BREAD, FREEDOM, SOCIAL JUSTICE: The Egyptian Uprising and a Sufi Khidma

‘Aīsh, huriyya, ‘adāla igtimā ‘iyya (“bread, freedom, social justice”) were key demands of Egyptian protesters in early 2011. Whereas the call for bread evokes immediate need, social justice is often associated with structural transformations and a better tomorrow. In light of this temporal tension,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cultural anthropology 2014-02, Vol.29 (1), p.54-79
Main Author: MITTERMAIER, AMIRA
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anthropology
Bread
Capitalism
Conversation
distribution
Economic Development
Economic growth
Egypt
Ethics
Fieldwork
Freedom
Freedoms
gift
Individual responsibility
Islam
Local politics
Monopolies
Needs
Neoliberalism
ORIGINAL ARTICLES
Politics
Productivity
Responsibility
revolution
Social Anthropology
Social Justice
Sufism
Tea
temporality
Traditions
Welfare
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Summary:‘Aīsh, huriyya, ‘adāla igtimā ‘iyya (“bread, freedom, social justice”) were key demands of Egyptian protesters in early 2011. Whereas the call for bread evokes immediate need, social justice is often associated with structural transformations and a better tomorrow. In light of this temporal tension, this article calls for a critical rethinking of an orientation toward the future by dwelling on the ethical and political potentials inherent to traditions of giving, sharing, and hospitality that are fundamentally oriented toward the present. Drawing on fieldwork in Cairo during 2010 and 2012, I think about an ethics of immediacy that is embodied in seemingly non-revolutionary everyday practices, but that also emerges from stories about Tahrir as a space of togetherness and solidarity. I argue that such an ethics is obscured in dominant neoliberal concepts of social justice, which foreground individual responsibility, productivity, and economic growth. Concretely, the article places the Tahrir utopia in conversation with a Sufi khidma that provides guests with food, tea, and a place to rest. Both spaces, I suggest, gesture toward modes of being in the world which rupture the state’s monopoly of politics, enable alternative forms of circulation and distribution, and encourage forms of relationality different from capitalism (in both its welfare and neoliberal renditions). By bringing these spaces into conversation, I seek to problematize a pervasive neoliberalization of social justice and to contribute to an anthropology of the otherwise.
ISSN:0886-7356
1548-1360
DOI:10.14506/ca29.1.05