Arab Masculinities

Anthropological Reconceptions in Precarious Times

Konstantina Isidoros, Marcia C. Inhorn, Konstantina Isidoros, Marcia C. Inhorn

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780253058928
• eBook ISBN: 9780253058898
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History

Arab Masculinities provides a groundbreaking analysis of Arab men's lives in the precarious aftermath of the 2011 Arab uprisings. It challenges received wisdoms and entrenched stereotypes about Arab men, offering new understandings of rujula, or masculinity, across the Middle East and North Africa.

The 10 individual chapters of the book foreground the voices and stories of Arab men as they face economic precarity, forced displacement, and new challenges to marriage and family life. Rich in ethnographic details, they illuminate how men develop alternative strategies of affective labor, how they attempt to care for themselves and their families within their local moral worlds, and what it means to be a good son, husband, father, and community member.

Arab Masculinities sheds light on the most private spaces of Arab men's lives—offering stories that rarely enter the public realm. It is a pioneering volume that reflects the urgent need for new anthropological scholarship on men and masculinities in a changing Middle East.

PART I

MASCULINITY AND PRECARITY: CLASS CONFLICT AND ECONOMIC INDIGNITY

ONE

EGYPTIAN MIDDLE-CLASS MASCULINITY AND ITS WORKING-CLASS OTHERS

BÅRD HELGE KÅRTVEIT

INTRODUCTION: REFLECTIONS ON MASCULINITY

Since the late 1980s, Raewyn Connell’s (1987, 2000) concept of hegemonic masculinity has been a dominant point of reference in masculinity studies. The term refers to a set of practices that, in a given society, constitute “the currently most honored way of being a man” (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005, 832). Within a hierarchy of competing masculinities, hegemonic masculinity represents an ideal that “all other men must position themselves in relation to” (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005, 533) and that is distinguished from subordinate and complicit masculinities. The term hegemonic masculinity connects the dominance of some masculinities over others with men’s patriarchal dominance over women, thus representing two mutually constitutive relations of domination. Studies of Western societies include the following among the core tenets of hegemonic masculinity: physical strength, courage, self-assertiveness, and the absence of what are perceived as stereotypical feminine traits, such as emotional openness and vulnerability (MacDonald 2014). In a Middle Eastern context, patriarchal authority and patrilineal loyalty are also critical dimensions.

In this chapter, I argue that the masculine ideals and practices embraced by some middle-class Egyptian men—and their subsequent construction of a working-class masculine Other—challenge some of the central premises of Connell’s notion of hegemonic masculinity. One such premise is that some form of masculinity must necessarily attain hegemonic dominance, thus becoming “culturally exalted above all other” (Connell 1995, 77). The case of middle-class men in the city of Alexandria, Egypt, teaches us instead that men belonging to different social milieus within the same society can embrace different and even mutually exclusive forms of masculinity that are hierarchically unrelated. Further, this case challenges the notion that dominant masculinities necessarily serve to reinforce patriarchal power structures (Christensen and Jensen 2014). Under some circumstances, resourceful, assertive men can aspire to masculine ideals that may challenge, or at the very least seek to decenter, patriarchy as a defining aspect of male-female relations. I use patriarchy here to mean “the privileging of males and seniors and the mobilization of kinship structures, morality, and idioms to legitimate and institutionalize gendered and aged domination” (Joseph 1993, 453).

Other scholars have sought to challenge, improve, or move on from Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity. For instance, Ann-Dorte Christensen and Sune Qvotrup Jensen (2014) have introduced the notion of intersectionality by exploring how other criteria of stratification, such as race and class, serve to complicate relations between masculinities. Other researchers have argued in favor of inclusive masculinity, suggesting that a new form of masculinity, characterized by social tolerance and inclusion, is emerging in societies where homophobia has begun to decrease, thus challenging concepts of “orthodox” masculinity (Anderson 2005; Anderson and McGuire 2010). Parting with Connell, Eric Anderson and Rhidian McGuire (2010, 250–251) argue that this new form of masculinity can coexist with an orthodox masculinity that may be numerically but not hegemonically dominant, allowing for a horizontal rather than a stratified relationship between the two. Researchers working within a European context have likewise introduced the concept of caring masculinities, characterized by an emphasis on caregiving, compassion, and nurturing as central values and by an explicit rejection of patriarchy (Elliott 2016).

Working from within a Middle Eastern context and adopting Raymond Williams’s (1977) notion of emergence, Marcia C. Inhorn (2012) introduces the concept of emergent masculinities to describe changes in masculine norms and practices. Inhorn (2012, 15) argues for the emergence of a “new Arab man,” describing a new generation of males who are departing from the patriarchal ideals and practices of earlier generations and expanding “the terms for what it means to be a man in the Middle East.” The New Arab Man (Inhorn 2012) has become an important reference well beyond the Middle East (Thompson, Kitiarsa, and Smutkupt 2016) and has been joined by other works on Middle Eastern masculinities, including Farha Ghannam’s (2013) Live and Die Like a Man and Nefissa Naguib’s (2015) Nurturing Masculinities. All these works share some important characteristics. First, they add nuance, complexity, and dynamism to the portrayal of Muslim men in the Middle East. Second, they focus on men’s relationships and responsibilities toward their families and the women in their lives and on the importance of these relationships in shaping masculine subjectivities. In this sense, these texts stand out from a broader international literature on masculinity, which has focused heavily on homosocial relations—that is, on men’s evaluation of and relations with other men. Third, these works focus on Muslim men without necessarily stressing the importance of Islam as a component of their masculine identities. There are good reasons for this approach: Islam is the majority religion in the region, and Muslim men are the primary targets of the static representations these scholars seek to challenge.

A central theme among many of these recent works is an effort to capture new forms of masculinity that break with previously dominant ideals that might otherwise be referred to as old, orthodox, hegemonic, or traditional. I borrow from all these contributions to explore how urban middle-class masculinities in Alexandria are taking many new forms. But at the same time, these emergent masculinities are constructed in opposition to a working-class masculine Other.

Negative stereotypes of Arab men have a central place in the Western representation, but they are also prevalent in the Arab world. These internal stereotypes serve multiple functions. For example, they serve to justify and reinforce social divides based primarily on class, regional origins, ethnicity, and other criteria. Furthermore, by offering the construct of a masculine Other, a masculinity ascribed with negative traits—one to which urban middle-class men can define themselves in opposition—these stereotypes also provide direction for the formation of positive masculine aspirations.

The masculine Other is a construct of a masculinity that can be found in any society, and it describes a series of traits that are traditionally associated with masculinity.¹ Notwithstanding, those men who self-identity with other masculine ideals tend to negatively view this masculine Other. In this chapter, I look at masculinity among middle-class men in their early twenties to midforties in the city of Alexandria. I explore the kinds of ideals and practices to which they aspire while also focusing on the masculine constructs to which they define themselves in opposition.

While sitting at a coffee shop in Alexandria, Mohammed, a well-groomed young man in his midtwenties, points to a group of men who are ten years his senior and wearing much plainer clothes than himself: “You see these guys over here? You can bet they are all married, and most of them have small children. Still, they hang out here with their friends all night. Every day. This is how they behave.”

In criticizing a form of socializing and a way of prioritizing that is common, accepted, and even celebrated among Egyptian men, Mohammed and many of his peers are signaling a new set of masculine aspirations for themselves. Here, masculinity becomes centered around men’s conduct toward the women and children in their lives, as well as their ability and willingness to embrace new expectations in handling these relationships. For instance, as young middle-class men describe their aspirations—and sometimes shortcomings—in connecting with their partners at an emotional level, they assume no such aspiration or capacity among men of lower socioeconomic status. When Mohammed looks at a group of working-class men at the coffee shop, he assumes that they are neglecting the needs of their families in order to socialize with friends. This chapter is based on fieldwork conducted in Alexandria, Egypt’s second-largest city, in the spring and summer of 2014 and later in 2015 for a research project focused on masculinity among Egyptian Copts and Muslims. For this project, I connected with young men in coffee shops, at sport clubs, outside mosques, and at churches. I spent the evenings with several groups of young men hanging out in inexpensive coffee shops. After I explained my research project to them, they generously assisted me by connecting me with other male friends and family members, most of whom allowed themselves to be interviewed. As such, the material presented here is based on unstructured interviews, informal conversations, and personal observations, primarily among men of middle-class backgrounds between the ages of twenty and fortyfive years.² While doing fieldwork, I presented myself as a North European of Protestant background but also as a married man in my thirties and a father of two small children. In my experience, this positioned me clearly as a foreigner and an outsider, but one who could connect with some of these men on the basis of shared concerns and experiences. In many cases, at least initially, my own background informed how some of my informants presented themselves to me. With time, they grew more candid and assertive in expressing attitudes and describing actions with which they knew I would not personally identify.

MOHAMMED AND ISLAM

Among my first acquaintances in the city were Mohammed, who was mentioned earlier, and Islam. These two young Muslim men lived in Bahary, a neighborhood in the western part of Alexandria. They were both bachelors in their midtwenties and men of relative privilege who came from families with some wealth and valuable connections. While growing up, they had attended church-run private schools. They had since completed studies in engineering and landed steady jobs. Both were socially and financially prepared to get married. Their families had also started nagging them about settling down.

The two talked about the challenges of looking for and attracting a suitable girl. “You’ve got to be hard,” stated Mohammed. “Arab women want their men to be hard.”

Islam reacted to his friend’s assertion: “Hard? Any fellah [peasant] can be a hard man! You got to be able to talk to her! That’s the difficult part.” This exchange was followed by ten minutes of banter about which of the two was smoother in talking with girls.

The two young men argued that the informal rules of marriage arrangements had changed since their own fathers were young. They belonged to a generation of men whose search for a spouse would not be directed entirely by their families. Today, they stressed, a bachelor is expected to get to know the girl and establish some kind of connection, all without depending on family to act as intermediaries. Although there are clear social limits on what kind of direct interaction can occur between unmarried men and women, social media represents a new arena where young men can—and increasingly are expected to—express themselves and connect emotionally with their chosen ones while demonstrating wit, sincere affection, and romantic instincts. Such expectations are also shaped by Egyptian popular culture through music, television series, and social media. For young men such as Mohammed and Islam, the world of courtship is a difficult terrain where mistakes are easy to make but are not always easily forgiven. In this regard, Valentine’s Day (February 14) was described by many as a minefield and viewed with absolute dread.

However, the rules of married life and family life are changing as well. Once married, young men now are expected to spend more time with their wives and children than was common just a few years ago. This is particularly visible at one of the primary areas of male interaction: the coffee shop.

In Egypt, as in other parts of the region, the local qahwe or coffee shop is an important meeting place for men of all ages. Young men can spend several hours here drinking coffee, playing cards, and socializing with their friends (Kreil 2016; Schielke 2009, 2015). Alexandria is known for its bustling coffee shop scene, and those facing the Cornish and Mediterranean are especially popular. These coffee shops often have a basic interior with many tables and chairs. They sell tea and coffee at moderate prices, thus boosting their popularity as social hangouts. Traditionally, the coffee shop is a space in which to assert masculine authority, both directly through interaction with other men and indirectly, in that by spending time at the coffee shop, a man demonstrates that he is in control of his household and needs not be physically present at home at all times.

These ideals are challenged by young men who want to retain control over their own households but who also wish to make their wives happy and be a central part of their children’s lives. Among young men on the brink of starting their own families, challenging these ideals requires a careful consideration of their own priorities as husbands, fathers, and friends. Mohammed and Islam both have older brothers who are married with children and who rarely meet friends at the coffee shops because they spend what little free time they have with their families. Mohammed and Islam compared this to the behaviors of their fathers, whom they mostly saw on Fridays while they were growing up. This contrast between the priorities of their fathers and their own expectations of marriage was a point emphasized by other young men in Alexandria, both Muslim and Christian. Some men considered these changes to be significant, and some could face sanctions from their own families if they failed to adjust.

OMAR

Omar is thirty-two years old and holds an administrative position at Alexandria University. He has been married for eight years and has two daughters, ages three and five. His family lives in an apartment complex next door to two of his brothers and their families, and their parents live one floor down. He loves his daughters, but he has been deeply unhappy in his marriage, and so has his wife. When I first met him in spring 2014, Omar handled this situation by staying in his office much longer than his job required and then spending several hours with friends at his favorite coffee shop before going home around midnight. He did this every evening except on Fridays, when he had the day off. Though he felt guilty about not seeing his daughters very often, he believed that this coping mechanism worked for him.³ When I met him again six months later, his two brothers had held an intervention, admonishing Omar to come home after work and to spend more time with his family. They told him that his wife was lonely and that there was no excuse for his behavior. He tried to defend himself, saying that this was how their father had behaved. His oldest brother gave him a stern look and said, “Yes, but that was a different time. We can’t behave like that. You can’t behave like that.” Since this intervention, he has spent more time at home. He cherishes the time with his daughters and now gets along better with his wife. Though Omar had to be coerced into making this adjustment, his brothers’ interference points to broader changes in the norms and expectations associated with marriage and fatherhood. These changes represent a break from the traditional structure of the Egyptian family, where the domestic space is viewed as a female arena and where staying out of the house has been not only a male privilege but also a male virtue, one tr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction—Middle East Anthropology and the Gender Divide: Reconceiving Arab Masculinity in Precarious Times
• Part I. Masculinity and Precarity: Class Conflict and Economic Indignity
• Part II. Masculinity and Displacement: Moving, Settling, and Questions of Belonging
• Part III. Masculinity and Familial Futures: Sex, Marriage, and Fatherhood under Threat
• Index