Markets of Dispossession

Julia Elyachar is Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine.

“Markets of Dispossession is a brilliant study of contemporary forms of market ideology and practice. Exploring central questions about value and social resources, debt and dispossession, culture and power, it offers an original and outstanding contribution to the anthropological analysis of the economic.”-Timothy Mitchell, author of Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity “Ethnographically rich and analytically powerful, Markets of Dispossession fundamentally reshapes the debate over the informal economy, microenterprise, and economic development and points to the complex and many-layered world-conjuring work of that which we have come to call neoliberalism. Based on evocative accounts of craftsmen’s workshops in Cairo, Julia Elyachar shows how the market expansion promoted by the World Bank, NGOs, and others poses critical challenges to both everyday lives and contemporary social analysis.”-Bill Maurer, author of Mutual Life, Limited: Islamic Banking, Alternative Currencies, Lateral Reason “[A] masterful description and sophisticated interpretation of the transformation of the social, cultural, and political economy of urban Egypt since the early 1990s. . . . Elyachar has written a book that is essential reading for anyone concerned with development, Egypt and the Arab World, and the dangers of ideologically motivated interference by foreign social scientists and other experts in local economies and societies.”- Donald (Abdallah) Cole (American Ethnologist) “Elyachar has produced a work rich in fine ethnographic detail and driven by important theoretical insights into the workings of market, the anthropology of value, the play of power in society, and the social consequences of development strategies. This is a brilliant study on many levels. . . . This work is a tour-de-force of critical analysis and ethnographic exposition. It sets new standards for the study of programmatic economic development, the ethnography of craft and small-scale production, and the cultural consequences and human costs of structural adjustment.” - Roy Dilley (Social Anthropology)

• Acknowledgments ixA Note on Transliteration xv1. Introduction: The Power of Invisible Hands 12. A Home for Markets: Two Neighborhoods in Plan and Practice, 1905–1996 373. Mappings of Power: Informal Economy and Hybrid States 664. Mastery, Power, and Model Workshop Markets 965. Value, the Evil Eye, and Economic Subjectivities 1376. NGO's, Business, and Social Capital 1677. Empowering Debt191Conclusion: The Free Market and the Invisible Spectator 213Notes 221Bibliography 245Index 269