عنوان

'Let down the curtains around us' :

Number

TLets571057

Title Proper

'Let down the curtains around us' :

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Biancani, Francesca

Title Proper by Another Author

sex work in colonial Cairo 1882-1952

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London)

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2012

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Thesis (Ph.D.)

Text preceding or following the note

2012

Text of Note

The shift from pre-modern to modern sex work meant the "professionalization" of transactional sex, its commodification and the attending social stigmatization of the essentialized category of prostitutes as "public women". This dissertation explores the construction of social marginality of sex workers in colonial Cairo (1882-1952), in the context of major economical and social changes and the development of dramatically new concepts about the scope of intervention of the State on society. The quantitative and qualitative change in sex work which took place in Cairo since the end of the nineteenth century was made possible by a number of structural factors such as the integration of Egypt in the global market in a subaltern position, the restructuring of autonomous households' economy, the augmented economic social vulnerability of female economic roles in the job market, migration and rapid urban growth. At the same time, the new social meaning of prostitution, a permanent symbolic threat to the physical and moral welfare of the rising Egyptian nation, was discursively constructed by dominant positions, both by local and colonial elites. Prostitutes were used as dense referent to express a wide range of dominant anxieties about the social order, the definition of normative notions of Egyptian citizenship and colonial racial hierarchies. Positing the inextricable link between material and discursive formations, this study analyzes the political economy of sex work and combines a wide range of sources - governmental reports, reformist societies' papers, court cases, contemporary press and semi-academic literature - to explore a space of subaltern and gendered agency which has been overlooked for long and endeavours to restore prostitution, generally considered as a marginal activity, to the history of the Egyptian nation.

DT Africa

Biancani, Francesca

London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London)

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y