MASU presents: Farha Ghannam

Farha Ghannam on "Visibly In-between: Class, Gender, and Taste in Urban Egypt"

Farha Ghannam,Professor of Anthropology, Swarthmore College

Drawing on ethnographic research in a low-income neighborhood in Cairo and informed by the work of Pierre Bourdieu, feminist studies, and theories of new materialism, this paper looks at the shifting tastes of social groups who occupy unstable and uncertain positions in the social space. It draws attention to a fragment of the Egyptian working class, who are able to accumulate more material and cultural forms of capital than their neighbors but not enough to securely join the middle class. The discussion looks at some of the ways class is enacted and visibly manifested in daily life and shows the central role of women in materializing the socio-economic status of their families through the ways they prepare food, maintain their homes, and take care of their children and their education.

Open to the public.