Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
An intimate portrayal of masculinity in Egypt from lively, grounded, and fresh perspectives
Based on long-term research in Cairo and Alexandria and grounded in ethnographic stories and intimate portrayals, Economies of the Male Body takes up masculinity in Egypt from an important new angle: male bodies in conditions of overwork, illness, as well as pleasure and recreation.
The contributors to this volume center bottom-up everyday perspectives, in which the men appear as real flesh-and-blood human beings, embodying both their society’s gendered ideals as well as their own personal trajectories and idiosyncrasies. They set out to substantiate how underlying economic and social conditions undermine non-elite men’s ability to eat a varied diet, get proper rest, participate in sports, be loving and present husbands, and, more generally, lead rich, full, and worthwhile lives.
Economies of the Male Body shows how the health of Egyptian men, many of whom are overweight and overworked, and Egypt’s grim health statistics of high premature male mortality among men of lower socioeconomic classes should be read not as a result of substandard awareness among the population, but as a record of visceral inequalities generated by late capitalism and a global economic system that disproportionately burdens underprivileged bodies.
Contributors:
Carl Rommel, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
Karin Ahlberg, Stockholm University, Stockholm Sweden and Universität Bremen, Bremen Germany
Mariz Kelada, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon
Mustafa Abdalla, The Robert Koch Institute, Berlin, Germany
Youssef Ramez Boktor, The City University of New York, New York, USA
Noha Fikry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
"Engaging and insightful, this collection’s focus on the male body is particularly significant and makes an exciting and timely intervention in the study of gender in the Middle East."—Farha Ghannam, Swarthmore College
Carl Rommel (Edited by) is a researcher at the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology at Uppsala University. His publications include Egypt’s Football Revolution: Emotion, Masculinity, and Uneasy Politics (2021).
Karin Ahlberg (Edited by) is a researcher and (co-)PI of the projects BIOrdinary and The Environmental Afterlife of the Suez Canal at the Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University. She is also a CRDF Advanced Postdoc at IFEK, Universität Bremen.
Samuli Schielke (Afterword by) is a research fellow at the Center for Modern Oriental Studies in Berlin, Germany. He is the author of numerous publications including Egypt in the Future Tense: Hope, Frustration, and Ambivalence before and after 2011 (2015) and Migrant Dreams: Egyptian Workers in the Gulf States (AUC Press, 2020).
Introduction: Economies of the Male Body in Egypt
Carl Rommel and Karin Ahlberg
1. Exhausting the Male Body: A Magic Reserve and Shock Absorber Between Social Expectations and Capitalist Precarity
Karin Ahlberg
2. Men behind the Scenes: The Operationalization of Care in Egypt’s Visual Media Production
Mariz Kelada
3. The Intricacies of Disease Professionalism in Egypt: Diseased Bodies, Empowered Souls
Mustafa Abdalla
4. Enhanced Sexualities: The Male Body in Egypt at the Age of Viagra
Youssef Ramez Boktor
5. Weeping, Poetry Writing, and Bible Reciting: Men-Pigeon Relations on Egypt’s Rooftops
Noha Fikry
6. All Work and No Play?: Economic Pressures and Bodily Pleasures on and off the Football Pitch
Carl Rommel
Postscript by Samuli Schielke
Notes on Contributors