Watching the revolution of January 2011, the world saw Egyptians, men and women, come together to fight for freedom and social justice. These events gave renewed urgency to the fraught topic of gender in the Middle East. The role of women in public life, the meaning of manhood, and the future of gender inequalities are hotly debated by religious figures, government officials, activists, scholars, and ordinary citizens throughout Egypt. Live and Die Like a Man presents a unique twist on traditional understandings of gender and gender roles, shifting the attention to men and exploring how they are collectively "produced" as gendered subjects. It traces how masculinity is continuously maintained and reaffirmed by both men and women under changing socio-economic and political conditions. Over a period of nearly twenty years, Farha Ghannam lived and conducted research in al-Zawiya, a low-income neighborhood not far from Tahrir Square in northern Cairo. Detailing her daily encounters and ongoing interviews, she develops life stories that reveal the everyday practices and struggles of the neighborhood over the years. We meet Hiba and her husband as they celebrate the birth of their first son and begin to teach him how to become a man; Samer, a forty-year-old man trying to find a suitable wife; Abu Hosni, who struggled with different illnesses; and other local men and women who share their reactions to the uprising and the changing situation in Egypt. Against this backdrop of individual experiences, Ghannam develops the concept of masculine trajectories to account for the various paths men can take to embody social norms. In showing how men work to realize a "male ideal," she counters the prevalent dehumanizing stereotypes of Middle Eastern men all too frequently reproduced in media reports, and opens new spaces for rethinking patriarchal structures and their constraining effects on both men and women.
"Despite the profusion of works on gender in the Middle East, few studies are devoted to masculinity. This pathbreaking volume is the first to examine Egyptian manhood through an ethnographic lens, following the stories of 'boys-to-men' on the brink of a revolution. A must-read for those interested in Middle East gender studies, anthropology, and contemporary Egypt."
Yale University, author of The New Arab Man: Emergent Masculinities, Technologies, and Isl
"In Live and Die Like a Man: Gender Dynamics in Urban Egypt, anthropologist Farha Ghannam offers a compelling longitudinal study of masculinity in a lower- and middle-income neighborhood in Cairo known as al-Zawiya . . . Ghannam does a wonderful job showing the nuances of masculinity, as well as the complexities and contingencies of the masculine trajectory over time. Well written and accessible,
Journal of Anthropological Research
"With Live and Die Like a Man, Farha Ghannam is far ahead of the academic curve, setting an imposing standard for future scholarship on the Arab Spring and gender across the Middle East and North Africa. This engrossing book breaks ground by using the study of men's experiences as a method for understanding contemporary societies."
