perhaps explain the why and how of this phenomena. I'll be using Marcel Mauss' essay on gift exchange and how the exchange is a pervasive social activity that encompasses all social institutions. However, I'm going to drop the proverbial bomb when I bring in Gale Rubin's "The Traffic in Women." She not only references Mauss and places him in a greater critical position; she draws on Marx, Freud, Levi-Strauss and Lacan and places them into her theory. Her "sex / gender system" (transforming biological sex into cultural activity) is relevant for my paper, as well as her use of Levi-Strauss' ideas on kinship as institutions for gender reproduction. Well, I may not use that particular theory after all.

Damn, I gots to get me to school. Laters.