Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-wq2xx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T00:49:51.234Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Building “Community” and Markets in Contemporary Cairo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 March 2018

Sarah El-Kazaz
Sarah El-Kazaz*
Affiliation:
Oberlin College
*
selkazaz@oberlin.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper interrogates the political economy of re-regulation in market-driven economies through the lens of transformations in contemporary Cairo. Focusing on property markets, the paper demonstrates that rather than reveling in the “freeing” of real estate through the reversal of rent control laws, private sector actors were working to re-regulate the real estate market. They were not turning to legal mechanisms or patronage networks, but invested in the production of local “community” in central Cairo as they worked to re-regulate the market. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork from 2011–2012, the paper compares how two private sector actors with varying relationships to the market reacted to the reversal of rent control. The paper demonstrates that both actors were mobilizing urban planning and architectural design as modes of societal engineering to foster local particularistic communities as they worked to corner real estate markets both upward toward a high-end clientele and downwards towards low-income residents. In unpacking how these actors mobilized community as they worked to intervene in markets, and their interventions’ contradictions, the paper challenges the idea that trust or relational networks are the most valued facets of community in market-transitioning economies. It shows that actors value the spatial boundary-setting and particularism of communities as they work to re-regulate markets, and accentuate difference rather than trust in those contexts.

Keywords

community developmentreal estateurban transformationsocial engineeringneoliberalismauthenticityrent controldeveloping citiesCairo
Type
Egyptian Vernacular
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 60 , Issue 2 , April 2018 , pp. 476 - 505
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aga Khan Trust for Culture. 2005. Cairo: Urban Regeneration in the Darb El-Ahmar District—A Framework for Investment. Rome: Artemide Edizioni Press.Google Scholar
Brenner, Neil and Theodore, Nik. 2002. Cites and the Geographies of ‘Actually Existing Neoliberalism.’ Antipode 34, 3: 349–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldeira, Teresa. 2008. From Modernism to Neoliberalism in São Paulo: Reconfiguring the City and Its Citizens. In Huyssen, Andreas, ed., Other Cities, Other Worlds: Urban Imaginaries in a Globalizing Age. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Cuno, Kenneth. 1980. The Origins of Private Ownership of Land in Egypt: A Reappraisal. International Journal of Middle East Studies 12, 3: 245–75.Google Scholar
De Soto, Hernando. 2000. The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Denis, Eric. 2006. Cairo as Neo-Liberal Capital? From Walled City to Gated Communities. In Singerman, Diane and Amar, Paul, eds., Cairo Cosmopolitan: Politics, Culture, and Urban Space in the New Globalized Middle East. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press.Google Scholar
El Araby, Mostafa Morsi. 2003. The Role of the State in Managing Urban Land Supply and Prices in Egypt. Habitat International 27, 3: 429–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elyachar, Julia. 2005. Markets of Dispossession: NGOs, Economic Development, and the State in Cairo. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Fennell, Catherine. 2015. Last Project Standing: Civics and Sympathy in Post-Welfare Chicago. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Ghannam, Farha. 2002. Remaking the Modern: Space, Relocation and the Politics of Identity in a Global Cairo. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harvey, David. 1989. From Managerialism to Entrepreneurialism: The Transformation of Urban Governance in Late Capitalism. Geografiska Annaler 71, 1: 3–17.Google Scholar
Harvey, David. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hazbun, Waleed. 2008. Beaches, Ruins, Resorts: The Politics of Tourism in the Arab World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Holston, James. 1989. The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasilia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ismail, Salwa. 2006. Political Life in Cairo's New Quarters: Encountering the Everyday State. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Jacobs, Jane. 1961. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Jamal, Amaney. 2007. Barriers to Democracy: The Other Side of Social Capital in Palestine and the Arab World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Joseph, Miranda. 2002. Against the Romance of Community. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Keyder, Çaǧlar, ed. 1999. Istanbul: Between the Global and the Local. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Lefebvre, Henri. 1991 [1974]. The Production of Space. Nicholson-Smith, Donald, trans. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Li, Tania Murray. 2007. The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development and the Practice of Politics. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Timothy. 2002. Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity. Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Muehlebach, Andrea. 2012. The Moral Neoliberal: Welfare and Citizenship in Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, Keith M. 2013. Cultural Geometry: Designing Political Things in Sweden. American Ethnologist 40, 1: 118–31.Google Scholar
Nagy, Ahmed. 2015. Hal Yataḥawal “Wust El-Balad” Fel Qahira Kama Taḥawal Wassat Madinat Beirut? Raseef 22 Online, 7 Apr. 2015, http://raseef22.com/culture/2015/04/07/will-cairo-downtown-transform-like-beirut-downtown/ (accessed 9 Apr. 2015).Google Scholar
Ong, Aihwa. 2006. Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Putnam, Robert. 1993. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Putnam, Robert. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Rose, Nikolas. 1996. Governing “Advanced” Liberal Democracies. In Barry, Andrew, Osborne, Thomas, and Rose, Nikolas, eds., Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism, and Rationalities of Government. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sassen, Saskia. 2001. The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. 2d ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, James. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Shehayeb, Dina. 2011. Backtracking to Sustainable Urban Development and Working with Local Communities: The Al-Darb Al-Ahmar Project in Islamic Cairo. Égypte/Monde Arabe, Troisième Série, http://ema.revues.org/3006 (accessed 10 July 2014).Google Scholar
Shehayeb, Dina and Hafiz, Mohamed Abdel. 2006. Tradition, Change, and Participatory Design: Re-Designing Tablita Market in Historic Cairo. Open House International 31, 4: 67–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shehayeb, Dina and Eid, Yaldiz. 2007. Neighborhood Design and Community Building: A Model of Social Interaction. In Shehayeb, Dina, Yildiz, H. Turgut, and Kellett, Peter, eds., The Appropriate Home: Can We Design “Appropriate” Residential Environments? Cairo: HBNRC: Proceedings of the First HNBRC & IAPS-CSBE Network Joint Symposium.Google Scholar
Shehayeb, Dina and El-Mikawi, Mohamed. 2003. Improving Quality of Life through Sustainable Rehabilitation of Low Income Housing in Historic Cairo. The Arab Regional Conference: Improving Quality of Life through Sustainable Urban Development, Cairo, Egypt, 15–18 Dec.Google Scholar
Sims, David. 2010. Understanding Cairo: The Logic of a City Out of Control. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press.Google Scholar
Sims, David. 2015. Egypt's Desert Dreams: Development or Disaster? Cairo: American University in Cairo Press.Google Scholar
Soliman, Samer. 2011. The Autumn of Dictatorship: Fiscal Crisis and Political Change in Egypt under Mubarak. Daniel, Peter, trans. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Uslaner, Eric. 2002. The Moral Foundations of Trust. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Van der Tas, Jurjen. 2004. Preliminary Results of a Socio-Economic Survey in al-Darb al-Ahma. In Bianco, Stefano and Jodidio, Philip, eds., Cairo: Revitalizing a Historic Metropolis. Turin: Umberto Allemandi & C. for Aga Khan Trust for Culture.Google Scholar
Vitalis, Robert. 1995. When Capitalists Collide: Business Conflict and the End of Empire in Egypt. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Zencirci, F. Gizem. 2015. Illusory Debates: How the “Sadaka Culture” Discourse Masked the Rise of Social Assistance in Turkey. Asian Journal of Social Science 43, 1–2: 125–50.Google Scholar
Zukin, Sharon. 1995. The Cultures of Cities. London: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Zukin, Sharon. 2009. Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar