On time : technology and temporality in modern Egypt / On Barak.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Barak, On.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Technology--Social aspects.

Time perception--Social aspects.

Time perception.

Time--Social aspects.

Social conditions.

Egypt--History--British occupation, 1882-1936.

Egypt.

History.

Egypt--Social conditions--19th century.

Egypt--Social conditions--20th century.

Time--Social aspects--Egypt.

Time.

Time perception--Social aspects--Egypt.

Technology--Social aspects--Egypt.

Technology.

Physical Description:

xiii, 341 pages: illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, 2013.

Summary:

In this pioneering history of transportation and communication in the modern Middle East, On Barak argues that, contrary to accepted wisdom, technological change in Egypt did not drive a sense of time focused on standardization only. Rather, the introduction of the steamer, railway, telegraph, tramway, and telephone in colonial Egypt actually triggered the development of unique timekeeping practices that subverted the typical Western infatuation with expediency and promptness. These countertempos, predicated on uneasiness over "dehumanizing" European standards of efficiency, sprang from and contributed to nonlinear modes of arranging time. Barak shows how these countertempos developed with each new technological innovation during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, contributing to a particularly Egyptian sense of time that extends into the present day, exerting influence over contemporary political language in the Arab world. The universal notion of a modern mechanical standard time and the deviations supposedly characterizing non-Western settings "from time immemorial," On Time provocatively argues, were in fact mutually constitutive and mutually reinforcing. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction: another time?

En route

Double standards

Effendi hauntologies

Harmonization and its discords

The urban politics of slowness

Counterclockwise revolution

On hold

Conclusion: countertemporality.

Notes:

Revised version of the author's dissertation--New York University, 2009.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780520276130

0520276132

9780520276147

0520276140

OCLC:

830992839