Militarizing the Nation
The Army, Business, and Revolution in Egypt
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Columbia University Press
Published:18th May '18
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Zeinab Abul-Magd's Militarizing the Nation investigates the Egyptian military's extensive control over the nation's politics and society, revealing its adaptive strategies over decades.
In Militarizing the Nation, Zeinab Abul-Magd provides a comprehensive analysis of the Egyptian military's pervasive influence over the country's political, economic, and social landscapes. Over the past sixty years, the military has positioned itself as a protector of the nation while simultaneously enforcing a regime of control that extends beyond traditional military functions. The author meticulously details how the military has leveraged critical historical moments to solidify its power and expand its business interests, adapting to various economic shifts from socialism to neoliberalism.
The book explores the duality of the military's role in Egypt, illustrating how it has managed to present itself as a guardian while effectively militarizing society. Abul-Magd highlights the transformation of urban spaces into military camps, where an armed presence enforces a culture of surveillance and compliance. This environment not only affects the daily lives of citizens but also enables the military to capitalize on consumer habits across socioeconomic classes, leading to significant, unaccountable profits.
Through a combination of political economy and Foucauldian analysis, Militarizing the Nation traces the historical evolution of the Egyptian military's authority. It offers insights into how such an influential entity maintains its grip on power, making it an essential read for those interested in understanding the complexities of military influence in Egypt's contemporary landscape.
No other work provides such a detailed account of the military's penetration of the economy or the state administration, nor of the causes or consequences of that penetration. The topic is of major importance and the range of sources drawn upon is without parallel. -- Robert Springborg, author of Mubarak's Egypt: Fragmentation of the Political Order
The insidious connection between saving and militarizing the nation is the subject of this fascinating investigation of Egypt's current travails. Abul-Magd offers an impressive and meticulously documented account of this bleak process, from the establishment of military dominance in 1952 to its resurgence after 2011, and concludes with prescriptions on how to reverse it. Militarizing the Nation is essential reading for those lamenting the fate of the 2011 Arab revolts. -- Hazem Kandil, University of Cambridge
Abul-Magd has written an empirically-rich and thoughtfully organized book. By capitalizing on many newly-available sources of information and contextualizing this in a broader theoretical literature on militarization, she has made the otherwise opaque subject of Egyptian military politics into a comprehensible case study. This text will be useful to students of Middle East politics but also to comparativists interested more broadly in political economy and critical military studies. -- Shana Marshall, George Washington University
A must-read...Unlike the flurry of publications after January 2011 that viewed the Egyptian military from the outside as a black box making crucial decisions (i.e. to let Mubarak fall and then govern, and then to deal with and later topple the Muslim Brotherhood), this book provides more context. It describes how the Egyptian army, especially after the 1980s, managed to entrench itself in the state apparatus, the economy (even during times of privatization), and society. This book supersedes all previous empirical works in this area of study. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the decisions of the Egyptian military after 2011, and the enduring weight of these actions. -- Philippe Droz-Vincent, Middle East Institute
Essential reading for anyone interested in the contemporary Egyptian military state. * Choice *
As a social and institutional history of the Egyptian military, the book collects an unparalleled range of materials and wealth of details. * The American Historical Review *
- Winner of Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2017
ISBN: 9780231170635
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
336 pages