Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics, and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo 9781400851768

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Avenues of Participation

PRINCETON STUDIES IN MUSLIM POLITICS

Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori, editors

Avenues of Participation FAMILY, POLITICS, AND NETWORKS IN URBAN QUARTERS OF CAIRO

DIANE SINGERMAN

P R I N C E T O N

U N I V E R S I T Y

P R I N C E T O N ,

N E W

P R E S S

J E R S E Y

Copyright © 1995 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Chichester, West Sussex All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Singerman, Diane. Avenues of participation : family, politics, and networks in urban quarters of Cairo / Diane Singerman. p. cm. — (Princeton studies in Muslim politics) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-691-08654-0 (CL) 1. Political participation—Egypt—Cairo. 2. Family—Egypt— Cairo. 3. Households—Egypt—Cairo. 4. Informal sector (Economics)—Egypt—Cairo. I. Title. II. Series. JS7782.S55 1995 323 1 .042'096216—dc20 94-19060

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The jacket photo and photos on pages 26 and 28 courtesy of John Waterbury. All other text photos are by the author. This book has been composed in Laser Sabon Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources Printed in the United States of America 1 3 5 7 9

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8 6 4 2

TO MY MOTHER, PHYLLIS SINGERMAN, • AND TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER, • SOL SINGERMAN

C O N T E N T S

LIST OF TABLES

ix

FOREWORD

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION

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INTRODUCTION

3 5 17

Egypt and Popular Political Expression The Context and Approach of the Study CHAPTER 1 The Family, Politics, and the Familial Ethos

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77?e Public/Private Dichotomy and Political Participation Patrimonialism, the Family, and Participation in a Middle Eastern Context The Familial Ethos Conclusion: An Ethos beyond the Household CHAPTER 2 Reproducing the Family

44 45 49 71 74

3

Choosing a Mate: "Shababiik, shababiik, id-dunya kullaha shababiik" Marriage Protocol, or the Rules of Engagement Sexuality and the Transgression of Public Norms The Cost of Marriage: An Economic Nightmare Raising the Capital to Marry Conclusions: Marriage, the Economy, and the State CHAPTER 3 Networks: The Political Lifeline of Community

77 85 92 109 121 126 132 138 160 164 171

Earning a Living Development: Education Networks The Bureaucracy and the State Conclusion CHAPTER 4 Informality: Politics and Economics in Tandem e

Informal and Formal Economic Activity in a Sha bi Community Family Enterprises Informality Meets the State The Shacb and Informality: Wages and Wealth Informality: The Economic and Political Consequences for the Nation

173 179 199 205 231 238

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CONTENTS

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CHAPTER 5

Politics as Distribution Private Voluntary Organizations: A Mediated Distribution Point Elite Politics, the State, and the Shacb

244 246 255

CONCLUSIONS

269

NOTES

273

BIBLIOGRAPHY

315

INDEX

331

L I S T

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5

OF

TABLES

A Groom's Marriage Expenses A Bride's Wedding Expenses A Typical Trousseau The Dowry of a Mother and Her Daughters, 1947-1985 An Estimate of the Assets of Informal Savings Associations throughout Egypt 4.1 Total Primary Sources of Income 4.2 Total Secondary Sources of Income 4.3 Total Tertiary Sources of Income 4.4 Primary Economic Activity by Gender 4.5 Secondary Economic Activity by Gender 4.6 Distribution by Occupation within the Economically Active Sample: Primary Economic Activity 4.7 Distribution by Occupation within the Economically Active Sample: Secondary Economic Activity 4.8 Distribution by Industry within the Economically Active Sample: Primary Economic Activity 4.9 Economic Activity among the Active Population of the Economically Active Sample 4.10 Informal Economic Activity in the Private Sector, Primary Occupation 4.11 Informal Economic Activity in the Private Sector, Secondary Occupation 4.12 Informal Economic Activity among the Active Population by Gender 4.13 Employment Combinations for Those Engaged in the Informal Sector from the Active Population of the Economically Active Sample 4.14 Activity in Family Enterprises in the Economically Active Population 4.15 Employment Status in Family Enterprises, Primary Economic Activity 4.16 Employment Status in Family Enterprises, Secondary Economic Activity 4.17 Labor Force Participation among Women in the Economically Active Sample 4.18 Prevailing Wages in the Economically Active Population 4.19 Profile of Resident Labor Force, Squatter's Settlement 4.20 A Summary of Total "Quantifiable" Black Economy Transactions for the Year 1980 in Egypt

112 112 115 119 129 182 183 183 185 186 188 189 191 195 196 196 198 198 200 201 201 203 232 233 236

F O R E W O R D

THE STUDY OF politics

in Muslim societies has been dominated by elites and formal institutions. All too often observers of these, and other, societies assume that power exclusively resides in such state institutions as the bureaucracy, the military, and the intelligence services. Prodded by the theoretical work of scholars sensitive to political, sociological, and anthropological concerns, regionally focused work is beginning to emphasize the politically significant activities of nonelites and to recognize that an evaluation of the civic order depends on a more complex calculus of actors, interests, and values than has previously prevailed. By concentrating on the popular (sha'bi) quarters of Cairo, Diane Singerman provides just such a rich analysis in this volume. The minutely observed story she tells is of an inventive people who, because of the demands of everyday life in an overly bureaucratized and largely authoritarian society, evolve networks that facilitate access, or provide alternatives, to the formal resources of the state; these do not, however, displace the formal power of the Egyptian state. Here are a people who rely on the ties of family or neighborhood to plant a sympathetic word or financial favor with normally unreceptive bureaucrats; who mitigate the effects of underemployment by holding supplementary jobs in a vigorous informal economy; who establish savings associations to provide credit to individuals who would not otherwise qualify in the rigid, formal banking system; who resettle to outlying areas of the municipality and thereby force the government to accord them de facto autonomy. Despite the high degree of illiteracy, the urban quarters of Cairo are mixed in composition and are not exclusively lower class. Indeed, the common sense of economic and political discontent and the enterprising roles of women detailed by Professor Singerman disturb the customary image of the Muslim masses as a subdued, fatalistic political underclass. Two conclusions are particularly suggestive for the study of what we call Muslim politics—that is, the competition and contest of both symbolic production and control of the institutions, both formal and informal, which serve as symbolic or normative arbiters of society. First, Professor Singerman demonstrates that the distribution and redistribution of goods and services occur in the context of broadly shared values and assumptions. As her empirical findings amply indicate, individuals in the shabi quarters of Cairo respond to material interests, whether it be the need to accumulate marriage trousseaus, avoid the predatory tax collector, or gain a quality education unavailable through the state sector. It is equally clear that Islamic doctrine does not simply determine the popular politics of Egypt; considerations of class, education, and family are often the critical factors at work. Moreover, as Professor Singerman demonstrates in a comparative perspective, informal patterns of participation are not unique to Islamic societies. Yet Muslim

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politics in Egypt is played out against the background of an underlying framework that, while subject to contextualized nuances, is common to Muslims across the world. As it does elsewhere in the Muslim world, the family, for instance, emerges as the repository of social—and Muslim—values in Egyptian society. Much political action that unfolds is connected with the prior imperative to defend the family as a kind of Islamic microcosm and to advance its welfare. In addition, one reason why the garniyyat, or informal banks, are so popular is that Muslims are able to fulfill their financial needs while assuring themselves that they are participating in an Islamic venture that does not engage in riba or usurious practices. Moreover, the high value placed on education among the Cairenes is indicative of the Muslim ethos, which encourages full development of the faculties given by God, and many private voluntary organizations, such as health clinics and day-care centers, regard the collection of the zakat, or Islamic alms, for social welfare purposes as religiously enjoined. Second, Professor Singerman demonstrates that the usual dichotomized distinctions between the "public" and the "private," "above" and "below," in political analyses are tenuous. The former is generally thought to be the realm of the state and "high politics"; the latter, the realm of the family, women, and the nonpolitical or at best "low politics." This volume, and the volumes to follow in this series, argues that such distinctions ignore the nearconstant interpenetration of networks that evolve in the social and political life of Muslims, without, however, ignoring or underestimating the resources and capabilities of entrenched elite interests or etatist institutions. Precisely because the family is so esteemed, it becomes a natural vehicle by which economic and social relations are organized and regulated in societies such as Egypt, and its normative structure provides a standard by which individuals may assess the Islamic credentials of the government. Displeasure wtih the increase in marriages of Egyptian men to foreign, often nonMuslim, women, for example, turns into a political criticism of the government's "open door" (infitah) economic policy with its unwelcome rise in consumerism and foreign tourism. Incidents of rape become a political indictment of the goverment's inability to protect its citizens and to provide an effective moral lead. Moreover, the concerns of the family with the morality and with the appearance of the morality of its younger members (in matters of dress, comportment, and association) intersect—at times overlapping, at other times clashing—with the larger concerns of secular-minded liberals, the official religious establishment, and Islamist protest groups. In the pages to follow, the Muslim politics of the popular quarters of Cairo cohere into patterns of both cooperation and conflict over evolving values and interests, of commitment to and contest over symbols and contextualized symbolic understandings. In the face of closed avenues to meaningful political participation, alternative political institutions emerge. These include the mosque, but also family-based economic enterprises, informal

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FOREWORD

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banks, and private voluntary organizations. There is no doubt that Islamist groups benefit from the evolution of such an alternative political system, for it stands as a powerful counterpoint to the state's self-ascribed monopoly to designate the rules of the political society. These groups also advance their goals by deriving financial rewards from the informal economy and by expressing the underlying popular criticisms of government. Yet the politics of the sbab also suggests that to look for an apparent winner or loser in Muslim politics is to perpetuate the elementary "us against them," elite versus counterelite bias of political analysis. The Cairene scenes that unfold in this book constructively provide greater vibrancy and subtlety. Dale F. Eickelman James Piscatori

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

DURING THE COURSE of this study I learned of the support that familial and informal networks provide during good and bad times. Throughout the recent past I relied upon networks of professional, emotional, and financial support which rival the size of the community I studied in Cairo. I have exploited them as assiduously as any black marketeer or marriage broker. While these relationships have not proven to be nearly as reciprocal as is typical in Cairean networks, in the future I hope they will be. I also hope readers will tolerate the length of these acknowledgments, for this book is not only a product of individual effort, but when I consider the assistance of some of the people mentioned here it takes on more of the shape of a collaborative project. This study would not have materialized without the support of several important advisers at Princeton. In the very beginning, John Willis encouraged me to study Arabic and pursue my interest in Near Eastern Studies. L. Carl Brown provided direct and indirect encouragement throughout my studies at Princeton, as the Director of the Program in Near Eastern Studies. My primary adviser, John Waterbury, patiently allowed my ideas to gel, while offering essential suggestions and practical advice both in Princeton and Cairo. His dedication to his students, quiet support for their work, and his knowledge of the Middle East is remarkable. Nancy Bermeo set my research within a larger comparative context and provided critical structural and methodological advice. Samir Khalaf's sociological approach and understanding of other Middle Eastern societies provided a broader perspective for this research. Throughout my graduate work at Princeton, I came to depend upon Mildred Kalmus for far more than advice and assistance. Anne Norton, Manfred Halpern, Atul Kohli, Elizabeth Petras, Julie Mostov, Peter Gran, Bob Vitalis, and Homa Hoodfar have also offered important advice at various stages of this project. And I am very appreciative of the comments from my readers at Princeton University Press as well as of the editorial support and encouragement I received from Jennifer Matthews, Walter Lippincott, and Margaret Case at Princeton University Press and from my copyeditor Roy Thomas. Equally important throughout the past several years were my colleagues at Princeton. Muna Zaki, Margaret Koval, Steve Cowley, and Nathan Brown are owed many thanks. Rachel Kranton graciously answered frequent distress calls about economic issues raised by my research. Carolyn Makinson has always provided just the needed balance of logic, clarity, and support since the beginning of graduate school. Her reading of parts of this book provided somewhat of a breakthrough. Gail Gerhart, Walid Khezziha, Robert Bianchi, and Tim Sullivan, present and former members of the American University in Cairo faculty, taught me

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something about political science and Egypt when I was a graduate student there. The instruction and advice of Abbas al-Tonsy and Zeinab Taha at the Center for Arabic Study Abroad were also extremely helpful. This research could never have been accomplished without the support and encouragement of my Arabic professors along the way who have had to listen to my mutilations of the language, beginning with David Powers, Avram Udovitch, and Andras Hamori at Princeton University, Amin Bonnah and Adnan Haydar at Middlebury Summer Language Program, and, among others, Zeinab Taha, Abbas al-Tonsy, Nabila al-Asuity, and Wahid Sami at the American University in Cairo. I am indebted to them all. Discussions on literature and gender politics with Muna Abu Sinna of Ain Shams University still resonate today. A community of scholars and researchers in Cairo and the United States, including Ann Lesch, Barbara Ibrahim, Richard Lobban, Huda Zurayk, Margot Badran, Rebecca Copeland, Marsha Pripstein Posusney, Clarissa Burt, Ahmed Taha, and Ragui Assaad offered important encouragement and advice over several years. During the course of this study I was extremely fortunate to work with Frederic Shorter of the Population Council. He is the model of a scholar and researcher, whose gracious and generous support knew no bounds. In Cairo I also met Homa Hoodfar, whose experience as an anthropologist and whose wise counsel and friendship I was to rely upon again and again. With Homa I have benefited greatly from an ongoing exchange of ideas and research with Arlene MacLeod, Kathryn Kamphoefner, Nadia KhouriDagher, and Nawal Hassan. Without the assistance of Nawal Hassan, the Director of the Centre for Egyptian Civilisation Studies, this project would not have materialized. She provided essential assistance at the outset of my fieldwork, offering her Centre as a library and base for my research in central Cairo and sharing her experience as a dedicated ombudsman for people in shabi communities. I would also like to thank Professor Ibrahim elMuelhy and Madame Yusriyya at the Centre for their intellectual and personal hospitality. In Cairo, Sylvia Mitchell and Lou Ann McNeill of the USAID Information Center provided gracious assistance. Living in Cairo has increased my understanding of interdependence and mutual support. Since I arrived there several people have become "fictive kin," and these bonds have continued even after leaving each other's company. Bob Vitalis has been an extremely important friend as well as colleague and critic. Karen Glasgow and Khadry Sobhi Mahmoud have offered not only their friendship and assistance but the engagement of experienced and critical minds. George Marquis tried to sort out my Arabic and was a very appreciated editor. While writing much of this book, discussions with Sylvia Gruner helped clarify my thoughts, and her presence restored imagination and vitality to Cambridge. Linda Suter not only improved my writing with her editing skills, but she has been an immense source of support and wisdom since I have known her (I am forced to use superlatives, despite her advice). In Cambridge I would also like to acknowledge the friendship and

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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XV11

assistance of Anne Steurnagel, Maggie Browning, Rebecca Foote, Denise Spellberg, Matthew Gordon, Stefania Pandolfo, and Harriet. Since the early days of graduate school I have always been able to look to Eva Bellin for intellectual and professional solace, humor, friendship, and spirit, no matter if we were in Princeton, Cairo, Vermont, Washington, D.C., or, more often, on the phone. This endeavor has been easier due to her friendship. This book is based upon the experiences of a group of people who invited me into their homes and lives in a most gracious and generous way. Time and again they offered me their hospitality, tolerantly withstood my ignorance and questions, and opened their homes to me. To the family that offered me a room in their house, I cannot possibly thank them enough. While being an outsider should have been a difficult position, somehow my presence became routine and expected. While I am sure I have misinterpreted many things, and misunderstood others, I hope I have conveyed the deep admiration and respect I have for my friends in Cairo and their dedication to their families and communities. Through them I have learned much more about Egypt than would have been possible in any other manner. Although they remain anonymous, each and every one of them was incredibly hospitable to me, for which I am deeply appreciative. Most of all, to AB and her family and cAla3, shukran gaziilan. I would also like to thank the Fulbright Commission, the Social Science Research Council, the American Research Center in Egypt, and the Department of Politics, Near Eastern Studies Program, Council on Regional Studies, and the Center for International Studies at Princeton University, the Department of History and Politics at Drexel University, and Dean Neil Kerwin and the School of Public Affairs at the American University for logistical and financial support for various stages of this research. In addition, I would like to thank my able research assistants at the American University—Ryan Rusek, Matt Baker, Quintan Wiktorowicz, and Candace Walsh—for their contributions to this book. Tragically, three people who were not only deeply important in my life but who played such a significant role in this project have died in the recent past. AB, the matriarch of the family I lived with in Cairo, who was such a unique person—dedicated to her family, incredibly resourceful, determined, and generous—could no longer withstand her health problems. Though her memory lives on with her family and her fictive kin in the United States, Cairo has lost a most impressive and wise leader. I met Chuck Raht shortly after I first arrived in Cairo in 1980, and we became fast friends. Luckily he stayed in the Middle East for several years so that I could remain his sidekick. Chuck not only influenced my outlook on life in many ways but was always there with humor, encouragement, and gentle pointed words at the appropriate moments. Several years later Kevin Rimmington was incorporated into Cairo's fictive kin networks along with his constant good humor and cups of tea. He edited many versions of this book, from London or Cairo, even as he became ill. I cannot really convey how much these two

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friends are missed by myself and everyone who came to know them and how thankful I am that I ran into Chuck in the courtyard of the AUC dormitory so many years ago. Finally, my siblings Leni, Janet, and Robert Singerman have been a neverending source of support. There is little to say that conveys the sense of my appreciation to them, Terry Post, Court Fulton, Cleo Sofie Post, Ben and Deena Fulton. Mickey Lewis and Sol Lewis have always spurred me on with humor and love. From Cora Reed I first learned to listen to stories and to value the lives and experiences of others. Paul Wapner reappeared in my life at a time when I least expected to find such a find and, following my promise to friends in Cairo to worry about marriage after I had completed my Ph.D., I quickly married him. He has shown me that it is possible to finish a book while enjoying life. My kinship networks have now been enriched with the inclusion of the Wapner/Thiele clan as well. Finally, this book is dedicated to my parents, Phyllis and Sol Singerman, who sparked my tendency to question the obvious from an early age and then allowed me to pursue my interests, even if that meant sacrificing some of their own. Although I have heeded his advice to eat fish, my father is not here to see the fruits of his wisdom and encouragement, and he is sorely missed.

A

NOTE

ON

TRANSLITERATION

of phonetic transcription used in the following chapters has been chosen for reasons of accuracy and simplicity to represent spoken Egyptian Arabic in readable form for an English-speaking audience. The grammatical structure and phonological rules of colloquial Arabic and classical Arabic differ in some aspects, and various transliteration systems have been used by scholars to better capture the nuances of colloquial Egyptian Arabic. Since I conducted my research primarily in colloquial Egyptian Arabic (outside of my use of written Arabic sources), I believe the system that I have adopted here best reflects those nuances. Ideally, a one-character symbol for each corresponding consonant sound in Egyptian colloquial Arabic should have been used, however, due to printing limitations, this was not possible and two-letter symbols have been used to represent the sounds of £ and