In Cairo’s shadow? Student activists in Egypt’s second capital and its governorates
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on contentious student activism in post-2011 Egypt, this paper contrasts the manifestations of the “feeling” of marginality with reference to Cairo’s centrality between Alexandrian student activists and their other non-Cairene counterparts. Approaching marginality a...
Gorde:
| Argitaratua izan da: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ema, |
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| Egile nagusia: | |
| Formatua: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Hizkuntza: | Anglais |
| Argitaratua: |
Égypte/Monde arabe
2018
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| Sarrera elektronikoa: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Gaia: | Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on contentious student activism in post-2011 Egypt, this paper contrasts the manifestations of the “feeling” of marginality with reference to Cairo’s centrality between Alexandrian student activists and their other non-Cairene counterparts. Approaching marginality as a perceived problem, this study nuances the image of the governorates as equally disadvantaged and similarly excluded from the mainstream of power as Cairo supposedly is. Moreover, by looking at the activists’ strategies for dealing with the “problem” of Cairo’s centrality, this paper demonstrates that while Alexandrians employ strategies that assert their autonomy and portray them as a competing site of power, other non-Cairene activists feel the need to resort to various tactics to ensure the visibility and validation of their collective action. These tactics (and the lack thereof among Alexandrians) reveal that dependency and local identity are not markers of a condition of marginality as much as strategies that actors come up with to deal with their “problem” of marginality versus a perceived center. |
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