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Cotton Plantation Remembered: A family account of Egypt's changed social order Professor Mona Abaza offers a highly personal yet academic analysis of cotton plantations since the second half of the 19th century and shifting socio-economic orders
For decades, Egyptian cotton has been famed for being the finest in the world. The 'white gold', as Egyptian farmers called their crop, did not merely gain Egypt a wide reputation in the cotton bourses, but also created the fortunes of an entire Egyptian privileged class during the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. In her latest book, The Cotton Plantation Remembered: An Egyptian Family Story, Sociology professor at the American University in Cairo (AUC) Mona Abaza provides a sociological analysis of the changes in the Egyptian social order that cotton plantations brought about in the second half of the 19th century. A descendent of the Foudas – a highly-prominent family among Egypt's bourgeoisie that collected its wealth from the cultivation and trade of cotton – Abaza weaves profoundly personal family reminiscences, particularly involving her mother, with rigorous academic sociological research on the relationship between the wealthy landowners and the farmers who planted the cotton, as well as oral accounts she collected from her native town in the Nile Delta countryside. In the 224 pages of her book, Abaza documents various aspects of her family history while attempting to examine the structure of the two different classes' lives, as well as the metamorphosing status of the no-longer privileged landowners' class. According to Abaza's study, the redistribution of lands that ensued the 1952 July Revolution's efforts to eradicate feudalism in Egypt propelled the main change in the relationship, which, for nearly a century, had governed interactions between the two classes. At her book launch event held at AUC's Oriental Hall, Mona Abaza explained that, by the beginning of the 20th century, the cotton plantation had contributed to the creation of two entirely different worlds: The world of the landowners, who adopted a European lifestyle, and that of the labourers, who struggled for bare subsistence. Dozens of Abaza's family pictures, along with others showing the cotton plantation labourers, provide a visual account of these two distinct worlds. The author additionally makes use of photography theorists such as Susan Sontag to analyse the photographs she provides in her book. The writing process involved Abaza in numerous struggles, moments of tension and inner conflicts, as family history is a challenging matter to scientifically dissect. “The sociologist in me was constantly wrestling with the process of exposing personal settings, raising issues of how far one can expose family history without compromising others or oneself, how far one can expose intimate psychological deprivations. I sought refuge in sociology, which helped balance these matters,” she explained. Weaving a personal history into the wider context of Egyptian socio-economic history was one of the issues raised by the book: “A question that concerned me was how to contextualise one single story into a whole historical canvas,” Abaza said. Naturally, the writer did not reveal all her family details, nor did she particularly wish to. “It's not my story; it's the family story. There are other people involved. I didn't tell everything about everyone. I told the stories that help with character formation in a sociological dimension. I didn't explain everything and I didn't want to. I created the story so that anyone may read it [and understand] even if non-Egyptian,” she elaborated. Abaza stressed that the book is the result of collective work. Amr El-Kafrawy designed the book cover and used his "aesthetic eye" to insert the pictures. He also curated the photography exhibition held during the book launch at AUC, which displayed the family photographs and pictures printed in the volume. “The whole social order has changed; the landowners lost their lands, the labourers still have traumatic memories of the oppression I related through the interviews I gathered, but they lost their space for fear. Class remains an issue for me, but I am what I am and I represent who I am,” Abaza concluded. At the end of her talk at AUC, the author displayed the pictures in the book through a projector. She stopped by a photo depicting an old dining room with hardly a ceiling and told her audience: "This dining room collapsed on the day I received the first copy of my book; I don't think it's a coincidence," leaving them in laughter and with something to think about. ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/85733.aspx
