Remaking The Modern

An ethnography of a housing project in Cairo, which demonstrates how the modernizing efforts of the Egyptian government runs headlong into the traditional customs of the area's low-income residents. Brings new meaning to the phrase "global and local."

The sequel and companion volume to C.A. Bayly's ground-breaking The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914, this wide-ranging and sophisticated study explores global history since the First World War, offering a coherent, comparative overview of developments in politics, economics, and society at large. Written by one of the leading historians of his generation, an early intellectual leader in the study of World History Weaves a clear narrative history that explores the themes of politics, economics, social, cultural, and intellectual life throughout the long twentieth century Identifies the themes of state, capital, and communication as key drivers of change on a global scale in the last century, and explores the impact of those ideas Interrogates whether warfare was really the pre-eminent driving force of twentieth-century history, and what other ideas shaped the course of history in this period Explores the causes behind the resurgence of local conflict, rather than global-scale conflict, in the years since the turn of the millennium Delves into the narrative of inequality, a story that has shaped and been shaped by the events of the last hundred years

In an effort to restyle Cairo into a global capital that would meet the demands of tourists and investors and to achieve President Anwar Sadat's goal to modernize the housing conditions of the urban poor, the Egyptian government relocated residents from what was deemed valuable real estate in downtown Cairo to public housing on the outskirts of the city. Based on more than two years of ethnographic fieldwork among five thousand working-class families in the neighborhood of al-Zawyia al-Hamra, this study explores how these displaced residents have dealt with the stigma of public housing, the loss of their established community networks, and the diversity of the population in the new location. Until now, few anthropologists have delivered detailed case studies on this recent phenomenon. Ghannam fills this gap in scholarship with an illuminating analysis of urban engineering of populations in Cairo. Drawing on theories of practice, the study traces the various tactics and strategies employed by members of the relocated group to appropriate and transform the state's understanding of "modernity" and hegemonic construction of space. Informed by recent theories of globalization, Ghannam also shows how the growing importance of religious identity is but one of many contradictory ways that global trajectories mold the identities of the relocated residents. Remaking the Modern is a revealing ethnography of a working class community's struggle to appropriate modern facilities and confront the alienation and the dislocation brought on by national policies and the quest to globalize Cairo.

“A sprawling story richly textured with original material, quirky details and amusing anecdotes . . .” —Wall Street Journal “It is a cause for celebration that Yergin has returned with his perspective on a very different landscape . . . [I]t is impossible to think of a better introduction to the essentials of energy in the 21st century. The Quest is . . . the definitive guide to how we got here.” —The Financial Times This long-awaited successor to Daniel Yergin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Prize provides an essential, overarching narrative of global energy, the principal engine of geopolitical and economic change A master storyteller as well as a leading energy expert, Daniel Yergin continues the riveting story begun in his Pulitzer Prize–winning book, The Prize. In The Quest, Yergin shows us how energy is an engine of global political and economic change and conflict, in a story that spans the energies on which our civilization has been built and the new energies that are competing to replace them. The Quest tells the inside stories, tackles the tough questions, and reveals surprising insights about coal, electricity, and natural gas. He explains how climate change became a great issue and leads readers through the rebirth of renewable energies, energy independence, and the return of the electric car. Epic in scope and never more timely, The Quest vividly reveals the decisions, technologies, and individuals that are shaping our future.

The sequel and companion volume to C.A. Bayly’s ground-breaking The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914, this wide-ranging and sophisticated study explores global history since the First World War, offering a coherent, comparative overview of developments in politics, economics, and society at large. Written by one of the leading historians of his generation, an early intellectual leader in the study of World History Weaves a clear narrative history that explores the themes of politics, economics, social, cultural, and intellectual life throughout the long twentieth century Identifies the themes of state, capital, and communication as key drivers of change on a global scale in the last century, and explores the impact of those ideas Interrogates whether warfare was really the pre-eminent driving force of twentieth-century history, and what other ideas shaped the course of history in this period Explores the causes behind the resurgence of local conflict, rather than global-scale conflict, in the years since the turn of the millennium Delves into the narrative of inequality, a story that has shaped and been shaped by the events of the last hundred years Part of The Blackwell History of the World Series The goal of this ambitious series is to provide an accessible source of knowledge about the entire human past, for every curious person in every part of the world. It will comprise some two dozen volumes, of which some provide synoptic views of the history of particular regions while others consider the world as a whole during a particular period of time. The volumes are narrative in form, giving balanced attention to social and cultural history (in the broadest sense) as well as to institutional development and political change. Each provides a systematic account of a very large subject, but they are also both imaginative and interpretative. The Series is intended to be accessible to the widest possible readership, and the accessibility of its volumes is matched by the style of presentation and production.

This work explores the conception, design, construction, use, and afterlife of ENIAC, the first general purpose digital electronic computer.

In a work that spans the twentieth century, Nancy Tomes questions the popular--and largely unexamined--idea that in order to get good health care, people must learn to shop for it. Remaking the American Patient explores the consequences of the consumer economy and American medicine having come of age at exactly the same time. Tracing the robust development of advertising, marketing, and public relations within the medical profession and the vast realm we now think of as "health care," Tomes considers what it means to be a "good" patient. As she shows, this history of the coevolution of medicine and consumer culture tells us much about our current predicament over health care in the United States. Understanding where the shopping model came from, why it was so long resisted in medicine, and why it finally triumphed in the late twentieth century helps explain why, despite striking changes that seem to empower patients, so many Americans remain unhappy and confused about their status as patients today.

How artists at the turn of the twentieth century broke with traditional ways of posing the bodies of human figures to reflect modern understandings of human consciousness. With this book, Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen brings a new formal and conceptual rubric to the study of turn-of-the-century modernism, transforming our understanding of the era’s canonical works. Butterfield-Rosen analyzes a hitherto unexamined formal phenomenon in European art: how artists departed from conventions for posing the human figure that had long been standard. In the decades around 1900, artists working in different countries and across different media began to present human figures in strictly frontal, lateral, and dorsal postures. The effect, both archaic and modern, broke with the centuries-old tradition of rendering bodies in torsion, with poses designed to simulate the human being’s physical volume and capacity for autonomous thought and movement. This formal departure destabilized prevailing visual codes for signifying the existence of the inner life of the human subject. Exploring major works by Georges Seurat, Gustav Klimt, and the dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky— replete with new archival discoveries—Modern Art and the Remaking of Human Disposition combines intensive formal analysis with inquiries into the history of psychology and evolutionary biology. In doing so, it shows how modern understandings of human consciousness and the relation of mind to body were materialized in art through a new vocabulary of postures and poses.