ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the way in which the term 'tribe' has been deployed in the Afghan context, further problematising the notion of the tribe and showing how a monolithic and unreflective body of work has become the norm in reference to Afghan social organisation. It traces the conceptual hardening and reification of the term during the twentieth century and its particular deployment in the literature on Afghanistan in the twenty-first century, wherein the 'tribes' seem to have acquired a newfound importance. The chapter also explores the evolution of the concept from its use in the early nineteenth century by the influential Mountstuart Elphinstone, and on to his most significant successors writing in the late colonial period. Mountstuart Elphinstone was the first real scholar of Afghanistan, and his work was to be so pivotal that it would not be a stretch to call him the 'founding father' of modern Afghan studies.
