Childhood and colonial modernity in Egypt
By: Heidi Morrison (assistant professor, University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, USA)
Series: Palgrave studies in the history of childhood
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2014
Place of publication: Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9781137432773
Subjects: Children; History; Social conditions; Social change; Colonial influence; Nationalism; Politics and government; HISTORY / Africa / North; HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century; HISTORY / Social History; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Children's Studies
Description: "The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were pivotal in contemporary Egyptian history. The country searched for an identity in the face of intensifying western imperialism, the emerging nation-state, changing gender roles, and a rising middle class. A new cultural conception of childhood emerged in Egypt that had a synergistic and synonymous relationship with this process of modernization. Modernization cannot be separated from reconceptualization of categories of age. This book examines the transformations of Egyptian childhoods that occurred across gender, class, and rural/urban divides. It also questions the role of nostalgia and representation of childhood in illuminating key underlying political, social, and cultural developments in Egypt. The book uses unexplored Arabic sources such as the children's press and literature; as well as more familiar Arabic sources, such as autobiographies and the writings of Egyptian intellectuals--whose discussion of childhood has been so far ignored"--Provided by publisher.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: 1. Reforming Childhood in the Context of Colonialism; title: 2. Nation-Building and the Redefinition of the Child; title: 3. Child-Rearing and Class; title: 4. Girls and the Building of Modern Egypt; title: 5. Constructing National Identity through Autobiographical Memory.