Leila Zaki Chakravarti is a Visiting Research Fellow at Goldsmiths (University of London) Dept of Anthropology. She has extensive fieldwork experience as a shop floor worker in an Egyptian garment assembly factory.

Illustrations, Maps and Figures

Acknowledgements

A Note on Transliteration

Map of the Nile Delta

Chapter 1. The Factory as Crucible

Port Said - The Nation's 'Dual Frontier'

Space and Order: The Factory as Blueprint - and as Lived Experience

Issues, Inspiration and Method

Ordering and Animating the Ethnography

Chapter 2. Firm as Family - Control and Resistance
Il-Kebir: The Role of the Proprietor-Patriarch
Ikhlaas: Filial Loyalty and Sibling Rivalry
Ihtiram: Performing Respectability
Taraabut: Articulations of Community and Entitlement
Entekhbo Qasim Fahmy! - The Workers Endorse their Kebir

Chapter 3. Shop Floor as Marketplace - Love and Consumption

Sexualising the Workplace - The Struggle for Love

'Love in a World Ruled by Money' (Il-Hub fi Zaman Il-Felus)
Hub Il-Shibak: Love Matches

Commodifying the Shop Floor - Trading in Dreams

Celebrating Dreams - A Picture Says a Thousand Words

Chapter 4. Daughters of the Factory - Discipline and Nurture

Discipline as Performance

Performing Efficiency
Mishmish Alley Cats - Distinctive Femininities

Nurturing and Performing Male Power

Chapter 5. Globalised Takeover - Performance and Resistance

Refashioning the Labour Landscape

Retrieving the Firm as Family

The End of the Road?

Chapter 6. Domination and Resistance

Globalisation and Localisation

Co-Optation and Appropriation

The Revolution that Wasn't

Appendix: The Fashion Express Workforce

Select Glossary

Bibliography

Index