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

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Barak, On, author.

Contributor:

ProQuest (Firm)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Time--Social aspects--Egypt.

Time.

Time perception--Social aspects--Egypt.

Time perception.

Technology--Social aspects--Egypt.

Technology.

Social conditions.

Technology--Social aspects.

Time perception--Social aspects.

Time--Social aspects.

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

Egypt.

History.

Egypt--Social conditions--19th century.

Egypt--Social conditions--20th century.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 341 pages) : illustrations, maps

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, 2013.

System Details:

text file

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:

1 En Route 21

2 Double Standards 53

3 Effendi Hauntologies 85

4 Harmonization and Its Discords 115

5 The Urban Politics of Slowness 145

6 Counterclockwise Revolution 175

7 On Hold 205.

Notes:

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

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest, 2015. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest affiliated libraries.

OCLC:

855237498

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.