424 South Asia Research Vol. 36 (3): 406–426 Julie Billaud, Kabul Carnival (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), vii + 244 pp. DOI: 10.1177/0262728016663301 Kabul Carnival uses the stories and experiences of Afghan women to analyse the multivariate, overlapping and at times conflicting narratives that have arisen in the process of post-war reconstruction in Afghanistan. Women inhabit a unique position in conflict societies engaged in state-building as they serve as a site of vibrant contestations of differing normative value systems. Afghanistan presents a unique opportunity to study the state-building enterprise, which exhibits a political tug of war between state institutions (themselves multiply arranged), foreign troops, international donors, legal and international NGOs, powerful warlords and private contractors. The precariousness of the resulting environment is powerfully captured in the experiences of women, whose bodies become the very arena where contested norms take on their real-life character. In Kabul Carnival, the lived experiences of women serve as a mirror through which the complexities and inconsistencies of the political state-building enterprise can be scrutinised. The book’s insights are gleaned by Billaud from several months in 2007 spent in Afghanistan as a ‘mobile ethnographer’, skilfully weaving together a rich narrative from a variety of sources and individuals with whom she interacted. Billaud employs the intriguing metaphor of a carnival to analyse the ambiguous, conflicting and inverted realities that have come to characterise Afghanistan’s political environment. Kabul, like a carnival, can be viewed as the stage for theatrical-like performances by men and particularly women who navigate the tensions brought about by traditional, modernising and neoliberal forces. The carnivalesque performances of Afghan women reveal their ability to assert agency within the constructed gender order of the political environment by mobilising a multiplicity of culturally appropriate expressions relating to their bodies. These performances serve as a smokescreen for reality, showing the fragility of gendered norms that permit resistance and reinterpretations. The book, divided into two parts, focuses in part 1 on the state and provides the context through which women’s performances must be understood. Billaud evinces the various historical, political, ideological and modernising narratives that simultaneously play a role in defining gender norms and expectations. She also sheds light on the fragile nature of the state, whose legitimacy waxes and wanes according to various contestations within the wider society. Part 2 looks into the creative capacity of Afghan women in using their bodies to assert agency, resist and reinterpret gender norms. Chapter 1 provides an overview of Afghanistan’s recent political history from the 1920s to the present. Billaud carefully tracks the effects of modernisation on the country, showing how women’s bodies would serve as the billboard for particular images of society, whether ‘progressive’ or ‘traditional’. Afghanistan’s recent history has seen numerous changes in political leadership and women’s bodies have been at University of Sussex Library on November 17, 2016 sar.sagepub.com Downloaded from