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Egypt

Just like couscous : Gender, agency and the politics of female circumcision in Cairo

Upphovsperson: Malmström, Maria Frederika
Utgivare: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet | Göteborg : University of Gothenburg
År: 2009
Ämnesord: anthropology, identity, gender, agency, embodiment, senses, body, sexuality, female circumcision, politics, Social change, performativity, practice, Political islam, Egypt, Middle East, North Africa
This dissertation explores how female gender identity is continually created and re-created in Egypt through a number of daily practices, of which female circumcision is central. In order to do so, the study inquires into the lived experiences and social meanings of female circumcision and femininity as narrated by women from lower class neighbourhoods in Cairo. The study seeks to understand how the experiences of femininity and female circumcision are shaped and challenged by the social and political changes that impinge on these women’s lives. Female circumcision has become a global political minefield with ‘Western’ interventions affecting Egyptian politics and social development, not least in the area of democracy and human rights. The global human rights discourse brings about change by portraying female circumcision as mutilation. These discourses and other political and social changes both in Egypt and elsewhere, such as modernization, the aftermath of 9/11 and regional instability have together begun to dis-embed female circumcision from its socio-cultural context. This thesis focuses upon the way in which these women understand and respond to these complex changes and it looks particularly at how different actors, in their construction of female identity, contest, resist, subvert or embrace female circumcision. The study explores how the subject is made through the interplay of global hegemonic structures of power and the most intimate sphere, which has been exposed in the international arena. The need to understand agency as the capacity to act according to the exigencies of the specific sociocultural forms the main premise of this dissertation; the Egyptian context comprises the complex interaction between the local and a variety of wider global forces.

"Omskärelse är sött". Mat, kropp och kvinnlig omskärelse i Kairo

Upphovsperson: Malmström, Maria Frederika
Utgivare: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet | Göteborg : Socialmedicinsk tidskrift
År: 2004
Ämnesord: candy, female circumcision, Egypt, Gender identity, body image, Cultural anthropology
Artikeln diskuterar varför mat, framför allt mjuk, len och söt mat, bland arbetarklassen (baladi) i Kairo, har en sådan oerhörd symbolisk laddning och vidare dess täta relation till genus, kropp och kvinnlig omskärelse. Genom dagligt tal om mat och genom beredning av mat lär sig flickorna hur en ideal kvinnokropp skall se ut, hur de skall vara och vad som förväntas av dem rörande moraliskt uppförande. Kvinnlig omskärelse ingår som en naturlig och självklar del i skapandet av kvinnlighet, och när kvinnorna underförstått talar om kvinnlig omskärelse i vardagen nöts det rätta sättet att vara kvinna på kontinuerligt in.

"Omskärelse är sött". Mat, kropp och kvinnlig omskärelse i Kairo

Upphovsperson: Malmström, Maria Frederika
Utgivare: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet | Göteborg : Socialmedicinsk tidskrift
År: 2004
Ämnesord: candy, female circumcision, Egypt, Gender identity, body image, Cultural anthropology, kvinnlig omskärelse/könsstympning, mat, kropp, identitet, Genus, antropologi, sötsak
Artikeln diskuterar varför mat, framför allt mjuk, len och söt mat, bland arbetarklassen i Kairo, har en sådan oerhörd symbolisk laddning och vidare dess täta relation till genus, kropp och kvinnlig omskärelse. Genom dagligt tal om mat och genom beredning av mat lär sig flickorna hur en ideal kvinnokropp skall se ut, hur de skall vara och vad som förväntas av dem rörande moraliskt uppförande. Kvinnlig omskärelse ingår som en naturlig och självklar del i skapandet av kvinnlighet, och när kvinnorna underförstått talar om kvinnlig omskärelse i vardagen nöts det rätta sättet att vara kvinna på kontinuerligt in.    

Cosmogony

Upphovsperson: Oestigaard, Terje
Utgivare: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Agrarian Change, Property and Resources | Oxford
År: 2011
Ämnesord: Cosmogony, Eliade, Religion, Egypt, pyramids, cremation, Archaeology, Arkeologi
Cosmogony as a term is derived from the two Greek words kosmos and genesis. Kosmos refers to the order of the universe and/or the universe as the order, whereas genesis refers to the process of coming into being (Long 1993: 94). Thus, cosmogony has to do with founding myths and the origin and the creation of the gods and cosmos and how the world came into existence. There are schematically several different types of cosmogenic myths classified according to their symbolic structure: (1) creation from nothing, (2) creation from chaos, (3) creation from a cosmic egg, (4) creation from world parents, (5) creation through a process of emergence, and (6) creation through the agency of an earth diver. Several of these motifs and typological forms may be present in a given cosmogenic myth-system, and these types are not mutually exclusive but may rather be used in parallel in creation ororigin myths (Long 1993: 94). There are cosmogenic myths in all religions. In the Hebrew myth, there is creation from nothing: ‘And God said. “Let there be light”; and there was light’ (Gen. 1: 3). Importantly, in transcendental religions such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam the omnipotent god exists totally independent of its own creation (Trigger 2003: 473), but still there are cosmogenic myths. Usually, however, cosmogony refers to a divine structuring principle where cosmos and the world are not independent of its original creation, but dependent upon the outcome of the ritual relation between humans and deities for its future existence, and such religions are traditionally called cosmogenic, putting the emphasis on human rituals. Thus, there are differences between cosmogenic and transcendental religions with regards to structures of beliefs and practices. A cosmogenic religion links humans’ rituals in the present with the divine glory in the past and cosmic stability and prosperity in the future. Hence, a cosmogenic religion enables and prescribes particular types of ritualpractices which are archaeologically manifest in the material culture, and all the early civilizations have been cosmogenic (Trigger 2003: 444–5) together with the majority of prehistoric religions. Although cosmogony had been an analytical term before Mircea Eliade developed these perspectives, his writings in the 1950s (e.g. Eliade 1954, 1959a [1987]) have strongly influenced researchers’ views of peoples’ beliefs of the world and universe in early civilizations (Trigger 2003: 445). Cosmogony as a religious framework for understanding the world and the universe necessitates specific types of interactions and rituals with the divinities. Hence, due to the strong influence of Eliade’s work on cosmogony as a principleand process, this article will focus on (1) his premises and analyses, (2) criticism and development of cosmogony as a concept, and (3) how it is possible to analyse cosmogenic rituals and religious practices as manifest in the archaeological record. This will include:(a) rituals, with particular emphasis on death and sacrifices in the Aztec civilization; and(b) monuments, with particular emphasis on the pyramids in the ancient Egyptian civilization, since these are processes and places where the dual interaction between humans and divinities took place, which recreated cosmos against the threat of chaos. Together, these case studies will illuminate the possibilities of a cosmogenic perspective in the archaeology of ritual and religion despite the difficulties with Eliade’s structural universalism.

Cooperatives revisited

Medarbetare: Hedlund, Hans
Utgivare: Uppsala : Nordiska Afrikainstitutet
År: 1988
Ämnesord: Egypt, North Africa, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania, East Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Southern Africa, Cooperatives, Rural cooperatives, Production cooperatives, Conference papers, SOCIAL SCIENCES, SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP
Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe provide examples in this book of the problems and progress of the cooperative movement in Africa. The studies presented here were the major contributions to a seminar for African and European scholars specializing in examining the development of cooperatives. Certain themes reoccur: the relationships between the cooperatives and the state, the influence of the national economy on the local cooperatives, the pros and cons of the producer cooperatives. The tone is now very much against direct state control. Other themes are new: the role of women in cooperatives, a cautious view of external assistance to central bodies, and the need for self-help groups.