Paper Faces: Currencies, Users, and Usury Mesa 2009 This study examines currency as a key nexus between economy and culture in contemporary Arab and Islamic contexts. It will also consider the issue of usury/interest in religious and economic terms, with a focus on Shari`a-based, interest-free banking. What do the two faces of the currency tell us about relationships between the state, economic institutions, religion, cultural landmarks, and local and global users of the currency? I will focus on contemporary paper currency in Arab countries, with some attention to coinage. Whether it is a poet or a prince, the images, along with symbols, languages, denominations, usage patterns and distribution, provide crucial insights into a culture’s inner workings and outward interactions. Under whose auspices is the currency issued, and what personal and institutional names appear? While a currency constitutes a concrete demonstration of a state’s authority, it also represents a populace’s self-identification. What personages and images tell the country’s story? How far back do they reach into history and how closely do they approach contemporary developments? Do they include art, architecture, flora, fauna, proverbs, or texts? Are these unique to the issuing country or are they shared with others? Considering the notion that some interpretations of Islam frown on human images, how much of the human head and figure do the bills depict? Are the garments traditional or modern? How do age and gender fit in? Many currencies in Arab countries include English on one face of the bill: Which pictures and symbols appear on the English side? Does the use of English tend to propel users into a more global sphere, or is it a reflection of the general view of their nation’s place in the larger economic scheme? I will briefly contextualize the historic development of attitudes regarding usury, and current trends toward Islamic interest-free banking. Do the currency’s images and text give clues about the Qur’anic ban on usury/riba? “God has permitted trading and made usury unlawful,” Qur’an 2:275-278, and related texts in 3:130, 4:161, 30:39. This paper seeks cultural perspectives on paper money, its representation of different levels of identity, and users’ relationships to these identifications. The individual, the market, the nation, and religion stamp various impressions on contemporary currencies. My study draws upon published works in English and Arabic on currencies, usury, and legal thought, in addition to interviews with users at various places on the economic spectrum. Computer projection for powerpoint, please.

With the (first) oil-boom, a mass consumer society rapidly developed in Saudi Arabia. This transition did not take place unnoticed, but it was never a subject of scholarly investigation. Inspired by recent literature in Consumption Studies, this paper explores the political-economy that shaped Saudi consumer society. I argue, contrary to the conventional wisdom in public official pronouncements and research, that Saudi economy was hardly free-market oriented. Put differently, markets were never an unmediated meeting place between consumers and producers/sellers of commodities, as the notion of free-market implies. Instead, multiple forms of state, social, and cultural regulation were put in place to make sure that markets conformed to existing socio-cultural norms. The paper examines official statements, five-year plans and bureaucratic documents, state sponsored publications and the press to outline such regulation. It shows how regulation localized a new and mostly imported "world of goods.” Localization through regulation meant developing mechanisms to evaluate the religious permissibility of use for new commodities. It also meant banning some commodities, and verifying the halal status of others. Regulation further meant new censorship of knowledge and media, including supervision of advertisements. Shopping places were officially and semi-officially (by a morality police) monitored to ensure compatibility with religious law and practice such as closing for the prayer. Public places of leisure were also monitored or discouraged, for example, no cinema was allowed. Most significant, women’s access to markets was restricted by not allowing them to drive and by making it socially uncomfortable for them to shop on their own. Interaction between the sexes in new shopping or leisure environments was strictly forbidden. The emerging consumer society of Saudi Arabia, therefore, was localized by being made to support, indeed to strengthen, an earlier (real or imagined) way-of-life.

Since the beginning of the nineties, the Saudi government policies have encouraged the privatization of the economy, and Saudi Arabia has begun to negotiate its entry into WTO (which finally occurred in 2005). Riyadh’s urban landscape changed dramatically during this period, and new spaces accessible to women – shopping malls and workplaces - have appeared. These spaces are either opened to men and women or – most often – only to women, as Riyadh remains a strictly segregated city. In these sites, women are visible to other, unknown, women. Among Saudi women, young urban students and professionals have the most frequent access to public spaces. This paper will examine how young Saudi women’s increased public visibility, together with the success and multiplication of shopping malls in the city, shapes new norms of self presentation and consumption among them, often involving transgressions of official Islamic rules. It draws on ten months of ethnographic fieldwork in Riyadh between 2005 and 2009, including a large number of interviews with young Saudi women from different familial and material backgrounds and the ethnographic observation of their daily practices in workplaces, shopping malls, religious spaces and universities. In women’s spaces, such as workplaces, universities, or shopping malls, many interviewees stressed the importance of appearance, sometimes experienced as an obligation. More precisely, some young women emphasized two “compulsory” aspects: to be well-dressed, with branded accessories, and to look feminine, through make up, clothing and hairstyle. Linked to changing uses of urban spaces, these new norms engender new social groupings and distinctions among women. However, young women’s wearing fashionable, Western-style and often sexy clothes is also a way for them to transgress Islamic precepts of modesty, especially in public spaces where behaviours are subject to official Islamic rules, such as women’s university campus.

Based on ethnographic research conducted in Cairo in 2008 and 2009, this paper compares the material culture surrounding reproductive health in Egypt with a comparison between the 2008 “Waqfa Misriyya” family planning campaign and advertisements for, and popular culture representations of, erectile dysfunction drugs. It proposes that the link that ties these apparently disparate domains of reproductive health together is a discourse of consumerism. The Waqfa Misriyya campaign posters emphasize images of middle class Egyptians in clean, open spaces, free from the grime and crowding and grim poverty of most of Cairo, comfortably consuming a modern, middle class lifestyle. Yet with pictures of a glass of clean water and a loaf of bread, they simultaneously evoke Egypt's poverty and scarcity of resources. The “Waqfa Misriyya” campaign reiterated a familiar theme in family planning messages: that the way to address the social and economic problems facing the nation is by controlling reproduction. As Kamran Asdar Ali notes in his book Planning the Family in Egypt, there is a perversity in the national and international fixation on pressuring women to use contraceptives to reduce Egypt’s birth rate while the conditions of poverty that are associated with high birth rates go unaddressed. At the same time that Egypt struggles to reduce its birth rate, it also has a huge market for erectile dysfunction drugs. More than a dozen locally-produced brands of sildenafil are available in local pharmacies, and the pills are fixtures of Cairo's material and popular culture. Men sometimes give the pills to each other as gifts or even use them to grease the wheels of bureaucracy. This phenomenon of trading sildenafil as gift or bribe speaks to the history of the drug’s availability in Egypt: before the market was opened up to the cheap generic brands, Viagra was expensive and scarce. Thus the enthusiasm for trading it around was part of the wider intersection between gift economies and the black market. More than just irony connects family planning campaigns and the large market for erectile dysfunction drugs in Egypt. Like the ubiquitous advertisements for Viagra and Cialis in Cairo pharmacies and clinics, the family planning program is also part of a global ideology of capitalist consumption, creating new wants, desires, and notions of individuality and sexuality.

This paper is about the construction and representation of zar in Egyptian films as an antithesis to modernity. Since the later part of the 19th century zar devotion in Egypt has been criticized in the printed media by secular and Orthodox Islamic reformers alike. These reformers were concerned with purging the rising Egyptian nation from those unfavorable traditions that hamper its development. Since the advent of film production in Egypt, these anti-zar discourses have also been articulated in Egyptian films. A zar is an invisible supernatural being capable of inflicting harm upon people through possession and its ailing symptoms. The word zar also refers to a set of spectacular healing rituals that placate these afflicting spirits. Zar ritual practices are mostly informed by popular Islam and attract the devotion of a small group of Muslims. Zar devotees are mostly women who come from all walks of Egyptian society including some who are educated, professionally trained or lead bourgeois lifestyles. Highly rhythmic spirit praise songs are performed in public ritual events to entice the participants to dance into trance wearing spirit paraphernalia. In Egyptian films, snippets of these zar spectacles have been used mostly as idioms to signify superstition or traditionalism. On the big screen, zar ceremonies have been often framed as undesirable archaic traditions or as immoral practices associated with ignorance. Zar devotees and professionals who watch these movies on public television and/or video cassettes have developed responses to these negative views. In this paper, I will discuss the general characteristics of this cinematic construction of zar using several examples. I will argue that the highly staged ‘mediated’ zar is part of a discourse on modernity that first emerged in the printed media and made its way with ease to the cinematic medium. I will also describe how such cinematic reproduction of zar performances becomes one of main sources of cultural knowledge for those who do not participate in zar performances. I will use video clips from portrayals of zar in films and actual performances to illustrate my argument.