Nubian Women of West Aswan Reviews

Beginning in Tunisia, and spreading to as many as seventeen Arab countries, the street protests of the ‘Arab Spring’ in 2011 empowered citizens and banished their fear of speaking out against governments. The Arab Spring belied Arab exceptionalism, widely assumed to be the natural state of stagnation in the Arab world amid global change and progress. The collapse in February 2011 of the regime in the region’s most populous country, Egypt, led to key questions of why, how, and with what consequences did this occur? Inspired by the “contentious politics” school and Social Movement Theory, Arab Spring in Egypt addresses these issues, examining the reasons behind the collapse of Egypt’s authoritarian regime; analyzing the group dynamics in Tahrir Square of various factions: labor, youth, Islamists, and women; describing economic and external issues and comparing Egypt’s transition with that of Indonesia; and reflecting on the challenges of transition. “Its analysis is as fresh as the breathtaking events it covers.”—Nathan Brown, George Washington University “Arab Spring in Egypt is a modern history study that brings much greater understanding to light about the views of modern Arab people and the future they see for their country.”—Midwest Book Review

Based on unstructured interviews with thirteen Romanian–Egyptian couples presently living in Cairo, this study focuses on three interrelated aspects of these mixed marriages: the contexts that allowed the formation of the mixed families; the practices in which the couples engage in terms of household organization, gender relations, and kinship; and the role of religion in the lives of the mixed couples and how both the men and women position themselves in this regard. Cairo Papers Vol. 28, No. 1