The Power of Representation Publics, Peasants, and Islam in Egypt

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Synopsis

The Power of Representation traces the emergence of modern Egyptian national identity from the mid-1870s through the 1910s. During this period, a new class of Egyptian urban intellectuals—teachers, lawyers, engineers, clerks, accountants, and journalists—came into prominence. Adapting modern ideas of individual moral autonomy and universal citizenship, this group reconfigured religiously informed notions of the self and created a national sense of "Egyptian-ness" drawn from ideas about Egypt's large peasant population.
The book breaks new ground by calling into question the notion, common in historiography of the modern Middle East and the Muslim world in general, that in the nineteenth century "secular" aptitudes and areas of competency were somehow separate from "religious" ones. Instead, by tying the burgeoning Islamic modernist movement to the process of identity formation and its attendant political questions Michael Gasper shows how religion became integral to modern Egyptian political, social, and cultural life.

Book details

Author:
Michael Ezekiel Gasper
ISBN:
9780804769808
Related ISBNs:
9780804758888, 9780804758888
Publisher:
Stanford University Press
Pages:
312
Reading age:
Not specified
Includes images:
No
Date of addition:
2022-05-25
Usage restrictions:
Copyright
Copyright date:
2009
Copyright by:
the Board of Trustees of the 
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Categories:
History, Nonfiction