"A compendium of profound insights, garnered in all their granularity from varied aspects of Cairo's rich social life, which keeps the reader engrossed to the last page."—Contemporary Sociology A rich examination of the securitization of the everyday lives of the citizens of Cairo and how to build a more equitable urban order Until the year 2000, Cairo had been a model megacity, relatively crime free, safe, and public facing. It featured a thriving public culture and vibrant street life. In recent decades, however, the Egyptian state has accelerated a wholesale dismantlement of public education and public sector jobs and reversed the modest land reforms of the Nasser era. As a result, the vast majority of Cairo’s people have been forcibly deprived of their social rights, social goods, and educational capital. Eschewing the traditional focus on top-down regime and state security, the contributors to this volume, who represent a wide array of academics, activists, artists, and journalists, explore how repressive policies affect the everyday lives of citizens. They show the ways in which urban security crises are politically fashioned and do not emanate from the urban social fabric on their own: city crime, violence, and fear are created by specific means of extraction, production, and control. Another kind of city can live again. But how? By tackling a range of issues, including public health, transportation, labor safety, and housing and property distribution, Cairo Securitized unsettles simplistic binaries of thug and police, public versus private, and slum versus enclave, and proposes compelling new ways in which securitizing processes can be reversed, reengineered, and replaced with a participatory and equitable urban order. Contributors: Sara Soumaya Abed African Leadership Centre, Kings College London Zeinab Abul-Magd Oberlin College, USA Mohamed Ahmed Political Scientist and historian, Cairo Egypt Rania Ahmed Independent Researcher, Cairo Egypt Nicholas Simcik Arese University of Cambridge, UK Ahmed Awadalla University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK Ahmad Borham The American University in Cairo, Cairo Egypt Miguel A. Fuentes Carreño University of California, Santa Barbara, USA Roberta Duffield Scholar on urbanism, public space, Cairo Egypt Momen El-Husseiny The American University in Cairo, Cairo Egypt Mohamed Elmeshad SOAS, London UK Ifdal Elsaket Netherlands-Flemish Institute, Cairo Egypt Mohamed Elshahed Independent Writer and Curator, Mexico City Amy Fallas University of California Santa Barbara, USA Tina Guirguis University of California, Santa Barbara, USA Elena Habersky The American University in Cairo, Cairo Egypt Hanan Hammad Texas Christian University, USA Hatem Hassan Impact Justice, Pittsburgh, USA Amira Hetaba Federal Government of Lower Austria, Austria Deena Khalil The American University in Cairo, Cairo Egypt Omnia Khalil City University of New York, USA Sabrina Lilleby University of Texas, Austin, USA Paul Miranda Nonviolent Peaceforce, South Mosul, Iraq Mostafa Mohie American University in Cairo, Cairo Egypt Laura Monfleur University François-Rabelais, Tours, France Aya Nassar Royal Holloway, University of London, UK Nora Noralla human rights researcher, Berlin, Germany Aly El Reggal Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence Italy Afsaneh Rigot Harvard University, Cambridge USA Yahia Saleh Malmö University, Sweden Bassem al-Samragy political analyst at the International Criminal Court, The Hague, The Netherlands Yahia Shawkat Technische Universität Berlin, Germany Maïa Sinno Géographie Cités Lab, CNRS / Sorbonne University, Paris France Mark Westmoreland Leiden University, The Netherlands

Table of Contents:
Contents Contributors Introduction: “Cairo Securitized: Can Another World be Made?” Paul Amar Section I: Vernacular Mediascaping Beyond the binary of digital/virtual space versus street/real space 1. The Crime of Shamelessness: TikTok Women, the Principle of Bodily Integrity, and Independence without Regrets Sara Soumaya Abed 2. Securitized Consolidation, or How the State Co-opted Private Media Mohamed Elmeshad 3. The City and the Jungle: Africa and Blackness in the Egyptian Interwar Cinematic Imagination Ifdal Elsaket 4. Viral Visualities, Image Cycles, and Mosireen’s Revolutionary Archives Mark Westmoreland 5. Queer Digital Activism: Street Media and Subversion of Digital Securitization Afsaneh Rigot and Nora Noralla Section II: Reversing Social Cleansing and Depathologizing Justice Beyond the binaries of sociability versus social cleansing, value versus waste, abled versus debilitated, medicine versus magic 6. Toilets for the People? Hygiene in the City and Depathologizing Popular Sanitation Tina Guirguis 7. Cairo’s Sexuality Infrastructures: Securitizing Abortion, HIV, and Gender Affirming Surgery Miguel A. Fuentes Carreño 8. Road to the Future: Infrastructure and Landscape Sanitized of Trees and People, Viewed from ‘God’s Eyes’ Mohamed elShahed 9. The Khaki Color of Football: Digitized Militarization of Egypt’s Most Popular Game Rania Ahmed Section III: Anti-enclave Densityphilia Beyond the binary of working-class slum versus elite gated city 10. Urban (Counter) Revolution Against Gentrification: Shadow Security Networks, Baltagiyya Subjectivities, and Urban Densities Omnia Khalil 11. Urbanizing Dreams: The Struggles of Attaining ‘New’ Social Contracts for Middle- and Upper-Middle Classes at Cairo’s Desert Edge Momen ElHusseiny 12. Military Capitalism: Economic and Security Logics of Egypt’s New Administrative Capital Roberta Duffield 13. Gulf Investments, Megacontractor Projects, and Urban Isomorphism: The Imposition of a New Way of Life Maïa Sinno Section IV: Convivial Sociabilities Beyond the binaries of street mobility versus family domesticity, public versus private 14. Cairo Up! Infrastructures of Security and Desire Aya Nassar 15. The Curious Cases of the Disappearing Maids: Mobilization and Precarity Among Foreign Domestic Workers in Cairo Sabrina Lilleby 16. Cruising Ethics in Cairo: Queer Street Socialities against Fear Regimes Ahmed Awadalla 17. South Sudanese Refugees and Community Schools in Cairo: A Home Away from Home Amira Hetaba and Elena Habersky 18. Entangled in the City: Interstitial and Queer Urbanism through the Eyes of a Second- Generation Nubian Yahia Saleh Section V: Participatory Futurity Beyond the binary of informal versus planned 19. Seeing Like a City-State: Behavioral Planning and Governance in Egypt’s First Affordable Gated Community Nicholas Simcik Arese 20. Peripheralization and Infrastructural Violence: “Haussmanization” in Managua, Nicaragua and Cairo, Egypt Ahmad Borham 21. Statizing Informality and Unbundling Rights: Neoliberal Infrastructure in Cairo’s ‘Ashwa’iyyat Deena Khalil 22. Al-Asmarat: Managing Informality, Reproducing Precarity, and Dislocating Workers Mostafa Mohie 23. Pacta Sunt Servanda? Exercising Possession in an Informalized Cairo Yahia Shawkat Section VI: Enforcement Sovereignties Beyond the binary of thugs versus police 24. Gestures of Territorialism: Baltagiyya, Land Anxieties, and Securitizing Squatting Hatem Hassan 25. Cairo Militarized: Army Economies, Security Industries, and Surveillance Geographies Zeinab Abul-Magd 26. Thuggery, Urbanity, and Enforced Sovereignties: Competing Universes of the Baltaga Aly el Raggal 27. Deconstructing Thuggery: Riots, Prison Breaks, and the Criminal Subject of (Non)Violent Street Politics Mohamed Ahmed 28. Sectarian Politics? Securitization, Urban Development, and Coptic Advocacy in Cairo Amy Fallas Section VII: Abolitionist Desecuritization Beyond the binary of “crime from below” versus “security from above” 29. Security from Within: The Case of Informal Policing of Al-Mataria Neighborhood Bassem al-Samragy 30. Challenging Urban Militarization in Post-2011 Downtown Cairo: Walls and Checkpoints Laura Monfleur 31. Becoming a Man in Cairo: Sudanese and South Sudanese Refugees, Gangs, and Structural Violence Paul Miranda 32. Policing Women’s Sexual Economies in Downtown Cairo: Students and their Brothel Friends in Colonial Times Hanan Hammad Index