Peer-reviewed article

Nurturing Masculinities: Men, Food, and Family in Contemporary Egypt

Murat Cihan Yildiz · 18 Oct 2018

Abstract

Nefissa Naguib’s Nurturing Masculinities is built around such conversations with working- and middle-class Egyptian men, this one with Moody, a shopkeeper from the working-class Cairo neighborhood of Bulaq. Moody and his family had recently moved to a larger apartment in one of Cairo’s new suburbs, reflecting a rise in their socioeconomic status. Nevertheless, he remained deeply conflicted about severing ties with his old neighborhood and moving to an area that “had no soul or ambience” (113). Moody shared these concerns and memories of Bulaq with Naguib over a “tin plate of ful [fava beans]” and tea in a café. Naguib argues that food is central to masculinity in Egypt and offers understudied insights into men’s vulnerabilities, affective ties, and gendered constructions of self, family, and community.Naguib’s study, based on ethnographic fieldwork in Cairo between 2011 and 2013, builds on an exciting body of anthropological literature that explores “lived masculinities.” She completed interviews with fifty men of various ages and socioeconomic backgrounds whom she had previously met during trips to Egypt in the 1980s and the early 2000s. The men were similar in being emotional, caring, generous, and protective, standing in stark contrast, Naguib argues, to the stern authoritarian Egyptian man often seen in literature. Nurturing Masculinities, which challenges the efficacy of studying masculinity in urban centers through the lens of patriarchy, is composed of an introduction and four thematically organized chapters.The first two chapters discuss the concept of “nurturing masculinities,” which Naguib defines as “men’s food talk and their efforts to care for loved ones” (33). She argues that an anthropological investigation of nurturing masculinities “problematizes the hitherto exclusive link between femininity and food in Egypt” (33) by revealing the centrality of food to men’s fluid identities as husbands, fathers, and sons. Her interlocutors, inspired by duty as well as by affection, regularly and proudly shop for fresh vegetables, fruits, and meat for their families. The work argues that the intersection of “affection and authority” undergirds a wide range of men’s activities in daily life.Chapter 2, focused on “food activism,” is based on interviews with members of the youth branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, who distribute food to the less fortunate and are highly critical of the organization’s old guard. “Islamic activism,” according to Naguib’s interlocutor Sherif Hassan, a member of the brotherhood who studied economics at the American University in Cairo, “is about telling everybody that a Muslim’s wealth is governed by communal obligations that stress the rights of the needy, poor, orphaned, and drifters” (62). In other words, food distribution is central to these young male pious activists’ identities and ideal vision of society. Naguib shows how the intersection of age and gender among these activists fractures the category of even that Egyptian masculinity. She stops short, however, of investigating how food activism relates to the identity of these activists as sons, brothers, husbands, and fathers.In chapter 3 Naguib discusses the centrality of food to men’s recollections. One of her main interlocutors, the taxi driver Mustafa Hashim, describes the importance of “samna baladi” (clarified butter): “It’s the flavor of Egyptian cooking. An ingredient an Egyptian man cannot live without” (76). Hashim explains how he lost his temper with his wife when he noticed that she was cooking rice with olive oil, not his preferred samna baladi, which is inextricably connected to his childhood and his mother. In addition to illustrating the relationship between food and memory, the anecdote demonstrates the link between consuming authentic samna baladi and being a real Egyptian man.The final chapter examines the defining characteristics of ibn al-balad in the eyes of Naguib’s interlocutors. A “real ibn al-balad,” according to Farouk Mansour, a coffeehouse owner, is “very gallant, convivial, good-humored” (98). He is playful, witty, funny, even flirtatious (108). In addition to being lighthearted or “light-blooded” (dammu khafif), a “real ibn al-balad” is generous. He provides food for less fortunate neighbors and friends. The multiple characteristics that Naguib’s interlocutors use to describe themselves convincingly problematize reducing masculinity in Egypt to one element.Naguib offers a textured and compelling examination of the centrality of food to the obligations, responsibilities, and characteristics of many Egyptian men without flattening the differences among her interlocutors. The men in Nurturing Masculinities are bakers, butchers, grocers, florists, and taxi drivers as well as college-educated social activists. Their commitments, concerns, emotions, and responsibilities are inextricably connected to and shaped by their particular experiences, revealing the plurality of Cairo’s lived masculinities. Naguib’s extensive and illuminating engagement with the secondary anthropological and historical literature at times inhibits the development of her own narrative. Nevertheless, Nurturing Masculinities is an exciting study of the masculinities of a diverse set of men in coffee shops, bakeries, and butcher shops and around the dinner table. This work is important for students and scholars of the modern Middle East, the Arab world, anthropology, and gender studies.