Counter-Revolution and Egypt's Lower Middle Class
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ScholarWorks@UARK Theses and Dissertations 12-2018 Counter-Revolution and Egypt’s Lower Middle Class Keith Glenn Whitmire University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd Part of the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Whitmire, Keith Glenn, "Counter-Revolution and Egypt’s Lower Middle Class" (2018). Theses and Dissertations. 3007. https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/3007 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Counter-Revolution and Egypt’s Lower Middle Class A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology by Keith Glenn Whitmire Texas Tech University Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology, 2009 American University in Cairo Master of Arts in Sociology-Anthropology, 2011 December 2018 University of Arkansas This dissertation is approved for recommendation to the Graduate Council. _______________________________________ Ted Swedenburg, Ph.D. Dissertation Director _______________________________________ ______________________________ JoAnn D’Alisera, Ph.D. Kirstin Erickson, Ph.D. Committee Member Committee Member Abstract The Egyptian lower middle class has been declining since the 1970s. Yet since the 2011 uprising and coup d’état the lower middle class has sat in the midst of an economic and political counter-revolution carried out by the police, the military, and Egypt’s intelligence services. In particular, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has responded to Egypt’s economic crisis in 2014 and onward by engaging in a program of austerity has sped the decline of the Egyptian lower middle class significantly. The Egyptian lower middle class is in increasing danger of becoming merely educated working poor. Therefore this dissertation will examine the rapid decline of the Egyptian lower middle class after the 2011 and 2013 coup d’états, how elements of the lower middle class deal with a counter-revolution in Egypt, and the possibility that their income will become insufficient to sustain a middle class lifestyle. ©2018 by Keith Glenn Whitmire All Rights Reserved Acknowledgements I would like to thank my wife SaraJane. I would like to also thank my mother Linda, and my family, Fran, Elwood, Viola, and Jim, and Granny Mae. Without them this would never have gotten finished. Thanks to John Schaefer for his advice and friendship across the years. I also wish to thank my informants and friends in Egypt, who must necessarily remain nameless here. I also wish to extend my gratitude to my advisor, Ted Swedenburg, and the members of my committee, JoAnn D’Alisera and Kirstin Erickson for your advice and support. Any errors in this dissertation are of course, entirely my own. Dedication For the three most important women in my life: my wife, SaraJane, my mother, Linda, and my grandmother Mae. This would not have been possible without you. Table of Contents The Egyptian Lower Middle Class………………………………………………………………..1 Revolution and Counter-Revolution……………………………………………………………..45 Decline. ……………………………………………..…………………………………………...86 Fear and Paranoia……………………………………………..……………………………...…121 Struggling to Maintain Respectability………………………………………………...………..147 Conclusions……………………………………………..……………………………...……….183 Works Cited……………………………………………..………………………………...……191 Appendix A: IRB……………………………………………………………………...……......221 The Egyptian Lower Middle Class There is no money, no work, and no education – Amr, café owner This dissertation will examine the rapid decline of the Egyptian lower middle class after the 2011 uprising and 2013 coup d’état, how elements of the lower middle class deal with a counter-revolution in Egypt, and the possibility that their income will become insufficient to sustain a middle class lifestyle. The Egyptian lower middle class has been declining since the 1970s. Yet after 2013 the lower middle class sits in the midst of an economic and political counter-revolution carried out by the police, the military, and Egypt’s intelligence services. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has responded to Egypt’s economic crisis in 2014 and onward by engaging in a program of austerity has sped the decline of the Egyptian lower middle class significantly. During the time of my fieldwork between February 2016 and June 2017 the members of Egyptian lower middle class I came into contact with were demoralized, afraid to speak out, facing rapid inflation, and watching their government strip away the subsidies and price controls that underpinned their lives. The Egyptian lower middle class is in increasing danger of becoming merely educated working poor. The details and circumstances surrounding these problems are the substance of this dissertation. This dissertation derives the bulk of its data from a period of intensive anthropological fieldwork beginning in February 2016 and ending in June 2017. However, I also lived in Egypt from August 2008-December 2008 studying abroad and again from 2009-2011 as a master’s student at the American University in Cairo. I was present during most of the 2011 uprising and the 2013 protest and military coup. I was writing my master’s thesis at the American University in Cairo during the January 2011 uprising. In 2013 I was a doctoral student at the University of Arkansas doing preliminary fieldwork and language training and living in the al-Maadi section 1 of the city. Where applicable and in particular when I write about the uprisings my fieldwork data is supplemented by these experiences. The Circumstances of Fieldwork I arrived in Cairo, Egypt in February 2016 prepared to do fieldwork on masculinity among government workers in Egypt. My plan was to visit cafes where government workers congregated and find out how they were dealing with economic decline and the loss of the prestige usually associated with their jobs. The feasibility of this project was based on two assumptions about 2016 Cairo that were quickly derailed. Safety The first assumption I lost about 2016 Cairo was the idea that I would be personally safe. To explain I need to tell the story of Giulio Regeni. Giulio Regeni was an Italian researcher working with food cart vendors in Cairo. These food cart vendors exist all over Cairo selling sausages and meat, ṭammiyya, or fried bean patties with sauce, foul, or mashed bean paste, roasted sweet potatoes, and the Egyptian favorite kushari, a mix of various pastas and rice. Regeni leveraged his relationships with these men to reach out to the new labor unions that had formed in the wake of the 2011 uprising. These labor unions were arguably the real foci of Regeni’s research. The nature of Regeni’s research was very public: he was always at a labor rally or on a street corner chatting with his food cart vendor informants. Regeni also wrote about Egypt under a pseudonym for several communist periodicals in Italy. Egypt’s intelligence services had Regeni under surveillance for over a year because of his involvement with these non-state sponsored labor unions, a subject of deep concern to al-Sisi’s regime, before they finally abducted Regeni on January 25, 2016 (BBC News, 2018) near the Nile corniche in Dokki. 2 Giulio Regeni’s body was found by a busload of people who had stopped to relieve themselves on the Alexandria desert road on February 3, 2016, nine days after his initial disappearance. This was the day after I arrived in Cairo to do my own fieldwork. Regeni had been tortured to death (Georgy, 2016). All evidence suggests that Regeni had been murdered by the regime over the research he had been doing on labor unions (Reuters, 2018). The Italian government and his family are still demanding answers. It is clear that one of Egypt’s security agencies murdered Giulio Regeni: it is not clear which security agency killed him (Walsh, 2017). No one has been made to answer for Regeni’s death, though the regime did kill five men in a raid who they claimed were responsible for his murder. This announcement was greeted with skepticism by the Italian Government (Walsh, 2017) and by most outside observers, including myself. In truth Giulio Regeni is like so many Egyptians who have been disappeared and murdered by the regime since 2013: no one has been held to account for their deaths and disappearances either. Amnesty International estimates that the government disappeared 4 people per week in Cairo in 2016 and 2017 (Hamzawy, 2017; p. 401). Some of the disappeared re- emerge alive days, weeks, or months later at trial. Others, like Regeni, do not emerge alive at all. Regeni’s topic, labor unions, is a politically sensitive topic in Egypt. Mubarak’s ouster in 2011 was only clinched after the state backed labor unions (the new labor unions Regeni studied did not exist at that point) hit the streets against him (Mahdi, 2012). The power of labor unions to effect change is not one that was lost on al-Sisi’s regime in 2016. Hence any foreigner seen to be meddling with labor unions was bound to face some scrutiny. Those who spoke with me about Regeni had expected, if the regime even took notice, the same consequences for Regeni that troublesome foreign researchers in the past faced: Regeni would be arrested and deported, or simply not allowed to reenter the country once he left. Instead they mourned Regeni at his 3 memorial service at the American University in Cairo. The preponderance of evidence suggests that Regeni was murdered to send a message to foreign researchers and journalists: we are not immune and stay away from sensitive topics. Government workers, my original focus, are also a politically sensitive topic in Egypt, if not so much as labor unions. The government implemented raises for government workers on January 1, 2014, but these were modest and did little to improve the standard of living of this sector of the population.