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Paper short abstract:

Combining written and audio-visual ethnography, I ask how spiritual power is sensed, known, and embodied in Afghan landscapes. I argue that studying spirits can help us understand how sovereignties in Afghanistan are fragmented, where power is often shared with, and performed through, the unseen.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I walk with the listener through landscapes in Afghanistan that are considered, by those who live in them, to hold spiritual power (baraka). Merging written ethnography with audio-visual recordings from the field, I draw attention to sights, sounds and touches that characterise these evocative places. What is it that gives such places a sense of wonder, of something beyond the ordinary? And how do "signs of the past," places where spirits dwell, shape social experience in the present and constitute very earthly societies? The more-than-human in these landscapes tend to be spirits of jinn, saints, and martyrs fallen in war. These spirits shift and travel between the human and non-human worlds, connecting present inhabitants with the greater cosmological realm. They also transform the earth they inhabit - infusing dust, rocks, hills, and trees with healing power. Living with spirits strikes me as integral to Afghan ways of dwelling-in-place, often influencing personal decisions and social action. In this paper I take this notion further, arguing that spirits also hold sovereignty over certain places. To understand how power is performed locally in Afghanistan, we may need to view sovereignty from a different perspective. This requires a shift from understanding "territory" as a secular sphere of political authority, in which a human polity has full authority over defined and bounded places. In these Afghan landscapes, power tends to be fragmented and sovereignty distributed between worldly rulers and the unseen realm - where humans share power with, and through, spirits.