Upending Infrastructure: Tamarod,Resistance, and Agency after the January 25th Revolution in Egypt

In this paper, I review recent contributions to theories of resistance and agency in the context of anthropology of Egypt. Drawing on ethnography conducted in Egypt after the January 25th Revolution and then after the election of Mohamed Morsi as President, I analyse the mass mobilization movement in Egypt called Tamarod. Tamarod led the effort to have twenty-two million Egyptians sign a call for President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood to step down, and mobilized an estimated twelve million to come on the street for a mass demonstration on 30 June, after which Morsi was removed from power. Rather than critique the notion of Tamarod as resistance, as a dupe of the Military, or as the legitimate voice of the Egyptian people and their agency, I argue that Tamarod made visible, and rendered available for political goals, a social infrastructure of communicative channels in Egypt. More generally, the paper shows concretely, and as concomitant processes, how agency is embedded in infrastructure and how infrastructure is upended in uprisings.     

The development of a scientific understanding of synesthesia from early case studies (1849-1873)

The first case of synesthesia was reported in 1812 ( Jewanski, Day, & Ward, 2009 ). However, it took almost seven decades before the idea of synesthesia entered the mainstream of science and, subsequently, art. There are no known new cases described between 1812 and 1848, but in the following three decades there are at least 11 reported cases of synesthesia and many reviews of these cases. This comes at an important period in the history of the neurosciences, and for sensory physiology in particular. However, the literature that describes synesthesia during this period is largely unknown to contemporary researchers and historians. The aim of this review is to discuss the reports of synesthesia during this period, providing translations of some key passages, and to place these reports within the contextual framework of nineteenth-century neuroscience.     

Safe Places in Domestic Spaces: Two-Year-Olds at Play in their Homes

This paper contributes to the growing research literature on children's ‘intimate geographies’ by focusing on two-year-old children's explorations and play within the domestic spaces of their homes. It draws on video data showing three young girls playing in selected home spaces i.e. a family grocery shop in Peru, the upstairs rooms of a house in America, and the balcony of an apartment in Italy. Through analysis of short video sequences the paper describes the way children use and invest meaning in these spaces. It is argued that the three domestic locations can be seen as ‘safe places’, in both material and personal senses; and that they enable children's sense of belonging, foster their ‘emplaced knowledge’ and build on their confidence to explore spaces further afield.     

Global Gay and Soviet Queen: Polish Transformation and Discourses of Homosexual Gender Variance

The paper discusses the ways in which gender variance of gay, male-bodied persons was positioned within the East/West divide after 1989. The critical media reading is based on gay press columns from the 1990s. While in Polish culture, as in the West, homosexuality was traditionally linked to gender variance, in the 1990s the new gay identity was established as gender-normative — a task much facilitated by the fact that in Poland the development of gay identity was preceded by a medicalized and heteronormative concept of transsexuality. The study shows that gay imagery was highly influenced by the ‘global gay’ capitalist ideal and the ‘chasing the West’ narrative of progress and liberation. After 1989, homosexual gender variance became a taboo that was only discussed in the gay erotic press in satirical columns in which the term ciota was used (queen, auntie). In the columns, cioty were ridiculed and degraded, but also positioned as more authentic and noble. Their femininity was framed in the misogynist discourse of flawed, uncontrollable physiology and emotional instability, which corresponds with the second meaning of the word ‘ciota’ in Polish — menstruation. Ultimately, the change from the Soviet queen to the respectable Western gay was legitimized by the use of nostalgic rhetoric and the fact that ciota was equated with the fallen communist regime and ‘gay’ with blooming capitalism.     

Dressed ‘as if for a Carnival’: Solving the Mystery of the Origins of Children’s Fashion. A New Perspective on the History and Historiography of Children’s Dress

The article has a double focus: explaining the so-far obscure origins of children’s fashion in the later eighteenth century and putting its emergence in the context of the ‘grand narrative’ concerning the ‘discovery of childhood’ during this pivotal period. Contrary to Rousseau’s famous dismissal of the hussar suit, the role of ‘fancy dress’ inspiration in the development of children’s fashions for the first time purposefully meant to distinguish the (male) child from the grown-ups and, concurrent with the Enlightenment’s ideas on childhood, emerges as central rather than marginal. The repertory of styles adopted for boys’ wear is shown to have been inspired by various ethnic and historical dress traditions rooted in the fascination with masquerade characteristic of the Rococo culture but harnessed to express the emerging new attitudes. Among them, special attention is given to inspirations by Polish national dress.

Second, the article takes on the argument presented by Daniel Thomas Cook in his inspiring article in Textile History, 42, no. 1 (2011). Having acknowledged the foundational role of fashion history in the emergence of childhood studies, Cook regards its present status as peripheral. He dismisses the underlying premise of its principal ‘grand narrative’ as based on a fruitless distinction between utility (and functionality) and fashion rather than the invention or discovery of the ‘child’ and ‘childhood’. While partially accepting Cook’s criticism, the article argues that the ‘grand narrative’, thus modified and expanded, retains its usefulness. In the nineteenth century, the ‘fancy dress’ and ‘playfulness’ theme continued, reflected in the most popular children’s styles (sailor suit, Little Lord Fauntleroy suit) and a range of others, temporarily or locally prominent, and intertwining with multifarious cultural, artistic, social and commercial developments.