Without hope there is no life: class, affect, and meritocracy in middle class Cairo

This thesis examines the lives of a group of young middle-class Egyptian men who experience a mismatch between their aspirations and their chances of realising them. It analyses the historical emergence of an under-recognised ‘falling’ middle-class in contemporary Egypt, by comparing their relative fall with another middle-class population which has experienced a dramatic rise in wealth and status in the aftermath of neoliberal economic change. I contribute to literature examining the rise of the middle-classes across the Global South in recent years. First, I reveal the importance of historically-owned rural land, cultural privilege, the legal and political remnants of state socialism, and international migration in the socio-economic rise of an Egyptian middle-class. Second, I move away from a predominant focus on consumption, and instead highlight how educational markers, and ‘character’ differences enable the exercise of a new form of ‘open-minded’ middle-class distinction. But finally, I challenge existing literature by uncovering the emergence of an alternative, less-celebratory middle-class in the late-20th and early-21st century, one which has experienced relative decline as the public sector jobs, education, and subsidies they relied on to forge their middle-class lives have been stripped away. The rest of the thesis uses eleven months of ethnographic fieldwork stretched over two years to delve into the lives of a group of young men in this falling middle-class category as they attempt to make the transition from education to ‘aspired to’ employment. It first establishes the existence of a rupture in the Bourdieu-like congruence between their aspirations for a globalised middle-class life, and their ability to reach it. The three main empirical chapters analyse the consequences of this ‘mismatch.’ By applying affect theory to the study of class immobility, I recast existing understandings of how people navigate conditions of ‘waithood,’ in particular through reintroducing a focus on stability and power. I argue that these young men survive their classed and aged immobility through forming a ‘cruel attachment’ to a discursive and material terrain of Egyptianised meritocracy that affects them with hope for the future. This terrain was continuously extended by certain labour market industries and institutions, such as training centres, recruitment agencies, and an entrepreneurship ‘scene,’ that constituted part of Cairo’s ‘hopeful city.’ The thesis therefore demonstrates how Egypt’s capitalistauthoritarian regime also survives, securing the compliance of young middle-class men, despite denying them access to respectable middle-class living, by continually regurgitating a hopeful promise of future fulfilment

Encountering Berlant part two: cruel and other optimisms

Part 2 of Encountering Berlant amplifies the promise of Lauren Berlant's influential concept of ‘cruel optimism’. Cruel optimism names a double-bind in which attachment to an ‘object’ holds out the promise of sustaining/flourishing, whilst simultaneously harming. The lines between harming, sustaining, damaging and flourishing blur, sometimes collapsing entirely. By holding together opposites the concept exemplifies and performs the centrality of ambivalence to Berlant's thought, as well as their orientation to overdetermination and incoherence. Geographers and others have found in the concept a way of understanding the intersection between affective and political economies in the crisis-present following the 2008 financial crisis. Together with Berlant's linked concepts such as ‘crisis ordinariness’ and ‘impasse’, cruel optimism has offered a way of understanding why detachment can be so difficult and how damaging conditions endure. Contributors begin from these starting points, amplifying the concept's promise: a new way of researching and writing about the reproduction of ordinary damage and harm. By writing from diverse encounters with Berlant's work, they move the concept in multiple directions, juxtaposing it with other optimisms across a variety of empirical scenes and locations. The result is a repository of what cruel optimism, and Berlant's mode of thinking-feeling more broadly, offer geographers and others

Automated Additive Construction (AAC) for Earth and Space Using In-situ Resources

Using Automated Additive Construction (AAC), low-fidelity large-scale compressive structures can be produced out of a wide variety of materials found in the environment. Compressionintensive structures need not utilize materials that have tight specifications for internal force management, meaning that the production of the building materials do not require costly methods for their preparation. Where a certain degree of surface roughness can be tolerated, lower-fidelity numerical control of deposited materials can provide a low-cost means for automating building processes, which can be utilized in remote or extreme environments on Earth or in Space. For space missions where every kilogram of mass must be lifted out of Earth’s gravity well, the promise of using in-situ materials for the construction of outposts, facilities, and installations could prove to be enabling if significant reduction of payload mass can be achieved. In a 2015 workshop sponsored by the Keck nstitute for Space Studies, on the topic of Three Dimensional (3D) Additive Construction For Space Using In-situ Resources, was conducted with additive construction experts from around the globe in attendance. The workshop explored disparate efforts, methods, and technologies and established a proposed framework for the field of Additive Construction Using In-situ Resources. This paper defines the field of Automated Additive Construction Using In-situ Resources, describes the state-of-the-art for various methods, establishes a vision for future efforts, identifies gaps in current technologies, explores investment opportunities, and proposes potential technology demonstration missions for terrestrial, International Space Station (ISS), lunar, deep space zero-gravity, and Mars environments

The Ursinus Weekly, April 30, 1951

Nominations made for class, MSGA elections • Coeds elect new student council representatives • Y to organize; Retreat slated • Senior dinner planned • Professors\u27 panel set for Wednesday night • Beemer, Mras get waiter posts • Arsenic rehearsal speeded up as performance nears • Varsity show called amusing • Turk to speak here Tuesday • Jobs open for spring graduates • Senior group works hard preparing papers for departmental honors • Editorials: Attention, W.S.G.A.! • Are we prey to science? • Important news goes unsung • Letters to the editor • One day of blood-giving leaves campus perplexed • Ursinus grad, Lloyd Wood \u2725, is Lt. Governor • Co-eds defeated by Bryn Mawr team; Jody Woodruff elected as tennis head • Belles win opener; Spencer fans nine • F & M track team beats Bruin cindermen, 64-62 • Ursinus baseball team defeated, 6-4; Losers held to four hits by Lehigh • Cumpstone is eighth in Penn javelin throw • Drop Albright in 5-4 net upset • Curtis holds lead in League I play • Grizzlies beat F & M nine; But lose to Elizabethtown • PA. Dutch film shown • Fresh-more frolic set • French Club plans banquet • Communion breakfast planned • Pi Gamma Mu frat holds district banquet • Lit reading Tuesdayhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/weekly/1567/thumbnail.jp

Ursinus College Alumni Journal, March 1960

President\u27s page • 1960 - A democratic president • Faith in the individual • Teachers are made • Alumni elections - watch for your ballot in April • On recruiting • Recent changes in the Education Department • Attention: Alumna at work • Lamond promoted • The liberal arts • An interview with Flora Rahn Lentz, Class of 1889 • Esso grant • Summer Assembly • Dr. Lentz is dead • Dr. Rice publishes new Swedish text • Dr. Stein resigns • Medical college award • Washington regional • Lehigh Valley regional • New York City regional • Philadelphia regional • South Jersey regional • Schuylkill Valley regional • Ursinus Women\u27s Club • Facts concerning the directory • Alumnae hockeyites honored • New football coach • Fall sports\u27 record • Wrestling results • Please help us • Basketball review • New look in track facilities • Track • Vanishing crafts and their craftsmen • January 1960: Mid year report of the Loyalty Fund campaign • 1960 Loyalty Fund campaign • Alvin Weiss: Man of the year • News about ourselves • Weddings • Births • Necrology • Alumni Day Saturday, June 4, 1960https://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/alumnijournal/1068/thumbnail.jp

Clients Their role in the procurement of infrastructure projects

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:DXN055205 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo