Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

Swipe For More: Digital Sex Education, The Emergence Of Femtech And The Neoliberal Subject In Cairo, Egypt, Marisa Breathwaite

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I approach digital sex education in Cairo, Egypt and how it is navigated by Cairo’s urban elite. The way digital sex education in Cairo is consumed via social media and online courses is touted as “new” by popular media coverage. The content, products and services boast the first of their kind by the creators of the platforms themselves. That middle and upper class Cairene women are talking about sex online and consuming digital sex education content, in visible public forums, is portrayed as a completely novel phenomenon—in other words, platforms like Cairo’s first femtech company, Motherbeing, are …

Abundant Bodies In Times Of Excess: A Critical Exploration Of Fatness From Cairo To Tokyo, Sarah Aly

Theses and Dissertations

This work is an autoethnographic exploration of the social construction of fatness in contexts of existing and emerging neoliberal state control through the embodied experiences of fat people, following the tradition of ‘fat epistemology’ promoted by the emerging 'critical fat studies' field. It is a comparative study of the experiences of fatness as an unstable embodied category of being, rather than a liminal undesirable state or medical condition, in Cairo, Alexandria, and Tokyo, paying particular attention to the gender, racial, and class dynamics surrounding the construction (and marginalization) of fatness across various spatial and temporal contexts. These experiences are considered …

Barley As A Human Companion Species - Exploring The Relationship Between Barley And North Atlantic Peoples: 4000 Bc – Ad 1200, Chloe Combs

Theses and Dissertations

Barley (Hordeum vulgare) is an ancient cereal crop originating in the Fertile Crescent approximately 12,000 years ago and is presently one of the most important cereal crops globally. Barley has a long and complex history. This thesis aims to explore one dimension of this history through the lens of human companion species using archaeobotanical data collected from the islands of the North Atlantic from the Neolithic (4,000 BC) to the Norse period (AD 1200).

The School Of SharīʿA Judges: SharīʿA Courts’ Reform And Legal Modernization In Egypt (1907-1927), Yamen Nouh

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studied the history of the school of sharīʿa judges (1907-1927) as an essential episode of the reform of Sharīʿa courts in Egypt in the early 20th century. The thesis studied the school in connection with the broader context of legal modernization of the Egyptian legal system. The study explored the institutional, pedagogical, and legal aspects of the reform that the school advocated. The study analyzed the impact of the school’s pedagogy on the practice of the Islamic judiciary and the theoretical conception of Sharīʿa. The study used a significant yet understudied historical source: the judicial press. A comparative …

Navigating Complexity Of Serving Displaced Communities: A Study Of Yemeni Community-Based Organizations In Egypt, Alya Mohammed Al-Mahdi

Theses and Dissertations

Forced displacement is a global crisis that poses challenges for nations like Egypt. Despite international NGO support, escalating displaced individuals have overwhelmed existing capacities. Refugee Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) have emerged as a natural response from the communities themselves to bridge the gap between the state and NGOs and the refugee community. However, CBOs in Egypt face challenges that impact their operation and continuity. Through qualitative research, this study aims to explore the experience of the Yemeni CBOs. Through interviews with seven people from six CBOs conducted through field visits and online calls, this research uncovers the dynamics of Yemeni CBOs …

Politics Of Belonging: Being Armenian In Turkey And Lebanon, Pinar Ertekin

Theses and Dissertations

An estimated two million Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire before the beginning of World War I, and almost all of them were annihilated or displaced during the genocide of 1915. My work revolves around the meaning of the Armenian Genocide to Armenians living in Turkey and Lebanon. I focused on what it feels like to be an Armenian living as a Turkish citizen in a state and nation that had perpetuated and then consistently denied the genocide of their ancestors, and I examined how Armenians in Turkey experience their everyday lives, the challenges they encounter as well as their …

The Fall And Rise Of Bengali Muslim Conciousness: Conceptualising The Identity Of The Bangla Universal, Habib Khan

Theses and Dissertations

The emergence of modern-nation states saw the end of the empirical era of exploitation and exercise of inherent racist tendencies towards the 'other'. However, the effect of that colonial system is still ever-present in the creation and governance of these newly independent states. While every new state aims to be 'modern', they adopt the international legal framework of the West as their own - a system they had initially wanted to escape. The concept of Muslim universality in the form of the ummah should have freed Pakistan from the shackles of its former colonial masters. Instead, this phenomenon was replaced …

Narrating & Living With Loss: Towards An Ethnography Of Grief, Fayrouz Ibrahim

Theses and Dissertations

Through this paper, I seek to approach grief through how it is lived, the nexus between loss, and the sought-for physical abstractions through memory, objects, and materials to live with/despite such a loss. This paper is a phenomenological and ethnographic research project on the curatory rituals and practices that individuals employ in keeping lost loved ones alive in their everyday. I explore grief through a multidisciplinary and multimodal conceptualization rather than simply through cultural and social practices such as burial and mortuary rituals. The research follows the grief narratives of different individuals in Egypt in inquiring about the objects, memories, …

Privacy Perceptions Transformation In Cairo’S Home Designs - A Case Study: Gated Communities, Yasmine Esmat

Theses and Dissertations

The infrastructure of gated communities in Egypt’s New Cairo and 6th of October cities have become the new normal. The streets bordered by fences, walls, and the occasional gate, formed when two or more gated communities face each other, dominate the urban landscape today (Kostenwein, 2021). Nowadays, it is highly common to see billboards advertising new gated communities everywhere on the roads and bridges. Gated communities offer various privileges, and one of them is privacy. Taking Cairo city with its several gated communities as a case study, the research focuses on the transformation of privacy perception for Cairo’s home designs …

Choosing To Come Back: Second-Generation Egyptians Returning As Social Change Agents, Hajar Khalil

Theses and Dissertations

Research has found that upon visiting their parents’ homeland, second-generation immigrants were able to gain a better understanding of where they came from, allowing them to reflect upon their own lives in respect to their family history (Marschall, 2017). Some researchers call this journey the ‘self-awakening’ or ‘searching-self’ journey (Christou, 2003). The aim of this research is to understand the process of second-generation Egyptians return journey to their parent(s)’ homeland in order to create social change. The two main questions posed are: 1) How do second-generation Egyptians construct their narrative identity, and 2) How do they conceptualize themselves as social …

Diasporic Women’S Mutability In South Asian Postcolonial Literature, Tasnim S. Halim

Theses and Dissertations

Though Western scholarship tends to homogenize South Asian experiences, researchers and novelists shed light on different classes of South Asian postcolonial and migratory women who experience mutability, or the internal and external changes as a trauma response after British colonial rule ended and the 1947 Partition abruptly fractured national identity. Though this mutability has positive and negative transformative qualities, it also allows women characters the power to remove themselves from cycles of oppression, work towards healing, and transforming their physical bodies from sites of repressed trauma to sites of expression and agency. What binds them is not only their physical …

Blacklash: Phenomenological Hermeneutics In Black Dance, Darvejon A. Jones

Theses and Dissertations

The horrors inflicted on Black bodies, souls, and spirits in the United States during the transatlantic slave trade, the Jim Crow era, and the current era (2023) have a lasting legacy of trauma metabolized through the body and transmuted generationally. Jones uses this data to contextualize the work of Black dance artists as hermeneutic phenomena in which the Black dance artist is a hermeneut tasked with delivering a message of the Black body/spirit complex: “I AM HUMAN. DO NOT KILL ME.” This paper examines how Black dance artists frequently petition for their survival — incessantly subjugated to the interpreter’s empathy, …

On The Balcony, Beyond “Balconearing”; Perception Of Cairene Women, Behind The Curtains., Rowida Magdy Al-Gebeily

Theses and Dissertations

This study sheds light on the significance and role of threshold spaces as means of accomplishing sociocultural needs, restoration and wellbeing in the residential environment. Understanding the function and uses of these spaces allows us to appreciate their benefits that are often neglected. The research particularly focuses on the social dimension of one fundamental threshold space; the Cairene balcony. It is an integral space that provides a valuable connection to the outside, and its importance in the development of urban living is widely recognized. If carefully designed to meet the residents’ needs and demands, they can promote a better quality …

Eldest Daughter Or Third Parent? An Exploration Of Eldest Daughters In The Egyptian-American Diaspora, Fatima Abdel-Gwad

Theses and Dissertations

Egyptian-American first-born daughters in the diaspora women cope with the pressures of immigration by improvising processes of identity-making and preserving ethnicity. This group is subject to complex systems of gendered, classed, and racialized tensions that become relevant in their attempts to preserve cultural formations in the diaspora. This work seeks to showcase the various tensions present in diasporic existence and explore the methods with which these diasporic daughters participate in processes of cultural and ethnic preservation. Through the ethnographic accounts of six eldest daughters in the New York City and Northern New Jersey areas, this research explores the connections between …

What Is A Child? The Conception Of Childhood Viewed Primarily Through The Funerary Culture From The Predynastic Era To The Middle Kingdom, Courtney Mcrae

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses an interdisciplinary analysis of the theories involving cultural ideas of childhood, as well as archaeological approaches to studying the funerary material culture related to children, in an attempt to determine the role of children in ancient Egypt. To achieve this, the author examines grave goods in relation to child burials from the Predynastic (5000-3200 BC) to the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 BC) to examine the correlation between funerary material cultures with different stages of childhood. The author used these time periods in order to properly conduct an in depth analysis of early Egyptian culture. The author also analyzes …

An Arbitrary Aesthetic: Cultural Reproduction And Hegemonic Canonical Formations In The Western Theatrical Academy, Sim C. Rivers

Theses and Dissertations

Theatre as an artistic practice has often been celebrated as an art of and for the people, being a modality that in theory the common person has access to learn, explore and experience. In recent years I have become preoccupied with the growing rarification and privileging of this art form, particularly in how it is cognized and taught in the academic world. As such, I set out to investigate the mechanisms at work at levels structural, artistic, and personal that determine how theatre is taught and understood within the western academy.

This thesis seeks to examine and unpack the perceived …

Navigating The Cairene Table: Food And Family Between What Is Ideal And What Is Real, Iman Afify

Theses and Dissertations

Our daily encounters with food, especially during our childhood, play a crucial role in shaping and informing our identity and our habitus. In this research, by using multimodal and auto ethnography, I argue that due to the guiding path that our senses carve for us, we make sense and contextualise our surroundings through our senses, and not only the five senses of vision, smell, taste, hearing, and touch, but also through our inner senses of time and temporality, and how time and memory play an important role in the registration of our surroundings through our bodies and senses. I am …

Uncovering The Layers Of Compassion: A Study In The Cultural Implications Of An Emotion, Suzan Jespersen

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a study of compassion in American society and how it is conveyed in volunteerism based on ethnographic research conducted at a non-profit organization. I challenge the idea that compassion is a universal and instinctive emotion. Instead, I focus on the relationship between emotions, society, and power.

Inhabiting Suspension: Neoliberalism And The Public Servants In Ismailia's Radio Canal, Mayar Ibrahim

Theses and Dissertations

To be a public servant in 2021 is to endure many sociopolitical and financial hardships as well as many stereotypes. Between living in dire straits and lacking any motive to work, the public servants and their behavior are almost always rendered indolent. Yet, this ambiguous/all-inclusive category needs to be pinned down, shaped in a sociopolitical landscape in which change is analyzed, documented, and conveyed. In the journey of uncovering what it is like to be working in a service governmental institution, Radio Canal in Ismailia allowed me to delve into a segment of the public servant category in a moment …

“No Masses Without Muslims’ Approval” The Crisis Of Building And Restoring Churches In Egypt: Three Case Studies From El-Minya Governorate, Sara Shaltout

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examined the crisis of building and renovating churches in Egypt in the light of the Church-state relation. I focused on three case studies in the El-Minya governorate that includes the largest Christian concentration in the Middle East to shed light on the existing difficulties that face Christians there regarding building a house of worship. The first case study, "church No 1", was demolished due to political conflict between Islamists and the state after the Rabaa massacre in 2013. In comparison, church No 2 asserts that Muslims' approval is a prerequisite for Christians' prayers. In addition to church No …

The Social World(S) Of The Scooter: Two-Wheeled Mobilities In Cairo And Alexandria, Ahmed El Serougui

Theses and Dissertations

My research project looks at the scooter as a particular type of two-wheeled motorcycle, which has shot into prominence as a specific mode of transportation used by middle class women and men in the past few years and has been notably visible in prominent Egyptian cities. This research is based on a multi-sited ethnography in Alexandria and Cairo, tracing the scooter through the urban landscape in time and space, addressing first questions related to navigating the city in times of pandemic and what kind of theory could be produced from these ordinary cities in such an extraordinary time.

This research …

Making Yourself At Al-Dar: On Islamic Education, Social Imaginations, And Affective Possibilities, Alia Amr Amin Shaddad

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the Dar as an alternative space of knowledge, and unravels how its different contexts and rhythms allow us to imagine what that alternative means in the everyday. In order to do so, this thesis unpacks questions of space, time, subjectivity, and potential. I look at the ways in which this Dar is constituted as a space through its relations with other spaces and by engaging questions of temporality. By doing so, this thesis maps this space to make clear what and how it is, and highlights the historical and geographical context it exists in. This also includes …

The Banality Of Corporate Evil, Amina Dessouki

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis critiques the notion of corporate social responsibility (CSR) through tracing the multiple dynamics between a multinational corporation and a development consultancy working on a recycling project in collaboration with the Zabaleen in Mansheyet Nasser, Egypt. The thesis looks at the ways in which actors negotiate their different positions, the harmonies and discordances that unfold through various agendas coming together, the silences produced, and the ways in which structural violence is intensified under the guise of development. The thesis contrasts the detached efforts of corporate workers and development consultants with the lives of the zabaleen, who live in a …

Meanings Of Mindfulness And Spiritual Awakening: Affliction And Holistic Healing In Contemporary Cairo, Sohayla El Fakahany

Theses and Dissertations

In contemporary Cairo, people turn to various modes of spiritual, alternative, and complementary healing. Some are rooted in formal religious traditions, and others are inspired by a new globalized form of holistic healing such as yoga or meditation. What makes these practices more controversial than spiritual healing practices like el-Zar or el-Hadra is the exchange of money for the promise of healing or foreknowledge. Spiritual healing is often deemed “charlatanistic” by religious exclusivists. This entanglement of the practices with religion creates a threat because it provides an alternative to the modes of religiosity supplied by the main hegemonic Egyptian religious …

Eagle Eye Vs. Gear Jammer, Jessica Danielle Ellis

Theses and Dissertations

Where similarities in class struggle have historically operated as a unifying force globally, the American crafted mythos isolates the individual and dehumanizes those that do not fall within the parameters of the cowboy archetype. The national protagonist is turned into a class traitor and an extension of government power.

Journeys Of Middle-Class Syrian Women To And In Berlin: Modes Of Subjectivity, Possibilities And Becoming, Randa Adnan Bashlah

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an invitation to dive into the possibilities that emerge in the multiple stages of displacement journeys of a group of diverse Syrian women from a middle-class background, who happen to live in Berlin today, and learn about the displaced bodies' experiences from a personal scale. By capturing the journeys' nuances and trajectories, this study demonstrates how the mobile subjects interact differently and create different attachments with different power structures in the various modes which emerge through the journeys' different spatial and chronological stages. Looking at how displacement adds layers of complexity to the social's messiness and diversity, …

Privacy And The Digital Divide: Investigating Strategies For Digital Safety By People Of Color, Denavious Hoover

Theses and Dissertations

People of color are becoming increasingly concerned with digital privacy. They are concerned about the obfuscated data collection and sharing practices of major social media plat- forms and the strong entitlement of other users in the online space to their content. This study examines how people of color conceptualize and behave to produce safety in the online space, or, in other words, digital privacy. This study challenges notions that people are not purposeful about privacy in the online space and highlights the voices of people of color, whom are not of- ten included in theorizing or decision making about the …

Dance And Know You Are A Part: The Instrumentality Of Performative Politics And Dance In The Configuration Of Local Social Memory And Afro-Brazilian Identity And Agency In Pelotas, Rio Grande Do Sul, Brazil, Triston R. Brown

Theses and Dissertations

The arts have been a refuge from perpetual repression and omission, and, a platform for social activism for Afro-descendants in the Americas. In Brazil this is very much the case. With performance serving as a social barometer or a looking glass, dance becomes a source of cultural knowledge, acts as preservative, and negotiates individual mobility within a given context. The Afro-Brazilian dance company, Cia de Dança Daniel Amaro in Pelotas, Brazil grants its members a means of activism and agency to challenge entrenched national narratives and reinterpret local social memory.

Most academic writings about dance or performance in Brazil, focus …

Experiences From City Year: A Glimpse Into The Complex Roles Of Racially Diverse Americorps Members And What That Means For The Nonprofit Field, Orsolya Ficsor

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I explore the lived experiences of alumni from City Year, an AmeriCorps education nonprofit dedicated to providing academic and social-emotional interventions to address social inequity in education in disadvantaged schools throughout the U.S. and abroad. Their thoughts and ideas reflect the complexities of working on a diverse team, serving students of color in a nonprofit organization that is limited in its ability to create structural change. Guided by an analysis of historic systems of oppression, whiteness, white saviorism, and the nonprofit industrial complex, I examine how the nonprofit sector operates as a shadow state that is restricted …

Closing The Achievement Gap: Analysis Of A Reading Academic Intervention In Conjunction With Integrated Social Services., Alejandra E. Martinez

Theses and Dissertations

Educators, legislators, and social activists have long debated the most efficient way to address the high needs of students in Title I middle schools that stem from persistent inequalities in education due to generational poverty and racism. Social activists have proposed integrated social services as a means to remove barriers that prevent students from learning. Providing integrated social services in conjunction with academic reading interventions should efficiently aid in closing the achievement gap that exists from the inequalities in education. This study examines the effectiveness of implementing the Middle School Quality Initiative, a reading and literacy program, in conjunction with …