Remaking the modern : space, relocation, and the politics of identity in a global Cairo / Farha Ghannam.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ghannam, Farha, 1963-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Urbanization--Egypt--Cairo.

Urbanization.

City and town life--Egypt--Cairo.

City and town life.

Cairo (Egypt)--Social conditions.

Cairo (Egypt).

Cairo (Egypt)--Economic conditions.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (227 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, c2002.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In an effort to restyle Cairo into a global capital that would meet the demands of tourists and investors and to achieve President Anwar Sadat's goal to modernize the housing conditions of the urban poor, the Egyptian government relocated residents from what was deemed valuable real estate in downtown Cairo to public housing on the outskirts of the city. Based on more than two years of ethnographic fieldwork among five thousand working-class families in the neighborhood of al-Zawyia al-Hamra, this study explores how these displaced residents have dealt with the stigma of public housing, the loss of their established community networks, and the diversity of the population in the new location.Until now, few anthropologists have delivered detailed case studies on this recent phenomenon. Ghannam fills this gap in scholarship with an illuminating analysis of urban engineering of populations in Cairo. Drawing on theories of practice, the study traces the various tactics and strategies employed by members of the relocated group to appropriate and transform the state's understanding of "modernity" and hegemonic construction of space. Informed by recent theories of globalization, Ghannam also shows how the growing importance of religious identity is but one of many contradictory ways that global trajectories mold the identities of the relocated residents. Remaking the Modern is a revealing ethnography of a working class community's struggle to appropriate modern facilities and confront the alienation and the dislocation brought on by national policies and the quest to globalize Cairo.

Contents:

Relocation and the creation of a global city

Relocation and the daily use of "modern" spaces

Old places, new identities

Gender and the struggle over public spaces

Religion in a global era

Roads to prosperity.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 195-206) and index.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN:

9780520230460

9786612762550

9781282762558

1282762559

9781597345125

1597345121

9780520936010

0520936019

9781597348591

1597348597

OCLC:

614690526