Whatever Happened to the Egyptians? Changes in Egyptian Society from 1950 to the Present

184 Pages·2001·10.6 MB·English

by  Galal Amin

Whatever
Happened
,to thetians?
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Whatever
Happened
to theans?
E
Changes in Egyptian Society
from 1950 to the Present
Galal Amin
Illustrations by Golo
The American University in Cairo Press
Cairo • New York
Copyright ® 2000 by
The American University in Cairo Press
113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt
420 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018
www.aucpress. com
An earlier version of this book was published in Arabic in 1995 as
Madha hadatha li-l-Misriyin?
Protected under the Berne Convention
An earlier version of chapter 1 appeared in Charles Tripp and Roger
Owen, eds., Egypt under Mubarak, London: Routledge, 1989.
Reproduced by permission.
An earlier version of chapter 2 appeared in Galal Amin, Egypt's
Economic Predicament: A Study in the Interaction of External
Pressure, Political Folly and Social Tension in Egypt, 1960-1990,
Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995. Reproduced by permission.
An earlier version of chapter 13 appeared in "The Development of
Social Science in Egypt," Cairo Papers in Social Science, Fifth Annual
Symposium, vol. 18, No. 3, Cairo: The American University in Cairo
Press, 1995.
Third printing 2001
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Dar el Kutub No. 14351/99
ISBN 977 424 559 8
Designed by the AUC Press Design Center
Printed in Egypt
Contents
Introduction 3
1 Social Mobility 7
2 Religious Fanaticism 31
3 Westernization 45
4 Masters and Servants 55
5 Public and Private Sectors 65
6 The Position of Women 77
7 The Arabic Language 85
8 Migration 93
9 Private Cars 101
10 Weddings 109
11 Summer Vacations 119
12 The Cinema 133
13 Egyptian Economists 147
14 Egypt and the Market Culture 169
Notes 175
V
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"If, beginning with the eleventh century,
we examine examine what has happened
in France from one half-century to
another, we shall not fail to perceive that
at the end of each of these periods a two-
fold revolution has taken place in the
state of society. The noble has gone down
the social ladder, and the commoner has
gone up; the one descends as the other
rises. Every half-century brings them
nearer to each other, and they will soon
meet. Nor is this peculiar to France. The
various occurrences of national existence
have everywhere been turned to the
advantage of democracy, all men have
aided it by their exertions, both those
who have intentionally labored in its
cause and those who have served it
unwittingly; those who have fought for it
and even those who have declared them-
selves its opponents have all been driven
along in the same direction..."
Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America, 1835
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Introduction
In 1996, the Egyptian monthly journal al-Hilal decided
to dedicate a section of each issue to a discussion of
the question 'Whatever Happened to the Egyptians?,' ask-
ing a number of its writers to contribute their opinions
from any perspective they might choose. As we were on
the threshold of the twenty-first century, the editor of al-
Hilal deemed it fitting that we contemplate the changes
that had taken place in Egyptian social life.
I welcomed the opportunity to participate in the dis-
cussion and chose to write about the changes that I had
observed in the status of women in Egypt over the past
fifty years. I thought of comparing the status of three gen-
3