Remaking the Modern: Space, Relocation, and the Politics of Identity in a Global Cairo

by Farha Ghannam

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.

Genres: Egypt, Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Siyu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Has a very generic and standard ethnography structure. Covers a lot of topics so fell like it’s all over the place. My favorite chapter is the one talks about public space. It has some depth to it.

[Iris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Last century classics

[hala osman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that takes you closer to the social fabric of life in Cairo into people's homes and sensibilities in the neighborhood of Al Zawya Al Hamra. A great attempt to make sense of the diverse mosiac that is life in Cairo.

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somehow feels too sweeping, but it's thought-provoking. The conclusion is particularly cool.