In the 1960s the construction of the Aswan High Dam occasioned the forced displacement of a large part of the Nubian population. Beginning in 1960, anthropologists at the American University in Cairo’s Social Research Center undertook a survey of the Nubians to be moved and those already outside their historic homeland. The goal was to record and analyze Nubian culture and social organization, to create a record for the future, and to preserve a body of information on which scholars and officials could draw. This book chronicles the research carried out by an international team with the cooperation of many Nubians. Gathered into one volume for the first time are reprinted articles that provide a valuable resource of research data on the Nubian project, as well as photographs taken during the field study that document ways of life that have long since disappeared. Contributors: Kawthar Abd el-Rasoul, Mohamed Fikri Abdel Wahab, Charles Callender, Abdelfattah Eid, Hussein Fahim, Robert A. Fernea, Peter Geiser, Fadwa el Guindi, Anna Hohenwart-Gerlachstein, John G. Kennedy, Mohamed Riad, Alia Rouchdy, Thayer Scudder, and Abdel Hamid El-Zein.
Nubian Encounters
The Story of the Nubian Ethnological Survey 1961–1964
Edited byNicholas S. Hopkins
Sohair Mehanna
400 pp.
50 b/w photographs, 8 maps
15X23cm
ISBN 9789774164019
For sale worldwide
29.95
Also available by this author
Anthropology in Egypt, 1900–67: Culture, Function, and Reform
Cairo Papers Vol. 33, No. 2
Nicholas S. HopkinsAnthropology as a discipline came to Egypt around 1900, as foreign anthropologists reported home on the culture they found. Gradually the intellectual approach was influenced by the functionalist school, stressing that a society consists of interlocking parts. As Egyptians took the lead in anthropology, in the 1930s, the discipline entered into the debate about the need to reform Egyptian society and culture especially in the rural areas, against a general background of functionalism. This approach dominated through the 1960s, when there was a break in Egypt because of the Six-Day War and in world anthropology because of the emergence of new intellectual models. This study traces the evolution of anthropology in Egypt through the stories of its practitioners such as Blackman, Galal, Evans-Pritchard, Hocart, Abbas Ammar, Hamid Ammar, Berque, Abou Zeid, el Hamamsy, Uways, and their contemporaries, showing their challenges and accomplishments.
...read more
Paperback
180 pp.14.2X21.6cm
14.95
Political and Social Protest in Egypt
Cairo Papers Vol. 29, No. 2/3
Edited byNicholas S. Hopkins
Paperback
190 pp.14X21.5cm
19.95
Related products
Cairo Cosmopolitan
Politics, Culture, and Urban Space in the New Globalized Middle East
Edited by Diane SingermanPaul Amar
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. The original publication of this volume launched 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. 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.
...read more
Paperback
564 pp.80 b/w illus., 21 tables, 2 maps
15X23cm
19.99
Consuming Desires
Family Crisis and the State in the Middle East
Frances S. HassoOver the course of the twentieth century, most Middle East states adopted a shari’a-based system for recognizing marriages. Partly in reaction to these dynamics, new types of marriage that evade the control of the state and religious authorities have emerged. These marriages allow for men and women to engage in sexual relationships, but do not require that they register the marriage with the state, that they live together, or that the man be financially responsible for the wife or household. In this new study, Frances Hasso explores the extent to which these new relationship forms are used and to what ends, as well as the legal and cultural responses to such innovations. She outlines what is at stake for the various groups—the state, religious leaders, opposition groups, young people, men and women of different classes and locations, and feminist organizations—in arguments for and against these relationship forms.
...read more
Paperback
272 pp.15X23cm
16.95
Connected in Cairo
Growing Up Cosmopolitan in the Modern Middle East
Mark Allen PetersonFor members of Cairo’s upper classes, cosmopolitanism is a form of social capital, deployed whenever they acquire or consume transnational commodities, or goods that are linked in the popular imagination to other, more ‘modern’ places. In a series of carefully contextualized case studies—of Arabic children’s magazines, Pokémon, private schools and popular films, coffee shops and fast-food restaurants—Mark Allen Peterson describes the social practices that create class identities. He traces these processes from childhood into adulthood, examining how taste and style intersect with a changing educational system and economic liberalization. Peterson reveals how uneasy many cosmopolitan Cairenes are with their new global identities, and describes their efforts to root themselves in the local through religious, nationalist, or linguistic practices.
...read more
Paperback
288 pp.7 b/w illus.
15X23cm
16.95
Adaptable Autocrats
Regime Power in Egypt and Syria
Joshua StacherNotwithstanding the 2011 Arab Spring, autocratic continuity—not wide-ranging political change—remains the hallmark of the region’s upheaval. Contrasting Egypt and Syria, Joshua Stacher examines how executive power is structured in each country to show how these preexisting power configurations shaped the uprisings and, in turn, the outcomes. Even as Mubarak was forced to relinquish the Egyptian presidency, military generals from the regime were charged with leading the transition. The course of the Syrian uprising reveals a key difference: the decentralized character of Syrian politics. Political structures, elite alliances, state institutions, and governing practices are seldom swept away entirely—even following successful revolutions—so it is vital to examine the various contexts for regime survival. Elections, protests, and political struggles will continue to define the region in the coming years. Examining the lead-up to the Egyptian and Syrian uprisings helps us unlock the complexity behind the protests and transitions.
...read more
Paperback
256 pp.15X23cm
16.95