On the Semicivilized
Coloniality, Finance, and Embodied Sovereignty in Cairo
Seiten
2025
Duke University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4780-3190-1 (ISBN)
Duke University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4780-3190-1 (ISBN)
Drawing on thirty years of ethnographic research in Cairo, family archives from Palestine and Egypt, and research on Ottoman debt and finance to rethink catastrophe and potentiality in Cairo and the world today, Elyachar offers a sweeping analysis of coloniality that shaped—and blocked—sovereign futures for those dubbed barbarian and semicivilized in the former Ottoman Empire.
On the Semicivilized by Julia Elyachar is a sweeping analysis of the coloniality that shaped-and blocked-sovereign futures for those dubbed barbarian and semicivilized in the former Ottoman Empire. Drawing on thirty years of ethnographic research in Cairo, family archives from Palestine and Egypt, and research on Ottoman debt and finance to rethink catastrophe and potentiality in Cairo and the world today, Elyachar theorizes a global condition of the “semicivilized” marked by nonsovereign futures, crippling debts, and the constant specter of violence exercised by those who call themselves civilized. Originally used to describe the Ottoman Empire, whose perceived “civilizational differences” rendered it incompatible with a Western-dominated global order, semicivilized came to denote lands where unitary territorial sovereignty was stymied at the end of WWI. Elyachar’s theorizing offers a new analytic vocabulary for thinking beyond territoriality, postcolonialism, and the “civilized"/"primitive” divide. Looking at the world from the perspective of the semicivilized, Elyachar argues, allows us to shift attention to embodied infrastructures, collective lives, and practices of moving and acting in common that bypass lingering assumptions of territorialism and unitary sovereign rule.
On the Semicivilized by Julia Elyachar is a sweeping analysis of the coloniality that shaped-and blocked-sovereign futures for those dubbed barbarian and semicivilized in the former Ottoman Empire. Drawing on thirty years of ethnographic research in Cairo, family archives from Palestine and Egypt, and research on Ottoman debt and finance to rethink catastrophe and potentiality in Cairo and the world today, Elyachar theorizes a global condition of the “semicivilized” marked by nonsovereign futures, crippling debts, and the constant specter of violence exercised by those who call themselves civilized. Originally used to describe the Ottoman Empire, whose perceived “civilizational differences” rendered it incompatible with a Western-dominated global order, semicivilized came to denote lands where unitary territorial sovereignty was stymied at the end of WWI. Elyachar’s theorizing offers a new analytic vocabulary for thinking beyond territoriality, postcolonialism, and the “civilized"/"primitive” divide. Looking at the world from the perspective of the semicivilized, Elyachar argues, allows us to shift attention to embodied infrastructures, collective lives, and practices of moving and acting in common that bypass lingering assumptions of territorialism and unitary sovereign rule.
Julia Elyachar is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University and author of Markets of Dispossession: NGOs, Economic Development, and the State in Cairo, also published by Duke University Press.
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction. On the Move 1
1. Fixing Space, Moving People 35
2. Infrastructures of the Semicivilized 59
3. Sorting Things Out 86
4. Commons Goods 108
5. Phatic Labor and the Channels of Commerce 129
6. Across the Barzakh 152
Notes 179
References 195
Index 221
| Erscheinungsdatum | 18.04.2025 |
|---|---|
| Zusatzinfo | 11 illustrations |
| Verlagsort | North Carolina |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 152 x 229 mm |
| Gewicht | 340 g |
| Themenwelt | Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Wirtschaftsgeschichte |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie | |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung | |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie | |
| ISBN-10 | 1-4780-3190-5 / 1478031905 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-4780-3190-1 / 9781478031901 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
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