This rich cultural history of the formation of an Egyptian national subject in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth is also a compelling critique of modern Middle Eastern historiography. Wilson Jacob argues that during British colonial rule (1882–1936), attempts to create a distinctively modern and Egyptian self free from the colonial gaze led to the formation of an ambivalent, performative subjectivity that he calls “effendi masculinity.” He traces effendi masculinity as it took hold during the interwar years, in realms from scouting and competitive sports to sex talk and fashion, considering its gendered performativity in relation to a late-nineteenth- century British discourse on masculinity and empire and an explicitly nationalist discourse on Egyptian masculinity. He contends that as an assemblage of colonial modernity, effendi masculinity was simultaneously local and global, national and international, and particular and universal.
Working Out Egypt
Effendi Masculinity and Subject Formation in Colonial Modernity, 1870-1940
Wilson Chacko Jacob
440 pp.
48 b/w photographs
15X23cm
ISBN 9789774164231
For sale only in the Middle East
19.95
Related products
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
Beyond the Façade
Political Reform in the Arab World
Edited by Marina OttawayJulia Choucair-Vizoso
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
...read more
Paperback
304 pp.15X23cm
19.95
Cairo Cosmopolitan
Politics, Culture, and Urban Space in the New Globalized Middle East
Edited by Diane SingermanPaul Amar
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.
...read more
Hardbound
564 pp.80 b/w illus., 21 tables, 2 maps
15X23cm
24.95
A Convergence of Civilizations
The Transformation of Muslim Societies around the World
Yousef CourbageEmmanuel Todd
Leaving aside the media’s sound and fury on the conflict between the west and the Islamic world, measured analysis shows another reality taking shape: rapprochement between these two civilizations, benefiting from a universal movement with roots in the Enlightenment. The historical and geographical sweep of this book discredits the notion of a specific Islamic demography. The range of fertility among Muslim women, for example, is as varied as religious behavior among Muslims in general. Whether agnostics, fundamentalist Salafis, or al-Qaeda activists, Muslims are a diverse group that prove the variety and individuality of Islam. Youssef Courbage and Emmanuel Todd consider different degrees of literacy, patriarchy, and defensive reactions among minority Muslim populations, underscoring the spread of massive secularization throughout the Arab and Muslim world. Sensitive to demographic variables and their reflection of personal and social truths, Courbage and Todd upend a dangerous meme: that we live in a fractured world close to crisis, struggling with an epidemic of closed cultures and minds made different by religion.
...read more
Paperback
152 pp.1 map, 8 graphs, 10 tables
15X23cm
16.95