Live and Die Like a Man: Gender Dynamics in Urban Egypt by Farha Ghannam (review)

Farha Ghannam's Live and Die Like a Man: Gender Dynamics in Urban Egypt gives a nuanced analysis of the different phases of the constitution of masculinity (or ruguula in Arabic) in Al-Zawiya, a working-class neighbourhood of Cairo. The five chapters follow several men at different stages of their lives from 1993 to 2012. The book covers childhood, youth and adolescence before marriage; maturity through marriage and the founding of a family; retirement and old age; and death. The focus is on masculinity in these contexts through mobility in public spaces, maintenance of hierarchies, forms of violence and gender relations in a broader and dynamic sense, as well as the male body in a labour market without social security.

The motivation for this book is to fill a gap: most studies on masculinity in the Middle East are not focused on gender but on relationships of domination. Ghannam notes that "hardly any studies tell us about how Middle Eastern men . . . negotiate different social expectations that have to define their bodies and masculine selves" (11). The author criticises unidimensional and stigmatising aspects of previous studies on masculinity. Masculinity is not a static category but rather a process of being that is always in progress, framed, solicited and monitored by both men and women, always according to local culture, meanings and values. The book reads masculinity as a process and as a constant materialisation of important values, according to the system of informal meanings in specific contexts during the life course of a man. Theoretically, the book draws Williams James's theory of meaning. At the same time, masculinity is always related to women, which thus underlines the complexity of masculinity (ruguula) in the Middle East. Ghannam argues that ruguula is a profoundly multi-dimensional, contextual and contingent process, rather than merely something linked to sexual performance.

The book draws a rich portrait of real people who grow up, evolve, deal with adversity, fall in love, get sick and die after having, somehow, achieved their masculinity. There is Ahmed, a child raised by his mother after the early death of his father in Saudi Arabia. Ahmed's mother does everything to make him act and behave like a good boy–a boy who does not cry, who controls his whims and who does not let himself be dominated by others. Her goal is that Ahmed not receive the humiliating title of "raised by a woman." Samer is a 40-year-old man who married later than his peers, and who is perceived as a "gad'a," one who uses physical strength for a good cause. This is the typical model of a man who counts on his physical strength to earn a living, assert himself and realise his masculinity. Zaki is a young man of about 20 years of age, closely supervised by his mother, his sisters and his fiancée to attain an important stage in the achievement of masculinity: marriage and the founding of a family.

The book highlights a number of key themes under this system of masculinity, including violence and its modes of articulation, which Ghannam approaches in two distinct ways. The first aspect of violence is gad'ana, which is considered positive and is supposed to be performed to assert one's masculine identity and establish hierarchies among peers and between women and men, as in between brothers and sisters or husbands and wives. The second aspect of masculinity is baltaga, which refers to gratuitous violence performed outside the structures of meaning and is perceived as useless. The author highlights the presence of both aspects of violence during the 2011 revolution in Egypt: the protection of women, neighbourhoods and relatives during the chaos caused by the absence of police (gad'ana) versus the harassment of women and the brutality of police (and others) against protesters (baltaga).

The last chapter deals with the perception of disease and death, and the making of memories of the deceased...