Faculty Book Chapters

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  Fifty Years of State Land Distribution in the Syrian Jazira: Agrarian Reform, Agrarian Counter-reform, and the Arab Belt Policy (1958-2008)

  Myriam Ababsa

  This collection of essays revisits agrarian transformation in Arab countries in the light of new realities and emerging challenges. Apart from the urgency of the deepening food crisis, such realities include environmental challenges, changes in consumption and life-style choices, and a new set of rules governing the conditions of access to resources. The issue investigates the commonality and diversity in the current processes of agrarian transformation, based on empirical case studies from different Arab countries.

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  African Refugees: Ambivalent Status and Diasporic Struggles in Cairo

  Mulki Al Sharmani

  This chapter argues that African migrant groups are marginalized on the level of governmental policies, national discourse, and daily life yet, despite these exclusionary policies and economic hardships, Cairo's spaces of illegality, informality and (transnational) kinship networks, and community solidarity can make it a “more fluid and thus safer urban space” than that experienced by refugees in many other nations. It also covers the ways in which Somali and Sudanese communities, fleeing civil war and violence in their own countries, rebuilt their communities in Egypt, yet, when Sudanese refugees grew frustrated by very slow resettlement programs and the diminishing possibilities to gain refugee status, over 1,200 men, women, and children staged a sit-in. In general, Egypt, with its rigid citizenship laws and its public discourse of exclusionary nationalism and its simultaneous commitment to the protection of refugees and the cosmopolitan daily realities of its urban spaces, seems to be a host society that is both closed and open to refugees.

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  Gender, Poverty and Agro-Biodiversity Conservationin Rural Egypt and Tunisia

  Habib Ayeb and Reem Saad

  This paper investigates the links between poverty, gender, and biodiversity in rural Egypt and Tunisia. Its aim is to highlight the significant role of women in biodiversity conservation, as well as the complexities that characterize the relationship between poverty and biodiversity protection. Despite natural and social diversity, Egypt and Tunisia are com­parable in terms of their present paths of economic transformation. Agriculture and rural society are comparable in both countries in terms of scarcity ofland and water, and threats to agricultural resources (urbanization, industrialization, tourism, agro-investment, etc.). In both countries, rural dwellers are increasingly resorting to non-agricultural activity, including internal and external labor migration. In both coun­tries, the liberalization of agricultural land and water markets has been a core component of economic reform and structural adjustment poli­cies. Those reforms have aggravated the problem of rural poverty, and have had adverse effects on the general welfare and status of food secu­rity of a significant number of rural households. In both countries, the over-exploitation of agricultural resources and the introduction of new modes of farming (including the increasing reliance on hybrid seeds) are posing significant threats to agricultural biodiversity and to the ecological balance in general. This problem has important implications for the welfare of rural dwellers, especially because of the implications for food security. This paper seeks to test a hypothesis supported by research evidence from other world regions: that women's increased access to secure land tenure and other agricultural resources is positively correlated with bio­diversity conservation. The paper will also test the same correlation with respect to poor farmers. The paper is primarily based on fieldwork carried out in two compa­rable regions of rural Egypt and Tunisia, namely the region ofFayoum and the Oasis of Gabes respectively. In both areas there are serious challenges to agro-biodiversity and the ecological balance in general. These include the encroachment of urbanization and industrialization, emerging modes ofland exploitation that over-exploit natural resources, and the widespread use of hybrid seed varieties to the detriment oflocal varieties. In the area under study in rural Egypt, the main challenge to agro-biodiversity is the spread of hybrid seeds, while in the Tunisian case it is the encroaching urbanization and industrialization, and an expansion of investment agriculture. The paper is divided into three main sections. The first outlines the main conceptual issues, including comparative material from agrarian societies outside of the MENA region. The second details the Egypt case, and the third the Tunisian case.

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  Gender, Poverty, and Agro-Biodiversity Conservation in Rural Egypt and Tunisia

  Habib Ayeb and Reem Saad

  This collection of essays revisits agrarian transformation in Arab countries in the light of new realities and emerging challenges. Apart from the urgency of the deepening food crisis, such realities include environmental challenges, changes in consumption and life-style choices, and a new set of rules governing the conditions of access to resources. The issue investigates the commonality and diversity in the current processes of agrarian transformation, based on empirical case studies from different Arab countries.

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  Revisiting Agrarian Transformation in the Arab Region

  Habib Ayeb and Reem Saad

  This collection of essays revisits agrarian transformation in Arab countries in the light of new realities and emerging challenges. Apart from the urgency of the deepening food crisis, such realities include environmental challenges, changes in consumption and life-style choices, and a new set of rules governing the conditions of access to resources. The issue investigates the commonality and diversity in the current processes of agrarian transformation, based on empirical case studies from different Arab countries.

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  Biodiversity and Social Change in Ishkeul National Park, Tunisia

  Sonia Ben Meriem

  This collection of essays revisits agrarian transformation in Arab countries in the light of new realities and emerging challenges. Apart from the urgency of the deepening food crisis, such realities include environmental challenges, changes in consumption and life-style choices, and a new set of rules governing the conditions of access to resources. The issue investigates the commonality and diversity in the current processes of agrarian transformation, based on empirical case studies from different Arab countries.

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  Of Fish and Profit: Large - and Small scale Fishing in Lake Nasser

  Hadeer ElShafie

  This collection of essays revisits agrarian transformation in Arab countries in the light of new realities and emerging challenges. Apart from the urgency of the deepening food crisis, such realities include environmental challenges, changes in consumption and life-style choices, and a new set of rules governing the conditions of access to resources. The issue investigates the commonality and diversity in the current processes of agrarian transformation, based on empirical case studies from different Arab countries.

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  Zero-person and the psyche

  Graham Harman

  This article addresses several closely linked issues: the mind-body problem, the relation between first-person and third-person descriptions, and panpyschism. First, the mind-body problem is one small part of a more basic body-body problem, as found in the abandoned occasionalist tradition. Second, what is missing from the distinction between first- and third-person descriptions is what I will call the zero-person stance. Third, the term "panpsychism" must be replaced with a more accurate alternative; in this article I propose "endopsychism" as the alternative term.

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  A Half-Century of Wheat Farming in Egypt: Self-Sufficency, Marketable Surplus, and Farm Size

  Francois Ireton

  This collection of essays revisits agrarian transformation in Arab countries in the light of new realities and emerging challenges. Apart from the urgency of the deepening food crisis, such realities include environmental challenges, changes in consumption and life-style choices, and a new set of rules governing the conditions of access to resources. The issue investigates the commonality and diversity in the current processes of agrarian transformation, based on empirical case studies from different Arab countries.

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  Participating in Agribusiness: Contested Meanings of Rurality and Water in Jordan

  Mauro Van Aken

  This collection of essays revisits agrarian transformation in Arab countries in the light of new realities and emerging challenges. Apart from the urgency of the deepening food crisis, such realities include environmental challenges, changes in consumption and life-style choices, and a new set of rules governing the conditions of access to resources. The issue investigates the commonality and diversity in the current processes of agrarian transformation, based on empirical case studies from different Arab countries.

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  Intersecting Photography with Text: Reflections on a Working Process

  Mona Abaza

  The third and forth of four issues in volume 31. This issue covers topics such as visual anthropology and activism art. Contributors include: Mona Abaza, Diana Allan, Yasser Alwan, Heba Farid, Pascale Fehali, Fadwa el Guindi, Angela Harutyunyan, Suncem Kocer, Sabelo Narasimhan, Elizabeth Wickett.

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  Photographic Practices and the Egyptian Imaginary: Intersecting Photography with Text: Reactions on a Working Process

  Mona Abaza

  This collection of essays builds on presentations and debates that were part of Cairo Papers 19th Annual Symposium, “Sights of Knowledge: Debates about Visual Production in the Middle East,” held in spring 2010. It also integrates commissioned contributions by other authors to reflect the wide scope of visual productions and engagements with and about the Middle East. Of special significance is a paper that deals with the 25 January Revolution and the visual productions and effects thereof. How was the revolution experienced through the visual production of everyday life on the square? And how and what forms of visual engagements allow us to tell different façades of experiences and demands that occasioned the revolution? Cairo Papers in Social Science 31:3/8

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  Social Ties between the people of al Walaja village at home and abroad

  Sheerin Al-Araj

  This monograph centers on the effort to understand the issue of return migration to Palestine from a sociological point of view. Six papers examine various human situations among Palestinians, ranging from villages that have been divided by borders such as the Green Line to populations of Palestinian origin that have been cut off from their roots in Palestine and are now seeking to establish their lives elsewhere. The common theme is the role of borders and boundaries—those that people seek to cross and those that the wider political processes establish around existing populations. Cairo Papers Vol. 29, No. 1.

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  Epistemological Intersections: Anthropology and Art - From Archive to Art Film: A Palestinian Aesthetics of Memory Reviewed

  Diana Allam

  This collection of essays builds on presentations and debates that were part of Cairo Papers 19th Annual Symposium, “Sights of Knowledge: Debates about Visual Production in the Middle East,” held in spring 2010. It also integrates commissioned contributions by other authors to reflect the wide scope of visual productions and engagements with and about the Middle East. Of special significance is a paper that deals with the 25 January Revolution and the visual productions and effects thereof. How was the revolution experienced through the visual production of everyday life on the square? And how and what forms of visual engagements allow us to tell different façades of experiences and demands that occasioned the revolution? Cairo Papers in Social Science 31:3/12

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  From Archive to Art Film: A Palestinian Aesthetics of Memory Reviewed

  Diana Allan

  The third and forth of four issues in volume 31. This issue covers topics such as visual anthropology and activism art. Contributors include: Mona Abaza, Diana Allan, Yasser Alwan, Heba Farid, Pascale Fehali, Fadwa el Guindi, Angela Harutyunyan, Suncem Kocer, Sabelo Narasimhan, Elizabeth Wickett.

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  Kefaya at a turning point

  Mustapha Kamel Al-Sayyid

  Cairo Papers in Social Science first appeared in 1977, the year that witnessed the famous bread riots in Egypt. As the journal celebrates its 30th anniversary, Egypt also seems to be at a crossroads, as new forms of protest have been developing with the aim of challenging the existing order and inducing change. This issue includes a collection of papers delivered at Cairo Papers 30th Anniversary Symposium that deal with the different protest groups that have been active in Egypt in the last three decades, including the Kefaya movement, the Negm-Imam phenomenon, the feminist movement, Coptic activism, and the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as workers' protests, rural resistance, and the judges' call for reform. Cairo Papers Vol. 29, No. 2/6

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  "No Ideas but in Things": A Documentary Art Short on Message

  Yasser Alwan

  The third and forth of four issues in volume 31. This issue covers topics such as visual anthropology and activism art. Contributors include: Mona Abaza, Diana Allan, Yasser Alwan, Heba Farid, Pascale Fehali, Fadwa el Guindi, Angela Harutyunyan, Suncem Kocer, Sabelo Narasimhan, Elizabeth Wickett.

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  Photographic Practices and the Egyptian Imaginary: “No Ideas But in Things”: A Documentary Art Short on Message

  Yasser Alwan

  This collection of essays builds on presentations and debates that were part of Cairo Papers 19th Annual Symposium, “Sights of Knowledge: Debates about Visual Production in the Middle East,” held in spring 2010. It also integrates commissioned contributions by other authors to reflect the wide scope of visual productions and engagements with and about the Middle East. Of special significance is a paper that deals with the 25 January Revolution and the visual productions and effects thereof. How was the revolution experienced through the visual production of everyday life on the square? And how and what forms of visual engagements allow us to tell different façades of experiences and demands that occasioned the revolution? Cairo Papers in Social Science 31:3/6

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  Europe in Asia: Mosques and Temples in the Age of Discovery

  David Blanks

  The first of four issues in volume 31, covering topics of sacred spaces and human perspectives. Contributors include: Richard Byford, Cassandra R. Chambliss, Anna di Marco, Michael Reimer, ACS Saunders, Mark Sedgwick, Robert Switzer.

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  Sacred Space: an Introduction

  David Blanks and Bradley S. Clough

  The first of four issues in volume 31, covering topics of sacred spaces and human perspectives. Contributors include: Richard Byford, Cassandra R. Chambliss, Anna di Marco, Michael Reimer, ACS Saunders, Mark Sedgwick, Robert Switzer.

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  Exploding into the seventies: Ahmad Fu'ad Nigm, Shiekh Imam, and the aesthetics of a new youth politics

  Marilyn Booth

  Cairo Papers in Social Science first appeared in 1977, the year that witnessed the famous bread riots in Egypt. As the journal celebrates its 30th anniversary, Egypt also seems to be at a crossroads, as new forms of protest have been developing with the aim of challenging the existing order and inducing change. This issue includes a collection of papers delivered at Cairo Papers 30th Anniversary Symposium that deal with the different protest groups that have been active in Egypt in the last three decades, including the Kefaya movement, the Negm-Imam phenomenon, the feminist movement, Coptic activism, and the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as workers' protests, rural resistance, and the judges' call for reform. Cairo Papers Vol. 29, No. 2/5

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  When "enough" is not enough: Resistance during accumulation by dispossession

  Ray Bush

  Cairo Papers in Social Science first appeared in 1977, the year that witnessed the famous bread riots in Egypt. As the journal celebrates its 30th anniversary, Egypt also seems to be at a crossroads, as new forms of protest have been developing with the aim of challenging the existing order and inducing change. This issue includes a collection of papers delivered at Cairo Papers 30th Anniversary Symposium that deal with the different protest groups that have been active in Egypt in the last three decades, including the Kefaya movement, the Negm-Imam phenomenon, the feminist movement, Coptic activism, and the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as workers' protests, rural resistance, and the judges' call for reform. Cairo Papers Vol. 29, No. 2/8

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  The Buddha in the Dunes: The Aesthetics of Alientation and the Sacred in the Surreal Japanese Novel

  Richard Byford

  The first of four issues in volume 31, covering topics of sacred spaces and human perspectives. Contributors include: Richard Byford, Cassandra R. Chambliss, Anna di Marco, Michael Reimer, ACS Saunders, Mark Sedgwick, Robert Switzer.

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  The Sacrament of Mari Giris: Rituals of Contact and Consumption at a Coptic Orthodox Saint's Festival in Upper Egypt

  Cassandra R. Chambliss

  The first of four issues in volume 31, covering topics of sacred spaces and human perspectives. Contributors include: Richard Byford, Cassandra R. Chambliss, Anna di Marco, Michael Reimer, ACS Saunders, Mark Sedgwick, Robert Switzer.

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  Worker protests under economic liberalization in Egypt

  Francoise Clement

  Cairo Papers in Social Science first appeared in 1977, the year that witnessed the famous bread riots in Egypt. As the journal celebrates its 30th anniversary, Egypt also seems to be at a crossroads, as new forms of protest have been developing with the aim of challenging the existing order and inducing change. This issue includes a collection of papers delivered at Cairo Papers 30th Anniversary Symposium that deal with the different protest groups that have been active in Egypt in the last three decades, including the Kefaya movement, the Negm-Imam phenomenon, the feminist movement, Coptic activism, and the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as workers' protests, rural resistance, and the judges' call for reform. Cairo Papers Vol. 29, No. 2/9