Sex work in colonial Egypt : women, modernity and the global economy /
In the early twentieth century, Cairo was a vibrant and booming global metropolis. The integration of Egypt into the global market had led to rapid urban growth and increased migration. As occupational prospects for women outside the family were limited, sex work became a prominent feature of the ne...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
London ; New York :
I.B. Tauris,
[2018]
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| Series: | Library of Middle East history ;
v. 72. |
| Subjects: |
| Summary: | In the early twentieth century, Cairo was a vibrant and booming global metropolis. The integration of Egypt into the global market had led to rapid urban growth and increased migration. As occupational prospects for women outside the family were limited, sex work became a prominent feature of the new modern city. However, the economic and social changes in Egypt ignited national anxieties about racial degeneration, social disorder and imperial decadence. Here, Francesca Biancani shows how this was a period of national crisis that became inscribed on the bodies of female sex workers. Based on a wide range of rare primary sources, including documents from court cases, reformist papers, police minutes and letters, Biancani examines the discourses around sex workers and shows how prostitution was understood in colonial Egypt. This book argues that from initially regulating and managing prostitution, local and colonial elites began to depict sex workers as a threat to the physical and moral welfare of the rising Egyptian nation. However, far from being a marginal activity, prostitution is shown to have played a central role in the history of Egyptian nation-making. By exploring the interdependence of power and marginality, respectability and transgression, Biancani writes sex work and its practitioners back into the history of modern Egypt. |
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| Physical Description: | xv, 231 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 1788311035 9781788311038 |