On the semicivilized coloniality, finance, and embodied sovereignty in Cairo

"On the Semicivilized examines how forms of coloniality have shaped conditions of life in Cairo, Egypt from the late 18th century to the present. Focusing on the concept of the semicivilized, or that which stands outside the divide between the "civilized" world of Europe and the "primitive" colonized world, Julia Elyachar follows the concept from its origins in the Ottoman Empire through its lasting effects in the present, bringing a term often associated with international law into anthropological discourse. Looking at embodied social infrastructures in Cairo, she makes sense of historical processes influencing how people live, their ways of thinking, and their place within economic and geographic systems. Elyachar uses ethnography and archival inquiry to investigate these elements, writing of Cairo in a post-Ottoman and post-imperial moment to demonstrate how multiple circles of sovereign belonging manifest. By telling these stories of people as they move through national and global moments of flux, Elyachar shows how dismantled institutions and political arrangements wield influence into the present, in Cairo and beyond"--