The Ecology of Rural Ethnic Groups and the Spatial Dimensions of Power¹

What mechanisms influence the locations of rural ethnic groups? Some authors have suggested that such groups are distributed merely in respect to ecological conditions. Political tensions between competing societies, however, also have a dimension that influences spatial locations. To illustrate this, the locations of the rural ethnic groups in a region in central Afghanistan are analyzed. In this case, variations in ecological adaptation do not adequately account for some of the spatial groupings. Effective distance, however—a time‐cost measure of the degree of separation and accessibility of different locations—is advanced as the primary factor, for it controls the degree to which the various local groups have been able to interact profitably with each other and the outside. The history of the area is presented to indicate that political alignments manifest locational controls on social relations in this region.