Introduction
The author purposefully interweaves elements from his personal experience and factual elements about Egyptian society throughout the book, but particularly in Chapters 5 and 6. Overall, I think that his technique of linking the personal with the historical is effective. It, in some measure, brings concreteness to the description because his personal experience stands out as evidence. Chapters 5 and 6 in particular are interesting because they discuss key areas in socio-economic change: public vs. private sector (Chapter 5) and women’s position (Chapter 6).
Public and Private Sectors (Chapter 5)
This chapter is important to the study of change in Egyptian society. It succeeds to some extent in describing Egypt in its journey to becoming a bi-patterned economy whereby both public and private sectors exist. The author further enriches the narrative by bringing elements from his own experience.
Galal Amin opens the narration by reporting how old members of his family were mostly working for the government in the pre-First World War period. He claims that it was the case in most Egyptian families at the time not only his. He also explains how the word Miri which is an adjective used to designate government jobs had a special resonance. A more or government job is something that one would highly aspire to. One important point in the description of this period in Egypt is that the prevalence of public jobs as opposed to private enterprise correlated with a middle class limited in size. I read this as empirical evidence on the now widely accepted definition of liberalization. I think that liberalization is largely understood as going hand in hand with the existence of a significant middle class, which plays the role of backbone to free enterprise. The middle class in Egypt has influenced and has been influenced by economic liberalization.
The 1950s period stands out as a focal timeline throughout Amin’s narrative. However, this Chapter demonstrates that Egypt has not witnessed depreciation in the trend of going for government jobs by the 1950s. Amin maintains that in this period the aspiration to Miri jobs remained strong. This, in my point of view, demonstrates that having the opportunity to undertake private enterprise is not enough; there should also be the motivation to do so. In the 1950s the haven that the government represented would not be dislodged by the lure of working on one’s own. Amin makes indeed the point that if the number of educated people increased, it was largely absorbed by the public sector. He also shares with the reader the fact that his brother who is an engineering major -a profile well integrated into the private sector in the US for instance- gave up the idea to work without the government because he was discouraged by his father’s friends.
Amin fails however to show how the 1950s paved the way for the movement towards the private sector in the subsequent decades. This part of the narration is not well developed. Amin talks about transformation in the economic sector as more private land was being cultivated, more industrial enterprises were undertaken, and buildings were constructed while government jobs remained by far the most prevalent. He does not explain fully how this period helped the subsequent transformation.
Besides this part of the narration, the argumentation afterward is rather clear. The 1970s is presented as the turning point. The author describes how small enterprises became attractive to Egyptians, how a trend to immigrate towards the Gulf to earn enough money to invest back home was taking place, and he finally mentions that people were trying to circumvent inflation that was back in 1975 to generate money on an individual basis. This section of the narrative is conclusive because it is the links between the old Egypt with that about the new one thematic-wise.
The above are the major elements in Chapter 5. The Chapter flows smoothly, mainly because the narrative brings in the personal experience of the author. It is also the major source of argumentation. It is an effective line of argumentation because it gives a living example of what is being argued- in this case, the movement towards the private sector in Egypt. The author even tries by the end of the Chapter to generate statistics about his family, contending that within his family the total number of people working for the government dropped from 100 percent to 16 percent.
The Position of Women
This Chapter, I believe, is yet another important one because of the issue it discusses; women constitute a barometer to social change. The argumentation is furthermore strong because the author builds this section on first-hand experience, things he has personally witnessed. The argumentation is further vested in reliability because the author seems aware of the fact that narrating from a personal experience may induce some bias. He claims from the start that he employs some effort to overlook any element that seems to him peculiar to his experience rather than a token on a general trend.
The text aims at bringing home the idea that the position of women improved. It is mainly built on a comparison between the authors’ daughter, representative of the new generation, and his mother, representative of the old generation. The description is tailored along a literary line, using vivid examples and a flavored style to show that there is a difference between the positions of women traditionally and in modern times. The result is a colorful description. However, he touches upon an important issue, namely the economic (in)dependence of women. The text argues that economic (in)dependence which the woman enjoys affects her position within the family. While the authors’ mother was subdued to her husband’s authority mainly because he was the provider for the family, the author claims that women nowadays, exemplified in his daughter, are no longer subject to their husbands’ authoritarianism on the sole basis of finance. He interestingly links the change in women’s position to the vividness that characterizes nowadays songs. This is perhaps a far-fetched link but it remains his point of view.
Another point that he tackles rather briefly is that the Hijab or the Islamic veil should not be seen as incompatible with women’s emancipation. He exposes a rather unique reading into the Hijab as he believes it is a sign of liberation. According to him, the appearance of women with the Hijab in the public sphere shows that women that used to be secluded are getting out of their households’ confines. This is rather a debatable point of view but it remains a reading from within the culture.
On the whole, the Chapter captures a dynamic that is not exclusive only to Egyptian society. One can relate to such a pattern whereby women enjoy better status because they are better educated and participate more in public life. Chapter 6, as its precedent, accounts for a general trend by taking elements from the author’s personal experience.
Conclusion
Both Chapters succeed in linking bibliographic elements with the wider external contexts. I feel this is their forte. Moreover, they represent a reading from within culture. However, some points that I have singled out could have been better developed. In Chapter 5, the importance of the 1950s for the ensuing growth of the private sector could have been better explained. Moreover, the author could have better developed his point about the Hijab to better explain his rather endogenous reading of the phenomenon. Indeed, one notices that both chapters are shrunk in size, in terms of narration. This is perhaps because it is a translation as he acknowledges at the beginning of the book.
Bibliography
Amin, Galal. Whatever Happend to the Egyptians? Changes in Egyptian Society from 1950 to the Present. American University in Cairo (AUC) Press. Cairo, Egypt: Dar el Kutub, 2000.