Your Country, Our War: The Press and Diplomacy in Afghanistan

Journalists are actors in international relations, mediating communications between governments and publics, but also between the administrations of different countries. American and foreign officials simultaneously consume the work of U.S. journalists and use it in their own thinking about how to conduct their work. As such, journalists play an unofficial diplomatic role. However, the U.S. news media largely amplifies American power. Instead of stimulating greater understanding, the U.S. elite, mainstream press can often widen mistrust as they promote an American worldview and, with the exception of some outliers, reduce the world into a tight security frame in which the U.S. is the hegemon. This has been the case in Afghanistan since 2001, particularly as emerging Afghan journalists have relied significantly on U.S. and other Western news outlets to report events within their government and their country. Based on eight years of interviews in Kabul, Washington, and New York, Your Country, Our War demonstrates how news has intersected with international politics during the War in Afghanistan and shows the global power and reach of the U.S. news media, especially within the context of the post-9/11 era. It reviews the trajectory of the U.S. news narrative about Afghanistan and America's never-ending war, and the rise of Afghan journalism, from 2001 to 2017. The book also examines the impact of the American news media inside a war theater. It examines how U.S. journalists affected the U.S.-Afghan relationship and chronicles their contribution to the rapid development of a community of Afghan journalists who grappled daily with how to define themselves and their country during a tumultuous and uneven transition from fundamentalist to democratic rule. Providing rich detail about the U.S.-Afghan relationship, especially former President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai's convictions about the role of the Western press, we begin to understand how journalists are not merely observers to a story; they are participants in it.

History

Brown, Katherine A.

Asia

Oxford University Press

Journalists are actors in international relations, mediating communications between governments and publics, but also between the administrations of different countries. American and foreign officials simultaneously consume the work of U.S. journalists and use it in their own thinking about how to conduct their work. As such, journalists play an unofficial diplomatic role. However, the U.S. news media largely amplifies American power. Instead of stimulating greater understanding, the U.S. elite, mainstream press can often widen mistrust as they promote an American worldview and, with the exception of some outliers, reduce the world into a tight security frame in which the U.S. is the hegemon. This has been the case in Afghanistan since 2001, particularly as emerging Afghan journalists have relied significantly on U.S. and other Western news outlets to report events within their government and their country. Based on eight years of interviews in Kabul, Washington, and New York, Your Country, Our War demonstrates how news has intersected with international politics during the War in Afghanistan and shows the global power and reach of the U.S. news media, especially within the context of the post-9/11 era. It reviews the trajectory of the U.S. news narrative about Afghanistan and America's never-ending war, and the rise of Afghan journalism, from 2001 to 2017. The book also examines the impact of the American news media inside a war theater. It examines how U.S. journalists affected the U.S.-Afghan relationship and chronicles their contribution to the rapid development of a community of Afghan journalists who grappled daily with how to define themselves and their country during a tumultuous and uneven transition from fundamentalist to democratic rule. Providing rich detail about the U.S.-Afghan relationship, especially former President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai's convictions about the role of the Western press, we begin to understand how journalists are not merely observers to a story; they are participants in it.

“A remarkably well-informed and truly innovative study of the way Boccaccio reimagined and rewrote Old French fabliaux in his Decameron.”—François Rigolot, Princeton University “Theoretically savvy, and yet jargon-free, philologically impeccable and critically acute, this is a book that shows the author’s unflinching dedication to the highest standards of scholarship.”—Simone Marchesi, author of Dante and Augustine “Brown’s attention to codicological contexts coupled with persuasive new interpretations of some of the fabliaux and Decameron stories make this book a pleasure to read for medievalist veterans and novices alike.”—Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, author of Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378–1417Short works known for their humor and ribaldry, the fabliaux were comic or satirical tales told by wandering minstrels in medieval France. Although the fabliaux are widely acknowledged as inspiring Giovanni Boccaccio’s masterpiece, the Decameron, this theory has never been substantiated beyond perceived commonalities in length and theme. This new and provocative interpretation examines the formal similarities between the Decameron’s tales of wit, wisdom, and practical jokes and the popular thirteenth-century fabliaux.Katherine Brown examines these works through a prism of reversal and chiasmus to show that Boccaccio was not only inspired by the content of the fabliaux but also by their fundamental design—where a passage of truth could be read as a lie or a tale of life as a tale of death. Brown reveals close resemblances in rhetoric, literary models, and narrative structure to demonstrate how the Old French manuscripts of the fabliaux were adapted in the organization of the Decameron.Identifying specific examples of fabliaux transformed by Boccaccio for his classic Decameron, Brown shows how Boccaccio refashioned borrowed literary themes and devices, playing with endless possibilities of literary creation through manipulations of his model texts.

Boccaccio's Fabliaux: Medieval Short Stories and the Function of Reversal

Literature & Fiction

Humor & Satire

University Press of Florida

A young woman is murdered at a car wash. An entire family is killed by a drunk driver. The victim of a violent assault survives but spends years struggling to heal physically and emotionally. Offenders in these crimes are apprehended, convicted and sentenced. But it is not enough. Across the U.S., in increasing numbers, these and other victims of violent crime have sought direct, personal encounters with the offenders who have harmed them. 
 "Facing Violence" tells the stories of courageous victims and offenders who have participated in facilitated dialogue in the aftermath of violent crimes. The book reports findings by a University of Minnesota research team that such victim/offender dialogue programs, when carefully supervised by trained facilitators, have usually resulted in life-transforming emotional healing for both parties. The book distills results of interviews with victims, offenders and staff members in two pioneering victim/offender dialogue programs in Texas and Ohio. 
 What kinds of benefits result from such programs? One parent said: "My daughter's dead. But I know I'm better, I can sleep at night. I know it's a good feeling not to hate some monster." 
 An assault victim commented: "This anger was deep witghin me, and now there's a lightness of my whole soul. It was transforming." 
 And an offender convicted of assault explained: "I wanted to tell her how sorry I was... I always felt like I had the duty to at least try to make things right with her."

Facing Violence: The Path of Restorative Justice and Dialogue

Politics & Social Sciences

Coates, Robert B.

Vos, Betty

Social Sciences

Lynne Rienner Publishers

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Brown, Katherine A.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Brown, Katherine A.