To Change Is to Be: The Kalasha of Pakistan’s Afghan Frontier and the Age of Heritage

Abstract

This thesis examines the relationship between heritage and borders. It argues that the study of heritage has a tendency to overlook important aspects of the borders of heritage discourses. The dissonance and conflict which occurs at the meeting points of different heritages is well worn academic territory. What is less comprehensively understood are the other products which issue from these meeting points.

Taking as its case study the Kalasha, a non-Muslim community of only 4000 members positioned on the Pakistani side of the Afghan border, I demonstrate how in certain settings different heritages can come together in creative combinations. The theoretical underpinnings of my argument are drawn from borderland studies, a discourse which has much to offer the critical discussion of heritage, but which has thus far been underutilised. I also make use of the ecological principal of the ecotone, a methodology which allows me to abstract what I learnt from my case study into a format which is applicable to the wider study of heritage.

The thesis makes several novel contributions to the academic discourse. The first is to draw attention to the potential of indeterminate borderlands for advancing critical heritage studies in productive new directions. The second is to produce a methodology for studying the meeting points of different heritages which offers the conceptual space to explore both dissonant and creative outcomes. The final contribution is to argue for a theorisation of heritage narratives as malleable and capable of being combined and in so doing nuance the prevalent understanding of heritage narratives as immutable and immiscible.