Live and Die Like a Man: Gender Dynamics in Urban Egypt
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.37 (595 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0804783292 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 240 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-04-16 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
"With its focus on masculinity, Farha Ghannam's thoughtful ethnography, Live and Die Like a Man, makes important interventions into the anthropological scholarship on gender, childhood, and family in the Middle East Her ethnographic sensibility perfectly grasps the dynamic and complex intertwining of male and female ways of being and self-presentation and how that interrelationship forms men's lives."—Nafissa Naguib, International Journal of Middle East Studies
"Interesting" according to Brianna. I think about this book constantly and I have lent it to several friends and professors. Ghannam's work is very impressive in my opinion, and she approaches the topic of masculinity in a way that is unusually interesting and entertaining (at least in terms of gender studies). She works with several case studies over the course of many years, showing the "masculine trajectories" of a somewhat diverse group of Egyptian men. She accomplishes a fascinating study.. "Offers invaluable insight into gender identity in the Middle East" according to Andrea Packard. Live and Die Like a Man offers a well-researched, insightful, and timely perspective on the ways in which men and women navigate the search for identity and security amid economic and political strife in contemporary Egypt. Building upon nearly 20 years of fieldwork, Ghannam documents moving life stories that dramatize how collective notions of masculinity affect individuals' life choices. A fascinating aspect of Ghannam's approach is her attention to the ways in which women as well as me. "Excellent!" according to Sa'ed. A compelling read and a rich contribution to the nascent field of masculinity studies in the Arab world. I have also found it to be incredibly useful for undergraduate students.
We meet Hiba and her husband as they celebrate the birth of their first son and begin to teach him how to become a man; Samer, a forty-year-old man trying to find a suitable wife; Abu Hosni, who struggled with different illnesses; and other local men and women who share their reactions to the uprising and the changing situation in Egypt. Against this backdrop of individual experiences, Ghannam develops the concept of masculine trajectories to account for the various paths men can take to embody social norms. These events gave renewed urgency to the fraught topic of gender in the Middle East. Watching the revolution of January 2011, the world saw Egyptians, men and women, come together to fight for freedom and social justice. It traces how masculinity is continuously maintained and reaffirmed by both men and women under changing socio-economic and political conditions.Over a period of nearly twenty years, Farha Ghannam lived and conducted research in al-Zawiya, a low-income neighborhood not far from Tahrir Square in northern Cairo. In showing how men work to realize a "male ideal," she counters the prevalent dehumanizing stereotypes of Middle Eastern men all too frequently reproduced in media reports, and opens new spaces for rethinking patriarchal structures and their constraining effects on both men and women.. Live and Die Like a Man presents a unique twist on