Strikes, riots and laughter: Al-Himamiyya village's experience of Egypt's 1918 Peasant Insurrection

When asked to write his personal memoirs, the Marxist intellectual ʿIsmat Saif al-Dawla wrote a history of his Upper Egyptian village, al-Himamiyya, based on the stories that were formative to both the village’s and his own political repertoire. The memoirs tell us of how the waves of World War I rippled through Europe to Egypt, reaching as far as al-Himamiyya. He tells the stories of Younis, the village’s only member taken to the front in Calais, and the strike action the labour corps undertook to negotiate with the French military command; the experiences of Sheikh ʿAbbas, who strove to ‘fight the law with the law’ and petition against the conscription of village youth into the war; and the stories of Fikry and Nuʿman, who plotted an armed insurrection against the village elite and noblemen. In this paper, I present a close reading of the memoirs that provide us with another language with which to understand the momentous peasant revolts of 1918 and the 1919 elite politician-driven revolution. I use official colonial archives to situate the events the memoir describes in their wider political context, while unearthing songs and chants heard during the insurrections that give us a better understanding of how and why people revolt. The paper explores the popular politics that were obscured by the sanitised banner of the nationalist-led 1919 Revolution

Hikāyāt sha‛b - stories of peoplehood: Nasserism, popular politics and songs in Egypt, 1956-1973

This study explores the popular politics behind the main milestones that shape Nasserist Egypt. The decade leading up to the 1952 revolution was one characterized with a heightened state of popular mobilisation, much of which the Free Officers’ movement capitalized upon. Thus, in focusing on three of the Revolution’s main milestones; the resistance to the tripartite aggression on Port Said (1956), the building of the Aswan High Dam (1960-­1971), and the popular warfare against Israel in Suez (1967-­1973), I shed light on the popular struggles behind the events. I argue that to the members of resistance of Port Said and Suez, and the builders of the High Dam, the revolution became a struggle of their own. Ideas of socialism and Arab nationalism were re-­articulated and appropriated so that they became features of their identities and everyday lives. Through looking at songs, idioms and stories of the experiences of those periods, I explore how people experimented with a new identity under Nasser and how much they were willing to sacrifice for it. These songs and idioms, I treat as an ‘intimate language’. A common language reflecting a shared experience that often only the community who produces the language can understand. I argue that songs capture in moments of political imagination what official historical narratives may not. Furthermore, I argue that these songs reveal silences imposed by state narratives, as well as those silences that are self-­imposed through the many incidents people would rather forget. The study contributes to an understanding of the politics of hegemony, and how an ideology can acquire the status of ‘common sense’ through being negotiated, (re)-­articulated, and contributed to, rather than enforced on a people suppressed. It also contributes to our understanding of popular politics, and the importance of exploring the experiences and intentions of people behind historical and political milestones; understanding politics beyond the person of politicians and the boundaries of the nation state

Exit, Quasi-Exit, And Silence : How Developing Countries React when Discontent with the Investment Treaty Regime

As a result of growing discontent with Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) and the expansive nature of the substantive protection standards in Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs), States around the world are revisiting their investment treaties. Developing countries are the most frequent respondents in ISDS cases. They have shared a growing concern that BITs restrict their right to regulate in the public interest. These realities trigger two research problems motivating this dissertation: how and why did developing countries sign these treaties; and how and why have their reactions to emerging policy constraints differed. While there is a considerable literature addressing the first problem, there is a dearth of studies addressing the second. This political economy study conducts a qualitative comparative case study analysis of three developing countries – Egypt, South Africa, and Bolivia – that share similarities in the way they signed BITs, but reacted differently to their constraints. Mobilising Hirschman’s Exit, Voice, and Loyalty framework, this thesis assesses what options are available to developing countries (in practice) and which factors determine why a particular route is pursued. This framework is supplemented by Poulsen’s adaptation of the Bounded Rationality theory and Gwynn’s use of the Structural Power Framework to enable a historical analysis of how and why BITs were signed and later contested. This thesis argues that in order to reflect the options available to developing countries, Hirschman’s framework must be reconceptualised to take into consideration the dynamics of the investment treaty regime and the challenges facing developing countries when deciding which route to take. It proposes revising Hirschman’s framework so that ‘exit’ is reconceptualised, ‘voice’ is replaced with ‘quasi-exit’, and ‘loyalty’ with ‘silence’. The main factors that influence the decision to take one route or another include structural power dynamics influenced by a country’s international economic position, and its regime’s ideological motives

Extreme bendability of DNA double helix due to bending asymmetry

Experimental data of the DNA cyclization (J-factor) at short length scales, as a way to study the elastic behavior of tightly bent DNA, exceed the theoretical expectation based on the wormlike chain (WLC) model by several orders of magnitude. Here, we propose that asymmetric bending rigidity of the double helix in the groove direction can be responsible for extreme bendability of DNA at short length scales and it also facilitates DNA loop formation at these lengths. To account for the bending asymmetry, we consider the asymmetric elastic rod (AER) model which has been introduced and parametrized in an earlier study (B. Eslami-Mossallam and M. Ejtehadi, Phys. Rev. E 80, 011919 (2009)). Exploiting a coarse grained representation of DNA molecule at base pair (bp) level, and using the Monte Carlo simulation method in combination with the umbrella sampling technique, we calculate the loop formation probability of DNA in the AER model. We show that, for DNA molecule has a larger J-factor compared to the WLC model which is in excellent agreement with recent experimental data.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figure

Girls’ empowerment through sports: Sports and physical activity with life skills

Social norms, myths, and misconceptions negatively impact girls’ self-esteem, self-confidence and self-efficacy. These harmful traditions and social norms often cause feelings of inadequacy and powerlessness. With limited opportunities provided to girls, in general, and rural girls, in particular, including limitation of mobility and exclusion from education and employment, girls often lack self-esteem. This study focuses on rural marginalized girls in Upper Egypt, which is a conservative setting characterized with harmful social norms and practices; such as, early marriage and female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C). This thesis examines rural girls’ empowerment through sports and physical activities and argues that sports and play are rights through which other rights can be addressed. Sports and physical activities are innovative approaches that can bring about self-reliance, self-esteem, and self-efficacy, which ultimately promote girls’ empowerment. In this respect, the study provides an analysis of UNICEF Egypt’s Sports for Development Project (S4D) namely Sports and Physical Activities with Life Skills. The project was implemented in Assiut governorate in collaboration with Assiut Childhood and Development Association (ACDA), and the Ministry of Education (MoE) Directorate in Assiut governorate. The S4D project was piloted in 50 community schools in three rural districts; namely, Abnoub, El Fath, and Dayrout during the academic year 2013-2014. The analysis was undertaken in light of the three main components of the empowerment theory, which are: the intrapersonal, the interactional and the behavioral. The results of the analysis revealed that sports and physical activities with life skills can promote girls’ empowerment and enhance their school attendance and hence retain them in education. The analysis also revealed that even though sports and physical activities are effective innovative approaches, their deployment in development interventions has been overlooked by the development organizations. Most of the development interventions tend to adopt complex approaches, thus pay less attention to simple and entertaining approaches such as sports and physical activities. Consequently, there is a need to promote the use of sports as a right and as a crosscutting strategy to address other rights

Stretching An Anisotropic DNA

We present a perturbation theory to find the response of an anisotropic DNA to the external tension. It is shown that the anisotropy has a nonzero but small contribution to the force-extension curve of the DNA. Thus an anisotropic DNA behaves like an isotropic one with an effective bending constant equal to the harmonic average of its soft and hard bending constants.Comment: 29 pages and 4 figure. To appear in J. Chem. Phy

Sequence Dependent Plectoneme Dynamics

Theoretical Physic