8 - 14 March 2001
Issue No.524
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 8 - 14 March 2001 Issue No.524 |
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What goes up
Whatever Happened to the Egyptians? Changes in Egyptian Society from 1950 to the Present, Galal Amin, Cairo: AUC Press, 2000. pp177
In Whatever Happened to the Egyptians? Changes in Egyptian Society from 1950 to the Present, the Arabic edition of which was awarded the Cairo International Book Fair Prize for the best book in Social Studies in 1998, economist Galal Amin chronicles the changes that have occurred in Egypt's class structure over the last half century with an emphasis on the last 30 years. This period saw the beginnings of the late President Sadat's Infitah, or "Open-Door", policies, as well as an accelerated rate of social mobility. Amin's book, which grew out of a collection of articles written for the Egyptian monthly Al-Hilal, combines socio-economic analysis with personal and anecdotal observation, and it is therefore more than accessible to the lay-reader, whether Egyptian or non-Egyptian.
"The idea of using caricatures by that genius of caricature, Golo as illustrations to the text was a brilliant one"
Unencumbered by ideology, by complicated theoretical tools, or by a rigid line of reasoning (the book, for example, spans a greater historical span than it claims in its title), Whatever Happened to the Egyptians? is not a difficult read, and it provides in its less analytic moments an almost photographic or cinematic portrait of Egypt past (early 1900s to late '60s) and present (1970s to today). And -- thanks to the meticulous work of the translator (an unnamed American friend of the author) and the copyeditor (Mrs Jan Amin), work which has resulted in the text reading so smoothly that it might have been written originally in English -- the book would make a good travelling companion for the first-time visitor to Egypt, for it is, among other things, an excellent introduction to that sometimes mind-bogglingly complex entity, "Egyptian society." The idea of using caricatures by that genius of caricature, Golo -- who, in addition to providing illustrations for The Cairo Times , has held exhibitions in Cairo art galleries -- as illustrations to the text was a brilliant one. Golo's images of Egyptian social types provide a visual analogue to Amin's text in its more literary or narrative moments.
Since the beginnings of the Infitah, Egyptian economists, sociologists, political commentators and literati have often spoken of "an economic and social 'crisis' in Egypt," the manifestations of which include, to name but a few, "a severe deficit in the balance of payments and a growing external debt," "an employment structure too heavily dominated by the service sectors," "too much consumption [...] wasted on luxury imports and too much investment [going] into 'unproductive' channels," "corruption," "a conspicuous lack of work ethic," "westernisation," a "weakened" sense "of belonging to the homeland," "the spread of [...] 'low culture,'" "the growth of fanaticism," "the decline of the Arab language as a means of expression in the mass media and the deterioration of the quality of education."
However, for Amin, "[m]any of [these] manifestations of an economic and social 'crisis' in Egypt," cannot be attributed solely to "the economic and political reorientation of Egypt in the early 1970s toward 'Open-Door' policies," and he thus argues against such (unnamed) Egyptian sociologists, economists, political commentators and intellectuals. Rather, Amin points out, these manifestations "could be more convincingly attributed to the change in Egypt's social structure and to the rapid rate of social mobility that has been proceeding at an accelerated rate over the last 30 years than to the mere change in economic policy in the 1970s toward Infitah." He concedes that economic liberalization may have been a factor contributing to this accelerated rate of social mobility, but he argues against the naive viewpoint that it has been "the only one".
For, he says, there have been other factors that included, on the one hand, the lingering on from the Nasser era, and into the Sadat era that followed, of Nasserite "channels for social advancement" -- namely the education and military establishments -- "but to these old channels the decade of the 1970s added some new channels of its own," resulting in the "striking, and to some degree ironic, [fact] that the era of laissez-faire of the 1970s seems to have witnessed a much higher rate of social mobility than that of the Nasserist era of 'Arab Socialism'." These post-Infitah social-mobility channels included employment in the service of foreigners, and, more importantly, inflation and external labour migration which, "[i]n contrast to other channels of social mobility, [...] had a unique feature in that it required very little education and hardly any capital. It now offered opportunities for social advancement to the virtually illiterate."
"All these factors," and here is the non-contentious kernel or thesis of Amin's book, "have worked together during the last three decades to bring about a rate of social mobility probably greater than anything Egypt has experienced in its modern history. They pushed large numbers of the population up the social ladder who traditionally had belonged to the lowest levels of society, and they allowed them to compete successfully with sections of the middle class who found their social status rapidly declining. [This] change in social structure explains much more of the current economic, social and intellectual scene tan is usually recognized."
What happened to the Egyptians in the 1970s, then, was that some went up in the world and some came down. Many of those who did not come up were alarmed by what they saw happening: it is not easy, after all, to see someone you have for ages been able unquestioningly to consider as your inferior to be possessed of a purchasing power superior to your own. This socially inferior, but economically superior, group -- collectively known as the nouveaux riches -- had, at least until the late '80s, been considered by those who do not consider themselves members of the group to be the source of all of Egypt's cultural woes.
One of the main merits of Amin's book is that it avoids the blanket scapegoating of those who have managed to make their way up the social ladder. When, for example, analyzing the phenomenon of tax evasion, which has been a factor in the growing state budget deficit, Amin eschews the easy path of blaming this "on the decline in moral standards and the weakening of loyalty to the state." Rather, his attitude to this late-'80s hot topic of conversation is non-judgmental, being one that tries to understand and to explain rather than to condemn. "If readiness to pay one's taxes," he writes, "has any relationship to the sense of indebtedness to the state, the newly rising classes in Egypt would be expected to show a much higher propensity to evade taxation than did the older classes of taxpayers whose income came from agriculture and industry," because the wealth accumulated by the new rich cannot be attributed to "state activities", but rather to its "inactivity," its "passive role," its "failure" to regulate the economy. "The downwardly mobile segments of the population," too, in "periods of rapid social mobility" will tend to evade taxes, because, Amin explains, they "have every reason to resist an additional sacrifice that would only hasten their decline."
But it is less in the author's socio-economic analysis contained in the book's first, "framework" chapter, which might be felt to state the obvious, than in the vignettes and personal observations drawn from Amin's own rich, multi-generational experience that may make this book pleasurable reading. This is an experience that draws both from that of Amin's parents and from that of his offspring. The portrait of the author's mother contained in the chapter on "The Position of Women," for example, is a pleasure to read in and of itself, regardless of how, or whether, it fits the thesis set out in the opening chapter. So, too, are the author's reflections on the changes in summer vacationing patterns from old-rich Miami, to Revolution-rich Ma'mura, to new-rich Marina; Amin's childhood memories of going to the cinema; and the charting of his own family's gradual move from public-sector to private-sector employment. Some might argue that straight autobiography, or even a historical novel, would have worked better than the book's "mixture of academic analysis and personal observation," but others -- including the author -- would argue not. In any case, Whatever Happened to the Egyptians? is an untaxing, pleasant read.
Reviewed by Nur Elmessiri
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