Cairo is a city of collective exhaustion. From the 2011 revolution to Sisi’s seizure of power in 2013, like millions of others, Mona Abaza was swallowed by a draining and exhausting daily life of a city caught up in the aftermath of revolt – a daily life that transformed countless people into all-embracing apolitical subjects.
Cairo collages narrates four parallel tales about Cairo’s urban transformations in the twenty-first century, examining everyday life and resilience after 2013. Weaving personal narrative with incisive theoretical discussions of the quotidian and the everyday, Abaza raises essential sociological questions regarding global orientations pertaining to emerging military urbanism. With reflections on the long hours of commuting to the gated communities in the desert east of Cairo and the daily material lives and social interactions of residents in decaying middle-class buildings, Abaza’s collage of landscapes weaves together the transmutations underway in the various Cairene geographies.
Mona Abaza is a Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, and Egyptology at the American University in Cairo.
Abaza received her B.A in Political Science from the American University in Cairo, Egypt (1982), her M.A in Sociology from the University of Durham, UK (1986) and her Ph.D from the University of Bielefeld (1990). She is currently a visiting Professor of Islamology in the Department of Theology at Lund University. Abaza is the former Chair of the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Egyptology and Psychology at the American University in Cairo (2007-2009). Previously, she has been a visiting scholar in Singapore at the Institute for South East Asian Studies (ISEAS 1990-1992), Kuala Lumpur 1995-96, Paris (EHESS) 1994, Berlin (Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg 1996-97), Leiden (IIAS, 2002-2003), Wassenaar (NIAS, 2006-2007) and Bellagio (Rockefeller Foundation 2005).
Research Interests: Religious and cultural networks between the Middle East and Southeast Asia, the Hadhrami diaspora in Southeast Asia, and consumer culture and the art market in Egypt.