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Democratizing Cairo: Civic Engagement, Professional Elites, and the Built Environment in Post-Revolution Egypt
Abstract
It has been seven years since Egyptians took to the streets and momentarily dismantled the country’s political order. Since then, the Egyptian military machine has re-asserted its authority and the protestors’ calls for political reform and social justice have gone unanswered. However, while the January 25th Revolution has been dismissed as a political “failure,” it has in fact engendered widespread–and ongoing–socio-political transformations outside the realm of “high politics.” In particular, it is responsible for the recent fluorescence of urban revitalization initiatives in Cairo–a remarkable array of sociospatial interventions largely undertaken by professional elites and focused on improving the city and the lives of its residents. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted from 2014-2016, this paper unpacks the repercussions of these initiatives in the neighborhood of Historic Cairo, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This area has long been the object of state and international attention due to its rich architectural heritage, but since 2011, it has witnessed a surge of activity by local groups. In this paper, I narrow in on the work of one such organization–namely, the Cairo Heritage School (CHS), a newly formed association of Egyptian architects, urban planners, and conservationists. In 2016, CHS held a week-long workshop on the “adaptive re-use” of Maq'ad al-Amir Mamy al-Sayfi, a 15th century palace located in the heart of Historic Cairo. The aim of the event, which engaged young professionals from both Egypt and abroad, was to develop innovative plans for the re-use of the building and its environs. Through an analysis of the workshop activities, I demonstrate that the project contributed to the exchange and circulation of Western conceptions of heritage-making, urban space, and adaptive re-use. My paper thus offers insight into how the movement of knowledge and expertise is frequently hitched to the flows of capital associated with so-called globalization. Yet I also illustrate the organization’s struggles to shake free of those flows. In particular, I show that the workshop sought to bring Egyptians from across the socioeconomic spectrum together as a means of forging a kind of trans-class connection. I contend that this endeavor should be understood as part of a broader desire to reconstruct Egyptian civil society, and in so doing, to re-engineer the political landscape–not through direct confrontation with the state but through sociospatial activities aimed at refashioning political subjectivity.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Egypt
Sub Area
Urban Studies