US economy contracts in Q1 '25    Golf Festival in Cairo to mark Arab Golf Federation's 50th anniversary    EGP closes high vs. USD on Wednesday    Germany's regional inflation ticks up in April    Taiwan GDP surges on tech demand    Germany among EU's priciest labour markets – official data    UNFPA Egypt, Bayer sign agreement to promote reproductive health    Egypt to boost marine protection with new tech partnership    Eygpt's El-Sherbiny directs new cities to brace for adverse weather    CBE governor meets Beijing delegation to discuss economic, financial cooperation    Egypt's investment authority GAFI hosts forum with China to link business, innovation leaders    Cabinet approves establishment of national medical tourism council to boost healthcare sector    Egypt's Gypto Pharma, US Dawa Pharmaceuticals sign strategic alliance    Egypt's Foreign Minister calls new Somali counterpart, reaffirms support    "5,000 Years of Civilizational Dialogue" theme for Korea-Egypt 30th anniversary event    Egypt's Al-Sisi, Angola's Lourenço discuss ties, African security in Cairo talks    Egypt's Al-Mashat urges lower borrowing costs, more debt swaps at UN forum    Two new recycling projects launched in Egypt with EGP 1.7bn investment    Egypt's ambassador to Palestine congratulates Al-Sheikh on new senior state role    Egypt pleads before ICJ over Israel's obligations in occupied Palestine    Sudan conflict, bilateral ties dominate talks between Al-Sisi, Al-Burhan in Cairo    Cairo's Madinaty and Katameya Dunes Golf Courses set to host 2025 Pan Arab Golf Championship from May 7-10    Egypt's Ministry of Health launches trachoma elimination campaign in 7 governorates    EHA explores strategic partnership with Türkiye's Modest Group    Between Women Filmmakers' Caravan opens 5th round of Film Consultancy Programme for Arab filmmakers    Fourth Cairo Photo Week set for May, expanding across 14 Downtown locations    Egypt's PM follows up on Julius Nyerere dam project in Tanzania    Ancient military commander's tomb unearthed in Ismailia    Egypt's FM inspects Julius Nyerere Dam project in Tanzania    Egypt's FM praises ties with Tanzania    Egypt to host global celebration for Grand Egyptian Museum opening on July 3    Ancient Egyptian royal tomb unearthed in Sohag    Egypt hosts World Aquatics Open Water Swimming World Cup in Somabay for 3rd consecutive year    Egyptian Minister praises Nile Basin consultations, voices GERD concerns    Paris Olympic gold '24 medals hit record value    A minute of silence for Egyptian sports    Russia says it's in sync with US, China, Pakistan on Taliban    It's a bit frustrating to draw at home: Real Madrid keeper after Villarreal game    Shoukry reviews with Guterres Egypt's efforts to achieve SDGs, promote human rights    Sudan says countries must cooperate on vaccines    Johnson & Johnson: Second shot boosts antibodies and protection against COVID-19    Egypt to tax bloggers, YouTubers    Egypt's FM asserts importance of stability in Libya, holding elections as scheduled    We mustn't lose touch: Muller after Bayern win in Bundesliga    Egypt records 36 new deaths from Covid-19, highest since mid June    Egypt sells $3 bln US-dollar dominated eurobonds    Gamal Hanafy's ceramic exhibition at Gezira Arts Centre is a must go    Italian Institute Director Davide Scalmani presents activities of the Cairo Institute for ITALIANA.IT platform    







Thank you for reporting!
This image will be automatically disabled when it gets reported by several people.



Master of insight
Published in Al-Ahram Weekly on 04 - 10 - 2018

Galal Amin exerted a singular presence in Egypt's intellectual life as a keen observer and chronicler of social change, no less than as an economist and university professor.
His literary talent gave expression to an astute insight which led him to author eight books and countless articles, all offering a profound understanding of Egypt's social and economic development in the past 50 years.
In 2000 Amin published his book Whatever Happened to the Egyptians?
This was followed by a sequel in 2004 entitled Whatever Else Happened to the Egyptians?
Both works have been translated into English.
Amin's writing transcended the strict discipline of economics, adopting a sociological approach in its analysis of the multi-layered dimensions which induce social change.
Notwithstanding the seriousness of the topics which he broached, Amin's approach was humanist, and his writing style entertaining, penned in a characteristically personal tone with humour, intelligence and scathing wit.
Born in Cairo in 1935, Amin was the youngest of eight children of the historian and author Ahmed Amin, a seminal figure in Egypt's era of liberal reform which extended during the first half of the 20th century.
Amin graduated from the London School of Economics and was first influenced by Pan Arab Baathist and subsequently Marxist thought.
He ultimately shifted away from the economic determinism of Marxist theory, and became increasingly concerned with what he called “the cultural component” of society as a manifestation of development.
Despite his training as an economist, he harboured a scepticism towards what he called “the subjectivity of economics” as a social discipline. In an interview with this writer conducted for a profile of Amin, published in Al-Ahram Weekly in 1997, he said that he taught “conventional economics at the American University in Cairo [only] because I have to”.
An outspoken critic of Western hegemony over the less advanced countries, he rejected resorting to criteria such as “the human development index” as a measure by which to judge society's well-being.
“Have you ever heard of anything more absurd than saying that a society that owns more television sets or washing machines is better than one which does not?”
It was typical of him to take a critical distance from the very discipline in which he had been trained and which he continued to teach, asserting that economics as a paradigm of thinking “evades” the fundamental social questions instead of answering them.
He preferred to teach the history of economic thought “because it shows the relativity of truth, and how metaphysics affects social thinking”.
Amin saw globalisation pushing human society even further towards a totalitarian world, one in which the individual and his freedom are becoming increasingly subjugated to a market system “which sells things to people that they do not really need”.
He upheld George Orwell and Noam Chomsky as, in his own words, “two of my idols, both of whom had very poor opinions of the world, and neither of whom had any illusion over the ease of change.”
Amin's independent and rebellious streak manifested itself in his autobiography entitled What Life Taught Me, published in 2007, and which spared not even his closest of kin from the butt of his detached and ironical candour.
Amin did not identify himself with political parties or orientations, and his affiliations remained restricted to the purely intellectual sphere.
He harboured a disdain for elitism in all its forms, extending his empathy to the mundane and the pedestrian: the countless “ordinary” human beings with whom he often commuted by metro from Maadi where he lived, to the AUC campus where he taught as a professor of economics.
lt was people who really interested him, the critical mass which constitutes a society, or “the multitudinous crowds” as he described them in Whatever Happened to the Egyptians?
In the mid-1970s with the advent of the economic “open-door” policy adopted by late president Anwar Al-Sadat, Amin wrote an article acknowledging the then-rising popular singer Ahmed Adawiya.
Brushing aside the view that the singer's widespread popularity signalled a decline in the cultural tastes of the Egyptians, Amin wrote of Adawiya's ingenuous and often startling lyrics as the creative expression of new and socially mobile groups emerging as a part of Egypt's changing social structure. If the phenomenon could not be appreciated as such, then at least it should not be dismissed.
Whenever Amin could take time off from reading and writing he would, as a hobby, strum his violin to the tune of the old Arabic music masters, Mohamed Osman and Zakaria Ahmed.
He was moved by their classical strains, just as in equal proportion he felt an empathy for the “multitudinous crowds” enjoying Adawiya's songs which blare from the micro-buses and street cafés of Cairo.
Amin was loved by the countless students who vied to attend his lectures at the university.
Standing in the middle of the classroom, his halo of grey hair endowed him with a rumpled teddy-bear look.
He would provoke chuckles when, with a twinkle in his eye, he gently quizzed his students on if they felt their study of economics would benefit them, and whether they truly believed that its pursuit would make them “happier human beings”.
Galal Amin is survived by his wife Janice, his daughter Dania and his two sons Tamer and Ahmed, and their children.


Clic here to read the story from its source.