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
The proceedings of the Arab Regional Women’s Studies Workshop held at the American University in Cairo in May 1997. Among the theoretical and practical issues discussed are: the importance of introducing gender studies in order to achieve social equality in the Arab World, rethinking political and research priorities in order to give more attention to gender issues, and comparing gender programs in some Arab countries.
Adel Azer Sohair Mehanna Mulki al-Sharmani Essam Ali
This study seeks to provide a critical analysis of child protection policies in Egypt and examine whether these policies are based on the rights-based model of child protection that is embodied in the Convention for Child Rights (CRC). It identifies the ways in which these policies fail to link child rights and child protection and thus are unable to provide integrated and accessible services that meet children’s needs. Cairo Papers in Social Science 30:1
This cross-disciplinary, ethnographic, contextualized, and empirical volume explores the meaning and significance of urban space, and maps the spatial inscription of power on the mega-city of Cairo. Suspicious of collective life and averse to power-sharing, Egyptian governance structures weaken but do not stop the public’s role in the remaking of their city. What happens to a city where neo-liberalism has scaled back public services and encouraged the privatization of public goods, while the vast majority cannot afford the effects of such policies? Who wins and loses in the “march to the modern and the global” as the government transforms urban spaces and markets in the name of growth, security, tourism, and modernity? How do Cairenes struggle with an ambiguous and vulnerable legal and bureaucratic environment when legality is a privilege affordable only to the few or the connected? This companion volume to Cairo Cosmopolitan (2006) further develops the central insights of the Cairo School of Urban Studies. Contributors: Khaled Adham, Jennifer Bell, Agnès Deboulet, Taline Djerdjerian, W.J. Dorman, Bénédicte Florin, Jörg Gertel, Katarzyna Grabska, Patrick Haenni, Kareem Ibrahim, Samia Mehrez, Sarah Ben Néfissa, Agnieszka Paczynska, Samuli Schielke, Mulki Al-Sharmani, Diane Singerman, Hania Sobhy, Malika Zeghal.
