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This article draws on practice theory to examine aspiring youths' pursuit of higher education in Afghanistan. It finds that plans and actions are mediated through youths' families, communities, and solidarity networks. As a result, the personal improvement and enhanced reputational status that aspiring youth seek is structurally connected to processes of social reproduction and social change. The paper is based on over 100 in-depth interviews conducted with youth in Afghanistan by an undergraduate research team. [Afghanistan, family, higher education, youth, social change] Introduction and Theoretical FramingSeveral years ago, when I initially came to Kabul to teach, I was chatting with Asmaa, a female undergraduate and student of mine, who recalled how her uncles had refused to speak to her or their brother, her father, in protest over her having traveled to the United States to represent our university, the American University of Afghanistan. 1 With time, Asmaa further explained to me, two of these three uncles had changed their attitudes such that they were now sending their own daughters, her cousins, to high school. That such an important opportunity for a self-made and overtly modern young Afghan woman would provoke such a harsh reaction from her close relatives surprised me. But even more intriguing was the fact that these uncles had eventually shifted their views. The story seemed to hold the kernel of something important about social change in contemporary Afghanistan and inspired the research reported here.There has been a long tradition in anthropology of seeking to understand how culture change happens as well as the related issue of how culture reproduces itself-how continuities of social values, norms, and behaviors are transferred across time and through generations. These questions are tied to the more general social theoretical problem of the relationship between structure and agency (Giddens 1984). Practice theory developed as a way to view individual and collective practices (human action/agency) as simultaneously shaping and being shaped by a system (culture/structure) that is itself continually being reproduced through these practices and is subject to change as a result (Ortner 1984). The emphasis in practice theory on explaining the reproduction and change of form and meaning of culture is the reason why the approach is used here. In Afghanistan, questions about continuity and change are not just theoretical but are consequential to people's lives, as many in the country are self-consciously reflecting on the imminent transition (of security control from the international community to the Afghan government) as well as the virtue and staying power of changes introduced over the last dozen years (after the Taliban were removed from rule). These questions are particularly concerning to youth in Afghanistan. This paper focuses on a subset of youth, "aspiring youth" (Lepisto 2010), who are young adults in their late teens and twenties who are pursuing a better future through higher education. In...

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