Abstract

This ground-breaking ethnography of an export-orientated garment assembly factory in Egypt examines the dynamic relationships between its managers – emergent Mubarak-bizniz (business) elites who are caught in an intensely competitive globalized supply chain – and the local daily-life realities of their young, educated, and mixed-gender labour force. Constructions of power and resistance, as well as individual aspirations and identities, are explored through articulations of class, gender and religion in both management discourses and shop floor practices. Leila Chakravarti’s compelling study also moves beyond the confines of the factory, examining the interplay with the wider world around it.

Leila Zaki Chakravarti is Research Associate at the Centre for Gender Studies, SOAS, with extensive fieldwork experience as a shop floor worker in an Egyptian garment assembly factory.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 THINKING ALLOWED AWARD FOR ETHNOGRAPHY

“Overall, Made in Egypt reveals a world of industrial labour that has seldom been explored in a city that has rarely been covered in the ethnography of Egypt, which has been dominated by works on Cairo in recent years. The monograph will speak to all students and researchers with an interest in the sociology and anthropology of industrial work, in addition to being an invaluable contribution to the literature on gender and labour in Egypt.” • Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

“Chakravarti’s highly detailed, fascinating glimpse into gender dynamics within this patriarchal factory setting challenges essentialist notions of patriarchy and women’s position in public sector employment, highlighting the fact that meaning is not fixed. Chakravarti’s book would fit well into an undergraduate or graduate course in Women and Gender Studies, a graduate qualitative methods course in ethnography, or as “recommended reading” to illustrate some of the key theoretical advancements within the field of Middle East Women and Gender Studies that problematize essentialist notions of patriarchy and the inferior position in which it places women.” • Review of Middle East Studies

“The book is a valuable addition to the ethnography of Egypt in general and to gender stories in particular. It succeeds in describing the inner lives of men and women working in the firm and in charting their social and sexual agency and aspirations…[It] is well written and conveys the humanity of its characters.” • Anthropos

“This book makes a timely and significant contribution to the ethnographic literature on contemporary Egyptian factory workplace dynamics between management and workers, in which gender relations, class, power, control, resistance, and religious discourses intersect…” • Khaled Adham, UAE University