Connected in Cairo: Growing up Cosmopolitan in the Modern Middle East

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Connected in Cairo Growing up Cosmopolitan in the Modern Middle East Connected in Cairo Peterson “A strong contribution to the anthropology of the Middle East, global studies, political economy of neoliberalism, and to scholarship on urban life and class and gender relations in the contemporary Global South. . . . [A] wonderful teaching tool.” —Paul Amar, University of California, Santa Barbara “A model for the use of ethnographic work for understanding how and why media practices have the impact they do on the lives of their consumers, producers and critics. . . . A very smart and sophisticated book.” —Bambi B. Schieffelin, New York University For members of Cairo’s upper classes, cosmopolitanism is a form of social capital, deployed whenever they acquire or consume transnational commodities or goods that are linked in the popular imagination to other, more “modern” places. In a series of thickly described and carefully contextualized case studies—of Arabic children’s magazines, Pokémon, private schools and popular films, coffee shops, and fast-food restaurants— Mark Allen Peterson describes the social practices that create class identities. He traces these processes from childhood into adulthood, examining how taste and style intersect with a changing educational system and economic liberalization. Peterson reveals how uneasy many cosmopolitan Cairenes are with their new global identities, and describes their efforts to root themselves in the local through religious, nationalist, or linguistic practices. INDIANA University Press Bloomington & Indianapolis iupress.indiana.edu 1-800-842-6796 Anthropology | Middle East Cover photos by Sophie Peterson. Used by permission. Mark Allen Peterson is Professor of Anthropology and International Studies at Miami University of Ohio. He is author of Anthropology and Mass Communication : Media and Myth in the New Millennium and coauthor of International Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Global Issues. Mark Allen Peterson indiana Public Cultures of the Middle East and North Africa Paul A. Silverstein, Susan Slyomovics, and Ted Swedenburg, editors ConneCted in Cairo Public Cultures of the Middle East and North Africa Paul A. Silverstein, Susan Slyomovics, and Ted Swedenburg, editors Indiana University Press • Bloomington & Indianapolis Connected in Cairo Growing up Cosmopolitan in the Modern Middle East Mark Allen Peterson This book is a publication of Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA www.iupress.indiana.edu Telephone orders 800-842-6796 Fax orders 812-855-7931 Orders by e-mail iuporder@indiana.edu© 2011 by Mark Allen Peterson All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-inPublication Data Peterson, Mark Allen. Connected in Cairo : growing up cosmopolitan in the modern Middle East / Mark Allen Peterson. p. cm. — (Public cultures of the Middle East and North Africa) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-253-35628-4 (alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-22311-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Consumption (Economics)—Egypt—Cairo. 2. Cosmopolitanism—Egypt—Cairo. 3. Social mobility—Egypt—Cairo. I. Title. HC830.Z9C67 2011 306.0962’16—dc22 2010043779 1 2 3 4 5 16 15 14 13 12 11 To Madi, Thea, and Sophie, who made Cairo home ...