Agrarian Transformation in the Arab World Reviews

Some governments of the Middle East have taken steps toward political reform. Are these meaningful changes, or empty attempts to pacify domestic and international public opinion? How do we distinguish reforms that alter the character of the political system from those that are only window dressing? Beyond the Façade evaluates the changes that are taking place in the region and explores the potential for further reform. The essays provide careful, detailed examinations of ten countries, highlighting the diversity of processes and problems. Contributors: Nathan Brown, Julia Choucair-Vizoso, Michele Dunne, Amr Hamzawy, Ellen Lust-Okar, Marina Ottaway, Sarah Phillips, Meredith Riley, Hugh Roberts, and Paul Salem. “A significant and needed contribution.”—Robert Springborg, SOAS, University of London “Superb . . . coherent, concise, and consistently insightful.”—Foreign Affairs

In the cities of the Arab world, while the media focus overwhelmingly on questions of religiosity and war, the future of urban modernity and political globalism is taking shape. As the Egyptian state reaches out to capture the apparent promises of neoliberalism, Cairenes struggle over and redefine their place, identity, and material welfare. Bringing together a distinguished interdisciplinary group of scholars, this volume explores what happens when new forms of privatization meet collectivist pasts, public space is sold off to satisfy investor needs and tourist gazes, and the state plans for Egypt’s future in desert cities while stigmatizing and neglecting Cairo’s popular neighborhoods. These dynamics produce surprising contradictions and juxtapositions that are coming to define today’s Middle East. Luxury malls owned by the military or foreign investors compete with flourishing but criminalized open-air markets; Nubian, Upper Egyptian and labor-migrant identities confront a renaissance of Arab nationalism; and new chic coffee houses, crumbling movie palaces, and resurgent working-class cultures offer radically clashing versions of public and gender sociability. This volume launches the Cairo School of Urban Studies, committed to fusing political-economy and ethnographic methods and sensitive to ambivalence and contingency, to reveal the new contours and patterns of modern power emerging in the urban frame. Cairo shows us that divergent cosmopolitanisms—both elite and working-class—are emerging across a broad spectrum of the polity, making new claims for political space, recognition, and representation. Contributors: Mona Abaza, Nezar AlSayyad, Paul Amar, Walter Armbrust, Vincent Battesti, Fanny Colonna, Eric Denis, Dalila ElKerdany, Yasser Elsheshtawy, Farha Ghannam, Galila El Kadi, Anouk de Koning, Petra Kuppinger, Anna Madoeuf, Catherine Miller, Nicolas Puig, Said Sadek, Omnia El Shakry, Diane Singerman, Elizabeth A. Smith, Leïla Vignal, Caroline Williams.