The women question was at the centre of cultural reform movement that took firm stand against the suppression of women in the patriarch Egyptian society at the turn of the twentieth century. Having experienced social and political structures of the 19th century Europe, wester- educated Egyptians used public institutions to force legislative structures and procedures that ruled out traditional housing forms and spatial systems. This paper detects direct and indirect influences European society and culture had on shaping modern forms of living in Egypt in the first quarter of the twentieth century. At one moment, Modern Egypt was exemplified in the ‘new man’ whose position towards the liberation of women, tyrannical society, and domestic manners would determine whether Egypt was ready to join the modern world and be capable of ruling itself. This paper offers analysis of socio-spatial practices and change in ordinary Cairenes’ modes of everyday living, by using social routine and interaction to explain spatial systems of daily events at the time. In doing so, the research utilised archival documents, accounts, formal decrees, and novels of the time as well as conducting survey of house forms and spatial organizations in Old Cairo. This paper argues that liberal values of modern Europe were embodied in a nationalist agenda that attempted to break with the deeply rooted traditions and mystical culture of the past as the only path to independence from the colonial rule. It reports that European culture could be traced through three pathways of change in Cairene homes; a. Restructuring the legal system that governed the design and construction of houses in line with European counterparts; b. Reforming children education to focus on domestic manners and behaviour; and c. Founding professional training on ideals of modern architecture

Spotlighting the political role of architecture in building new communities, this paper analyzes the work of the Egyptian architects Hassan Fathy and Sayed Karim, who sought to modernize the fellah (peasant) and his village in the 1940s. The paper argues that they generated a modernist approach of rational thinking contingent to economical, ecological, and political constraints that continues to shape the sub/urban planning condition to the present day. Fathy and Karim developed divergent approaches to improving the fellah’s deteriorated living conditions. Commissioned for New Gourna on the west bank of the Nile River in 1944, Fathy developed a low-budget architecture that was economical, sustainable, and oriented towards “rural-mass production” (in his own terms). He relied on indigenous materials such as mud-brick and traditional forms of roofing, like domes and vaults. He generated an experience of modernity under austere conditions. Accusing Fathy of being a traditionalist, Karim promoted the use of redbrick as a more hygienic, sturdy, yet an expensive alternative to mud-brick. He sought to sanitize deteriorating villages through cordoning them off, relocating peasants, and rebuilding in sites subject to expansion. Yet both of their projects, while sometimes traditional in form, were modernist in nature: Fathy and Karim emphasized building efficiency, optimization, and scientific-based research, such as Fathy's attempts to combat the disease Bilharzia. The chapter investigates the historical tension between Fathy and Karim’s divergent approaches to modernity and also contextualizes their projects within a larger political struggle against colonialism. Fathy’s project was doomed to failure. Funded by the Ministry of Antiquities, it was a collective punishment for the robbery of an old Egyptian tomb that the officials accused the peasants for. The peasants, feeling criminalized and demoralized, decided to resist by undermining Fathy's project despite his genuine efforts. Karim garnered more success in promoting his scheme of cordoning off and resettling peasants because it maintained the social hierarchy and capitalist mode. Karim was more successuful in organizing the profession, regulating the code of conduct for architects, and building an independent architectural society away from the hegemony of the Royal Palace and the British Mandate. To borrow Homi Bhabha’s term, Fathy and Karim became the subjects of “ambivalence” in the political arena; they occupied an ambivalent position, or liminal space, between the governed and the governing through a process of simultaneous inclusion and exclusion. This chapter provides a useful historical-political context for the emergence of homegrown architectural modernity.

This paper investigates British colonial policies and attitudes towards Cairo’s slums and “native quarters” (neighborhoods where mostly Egyptians lived) against the broader background of how the city became an object of colonial governance during the formative years of the British occupation of Egypt (1882-1922). Exclusionary geography was indeed crucial to colonial urban policies and to colonial visions of how to command the city and its future. It was anchored in a particular understanding of the place of the city in what colonial officials believed to be a country of peasants, and in a conception of rule that sought to direct the circulation of people and the processes of life along well-monitored channels. One year into the British occupation of Egypt, British officials faced many challenges, from the reorganization of Egyptian finances to establishing order in the countryside and the south. However, another stern challenge to British rule came from an unlikely source, a biological agent, namely cholera. The disease swept through the country during the summer of 1883 claiming thousands of lives and an estimated 8000 in Cairo alone, mostly within three disastrous weeks. This paper will examine the colonial governance of Cairo’s slums by focusing primarily on British public health policies. Such policies reveal how the British saw the city in Egypt, especially as a sociological anomaly. They also reveal how British officials, armed by late-Victorian confidence, utilized science and technology to solve problems of rule. Finally, they underscore the formation of an unstudied colonial discourse on slums as sites of biological and social danger, a discourse that was later appropriated by nationalist elites at a moment when the role of governments in matters of health and urban planning became part of the political vocabulary available for both proponents and critics of British colonial rule. The bulk of the paper will focus on cholera epidemics and sanitation in Boulaq and Misr al Qadima—areas where slums continue to exist to this very day—examining the work of various sanitary commissions and urban engineering reports with an eye on the place of slums in colonial urban planning. It will briefly look at drugs, their sale, and circulation within Egyptian neighborhoods. Finally, focusing on the work of public hygienists and sanitary engineers, the paper will trace how the slums became the object of expert analysis and quasi-anthropological investigation.

This paper traces the recent use of risk management techniques as a tool for governing informal urban areas in Greater Cairo, and for making them visible as objects of policy and intervention. In the wake of a 2008 landslide that killed 119 people and embarrassed the government by highlighting its inability to prevent the catastrophe or even rescue its victims, a Presidential decree created the Informal Settlements Development Fund (ISDF). The fund, organized under the Prime Minister's office, was charged with the task of mapping and developing informal areas, with priority given to neighborhoods classified as “areas that threaten life”. Following the literature on the politics of technical expertise, and in particular on 'risk' as a category constructed through expert practice, this paper focuses on the process used by the ISDF to assess informal areas, placing that process in the context of official discourse on informality as a site of disorder and danger. The aim of the ISDF assessment was to determine which areas of Greater Cairo would be categorized as 'unplanned' and thus slated for long-term upgrade plans, and which areas would be categorized as 'unsafe' and thus slated for immediate removal. Accordingly, the central argument of this paper is twofold. First, that the categories that were developed to map risk and classify informal areas elide the distinctions between poverty, informality, and danger, essentially constructing 'risk' to be near-synonymous with the most marginal areas of the city. And second, this framework has the effect of making informal areas visible to officials almost exclusively through the lens of risk. In this sense, risk assessment and risk management as deployed here can be seen as a technique of governance, with implications for understanding the interactions between officials, experts, and a large segment of Cairo's urban population. By making informality legible as a site of disaster or of potential disaster, and making residents legible as potential disaster victims, this framework authorizes extraordinary measures of control and intervention over wide swathes of the city.

The mainstream narrative on the Egyptian revolution (during its first phase in 2011) remains confined to the centrality of Tahrir Square’s gigantic demonstrations. This narrative attributes the ouster of Mubarak and the defeat of the police apparatus to the non-violent protests led by middle class activists. My approach in this paper will problematize the dynamics of the revolution from a controversial angle by highlighting the relation between revolution and violence and by questioning the role of neoliberal rule that permeated the social, economic and political atmosphere in Egypt in the years preceding the outbreak of the revolution. The paper aims to deconstruct the instrumental understanding of violence, which depoliticizes and diminishes it to a mere reaction to economic impoverishment, and to see how violent encounters with the police in the slums were articulated with the demonstrations in Tahrir and other squares nationwide. The paper argues that the narrative of Mubarak ouster would be seriously insufficient and analytically limited without understanding such articulation. The question of thuggery (al-baltaga) was at the heart of this articulation in 2011 onward and it became a reiterated topic in political debates, TV talk shows, newspapers, and street talks. Since the major blame for thuggery was directed at residents of slums (‘ashwa’iyyat), the paper will focus on Ezbet Abu Qarn, one of the most stigmatized informal areas in Cairo. Seen as a place of dire poverty, a haven of criminality and moral decadency, and time bomb potentially unleashing destructive chaos that could sweep the country, Ezbet Abu Qarn exemplifies the discourse on ‘ashwa’iyyat during the last 20 years. The focus on Ezbet Abu Qarn will also reveals how violence and marginalization were part and parcel of the neoliberal transition in Egypt and how they were consequently intertwined with the outbreak of the revolution.