(PDF) Contesting Identities in South Sinai: Development, Transformation, and the Articulation of a "Bedouin" Identity under Egyptian Rule

Contesting Identities in South Sinai:

Development, Transformation, and the

Articulation of a “Bedouin” Identity

under Egyptian Rule

The Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies

seeks to contribute by research, documentation, and publication to the

study and understanding of the modern history and current affairs of the

Middle East and Africa. The Center is part of the School of History and

the Lester and Sally Entin Faculty of Humanities at Tel Aviv University.

Contesting Identities

in South Sinai:

Development, Transformation,

and the Articulation

of a “Bedouin” Identity

under Egyptian Rule

by

Joshua R. Goodman

Tel Aviv University

The Moshe Dayan Center

for Middle Eastern and African Sudies

ISBN: 978-965-224-097-2

Production and cover design: Elena Lesnick, The Moshe Dayan

Center

Printed by: Tel Aviv University Press

5

Table of Contents

Preface

A Personal Account ..............................................................11

Introduction .............................................................................21

Chapter 1

Egypt’s Vision for Sinai .........................................................47

Chapter 2

The Evolving Economies of the Dahab Bedouin — Emerging

Trends and Continuities .........................................................67

Chapter 3

Economic Competition and Marginalization ............................97

Chapter 4

Evolving Social Contacts and Frameworks .............................123

Chapter 5

Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Identity Transformation among

the Aqaba Bedouin .............................................................159

Conclusions ...........................................................................199

Epilogue

July 2011 – June 2012 .......................................................217

Bibliography ..........................................................................223

Acknowledgements

6

Table of Figures

Figure 1: Map of approximate tribal divisions in Sinai ............................. 30

Figure 2: Conducting an interview on ﬁlm. ............................................. 42

Figure 3: Ongoing construction in Dahab .............................................. 65

Figure 4: The Dahab Corniche .............................................................66

Figure 5: Urban herds .......................................................................... 80

Figure 6: Dried, preserved ﬁsh .............................................................. 82

Figure 7: Cannibis farm in South Sinai .................................................. 86

Figure 8: Bedouin girls selling bracelets ................................................. 94

Figure 9: Bedouin ‘arisha competing with Egyptian construction. ........... 103

Figure 10: Bedouin selling handicrafts on the Dahab Corniche .............. 120

Figure 11: Cairene youths strolling in the Khan al-Khalili ...................... 132

Figure 12: New forms of Bedouin dress ............................................... 141

Figure 13: Two photos of ‘Asala Center .............................................. 148

Figures 14 and 15: Wealthy and poor Bedouin homes in ‘Asala ............150

Figure 16: Grafﬁti on a wall in a Bedouin neighborhood ....................... 210

Figure 17: Grafﬁti in ‘Asala declaring “No to the Goverment.” .............. 221

Acknowledgements

7

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to recognize and thank Eli Sperling,

my close friend, colleague, and research partner. Without him, it is

very likely this project, born from our collaboration, would never

have happened. I would also like to thank him for his continuing

availability for questions, comments, and continuing debate, as

well as his support. Next, I would like to thank Daniel Cherrin, our

documentarian, for his patience, commitment, and hard work during

the course of this project. Special thanks go to him for documenting

and archiving our primary research, providing a number of photos

that appear throughout this work, as well as facilitating our close

relationship with our subjects.

I would like to recognize my thesis advisors, the late Professor

Joseph Kostiner, and Dr. Yoav Alon, both of Tel Aviv University’s

Department of Middle Eastern and African History, for their continuing

support and advice throughout the course of our research and writing.

Without their close help, this project would not have been conceived,

approved, or successfully executed. In a similar vein, thanks go out

to Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and

African Studies for its support in bringing this study to publication.

In addition to my departmental advisors, I would like to extend

my appreciation and thanks to Professor Emanuel Marx of Tel Aviv

University’s Social Sciences Department, who is not only one of the

foremost researchers of the Sinai Bedouin, largely paving the way

for my own work, but who also consistently made himself available

to answer any questions and provide valuable feedback based on his

experiences as well as his area of expertise, anthropology. He was

also kind enough to provide us with some of his own contacts in Sinai

and took valuable time out of his schedule to review a number of

chapters. Additionally, I would like to thank Professor Efrat Ben-Ze’ev

of Hebrew University’s Truman Institute for the Advancement of

Peace, for also agreeing to act as an advisor in an unofﬁcial capacity,

especially in relation to issues of anthropology and ﬁeld research.

This project is the product of my time at not one but two

institutions, and I must extend my deepest thanks to Yale University

and the MacMillan Center’s Council on Middle Eastern Studies,

Acknowledgements

8

Sociologists Jonathan Wyrtzen and Jeffery C. Alexander, and the

participants of the Middle East Social Sciences workshop for their

comments. Special thanks are due to Ellen Lust, my advisor in the

Political Science Department, for her close assistance and comments

on the ﬁnal manuscript. I would also like to extend my gratitude to

James C. Scott, whose ideas echo throughout this work. His unique

perspective on agrarian societies and their interaction with states

provided a fascinating looking glass for my work with pastoral groups.

Thanks also to William G. Nomikos, a colleague and fellow graduate

student in the Political Science department. I must also thank the

MacMillan Center for providing a ﬁnishing grant for the project,

providing me an unexpected opportunity to return to the ﬁeld in the

summer of 2012 while I was making my ﬁnal revisions.

Another important individual to acknowledge is Professor Lila Abu

Lughod of Columbia University, whose work Veiled Sentiments on

identity and the Western Egyptian Awlad ‘Ali Bedouin was a primary

source of inspiration behind this study. Also deserving of recognition

in this regard is Thomas Eriksen, whose anthropological examination

of ethnicity provided valuable insights and direction in my own

examination of Bedouin identity.

On a more personal note, I must express my deep appreciation

to my family and advisors who encouraged me to take the risk and

plunge head ﬁrst into the experience that was picking up my life and

moving it to another country. They would readily acknowledge that

this was a trying moment in my life, but they gave me the unequivocal

support I needed to make the step into that unknown. To my parents,

who never once questioned my decision and encouraged me to follow

my passions, thank you for your support and encouragement. I must

also recognize and thank two professors at Emory, Benjamin Hary

and Kenneth Stein, who both helped me to understand the decision I

was about to make and the opportunities it would present me. Their

support gave me the conﬁdence I needed to succeed abroad, and

while they have not been my ofﬁcial advisors for many years, I will

never forget the impact they had on me as I transitioned to life in the

Middle East.

My warmest thanks and deepest appreciation go to the Bedouin

of Aqaba, the Egyptian migrants, and all the others who formed the

Acknowledgements

9

basis for the research presented in this paper. To all the inhabitants

of Dahab, I dedicate this work to your uneasy coexistence and your

attempts to make the best of a difﬁcult situation. Furthermore, a

special and eternal thanks to the members of the Mzeina and Jabaliyya

tribes who welcomed us into their lives, homes, and families, who

showed us nothing but warmth and kindness, whose cooperation was

invaluable to this study, and whose friendship will remain with me for

the rest of my days.

Finally, I want to dedicate this work to the memory of Joseph

Kostiner, who passed away shortly after the completion of the ﬁrst

version of this study and my departure from Tel Aviv. His guidance

and support were instrumental both to this project as well as my early

encounter with academia. He was the closest thing I had to family

during my time at Tel Aviv University. While we did not always agree,

he was a source of unequivocal support and encouraged me to stand

by my claims and pushed me to develop more convincing arguments.

I can undoubtedly say this project would not have succeeded without

his personal support. He was a source not only of guidance, but of

inspiration, and he will be missed dearly.

1111

Preface: A Personal Account

My story begins late one evening in the winter of 2008 when I was

sitting on the beach in Dahab with a young Bedouin shop-owner and

my close friend and classmate, Eli Sperling. Eli and I had come to

Dahab in search of a break from the bustle of life in Tel Aviv, where

we were both pursuing a masters degree in Middle Eastern History.

While the purpose of our trip was purely relaxation, it was typical of

us to wander off of the beaten path and perhaps stumble into a scene

that a run-of-the-mill tourist might not. After looking into a random

shop and being invited to share a shisha with the Bedouin who

ran it, we found ourselves having a heart to heart with a complete

stranger by the beach. The ﬁrst thing that struck me was the level

of openness he was willing to show us as he began to rant about

his dissatisfaction with Egypt and the Egyptian “farmers” (fellahin),

as he pejoratively referred to residents of the Nile Valley. “Fucking

Egyptians,” he practically spat, “I hate those Egyptian farmers.” Wait,

I thought to myself, were we not sitting on an Egyptian beach? Wasn’t

this Bedouin also Egyptian?

As he launched into a tirade about the feminine qualities of the

“Egyptian man,” my thoughts wandered to Lila Abu Lughod’s work

on the Awlad ‘Ali Bedouin of the Western Egyptian Desert, and the

almost identical way in which she described their dim perceptions

of Egyptian society.1 As I listened along with Eli, we both began

considering the words of our companion and how his expressions

related to the anthropological concepts we were studying in our

Middle Eastern tribalism seminar in Tel Aviv. As though a light had

been turned on in the attic, we realized that our academic experience

allowed us to place this episode in a greater sociological context.

There was a deeper, more signiﬁcant meaning behind this seemingly

random display of hostility and bravado, perhaps applicable to a much

wider Bedouin culture. This, I felt, was a signiﬁcant discovery.

Rewind a year and a half, back to my ﬁrst visit to Dahab in the

summer of 2007, shortly after my graduation from Emory University,

1. Lila Abu Lughod, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin

Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).

Preface

12

where I had received by bachelor’s degree, and my arrival in Tel

Aviv. While I had visited Israel on many occasions, this was my ﬁrst

time in Egypt, in fact my ﬁrst time in the Middle East outside of the

predominantly Western-oriented State of Israel. I had been eager to

see something of the “real” Middle East: a convoy of camels carrying

goods across the desert, a ﬁreside evening at a Bedouin camp singing

ancient songs about the “good old days,” really anything that made

me feel like I was actually in the Middle East, a region that, as an

American Jew, had been a personal obsession for as long as I could

remember. Looking back, I will admit, my views of the region were

perhaps overly romanticized and I undoubtedly set myself up for

disappointment. Indeed, upon our arrival in Dahab, I was struck by how

phony the presentation of “Bedouin culture” to tourists appeared to

me, how much its manifestation reminded me of tourist reproductions

of Bedouin culture in Israel. That is not to say that there were no

camel convoys or singing by the campﬁre, but it still felt artiﬁcial.

Due to a certain, albeit limited, understanding of the social history

of the Middle East, it was quite apparent to me then that the tourists

were getting duped, and there was very little in Dahab that constituted

anything resembling “traditional” Bedouin culture of the past in my

limited understanding of the subject. I feared that the presence of

the town and the tourists had caused the Bedouin and their cultural

heritage to disappear, replaced by a manufactured cultural experience

presented as authentic in order to give scuba divers and windsurfers

an “exotic” atmosphere meant to enhance their vacations.

But for the longest time, I had great difﬁculty explaining exactly

why I felt this way. I knew that something seemed phony to me, but

should this come as such a shock in a space devoted to tourism? It

wasn’t until my arrival at Yale, when during a course on Imperialism

in the Middle East I read Timothy Mitchell’s post-Structuralist account

of British imperialism in Egypt, Colonising Egypt, that it hit me. The

key was in Mitchell’s narrative of European visitors’ ﬁrst experiences

in the chaotic disorganization of Egyptian cities after their exposure to

sanitized reproductions back home:

They were confused, of course, but perhaps the key to their

confusion was this: although they thought of themselves as

moving from the pictures to the real thing, they went on trying…

A Personal Account

13

to grasp the real thing as a picture. How could they otherwise,

since they took reality itself to be a picture?...Brought up in

what they thought of as a representational world, they took

representation to be a universal condition.2

The problem for these visitors was that they had arrived in Egypt

expecting to ﬁnd something distinctly familiar, connecting their

experience in the real world to the “world-as-exhibition” they had

experienced back home. I realized my problem had been exactly the

opposite; my disappointment stemmed from the fact that Dahab’s

Bedouin experience did appear to me as “world-as-exhibition,” when

I was distinctly looking for something “authentic” that transcended the

superﬁciality that I experienced in Orientalized Western perceptions

of the Bedouin. My disappointment, ironically, stemmed from the

unexpected situation in which Dahab met all of my expectations.

But the irony was that while my expectations for the Bedouin were

quite different than most visitors to Dahab, I, too, was guilty of the

same essentialization that had been the source of my disappointment.

Looking back, this was a vitally important experience, as it helped

me understand how the tourists’ expectations and limited knowledge

created demand for certain activities, helping to shape the type of

tourism the Bedouin offered, which in turn shaped the way in which

their culture was articulated.

Returning to that beachside evening conversation: it was then

that I realized that Bedouin culture had not disappeared in Sinai, but

lingered in both altered forms as well as symbolic forms, reﬂecting

simultaneously an acceptance of development and transformation as

well as an attempt to maintain tradition. Our excitement was palpable.

Eli and I decided to pursue this subject and immerse ourselves in the

Bedouins’ contemporary environment in an attempt to understand

how the Bedouin have changed and what their present condition was.

This was the beginning of our collaboration.

Our new friend invited us back to his home where we shared

tea with his family. From there we were introduced to his cousins

and friends who lived in Dahab. Quickly they came to know us,

2. Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1988), p. 22.

Preface

14

and before long we were seldom able to walk through the streets of

Dahab without being recognized and greeted. Over the course of the

next three years, our relationship with the young Bedouin (in their

teens and twenties) deepened and we came to know the community

through their eyes. This group included our friend the shopkeeper,

his older sister, divorced by the time she was 23, his mother the land

activist, his younger brothers and sisters (full and half-siblings), and

their many cousins and friends who formed the core of their social

group in Dahab. We met Bedouin shopkeepers and drivers, tour

guides, windsurﬁng and scuba instructors, local drug dealers, hotel

owners, community organizers, and school children, Bedouin with

an incredibly wide array of occupations and responsibilities. Each

had a story to tell, with similar origins but widely different hopes and

goals. With all of these individuals guiding us through the developing

landscape of Dahab, we came to perceive the town (both physically

and symbolically) in a way that we never could have imagined. Instead

of understanding Dahab only as a beachside tourist paradise, we came

to understand it as an economic and social conﬂict zone in its own

unique way.

Our greatest source of information came from the younger

Bedouin, both because of the nature of our encounter as well as the

linguistic skills that the members of this generation possessed. Despite

our limited Arabic, we found communication to be practically effortless

as our English-speaking Bedouin friends would act as translators when

needed. This group of Bedouin mediated our encounter with the

society of Sinai, and in this way, the research we gathered was most

inﬂuenced by this young generation of unmarried Bedouin who grew

up almost exclusively in an urban setting under Egyptian rule.3 The

3. While many people would not recognize a town as small as Dahab to

constitute something truly “urban,” the social and economic distinction

between urban (town) and rural (village) is vital to this study. The town of

Dahab is an important manifestation of early urbanization, and contrasts

between Dahab, loosely conceived as a type of metropole, and the

surrounding villages will be continually invoked. The distinction between

town and village is not based on size, but rather on the fundamentals of

organization.

A Personal Account

15

very nature of our ﬁeld encounter focused our research in a far more

signiﬁcant way than the types of questions we asked.

It soon became apparent that the relationships that we forged with

the Bedouin had a signiﬁcant impact on the direction of our research

agenda. As Lila Abu Lughod explains in the introduction to Veiled

Sentiments, “To ignore the encounter [between researcher and

subject] not only denies the power of factors such as personality, social

location in the community, intimacy of contact and luck to shape

ﬁeldwork and its product, but also perpetuates the conventional ﬁctions

of objectivity and omniscience that mark the ethnographic genre.”4

A fair account of the ﬁeld research preserves the transparency and

integrity of the research. It does not beneﬁt the writer to underplay

the personal connection that inevitably results from the ethnographic

experience. On the contrary, by acknowledging and embracing the

inevitable, we might come to a better understanding of the impact of

the research on the ﬁnal work, increasing the accessibility and value

of the research itself. Throughout this book, a number of personal

accounts are given. I attempt to present as personal a picture of the

event as possible while maintaining my focus on the issue at hand for

the very purpose of providing a transparent account of the research

experience.

Our ﬁrst important discovery was that as much as we were

interested in learning about the Bedouin’s culture, they were equally

fascinated with ours, listening to our tales from home with an intense

curiosity. This was not limited to stories, however, and our Bedouin

friends viewed our return trips with excitement as we would bring

much promised photographs and souvenirs along with our tales. The

Bedouin, trapped in Egypt because of restrictions against their travel

out of the country, are gripped with a perpetual wanderlust that our

tales of New York, Paris, and Tel Aviv could only partially sate. For

them, we were a window to the outside world.

It was no small shock for me to discover the strong similarities

between myself and my Bedouin friends, especially when I was

expecting to be confronted by a very foreign, even unrecognizable

culture. But as I listened to the Bedouin speak about their lives, I heard

4. Abu Lughod, Veiled Sentiments, p. 10.

Preface

16

echoes of my own thoughts, ranging from anxiety about their future

success to their attitudes about women, sexuality, and marriage, and

even their growing interest in music and sports. It was impossible not

to view them as part of a global youth that, in my late 20s at the

time of this publication, I am equally a part of. This connection was

facilitated by the openness that we were shown, the extent to which

the Bedouin were able to understand us from their daily interactions

with tourists, as well as the ease with which we were able to understand

their lives, which were not so starkly different from our own. While the

circumstances of their lives were certainly quite different, it was easy

to understand their worries about securing a good job and starting

a family, and whether they would be able to support themselves in

the future. Instead of focusing on the issues that were unfamiliar to

us, we spent much of our time discussing what we had in common,

deepening the bond that formed between us.

Further blurring the lines between the ﬁeld and our lives back

in Tel Aviv and beyond has been our ability to maintain contact

with our friends from Dahab, through social media and internet

communications such as Skype. Many of our friends have Facebook

accounts that they access almost daily, allowing us to keep in contact

when we are not in Dahab. They have the ability to follow our lives

over the internet, and we often have the opportunity to speak and

catch up, despite being as many as 5,000 miles away. These Bedouin

were not just research subjects, they were, and still are, close friends;

people who opened my eyes to new but familiar realities and gave me

the opportunity to leave Tel Aviv with a sense of accomplishment and

a greater understanding of the world around me.

My greatest regret is that I cannot be more speciﬁc when

discussing them. I cannot tell their individual stories or even write

their names. While we all agreed that it was important to produce a

narrative highlighting the sociopolitical trauma of the Egyptian state’s

development scheme and dismantling the idea that the beneﬁts rain

down evenly on all Egyptians, there is no question that challenging

the regime’s sociopolitical hegemony entails a certain level of risk. But

ﬁrst and foremost, I believe my responsibility is to my friends, and the

following work is an attempt to shed light on their situation.It should

be fairly clear that this type of subaltern or “bottom-up” analysis

A Personal Account

17

clashes quite strikingly with the “top-down” narratives perpetuated by

state authorities.

Perhaps the most important factors pushing me to focus on the

particular question of identity contestation were the politics that

were unfolding around me during my time in Sinai. While Sinai has

received increasing, and increasingly negative, attention in the media

after the fall of the Mubarak regime in February 2011,the peninsula

has long been considered a hotbed of instability. Narcotics smuggling,

human trafﬁcking, and terrorism are just a few of Sinai’s endemic

problems that have been blamed on the Bedouin. True, Bedouin have

been involved in all of these activities. The problem, which is itself

a core issue treated in this book, is that the activities of a select few

have been generalized as a cultural characteristic afﬂicting everyone

who considers themselves Bedouin. This is simply not true, and

the underlying circumstances that produce these types of behaviors

have little to do with internal aspects of Bedouin culture. Instead, I

discovered that regional and national factors, as well as basic market

pressures such as supply and demand, pushed certain groups of

Bedouin into certain illicit activities.

The primary distinction to be made among the Sinai Bedouin in

this regard is sub-regional; the social geography of North and South

Sinai are distinct. This has nothing to do with systematic differences in

the nature of the tribes inhabiting each region, but rather the policies

adopted by the Egyptian state and the nature of the Arab-Israeli

conﬂict. North Sinai, especially the areas bordering Israel and Gaza,

has become rife with the smuggling of weapons and narcotics as well

as of women and refugees across the border, due to the incredibly

high level of demand for these goods and the risk associated with

transport across a national border. Ofﬁcial embargoes on such goods

prevent legal organization of these activities, but the promise of high

proﬁts for those willing to take the risk have pushed some North

Sinai Bedouin to participate, utilizing tightly bound social networks

to facilitate such activities. Their willingness to participate in the black

economy is increased by their marginalization from the legal economy.

Egyptian policies have failed to provide the Bedouin sufﬁcient

economic opportunities in the transforming agricultural and industrial

economy of the North. In the South, production and smuggling of

Preface

18

narcotics is widespread, due not to transnational smuggling pressures,

but to local demand fuelled by the tourist market. The smuggling of

weapons, women, and refugees is entirely absent. Trade routes for

these goods and migrants do not transit the South, and furthermore,

such activities are potentially disruptive to tourism, the primary source

of Bedouin income. The relatively more open access that South Sinai

Bedouin have to the developing economy has led to signiﬁcantly

different attitudes about the worth of certain types of illicit activities,

as well as economically disruptive violence in general.

The other major issue facing Sinai Bedouin is terrorism. In the

opening decade of the 21st century, South Sinai was targeted three

times by terrorism. In October 2004, the Taba Hilton was attacked

with a car-bomb; in July 2005, a number of explosions rocked

Sharm el-Sheikh, and in April 2006, three bombs exploded in Dahab

itself, leading to multiple deaths and injuries, among both Egyptian

and foreign tourists. In all of these cases, authorities conﬁrmed

Bedouin participation and cracked down on Bedouin throughout

Sinai. However, in targeting Southern Bedouin for early arrests, the

authorities made a serious mistake. While opposition to the Egyptian

state is widespread in Sinai, violent manifestations are generally a

product of circumstances unique to North Sinai, where opposition

ideologies and greater instability have combined to generate violence

on a scale unseen in the South outside of these bombings. In the

South, on the other hand, the political and economic consequences

of terrorism are so devastating that there is absolutely no support for

it among Bedouin in the tourist areas of South Sinai.

Authorities later discovered and acknowledged that the Bedouin

perpetrators were from Northern tribes, just as the economic logic

would suggest.5 Northern tribes resent both the state and Southern

tribes, and the attacks against tourist resorts were as much an outburst

against the latter for their “privileged” economic position as they were

against foreigners or the state. These bombings devastated the tourist

economy in South Sinai, in turn causing severe economic hardship

among Southern tribes involved in tourism. Instead of understanding

that the Southern Bedouin were as much victims of these attacks as

5. Roee Nahmias, “Dahab Bombers Were Sinai Bedouins,” Yediot Ahronot

Online, April 26, 2006.

A Personal Account

19

were the tourists, the Egyptian state undertook efforts to “shield”

tourist centers from Bedouin living nearby. While Southern Bedouin

were entirely innocent of these crimes, they fell victim to the tendency

to assign cultural blame to groups instead of speciﬁc blame to

individuals. They were dangerous and subversive simply because they

were “Bedouin”; the actions of a few led to a generalized stereotype

afﬂicting the entire group.

The Egyptian state made no efforts to prevent the emergence of

such patently false and damaging stereotypes. If anything, their actions

served to reinforce them. The question is why. I believe there are two

answers. First, we all have a tendency to characterize by culture and

judge entire groups based on the actions of some of their members.

Second, it seems intuitive that the Egyptian state would show little

inclination to acknowledge the effects their own policies have played

in the Northern Bedouins’ turn to violent opposition. The state, by

virtue of its existence as the state, rarely accepts responsibility for the

negative effects of its policies. Instead, it seeks to blame others for

reasons that may be entirely spurious, while attempting to guard the

legitimacy of its actions.

Finally, on this note, I would like to insert a bit of a disclaimer

about some of the analytical decisions I have made throughout this

book. Language is a tricky thing when applied normatively. That is

to say, similar actions may be categorized differently depending on

the ideological proclivities of the speaker as well as the identities of

the actor and recipient of such action; people cannot seem to detach

language from the “good” and “bad” connotations that many words

carry. The maxim “One person’s terrorist is another’s freedom

ﬁghter” speaks volumes about the emotional connotations words carry

and the strength of the responses they provoke. It is my strong belief

that similar actions or attributes should carry similar labels, and when

I select a term, I have done so because of the analytical deﬁnition

I have attached to it. Thus, when I describe Egyptian state actions

as “neo-colonial,” this is not an accusation nor is it an attempt to

delegitimize the state. Instead, it is the recognition that the actions

of the Egyptian state (or any other state, for that matter) towards its

national periphery is strikingly similar to the manner in which imperial

centers acted towards their imperial peripheries.Joel Migdal presents

Preface

20

an identical conclusion: “Indigenously ruled regimes… often ended up

employing much the same set of policies as the Western powers did

in colonial territories.”6 Similarly, when I describe Bedouin identity as

“ethnic,” I am not making a political argument but an analytical one,

based on a well-established scholarly literature, albeit an argument

that is still somewhat contested. I hope that readers will withhold

their judgments regarding the legitimacy of such labels until after the

evidence has been presented. Legitimacy should come a posteriori,

not from the normative or emotional response to linguistic markers

used to describe events and actions.

6. Joel S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society

Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 56.

21

Introduction

Tourism development and an increasing state presence along the

Aqaba Coast of the Sinai Peninsula have motivated a number of

transformations among the local Bedouin population. Most notable of

these changes relate to patterns of social and economic organization

as the Bedouin increasingly settle in towns, pursue economic

opportunities provided by Egyptian development, and come into

increasing contact with foreigners in their daily interactions. While

Egyptian development programs have encouraged many Bedouin to

settle in towns such as Dahab and Nuwayba, they appear to be failing

to incorporate the Bedouin into the social fabric of the Egyptian nation.

This study focuses on the relationship between Egyptian development,

socioeconomic change, and the transformation of Bedouin identity

in the Aqaba Coast region of the Sinai Peninsula in the period

since Egypt reoccupied Sinai between 1979 and 1982 (henceforth

“the neo-Egyptian period”). This period has been characterized by

rapid development and attempts at national integration. Egyptian

state-building has instigated an accelerating process of acculturation

among the Bedouin that reﬂects the major transformations in

their sociopolitical environment. Absent, however, is exchange of

“traditional” identities for “modern, national” identities as envisioned

by Egyptian authorities. Instead, the Bedouin have retained a strong

sense of their heritage and tradition despite the signiﬁcant social

transformations they have already experienced. They have developed

a unique sense of cultural distinctiveness and articulate their identity in

direct opposition to an “Egyptian” identity.

The Bedouin living in Sinai’s Aqaba (Southeast) region have

reacted to the increasing presence of both state authorities and

unskilled migrant workers from the Nile Valley with hostility, leading

to the emergence of a social boundary between the Aqaba Bedouin

and the Egyptians who constitute the pool of laborers and authority

ﬁgures in Sinai. What is surprising, however, is that this boundary

is strengthening even as empirically identiﬁable cultural differences

between the two groups appear to be in decline. Furthermore,

Introduction

22

and far more interesting, the intensity of this process appears to

be tied directly to the intensity and pace of Egyptian development.

Simultaneously, the Bedouin are forming closer relationships with

foreign visitors and tourists, despite the often signiﬁcant differences

in their social conventions. These relationships constitute a primary

source of cultural transformation for the Bedouin, and in Dahab many

Bedouin are actively adopting and communicating elements of tourist

culture as their own.

How, then, are the Bedouin maintaining their identity and

heritage in the face of rapid social transformation, and what role, if

any, has the Egyptian government and its policies played in fueling

this process? While the connection between state development and

Bedouin socioeconomic transformation is quite clear, the link between

these processes and Bedouin identity is far less apparent. In order to

more effectively anticipate the sociopolitical outcomes of this type of

development and the resultant relationships formed by different sectors

of Egyptian society, it is important to ascertain the actual effects of

development on processes of integration and identity formation.

The social distance between the Egyptian and Bedouin

communities, reﬂected by the economic marginalization of the

Bedouin and their self-segregating tendencies, has led to the

reinforcement of the boundary between Bedouin and Egyptian

social categories. This situation has largely been motivated by the

Egyptian authorities’ inaccurate assumptions about Bedouin society

and the social effects of economic development, both of which were

fundamentally challenged by the unanticipated Bedouin reaction to

Egyptian development strategies. This study contends that Bedouin

identity in the Aqaba region of South Sinai, far from disappearing

in the face of new lifestyles, is actually strengthening in reaction to

Egyptian encroachment and development despite processes of social

homogenization caused by integrative development. The structural

integration of the Bedouin into the Egyptian state is not increasing a

sense of “national solidarity” among the Bedouin. On the contrary,

they communicate both a feeling of marginalization by Egyptian

authorities and a lack of national pride and belonging. Instead of

folding the Bedouin into the existing “Egyptian nation,” increasing

contact and transformation is fuelling a conﬂict between two groups

that see themselves as socially distinct.

Introduction

23

Simultaneously, the Bedouin are clearly recognizing a number of

beneﬁts that tourism development has brought to them, acknowledging

the rise in living standards even while lamenting the marginalization

due to perceived discriminatory policies of the Egyptian government.

This suggests that the Bedouin are not opposed to development, but

to the manner in which the Egyptian government is pursuing it.

Due to the economic and political importance placed on the

peninsula in the latter half of the 20th century, Sinai of the past 60

years has been marked by increasing levels of foreign penetration,

whether from Cairo, Jerusalem, or more recently, the “Lonely

Planet.” As scholars most often focus on the political and “big picture”

consequences of this type of penetration, competition, and conﬂict,

the micro-level social consequences have been given relatively little

attention and warrant closer study. This has been especially true of

the 30 years since Sinai was reoccupied by Egypt and Israeli social

scientists largely ended their research there. However, it is undeniable

that this perpetual instability, marked by frequently shifting regimes,

the intrigues of interested powers, and the recent arrival of tourism on

a global scale has ensured that change has been a constant feature in

the lives of Sinai’s inhabitants. While some of these changes have been

purely political and rather superﬁcial, others have caused signiﬁcant

dislocations in the socioeconomic patterns of everyday life.

The Bedouin, once caught between competing powers, an

environment of scarcity, and a territory marked by limited centralized

political control, are now faced with a new reality. The Egyptian

government, which regained Sinai from Israeli occupation per the

1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, has discarded its previous plan

for Sinai as military buffer to Israel and instead continued the Israeli

strategy of economic development, especially in the tourism sector.

This development has led to the emergence of urban spaces across

Sinai, sites that have supported emerging markets to create local

jobs and attract migrants from the Nile Valley searching for work in a

stagnating national economy. These towns have given the Egyptian

government a foothold in Sinai, allowing the state to bring a measure

of regulation to the peninsula; they have also created a destination for

an expanding foreign population of tourists and ex-pats, mostly from

Europe and America, who have become a common feature in the

transforming socioeconomic landscape of South Sinai.

Introduction

24

A large majority of the indigenous inhabitants of Sinai are

Bedouin, who are often assumed to be disconnected from the realities

of contemporary political life and are usually viewed as traditional

and isolated. On the contrary, it is inevitable that the lives of those

inhabiting Sinai would be dramatically affected by wars, invasions,

peace negotiations, phased withdrawals, urban development, and the

growth of tourism, and not only politically. Economically, these events

have the power to shape markets, and socially, the arrival of new

visitors carrying differing forms of culture has fundamentally altered

the Bedouins’ social space.

The native Bedouin have not ignored the Egyptian-directed

development process; indeed they could not even if they wanted to. On

the most superﬁcial level, signiﬁcant changes to the economic situation

of Sinai, with the emergence of local markets and a ﬂourishing tourist

economy, have encouraged new types of economic engagement,

while an increasing government presence has limited the ability to

continue a number of traditional activities such as herding and ﬁshing.

Furthermore, with the rapid expansion of available technologies and

increasing contact with Egyptian authority ﬁgures, migrants, and

tourists, the Bedouin have been exposed to new forms of culture

that have led them to reconsider their place in society. A notable

consequence is that they have begun to conceive of themselves as

imbedded in a much larger social environment on both a national and

global scale. This has recently become a much greater concern to the

Bedouin, leading to signiﬁcant changes in cultural conceptions and

self-image.

Analytical Frameworks

A major focus of this study is political identity. A question immediately

arises as to the best way to conceive of Bedouin identity. Is the

lens of tribalism still the best way to understand socioeconomic and

political transformation among the Bedouin? The answer to this

question is an unequivocal no, for the continuing tendency to study

the Bedouin through the lens of “tribalism” does a double disservice.

First, it perpetuates the ﬁction that there is some fundamental cultural

difference between tribal and non-tribal societies instead of conceiving

Introduction

25

“tribalism” through an organizational idiom. Second, it eliminates

any intersubjectivity with non-tribal populations, complicating any

attempt to apply the study of contemporary political processes to the

Bedouin.

Instead, I propose to utilize a signiﬁcantly different type of identity

theory to examine the identity politics of the Aqaba Bedouin, that

of “ethnicity.” While the term itself carries a number of political

connotations, my decision to adopt this category is entirely analytical,

deﬁned as “a form of interaction between culture groups operating

within common social [and political] contexts.”7 While this deﬁnition

may be unfamiliar to some, who instead perceive ethnicity to be similar

to ideas of race, there is a rich literature on the politics of identities

in interaction, to which scholars, notably social anthropologists, have

attached the label “ethnic.” In this way, I draw an analytical distinction

between tribalism, which aims to regulate relations within Bedouin

society, and ethnicity, which operates between the Bedouin and other

social groups. Tribalism is internally regulating; ethnicity is externally

regulating. At its most parsimonious, ethnicity is deﬁned as a form of

social organization based on an idiom of cultural descent.8

This political interaction of distinct social groups within national

contexts is precisely the focus of this book, and I have found that this

concept of ethnicity has provided high leverage for the analysis of

questions of Bedouin identity in a socially heterogeneous setting such

as Dahab.9 “Ethnicity” in this sense, focuses on issues of sociopolitical

7. Abner Cohen, “Introduction: The Lessons of Ethnicity,” in Abner Cohen

(ed.), Urban Ethnicity (London: Tavistock, 1974), p. xi.

8. Note that this definition implies that traits such as skin color and language

are not the sources of ethnic difference in and of themselves, but

instead are signaling devices for different culture groups, whether real or

imagined. See Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1985), p. 55. Horowitz states, “Ethnic

groups can be placed at various points along the birth-choice continuum.

But there is always a significant element of descent.”

9. J. Clyde Mitchell, “Perceptions of Ethnicity and Ethnic Behavior: An

Empirical Explanation,” in Urban Ethnicity (ed.), Abner Cohen (London:

Tavistock, 1974), pp. 27–28. When reading anthropology that dates

back to the 50s and 60s, as much of Mitchell’s work does, care must

Introduction

26

competition and provides a strong approximation of national identities

and those that develop in reaction to nationalism and nation-building.

In all of these ways, the type of identity that is the focus of this study

reﬂects many ethnic elements, and ethnicity theory, especially as it is

articulated among social anthropologists, provides a compelling logic

explaining the patterns of transformation and articulation of Bedouin

identity in the urban centers of South Sinai.

While the application of an “ethnic” framework is admittedly quite

rare in the study of the Bedouin, its importance to Middle Eastern

sociopolitical organization has not gone unrecognized. As early as

1984, Itamar Rabinovich and Milton Esman hypothesized that a

greater willingness to explore such theories of ethnicity and issues of

ethnic pluralism in Middle East societies could signiﬁcantly aid in the

explanation of patterns of conﬂict that dominate many structurally

weak Middle East states, but noted that ethnicity has not often been

used as a basis for analysis.10 Despite this hesitancy, they identiﬁed the

sectarian conﬂicts in Iraq and Lebanon, as well as the Sunni-Shi‘i rift

in the Gulf and the Muslim-Christian divide in Egypt all as phenomena

that can be studied in an ethnic framework. This contention is accurate

even though the dichotomies themselves may be religious. This has to

do with the ﬁeld in which identities are deployed. Whether religious or

racial, in contemporary national interactions, all cultural identities are

“ethnic” in this way.

Philip Khoury and Joseph Kostiner make a related claim in their

edited volume Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East, in

their discussion of the developing relationship between tribesmen

and polities. They argue that in conﬂicts between the state and tribes,

ethnicity is a vehicle that tribesmen, like other social groups, might

adopt in order to oppose government attempts to increase state

be taken to distinguish between the use of the terms ethnicity and

tribalism. However observers will notice that these terms often reflect the

perceptions of “modern” versus “traditional” societies and are thus quite

illuminating.

10. Itamar Rabinovich and Milton Esman, “Introduction,” in Itamar Rabinovich

and Milton Esman (eds.), Ethnicity, Pluralism, and the State in the

Middle East (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 1988).

Introduction

27

control over them.11 This statement in their introduction forms the

basis for this study, which seeks to examine social change and identity

formation in the framework of ethnic organization. The focus shall

be on examining the transformations in the social and economic

forms of organization among the Bedouin and how this relates to

the evolution in the articulation of their identity in an increasingly

“national” context.

Bassam Tibi, in his chapter in Tribes and State Formation,

supports a qualiﬁed view of Rabinovich and Essman’s hypothesis

by reconciling it with Khoury and Kostiner’s, drawing important

distinctions between tribalism and ethnicity. He shows that ethnicity

as a theoretical framework for studying tribe-state interactions

assumes importance due to the centrality of ethnic organization to the

modern nation-state (see below). Tibi distinguishes between tribes and

ethnicity in that ethnies are “sub-national divisions in the communities

of the modern nation-states of the Middle East,” while tribalism is

fundamentally non-national.12 He continues by asserting that ethnicity

presupposes the possibility of further tribal division, using the example

of the Alawites in Syria, showing how, despite their Arab heritage

and their tribally-divided society, they should be considered an ethnic

category in Syrian contexts due to the articulation of their Alawite

identity in ethnic terms.13 This is equally applicable to the Amazigh or

Berber tribes of some North African states, notably Morocco, Algeria,

and Libya, who have begun to mobilize politically, not along tribal

lines but along ethno-cultural lines.14

11. Philip S. Khoury and Joseph Kostiner, “Introduction: Tribe and the

Complexities of State Formation in the Middle East,” in Philip S. Khoury

and Joseph Kostiner (eds.), Tribes and State Formation in the Middle

East (London: IB Tauris, 1991), p. 3.

12. Bassam Tibi, “The Simultaneity of the Unsimultaneous: Old Tribes and

Imposed Nation-states in the Modern Middle East,” in Philip S. Khoury

and Joseph Kostiner (eds.), Tribes and State Formation in the Middle

East (London: IB Tauris, 1991), p. 139.

13. Ibid., p. 138.

14. See Jonathan Wyrtzen, “Colonial State Building and the Negotiation

of Arab and Berber Identity in Protectorate Morocco,” International

Journal of Middle East Studies 43 (2011). Wyrtzen demonstrates how

Introduction

28

The state is the primary factor in ethnic identity formation in two

major ways. First, as a territory with established boundaries, it sets

the scope for national sociopolitical interactions, deﬁning the arena or

political ﬁeld in which ethnic identity is shaped and deployed. Second,

it is a vehicle for the distribution of resources and the pursuit of group

interests, which are manifested in state policies. In the words of

Barkey and Parikh, “it has already become evident that state policies

constituted one of the major determinants of mobilization and shifting

identity patterns.”15 The social group controlling the state drives the

formation of primary national identities and ideologies, and it will

be against this group that other identities form. In these two ways,

the contemporary state is the primary arena for group mobilization

and the articulation of identities. Furthermore, it is not the state that

assumes importance in an examination of ethnic identities, but it is

ethnic identity that assumes importance in the contemporary reality

of the state system and state-society interaction. This, as Mitchell

explains, is because so often “political oppositions are phrased

in ethnic terms and in so doing provide the sentiments in terms of

which social actions may be justiﬁed.”16 It is this link between ethnicity

and national context that makes ethnicity theory applicable in an

examination of tribe-state relations in Sinai, as the state has, to a large

extent, created the basis for a Bedouin ethnicity through its policies

towards the group as a whole.

government policies created the basis for an ethnic “Berber” solidarity that

crossed tribal boundaries. This concept of state policy and identity will be

explored later in this paper. Regarding ethnopolitical Berber mobilization

in Morocco and Algeria in more recent years, see Bruce Maddy-Weitzman,

“Contested Identities: Berbers, ‘Berberism’ and the State in North

Africa,” The Journal of North African Studies 6.3 (2001). For a short

discussion of ethnopolitics between Arabs and Berbers in Libya, see Ishra

Soleiman, “Denied Existence: Libyan-Berbers under Gaddafi and Hope

for the Current Revolution,” Muftah, March 24, 2011, <http://muftah.

org/?p=961>.

15. Karen Barkey and Sunita Parikh, “Comparative Perspectives on the

State,” Annual Review of Sociology 17 (1991), p. 542.

16. Mitchell, “Perceptions of Ethnicity and Ethnic Behavior,” p. 30.

Introduction

29

Within this framework, this study aims to analyze the marginal

status of the Aqaba Bedouin as a result of the realities that the

Egyptian state, especially though its development policies, has

created for them, speciﬁcally through the link between socioeconomic

transformation, acculturation, and identity formation. This will begin

in chapter one with an examination of Egyptian goals for Sinai.

Chapter two examines the Bedouins’ adaptation of their economic

practices to adapt to the realities of Egyptian development and the

proliferation of tourism in the region. Chapter three examines the

other side of this coin, the increasing economic marginalization of

the Bedouin. Chapter four focuses on the social transformation of the

urbanizing Bedouin. Finally, chapter ﬁve examines the transformation

and articulation of a Bedouin identity to determine the relationship

between state policies, socioeconomic transformation, and processes

of Bedouin ethnogenesis, which is deﬁned as the articulation and

emergence of previously non-ethnic identities in an ethnic idiom.17

This study will show that state policies regarding development

and integration in South Sinai are motivating transformations in both

dominant modes of socioeconomic organization as well as Bedouin

identity including expressions of social solidarity. It is simultaneously the

goals of development and the manner in which state policies fuelling

integration have shaped Bedouin-Egyptian interactions that have led

to the emergence of the frameworks necessary for socioeconomic

transformation and the emergence of ethnically-articulated identities

among the Aqaba Bedouin.

Definitions

Before continuing, a few deﬁnitions should be presented in order to

clarify the terms and concepts central to this paper. First and foremost,

the subjects of this study are the Bedouin of the Aqaba Coast of the

Sinai Peninsula, and more speciﬁcally, the sedentary Bedouin of

Dahab. The focus of the research has been on the younger generation

of Bedouin who did not spend a signiﬁcant portion of their lives living

17. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, p. 64.

Introduction

30

in the desert or under Israeli rule and whose social experiences have

developed exclusively under expanding Egyptian rule from 1982

onwards. As a trend, these Bedouin are the ones most active in the

urban markets of Dahab, and thus represent the “cutting edge” of

Bedouin transformation. They also embody the core of an emerging

Bedouin elite at the top of distribution networks connected to tourism,

which has become the primary source of revenue for the Bedouin.

Figure 1: Map of approximate tribal divisions in Sinai, reproduced from

Murray, G.W., Sons of Ishmael: A Study of the Egyptian Bedouin

(G Routledge & Sons Ltd. London, 1935)

Introduction

31

As the geographical focus of this study is Dahab, which lies in

the territory of the Mzeina Bedouin (see Map, Figure 1), a majority

of these subjects come from the Mzeina tribe, inhabiting the Sinai

coast along the Aqaba Gulf from Nuwayba to Sharm el-Sheikh, and

inland to Santa Katarina. However, tribal divisions have not mirrored

developments in Egyptian policy and do not constitute a primary

source of differentiation for the purposes of this study. Within Dahab,

Bedouin from other tribes, such as the Jabaliyya and ‘Aleqat, also

seek work. Furthermore, the area north of Nuwayba is the territory

of the Tarabin tribe, whose members also participate in development

and tourism but are not from the same confederational grouping as

the Mzeina and other southern tribes: the Tawara, and therefore

hold a much different tribal identity. For the purposes of analytical

accuracy, then, tribal identities will only be used in speciﬁc reference

to tribal issues. In other contexts, the term “Aqaba Bedouin” will be

used to identify them primarily on the basis of their nationally-deﬁned

territory (the Aqaba Coast of Sinai, Egypt) and the activities which are

dominant in the region, notably tourism, as opposed to their tribally-

deﬁned territory. In instances where I am speciﬁcally referring to the

sedentarized Bedouin of Dahab, I use the term “Dahab Bedouin.”

Two terms that must be deﬁned are “state-building” and “nation-

building,” considered here to be two distinct but related processes,

both integral to a study of state-sponsored development and

identity transformation. State-building is a process aimed at building

institutions that reﬂect regime preferences while increasing state

control over its territory and inhabitants. It seeks the integration of

the periphery into the center for this purpose, through the creation

of transportation and communications infrastructure, coercive control

(such as army and police), the application of national laws and

policies and the effective collection of taxes. Nation-building, on the

other hand, is psychologically-oriented. As deﬁned by one political

scientist, nation-building is a process of “weld[ing] disparate elements

of the populace into a congruent whole by forging new identities at

the national [=state] level at the expense of localism or particularistic

identities.”18 In other words, it is the state’s (or other elite groups’)

18. Amitai Etzioni, “A Self-Restrained Approach to Nation-Building by

Foreign Powers,” International Affairs 80.1 (2004).

Introduction

32

dissemination and reiﬁcation of nationalist ideologies and values

across the whole of its population. The goal of this process is the

standardization of values, ideologies, and identities among a state’s

population to increase national solidarity and speciﬁc patterns of

sociopolitical conformity. While state-building seeks to strengthen

the state or the polity, nation-building seeks to forge a uniﬁed social

body, the nation, to overcome the inevitable existence of sub-national

social divisions. In blunter terms, nation-building may be thought of as

a process of legitimization of a social and institutional order created

by those controlling the state. Nation-building strategies are pursued

through mandatory education and national media outlets, tourism,

museums and other public spaces, and mandatory national service,

all of which play an important role in the socialization of identity and

values.19 State- and nation-building are the two processes by which the

Egyptian state seeks to increase its authority in Sinai. These processes

will be repeatedly addressed throughout this work.

Finally, a major concept presented in this paper is “modernization.”

Modernization most accurately refers to a cluster of theories seeking

to explain the effects of economic development and the sources of

social and political change. Originally, the founders of modernization

theory sought to locate the sources of participatory government

in contemporary trends of economic development, notably

industrialization and its accompanying social trend, urbanization.

Seymour Martin Lipset, considered one of the formative scholars

of modernization theory, showed a correlation between economic

output and democracy.20 The mechanisms through which this process

supposedly operates were given greater expression in various other

works, notably Daniel Lerner’s The Passing of Traditional Society,

which presents a theory linking economic development to participatory

19. See for example Byron G. Massialas, Education and the Political System

(Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1969); see also Benedict Anderson, Imagined

Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism,

2nd ed. (London: Verso, 1991).

20. Seymour Martin Lipset, “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic

Development and Political Legitimacy,” The American Political Science

Review 53.1 (1959), pp. 69–105; See also Lipset, Political Man: The

Social Bases of Politics (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960).

Introduction

33

government through processes of social change allegedly caused by

economic growth. For Lerner, industrialization yielded urbanization,

which in turn promoted the emergence of a mass media, which drove

increasing literacy, culminating in greater demands for participatory

government (democracy).21 In a nutshell, the idea is that economic

development drives social development which yields positive political

development, and by implication, all good things go together.

This is not to say that my own analysis in any way relies on the

components of modernization theory. Instead, it recalls a comment

once made by the renowned Middle East scholar Elie Kedourie, who

said, “When…policies… together with the doctrines and principles

which justify them, are considered, then it is realized what a large

part verbal traps and dubious dogmas have had in the construction

of doctrines and the shaping of policies.”22 Modernization theory can

be considered one of Kedourie’s “dubious dogmas,” enjoying little

empirical support at the micro-process level. Samuel Huntington

was more explicit in declaring modernization theory an “erroneous

dogma,” which simply cannot account for the abundance of anomalies

whereby industrialization and economic development have failed to

produce positive social and political developments.23

The abundance of critiques and the persistence of anomalies,

however, have not prevented the emergence of a number of extensions

and inversions of modernization theory. Perhaps the most problematic

have been social variants of modernization focusing on the role of

economic growth and institutional change in the disappearance of

traditionalism and the emergence of national identities. This strand of

modernization theory conceives of ethnic or particularistic identities

as “primordial sentiments … forg[ing] ties of emotion rather than

interests … [that] would be replaced through modernization by loyalties

21. Daniel Lerner, Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle

East (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1958). Moreover, the parallels

between modernization and structural conceptions of nationalism, notably

by Gellner and Anderson, should be apparent and will be addressed later.

22. Elie Kedourie, The Chatham House Version, and Other Middle-Eastern

Studies (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970), p. 2.

23. Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New

Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), p. 6.

Introduction

34

to the class and the nation,” loyalties that are labeled rational instead

of emotional.24 In a political sense, “modernization” entails a “marked

redistribution of power within a political system: the breakdown of

local, religious, ethnic, or other power centers and the centralization

in national political institutions [my emphasis].”25 Not only does

the mantra of modernization enshrine the national state as the sole

legitimate authority, but by combining economic and political strands

of the theory, it also casts state development as both benevolent and

efﬁcient when the reality may be much more traumatic for regions

undergoing this development.

The impact of modernization theory on economic ideologies

and development paradigms has had serious consequences for the

direction of national and global development. Since economic growth

is assumed to produce positive social and political outcomes, then by

implication more or faster growth is better than less or slower growth.

This produced a focus on maximizing economic efﬁciency. Moreover,

since the principal unit of political and economic organization is

assumed to be the state (this is certainly the case if we are interested in

outcomes such as democracy), the primary focus of the modernization

paradigm is not the individual, but the state. Modernization supports

a developmental strategy based on top-down economics singularly

focused on maximizing efﬁciency and growth through privatization,

reliance on international ﬁscal institutions, free trade, and foreign

investment and control; it focuses more on national economic interests

than on microeconomic successes and often does little to address the

economic needs of a great portion of the population.26

Simon, in an excellent and critical review of development rhetoric,

argues that deﬁning modernization in terms of economic efﬁciency has

meant that we no longer predicate modernity on increases in individual

24. Barkey and Parikh, “Comparative Perspectives on the States,” p. 542.

See also Andreas Wimmer, Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict:

Shadows of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002),

pp. 42–43.

25. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, p. 142.

26. David Simon, “Development Reconsidered: New Directions in

Development Thinking,” Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human

Geography 79.4 (Current Development Thinking) (1997), p. 187.

Introduction

35

wellbeing.27 Policies aimed at maximizing economic efﬁciency have

often ignored questions of whether economic transformations have had

positive or negative impacts on the quality of life of a state’s subjects,

whether it empowers locals to make their own decisions, and whether

this development is socially and environmentally sustainable.28

Regardless of the observed consequences of economic development,

the modernization paradigm’s tendency to privilege the welfare of the

state has rendered it an attractive model for state-building projects

and top-down development. The combination of social and economic

strands of modernization enables the state to dismiss peripheral

concerns and competing interests by casting them as “traditional” or

otherwise irrational. Modernization, as a development paradigm, is

very friendly towards states and national goals by legitimizing them

and delegitimizing regional development concerns that clash with

central interests, which are framed in the rhetoric of the greater

good or the national interest. Further perpetuating the centrality of

the modernization paradigm in global development and post-colonial

state-building has been the dominance of neoliberal policies favored

by USAID, the IMF, and the World Bank.29

In this way, modernization is given an objective existence

as the foundation of the state’s development strategy, guiding

assumptions and expectations for development, and thus has very

real consequences for the Aqaba Bedouin. Borrowing from political

scientist Alexander Wendt’s constructivist approach to objectivity, “If

men deﬁne situations as real, they are real in their consequences.”30

27. Ibid., 185. See also a discussion of economic reconstruction of Iraq:

Haytham Bahoora, “Shock-and-Awe Nation Building: Iraq’s Neo-Liberal

Reconstruction,” Jadaliyya.com, Arab Studies Institute, May 14, 2012.

Web. <http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/5522/shock-and-awe-

nation-building_iraqs-neo-liberal-re>. For Lenin, this was the sacrifice that

modernization entailed.

28. Ibid., p. 187.

29. Ibid., p. 185. Simon calls neoliberalism the “contemporary incarnation”

of modernization. See also Hutington, Political Order in Changing

Societies.

30. Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge,

UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 330.

Introduction

36

What is important to note here is that I am not claiming that these

development authorities necessarily adopt an explicit modernization

paradigm in their approach to development, that is to say, that

the state does not claim that the modernization of such peripheral

populations is the overarching goal of development.31 However, the

coincidence in the case of Dahab is striking, and the rhetoric of the

state and its developmental agencies appears predicated on many of

the assumptions of economic modernization to justify policies whose

beneﬁts have tended to target a narrow, politically connected group

of ofﬁcials and entrepreneurs. This issue will be explored in greater

depth in chapter one.

What is important to clarify is that the processes of “modernization,”

notably economic development, urbanization, the construction of

transportation and communications infrastructure and the rise of mass

media, the expansion of education and literacy, and the emergence

of bureaucracies, to name a few, are better deﬁned as “integrating”

processes. These processes lead to the adoption of similar

organizational forms and similar expressions of dependence on state

structures. This encourages cultural homogenization, but is superﬁcial

and not necessarily linked to an adoption of “modern” or “national”

identities as predicted by proponents of social modernization. Samuel

Huntington acknowledges this reality in Political Order in Changing

Societies when he states that in contrast with the above “facts” of

integration, “progress towards many of the other goals which writers

have identiﬁed with political modernization [including]… national

integration—often is dubious at best.”32

This study is not interested in distinctions between “modern” and

“primitive” societies, and instead focuses on the relationship and

interactions between various social groups bounded by a state as

levels of “stateness” increases in Sinai. I deﬁne stateness, following

Joel Migdal, as the state’s appropriation of forms of social and

economic control from non-state actors.33 In this regard, the state

31. The Development reports, though, do clearly show this to be at the very

least an ancillary objective.

32. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, p. 35.

33. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States. See discussion in Chapter

One: A Model of State-Society Relations, pp. 10–41.

Introduction

37

should be understood as “regime,” one of a number of social actors

competing for sociopolitical inﬂuence within its deﬁned territory.

To be “modern,” in the rhetoric of the state system, is to willingly

subordinate non-state forms of sociopolitical control and solidarity to

state interests and organs, a demand that has met much resistance

along the peripheries of the developing world. This is one potential

explanation for the persistence of “traditional” societies within

hegemonic “modernizing” states and suggests a coincidence of

identity and interest. In fact, a basic premise of this argument is that

the modern-traditional dichotomy, far from providing useful analytic

leverage on issues of social change, actually obfuscates the dialectical

and co-produced nature of social transformation. The link between

this structure of competition and identity will be discussed in chapter

ﬁve.

The Bedouin are not autarkic, a society able to exist independently

from the rest of Egypt (as in thinking about Egypt as a “modern”

society and the Bedouin as a “traditional” society), but have come to

constitute a unique social category within Egyptian society. It would

be helpful to recall the words of Friedrich Nietzsche when he noted,

“The general imprecise way of observing sees everywhere in nature

opposites (as for example “warm” and “cold” [or in this case “modern”

and “traditional”]) where there are, not opposites, but differences in

degree.”34 Instead of examining a transition from “traditional” to

“modern” modes of living, the focus shall be on increasing levels of

state control and integration and how the Bedouin have responded to

these changes.

Research and Methodological Approaches

While this work is based in large part on ethnographic ﬁeld

research conducted in Sinai, it draws on a number of other sources

34. Frederich Nietzsche, Der Wanderer und sein Schatten, in R.J.

Hollingdale (ed. and trans.), A Nietzsche Reader (Harmondsworth:

Penguin, 1988). Quoted in Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Ethnicity and

Nationalism—Anthropological Perspectives (Anthropology, Culture

and Society), 2nd ed. (New York: Pluto, 2002), p. 162.

Introduction

38

of information. It will be beneﬁcial to discuss the particulars of the

research as well as the location, Dahab. However, this project relies

on a number of other disciplines and methodological approaches in

addition to ethnography, and some words should be said about my

preference for a multi-disciplinary approach. I have attempted to rely

as evenly as possible on the different disciplines chosen for this study

instead of relying exclusively on one. The primary disciplines engaged

in this study are social anthropology, sociology, and history, though

support was sought further aﬁeld, including from political science,

social psychology, and the emerging ﬁeld of tourism studies. More will

be said about each discipline and their interaction.

The decision to make Dahab the geographical focus of the project

stems from the special attention this part of Sinai has received

for the development of tourism, which has been a primary tool

highlighting and magnifying the identity processes under study. As

the mainstay of the Aqaba Bedouin economy, tourism has led to

a “traditionalization” of Bedouin economic practices, that is, the

communication of these practices through the language of tradition

as a way to make these economically valuable practices symbolically

meaningful to consumers, who search for an “authentic” cultural

experience. Effective symbolism, in this case, legitimizes these

activities as “authentic.” Tourism can, in this way, be considered the

commercialization of culture for economic gain. This culture, however,

far from being a true representation of how the Bedouin live today,

is largely constructed based on perceptions about the Bedouins’

heritage and “traditions,” and is thus economically analogous to other

symbolic identity processes that are the focus of this study. This type

of culture under-communicates aspects of acculturation and focuses

instead on elements preserved from an idealized, distant past. Just

as ethnic identity links contemporary culture to images of the past,

tourism does the same.

Heritage tourism in Dahab has the effect of exaggerating the

communication of culture, allowing for a clearer examination of the

processes involved in the formation and communication of identity.

Furthermore, heritage tourism provided the opportunity to contrast

tourist conceptions of Bedouin culture and the actual progress of

socioeconomic transformation in order to analyze the role of culture

Introduction

39

in identity formation. Tourism as a lens was an invaluable aid in the

study of identity politics, especially the construction of culture and

tradition and the symbolic purposes they serve.35 Special attention

was given to manifestations of identity through tourism, a central

theme in the research. However, tourism so strongly connects culture

and economics that it may be the case that the economic aspect of

social conﬂict, a well-established but contested theory, is somewhat

overdetermined by the force of particular circumstances.

The ﬁeld of tourism studies played an important role in studying

the economic and social effects of tourism development. While this

ﬁeld is still fairly new, tourism as a global, cultural phenomenon

undoubtedly deserves the attention of social scientists, and a number

of works on the subject in general, as well as in the Middle East

speciﬁcally, had a profound impact on this analysis, and even played

a role in shaping the direction of the research conducted in the ﬁeld,

providing for the use of certain aspects of tourism as way points and

bases for further analysis, such as the state’s role in formal versus

informal tourism and how each might approach a single concept,

such as employment. Tourism is an issue that cannot be divorced

from the Aqaba Coast; it was vital to this work to explore the ways

in which tourism affects communities and economies. The volume on

tourism in the Middle East edited by Rami Daher is an excellent and

encompassing look at the various aspects of tourism—combining such

ﬁelds as economics, cultural anthropology, sociology, and political

science—and demonstrates how truly dynamic tourism studies can be

as an independent ﬁeld of inquiry.

Further increasing the value of Dahab as a research site is its

origin not as an administrative center, colonial outpost, or military

base, but as a Bedouin date oasis, a traditional forum for Mzeina

social interaction. Dahab’s origin as a tourist center dates from the

establishment of traveler camps set up by Bedouin to serve Israeli

visitors to Sinai after the 1967 War instead of a tourist resort

35. Rami Farouk Daher, “Reconceptualizing Tourism in the Middle East,”

in Rami Farouk Daher (ed.), Tourism in the Middle East Continuity,

Change, and Transformation (Minneapolis: Channel View Publications,

2006), pp. 16, 19.

Introduction

40

planned and built through government projects.36 Dahab’s Bedouin

neighborhoods around ‘Asala comprise the largest urban Bedouin

settlement on the coast, and they have developed organically from an

exclusively Bedouin space to a bustling commercial and tourist center.

Since Bedouin neighborhoods in Dahab are not the result of an

Egyptian urban plan, the space remains a manifestation of authentic

Bedouin transformation instead of a Bedouin tourist façade reﬂecting

external assumptions about the Bedouin; the Bedouin presence in

Dahab is more reﬂective of the Bedouin condition than the spaces

constructed to fuel Egyptian tourism.

The bulk of our ﬁeld research was conducted in Sinai between

March 2009 and May 2010, in which I, along with my research

partner, Eli Sperling, would take trips to Dahab for about a week

every other month. Additionally, I was able to undertake two longer

periods of research, each consisting of about four weeks, in the

summers of 2011 and 2012. From our base in Dahab, spending the

majority of our time with the Bedouin around town, we were able to

acquire a unique perspective on the effects that development in Sinai

and Egyptian policies have had on the lives of the Bedouin. We had

the opportunity to explore the ties between the Bedouin and foreign

tourists, through the relationship we forged with our subjects, as well

as the relationship between the Bedouin, the authorities, and the

Egyptian migrants. As a town about half-way down the Aqaba Coast,

Dahab provided a perfect base to travel throughout the sub-region.

Our excursions ranged from visits to Sharm el-Sheikh to compare the

economic roles of the Bedouin between the two towns, to trips into

the desert to participate in Mzeina social functions such as weddings

and even a ritual goat slaughter, to Bedouin tourist camps in order to

explore the role of Bedouin culture in Sinai tourism. While we felt that

these excursions did not greatly inform us about the historical practices

or lives of the Bedouin, we were able to construct a broad picture of

how development has affected the lives of the Sinai Bedouin today

36. Interview with a Bedouin Divemaster, July 24, 2009; see also Smadar

Lavie, The Poetics of Military Occupation Mzeina Allegories of

Bedouin Identity Under Israeli and Egyptian Rule (New York: University

of California, 1991), p. 68.

Introduction

41

and were shown how Bedouin notions of tradition were reconciled

with the changes to their world.

The goal of the ﬁeld component of the research was to construct a

broad picture of the realities of contemporary Bedouin life, especially

in an urbanizing setting, as well as to immerse ourselves in the Bedouin

tourist economy. From this it was possible to draw conclusions about

Bedouin self-identity and image, notably how Bedouin imagine

themselves and their cultural heritage and how they communicate

themselves and their community as separate from Egyptians.

Additionally, we focused on patterns of socioeconomic organization

and attempted to compare these forms to those adopted by other

social groups within the Egyptian state in order to draw conclusions

about the factors motivating certain socioeconomic transformations.

The ultimate goal was to ascertain whether the transformations we

identiﬁed within the community were motivated by internal structures

and dynamics or by external pressures.

The ﬁeld research came from a mix of observational methods

including mapping demographic patterns in the town, charting

types and locations of construction and development, and observing

Bedouin-Egyptian-Tourist interactions through what ethnographers

describe as participant observation as well as formal interviews (See

Figure 2). This raw data was then ﬁltered through intense analytical

sessions between myself and my partner in which we discussed our

observations and used “thick descriptions” to analyze the events we

had witnessed and attach underlying meaning to them.37 While the

number of formal interviews we conducted were quite limited, with

no more than ten individuals being recorded, our method of informal

interviewing, based on the concept of “snowball sampling,” brought

us into contact with dozens of Bedouin holding many different

occupations and social positions. Additionally, we were able to

interview about ten migrant laborers, from Egypt and Sudan, who had

traveled to Sinai in search of employment. Snowball sampling, which

entails the assistance of current subjects to recruit future subjects,

while a non-random sampling process, has the beneﬁt of allowing

us to construct a clear picture of the social networks that exist both

37. Clifford Geertz, “Thick Description, Towards an Interpretive Theory of

Culture,” in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic, 2000).

Introduction

42

within Dahab itself and how they connect to villages outside of the

town. This non-randomness was an important element in tracing

distribution networks that have emerged through tourism and inter-

familial as well as inter-generational relationships.

The reﬂections of the previous paragraph raise two major issues

that we confronted over the course of our ﬁeldwork. The ﬁrst is highly

complicated and had the potential to threaten our ability to collect

data. This has to do with our interview methodology. We quickly found

our attempts at formal interviewing frustrated by the Bedouin, who

appeared to react to our questioning with suspicion. It was important

to ﬁnd a method of accessing this information while simultaneously

building trust with those we were interviewing. In order to accomplish

this, we were largely required to turn off the cameras and recording

devices and be less direct in our questioning.

We found that the greatest level of success came when we posed

our questions anecdotally and in a largely quid-pro-quo manner. By

this I mean we would exchange stories with our Bedouin interviewees

Figure 2: Conducting an interview on ﬁlm.

Photo by author, September20, 2009.

Introduction

43

and compared their answers with experiences from our lives, or, more

commonly, attempted to lead the Bedouin to a certain issue by framing

it against the backdrop of our culture. For example, if we wanted to

discuss Bedouin marriage requirements, we might tell the Bedouin

about marriage practices in America, or tell a story of a particular

friend or family member’s marriage, and then ask about their own

experiences. We found that this worked quite well, and often it would

set the Bedouin off on long stories with valuable tangents that gave

us more information than a simple question and answer would have.

Furthermore, this allowed the Bedouin to volunteer information that

they felt was important to the topic, providing an opportunity to study

concepts from their perspective.

The second aspect of our research design was the issue of teamwork

in the ﬁeld, which, from the anthropological literature guiding our

research, appeared to be quite rare. Nevertheless, working in a team

was invaluable. Not only did this kind of work allow one of us to ﬁll in

gaps the other might have missed, it also encouraged discussion and

debate, fuelling analysis and the consideration of multiple points of

view. While we did not always agree on the meanings behind what

we saw, our differences of opinion more often than not added to

the quality of the material as we attempted to reconcile, convince,

or disprove each other’s concepts. Working as a team allowed us

to support one another, and gave each of us an advisor intimately

familiar with the research. We continually challenged each other’s

ideas, which forced us to carefully construct our theories and raise the

quality of our work. While in the end, each of us authored our own

papers and focused on different aspects of our experience, there is

no doubt that Eli’s ideas are reﬂected in my own work and mine are

reﬂected in his.

One ﬁnal but immensely important issue to mention in a discussion

of ﬁeldwork is the issue of potential bias. While we interacted with a

wide variety of people in Dahab, the focus of our research was the

Bedouin, and thus a large majority of our time was spent interacting

with Bedouin. There was a danger, I was warned, that my feelings for

my new-found friends would affect my ability to analyze the situation

objectively. This concern was voiced through my advisors, who

warned me that my sympathies might lead me to developa narrative

Introduction

44

that is overly critical of the Egyptian government or overly delicate in

regards to the Bedouin. In short, the objectivity of the researcher, and

by implication the integrity of the work, is called into question because

of an emotional connection or a tendency of the subjects to present a

biased view that is accepted and adopted by the researcher.38

In this way, ethnography more often than not is a double-edged

sword necessitating a delicate balancing of two very distinct identities

that may very well be impossible to separate: the ﬁrst being the friend

and the second the researcher. Without the friend, the researcher’s

job would be impossible. At the same time, it is the friend that

endangers the objectivity of the researcher, who is supposed to be

dispassionate and analytical. Thus, to the researcher, the friend is both

indispensable and a liability, and in the ﬁeld, not a moment went by

without consideration of the balance that we had to maintain between

them.

Unfortunately, there is no scientiﬁc method to counter this

tendency towards sympathizing with one’s subjects. In the words

of John Van Maanen, “Neutrality in ﬁeldwork is an illusion.”39 In

this case, all scholars who conduct this type of work might be

susceptible to accusations of bias, whether personal or ideological;

it is the responsibility of the researcher to navigate this path with

as much attention to avoiding such traps as possible. From my own

experience, to ignore the friend is impossible and only calls attention

to the researcher, generally leading to concerns and suspicion among

the ethnographic “subject.” The Bedouin have little use for formal

data gathering methods such as surveys, and are generally less willing

38. This has been a perpetual concern to ethnographers, both inside and

outside of the field of anthropology. See, for example, Annette Lareau and

Jeffrey J. Shultz, Journeys through Ethnography: Realistic Accounts of

Fieldwork (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996).

39. John Van Maanen, “Playing Back the Tape,” in W.B. Shaffer and R.A.

Stebbins (eds.), Experiencing Fieldwork: An Inside View of Qualitative

Research (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1991); quoted in Timothy Pachirat,

“The Political in Political Ethnography: Dispatches from the Kill Floor,”

in Edward Schatz (ed.), Political Ethnography: What Immersion

Contributes to the Study of Power (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 2009).

Introduction

45

to participate in these formal environments. The only alternative

is to always maintain self-awareness and to understand that this

emotional response is an inevitable consequence of the experience of

ﬁeld research. This process, I imagine, is very personal, varying from

researcher to researcher, and it would be difﬁcult, if not impossible, to

draw an accurate picture of the relationship between the researcher

and the subjects just by reading the work without any mention of

the personal experiences of the research. It is my goal to present as

transparent a picture of the research experience as possible, allowing

readers to understand my own ethnographic perspective.

The research we conducted in the ﬁeld did not present a complete

picture of the historical development of the Bedouin community, only

their present situation. Thus, this type of data was insufﬁcient to address

the types of historical questions that were vital to this study, including

how and why Egyptian development was undertaken, as well as how

this development has transformed the Bedouin socioeconomic order.

History was just as important to this analysis as anthropology, and so

constituted a second, yet equally important methodological approach.

Historical information about Sinai comes from two main sources:

ﬁrst, the diaries and surveys produced by visitors and colonial ofﬁcials

during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, and

second, the accounts and analyses of historians and social scientists

who spent time researching in Sinai in the 1970s and 80s, as well

as a number of studies published by their Egyptian successors. Since

the Egyptian reoccupation of Sinai, however, the freedom to conduct

research has been limited and our record for the past 20 years is not

as detailed as it was in the 20 years before that.

Many of the early diaries and surveys of Sinai have already been

digested by historians and social scientists and consequently held little

value for this work, as subsequent analyses published in the 1970s,

80s, and 90s proved signiﬁcantly more useful. These sources blurred

the lines between anthropology and history, as they were often

social histories or anthropological studies from previous decades

that provided the opportunity to construct a coherent timeline of

events and an encompassing picture of the Bedouin community and

its transformations across the previous decades. Reliance on history

enabled the analysis of the transformative processes that development

Introduction

46

in Sinai has instigated. This is an adaptation of a practice that is gaining

favor among anthropologists, increasingly utilizing historical texts; I

took this practice and reversed it by taking past anthropological studies

and using them as historical texts, providing sufﬁcient information to

compare, for example, employment patterns of the Aqaba Bedouin in

the nineteenth century, the 1970s, and today. In this way, it became

possible to examine not only the shape of the Dahab Bedouins’

current socioeconomic order, but to trace its development over the

past decades to analyze the transformative effects of development.

47

Chapter 1

Egypt’s Vision for Sinai

This chapter presents an analysis of the Egyptian development project

in Sinai in order to ascertain why Sinai development was undertaken

and how Egyptian authorities went about setting and attaining their

goals. Additionally, it will examine how a number of speciﬁc Egyptian

policies have shaped the direction of socioeconomic development

within the Bedouin community. With this perspective, Egyptian

priorities for development and the role envisioned for the Bedouin in

relation to the Egyptian vision for Sinai will become clear. In a study

of Bedouin reactions to development, an examination of Egyptian

approaches is the key to understanding Bedouin transformational

responses and identity processes.

The Egyptian development project in Sinai is merely a single

aspect of a larger plan for the development and integration of Egypt’s

vast, unsettled territory. In May 1974, faced with serious economic

stagnation and the beginnings of a population crisis, the government

of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat prepared a plan, known as “A New

Map of Egypt,” that aimed at extending Egyptian central authority to

territories far from the Nile Valley and developing them so as to make

them productive contributors to the Egyptian economy.40 As Sinai

at this time was still under Israeli control, the Egyptian development

plan focused on areas such as the Western Desert, the Mediterranean

coast, the Red Sea coast, and the Lake Nasser region. The project

had the broadly-stated goal of relieving social and economic pressures

on the population, and by implication, on the central government.41

40. Dames and Moore International, Sinai Development Study, Phase I:

Final Report (Washington, D.C.: United States Agency for International

Aid, 1985) Vol. 1, “A Strategy for the Settlement of Sinai,” 3.1 “National

Goals,” p. 47.

41. Lavie, The Poetics of Military Occupation, p. 75.

Chapter 1

48

The plan eventually adopted to oversee the development of

the Sinai Peninsula, as a piece of this greater strategy to increase

industrial and agricultural development in Egypt, was aimed at fulﬁlling

goals identiﬁed by the government to address central problems; the

primary concerns were not the wellbeing or interests of peripheral

populations, but those of the central state. One of the stated aims of

the Sinai Development Study (SDS-I), published in 1985 by Dames

and Moore, Inc. in conjunction with USAID, was to “ensure social

justice for the residents of these regions [under development],” to aid

in the reduction of “regional disparities.”42 However, this would only

be the case inasmuch as the goals and interests of these residents

aligned with those of the state. In fact, in the research and planning

stages of the project, the Bedouin were treated only superﬁcially and

were never actually consulted on potential courses of development

or Bedouin-Egyptian cooperation. Central Egyptian planners viewed

the Bedouin as a marginal population that did not need to be directly

included in Sinai development, but would react to development by

assimilating into Egyptian society.

In their attempt to impose “legibility” on the Bedouin, the Egyptian

state made a number of incorrect assumptions about the fundamental

nature of Bedouin society and the natural consequences of economic

development.43 Egyptian development strategies ultimately resulted

in the socioeconomic marginalization of the Sinai Bedouin. These

assumptions, compounded with their “modernization”-oriented

approach, facilitated the emergence of a number of obstacles

frustrating Bedouin participation in budding tourism industries in the

Aqaba region. Many of these assumptions or miscalculations were

based on Egypt’s focus on the critical crises that the regime faced

in central Egypt, for example the need to maximize tax revenue,

provide jobs, and spread the population. In focusing on these goals,

the Egyptians neglected to consider a situation whereby speciﬁcally

Bedouin interests might clash with Egyptian development goals. Not

42. Dames and Moore, Sinai Development Study, Vol. 1, p. 48.

43. James C. Scott, Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve

the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press,

1998). Scott refers to legibility as the manner in which a state categorizes

and defines a concept so that the state may interact with it.

Egypt’s Vision for Sinai

49

only did they not make an effort to ensure the Bedouin a dominant or

even a protected place in the developing tourist economy, they failed

even to undertake a comprehensive study of the Bedouin and their

standards of living in order to determine how best to harmonize their

plan with existing conditions on the ground; the Bedouins’ customary

socioeconomic order and recent transformations were not examined

or considered in the scope of development.

Egyptian National Crises and the Need for

Development and Integration

In the early 1970s, Egypt faced a number of social and economic

crises stemming from major demographic shifts, destructive economic

policies, and President Gamal Abd al-Nasser’s ﬁxation on the conﬂict

with Israel. Egypt’s economy, which Nasser had based on the socialist

model of import-substitution and nationalization, was on the verge

of collapse. Compounding a lack of productivity, a rapid population

increase created a shortage of employment. While Nasser promised

jobs to all university graduates, stagnant economic growth and rampant

corruption meant that there were not nearly enough opportunities to

satisfy Egypt’s population.

Making matters worse, the urban centers of Egypt experienced

rapid population increases due to the dual processes of urbanization

and accelerating population growth. Cairo, which in 1960 had a

population of three and a half million,44 and in 1989 of 14 million,45

today has an estimated population of 20-25 million inhabitants.46 As

Cairo’s population expands, the conditions in the city have deteriorated

44. Janet Abu Lughod, “Migrant Adjustment to City Life: The Egyptian

Case,” The American Journal of Sociology 67 (1962), p. 22.

45. Thomas W. Lippman, Egypt After Nasser: Sadat, Peace, and the

Mirage of Prosperity (New York: Paragon House, 1989), p. 166.

46. André Raymond, Cairo, trans. Willard Wood (Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 2000), p. 13. In 2000 Raymond supports the lower

figure of 18 to 20 million. The higher estimate of 25 million comes from

a consideration of the potential contribution of the unofficial residents of

Cairo as well as the figure stated by everyone in Egypt.

Chapter 1

50

for its inhabitants. Overcrowding is now a fact of life and living

conditions for many have become less than sanitary. Additionally, the

huge population has put an incredible strain on Cairo’s aging urban

infrastructure, which is in severe need of renovation and replacement

and has barely been able to support a city of 20 million inhabitants.

Population growth and urbanization have had a devastating impact

on Egypt’s ability to maintain food self-sufﬁciency.47 Processes of

urbanization, concentrated heavily in the Nile Valley, have created a

situation whereby land suitable for agriculture is being converted into

residential zones to accommodate an increasing number of citizens.48

While Egypt’s population has grown rapidly in the Nile Valley, the

amount of cultivable land has not increased despite Nasser’s massive

land reclamation scheme, which aimed at converting unproductive

desert into cultivable land suitable for agriculture. As settlements

expand, they continuously encroach on the limited amount of arable

land. Egypt, once a major exporter of agricultural products, has

become dependent on massive food imports to supply the needs of

the population.49

When Anwar Sadat became president of Egypt in 1970,

overpopulation, under-employment, food shortages, and economic

stagnation were the major socioeconomic crises facing the Egyptian

state. In order to address these crises, the Egyptian government

enacted a number of policies aimed at bringing economic as well as

social relief to Egypt. Perhaps the most well-known of these policies

was Sadat’s program of Inﬁtah, or “Open Door” economics, aimed

at attracting private and foreign investment, and bringing an end

47. While World Bank figures show that the rate of population growth

is slowing, it is still well above rates in Europe and North America.

Moreover, this has done little to relieve pressures on the state to continue

supplying sufficient food to urban populations. Source: Google Public

Data from World Bank, updated Jan 17, 2013. <https://www.google.

com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_pop_grow&idi

m=country:EGY&dl=en&hl=en&q=population%20growth%20rate%20

egypt>.

48. Dina F. Ali, “Case Study of Development of the Peripheral Coastal

Area of South Sinai in Relation to its Bedouin Community” (MA Thesis,

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1998), p. 13.

49. Lippman, Egypt After Nasser, p. 128.

Egypt’s Vision for Sinai

51

to the state-dominated economic policies of Nasser.50 As a clear

rejection of the Nasserite economic model based on etatism, Sadat’s

freer-market Inﬁtah was a highly visible concept. It was not, however,

the only plan developed to address Egypt’s ills. Another of Sadat’s

programs, geared simultaneously at relieving both the population and

food crises, was the “Green Revolution.” This “revolution” strove to

tame the Egyptian frontier, extract valuable natural resources, convert

deserts into farmland, and relieve the immense population pressures

in Egypt’s cities and along the Nile River.51

With this “Green Revolution,” Sadat envisioned a massive

population shift out of Egypt’s urban areas along the Nile into the

desert, namely the Western Desert around the oases of Siwa and

Bahariyya, the Eastern Desert along the Red Sea Coast, and later,

the Sinai Peninsula. It was the government’s hope that relieving

overcrowding would increase economic productivity, bringing added

relief to the economy in addition to alleviating urban congestion. It

additionally hoped to convert the desert into cultivable land, bringing

Egypt back to food self-sufﬁciency.

The goals of the Sinai Development Project, as outlined in the

development reports published in the 1980s and 90s, are consistent

with the crises mentioned above. As stated in the SDS-I study prepared

in 1985, the national goals were the following:

Social1.

Slower population growth in Cairo and the cities of the •

Delta

Reversal of Brain Drain, in part by creating well-paid, high •

tech, modern economic activities within Egypt

Economic2.

Expanded private sector•

Foreign aid reduced, later eliminated•

Strategic3.

Food self-sufﬁciency, improved yields and land reclamation •

50. P.J. Vatikiotis, The History of Modern Egypt, 4th ed. (London:

Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991), p. 430; see also Raymond Hinnebusch,

“The Politics of Economic Reform in Egypt,” Third World Quarterly

14.1 (1993).

51. Lippman, Egypt After Nasser, p. 126.

Chapter 1

52

Integration of remote areas into the mainstream of Egyptian •

civilization.52

The ﬁnal goal, the integration of remote areas into “Egyptian

civilization,” suggests an added aim of increasing state control over its

territory and simultaneously working for the socialization of peripheral

populations and regions to integrate them into the Egyptian nation.

These goals, far from striving to protect the unique characteristics

of Egypt’s peripheral populations, suggest that a major aim of the

Egyptian government is to transform the character of these territories

to reﬂect Egyptian national values and characteristics. This is a major

element in the process of nation-building. Economic development in

Sinai aimed both to increase Egyptian state presence and control in

Sinai and to socialize peripheral populations into Egypt’s national

society.

It is clear from even this superﬁcial examination of the crises Egypt

faced and the goals the government set that regional integration and

development in Egypt was undertaken to serve the center instead

of the peripheries. Despite claims about the importance of regional

equality, Egyptian development was less about extending the amenities

and services available in central Egypt to the various peripheries as it

was about the development of these peripheries in order to solve the

problems of central Egypt.

From the “Green Revolution” to the

National Project for the Development of

Sinai — A Plan for 2017

Between 1979 and 1982, when Egypt re-gained Sinai after the Camp

David Accords and the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, the concept

of developing the deserts was extended to the Sinai Peninsula. The

values and goals of the Green Revolution were reproduced in the Sinai

Development Studies and played a primary role in shaping Egyptian

goals for Sinai. Soon after the Egyptian reoccupation, planning

for Sinai development began. The SDS-I Sinai Development Study

was commissioned by USAID in order to survey Sinai and present

52. Dames and Moore, Sinai Development Study, Vol. 1, p. 48.

Egypt’s Vision for Sinai

53

its recommendations for the best development strategies. This plan

eventually yielded the Egyptian Ministry of Planning’s National Project

for the Development of Sinai (NPDS), which was adopted by Egyptian

authorities as the ofﬁcial strategy to develop Sinai between the years

1994 and 2017. These plans hoped to transform Sinai into a multi-

sector economy through large-scale foreign investment and the

settlement of over a million Egyptians in the peninsula.53

There is remarkable similarity between the two development

reports, and the NPDS can easily be considered a continuation of

the development strategies recommended in the 1985 SDS-I report.

The major difference between the two is in the scale of development.

The SDS-I had for its goal one million Egyptian settlers in Sinai while

the NPDS hoped to attract over three million,54 reﬂecting an ever-

increasing need to relieve Nile Valley population pressures by both

enticing urban Egyptians to seek better working conditions in Sinai

as well as convincing rural Egyptians to seek employment in Sinai

instead of in the urban centers of the Nile Valley.

The development reports identify tourism as a huge potential

market in Sinai, suggesting that Sinai could compete with international

tropical vacation destinations; the Aqaba Coast was recommended

as particularly suitable for international tourism development.55

They further suggest that basing tourism on large-scale private

and foreign investment could potentially fund other development

projects, highlighting the economic importance of tourism and tourist

development to the Egyptian authorities in their endeavor to create

industry and infrastructure in Sinai. The SDS-I study, and later the

NPDS, proposed to expand the Aqaba Coast’s tourist capacity by

attracting “major international beach tourist resorts along the Gulf of

Aqaba,” as this would be the most direct way to maximize both growth

and (taxable) proﬁt.56 The plan foresaw continuous development along

53. David B. Ottaway, “Egypt Tries Hard to Lure Settlers to Sinai Region,”

The Washington Post, April 25, 1983.

54. David Homa, “Touristic Development in Sinai,” in Tourism in the Middle

East Continuity, Change, and Transformation, ed. Rami Farouk Daher

(Minneapolis: Channel View Publications, 2006), p. 239.

55. Dames and Moore, Sinai Development Study, Vol. 3, “An Economic

Development and Investment Plan, 1983 to 2000,” p. 80.

56. Ibid., p. 77.

Chapter 1

54

the Aqaba Coast and the eventual growth of Dahab’s population from

just over 2,000 to over 90,000 inhabitants between 1994 and 2017,

and the growth of Sharm el-Sheikh’s population from just over 2,000

to over 130,000 in the same time frame, almost all of whom would

be Egyptian families enticed to move from the Nile Valley.57

While an in-depth analysis of the two development plans is beyond

the scope of this study, there are two major aspects that must be

discussed in relation to how the Egyptian government chose to relate

to the Bedouin in their development scheme. The ﬁrst is to what

extent the reports consider the needs and probable reactions of the

Bedouin; the second deals with the issue of the formalization of tourist

economies.

The Bedouin and Development

The SDS-I report purports to have conducted an in-depth study of

the population of Sinai, and volume six of the report deals exclusively

with Sinai’s social development. However, the study focuses

overwhelmingly on migrant social development and questions of how

to attract and maintain such a high number of Nile Valley migrants

in Sinai. There is little said in this report about the Bedouin outside

of population estimations, and even less is said about the proposed

integration of this population into development strategies beyond the

need to provide “opportunities for employment.” While the SDS-I

does not contain a sufﬁcient treatment of Sinai’s Bedouin populations,

the NPDS contains even less.

The SDS-I report predicted that increasing service- and

construction-sector jobs would induce the Bedouin the shift away from

“traditional employment” which, according to their understanding,

was “livestock grazing,” and attract the Bedouin populations to settle

closer to the coasts.58 In this, the report identiﬁed and described the

57. “Distribution of the Existing and Target Population in South Sinai,”

Final Report on the National Project for the Development of Sinai,

translated in Ali, “Development of the Peripheral Coastal Area of South

Sinai,” p. 24.

58. Dames and Moore, Sinai Development Study, Vol. 6, “Settlement and

Social Development,” p. 17.

Egypt’s Vision for Sinai

55

major transformation in Bedouin economics experienced during the

Israeli occupation, the shift of Bedouin populations to coastal centers

for purposes of employment. It failed, however, to recognize the fact

that this process had already begun and that by the 1980s, herding

and “livestock grazing” were not these Bedouins’ primary sources

of subsistence. The authors were unable to see the link between

increasing sedentarization and the growth of urban economies and

employment opportunities. They failed to recognize the effects of

development and increasing state control on the declining access

of the Bedouin to pastures and wells needed to maintain a pastoral

economy. There was no discussion of how jobs would be allocated

between the local Bedouin and unskilled migrants from the Nile Valley

seeking the same service and construction sector jobs mentioned

above. Finally, there was no provision or discussion regarding the

potential recognition of Bedouin claims according to their customary

laws, speciﬁcally regarding certain rights of access, for example to

valuable stretches of shoreline for ﬁshing or tribal gatherings. Nor was

there any discussion as to the proposed legal status of the Bedouin or

their land claims, nor any discussion of compensation for developing

on Bedouin land or of providing housing and other services to the

community.

This is the extent to which the SDS-I treated the Bedouin.

Conspicuously absent are any recommendations regarding the

integration of Bedouin populations into the developing economies of

Sinai, or visions of how the Bedouin would function in close proximity

to these estimated one million migrants. Additionally, in the section

dealing with tourist development, the authors mention a number of

possible types of tourism, ranging from beach and resort tourism to

religious and cultural tourism. This discussion, however, makes no

mention of the possible role the Bedouin might play in this industry,

notably in the culture tourism sector. Culture tourism, according to the

SDS-I, would focus on incorporating Sinai into the existing “Cairo,

Luxor, Giza circuit,” integrating Sinai into Egyptian heritage instead

of focusing on its own unique culture.59

The goals for the NPDS focus even more heavily on the issues

facing central Egypt, and the previously mentioned desire to ensure

59. Dames and Moore, Sinai Development Study, Vol. 3, p. 82.

Chapter 1

56

social justice for peripheral populations is absent from this version.

Not once in the section outlining objectives for Sinai development

are the Bedouin even mentioned, and instead the report focuses

on its goal of “building new societies” to vary the lifestyles available

to Egyptians.60 Thus the role ascribed to the Bedouin by those

responsible for development has been peripheral at best.

The report does, on the other hand, set the goal of appropriating

over 90 percent of Bedouin land for development, allowing Bedouin

to retain a mere seven percent of the territory they once exploited.61

While the Bedouin had previously used this land for ﬁshing, holding

tribal gatherings, and more recently, running tourist camps, Egyptian

authorities hoped to utilize this land for the development of large

multinational resorts that had the potential to yield large tourism

revenues for the central government.

Egyptian development authorities, in conjunction with USAID,

based this land appropriation goal on the assumption that Bedouin

do not value land the same way that the development agency would

due to their “nomadic lifestyle,” and believed this appropriation would

be accepted by the Bedouin. The report went even further, stating

that “the NPDS works for the urbanization of the tribal population

and at the same time [for] maintain[ing] their tribal cultures as it is

part of Sinai heritage.”62 How, then, did the Egyptians propose to

reconcile the conﬁscation of Bedouin territory for development with a

desire to preserve the cultural heritage of the Bedouin? Furthermore,

how did they expect to achieve the urbanization of the Bedouin

while neglecting to envision a formal role for them in the developing

tourism-based urban economy? Finally, assuming that there were

more migrants at any given time than available jobs, how would

employment be allocated between migrants and local Bedouin? These

are questions that Egyptian planners and developers, as well as their

American counterparts representing USAID, failed to address.63 The

60. David Homa, “Touristic Development in Sinai,” p. 241.

61. Ibid., p. 252.

62. Ibid., p. 241. Quote taken from Sinai report titled “Sinai: Location and

Natural Resources,” Government publication (1995).

63. While many defend organizations such as USAID for their good

intentions, Joel Migdal rightly points out that there is a huge disparity

Egypt’s Vision for Sinai

57

fact that the Bedouin have intended to participate in the development

and future economies of Sinai, notably the tourist sector, has all but

ensured that the vision the central government created for Sinai would

be complicated by a clash between local Bedouin and central Egyptian

interests.

Tourist Development along the Aqaba

Coast — Egyptian Preferences

The Egyptian development strategy is best examined through a lens

of “modernization.” While as an academic theory, modernization has

been the subject of ongoing debate, and the mechanisms through

which the process supposedly operates produce questionable

outcomes, modernization continues to hold relevance for developing

states as a popular paradigm for third-world development.64 This is not

to argue that Egyptian authorities adopted an explicit “modernization”

approach to Sinai development, which would assume that a primary

goal was social development of the periphery instead of revenue

maximization. In fact, the state appears little concerned with the

Bedouin outside of the implications for maintaining a tight security

presence in the Peninsula. Instead, both written and anecdotal

evidence strongly supports the revenue maximization approach. The

positive externalities anticipated by the modernization paradigm, such

between declarations of intent by state leaders and the actual execution

of policy on the ground. Furthermore, good intentions and the desire

for macro-level transformation say nothing about their knowledge of

micro-level social and economic dynamics. Migdal, in 1988, argued that

scholars need to examine the impact of social policies from a bottom-up

perspective. Ten years later, Simon suggested that while “sustainability”

had become an ostensible goal of development agencies, the addition of

the label “sustainable” was accompanied by few policy changes and no

greater sensitivity to the micro-level impact of development. Today, while

progress has been made on the scholarly side, aid agencies have not

changed significantly. Migdal, Strong Societies, Weak States, pp. 260-1.

Simon, “Development Reconsidered.”

64. Simon, “Development Reconsidered,” p. 185.

Chapter 1

58

as social integration, economic rationalization, and increasing state

control of its territory, are often assumed to be associated with the

type of neo-liberal development policies in play in Sinai. The failure

of these policies to yield the assumed beneﬁts warrants the same

type of criticism that has underpinned the modernization debate for

decades. Furthermore, it would be hard to deny that the promises of

“modernization,” notably rationalization of the economy and political

stabilization, are themselves attractive goals for state authorities,

and it is quite probable that both neo-liberal goals and sociopolitical

“modernization” arguments work together in this regard.

The course of tourism development in South Sinai was shaped by

the requirements that the Egyptian government needed this sector to

fulﬁll and reﬂect the basic assumptions stated above. As one of the

earliest established sectors of the developing Sinai economy, tourism

has become the primary economic activity along the Aqaba cost (as

opposed to industry, concentrated on the West coast, and agriculture,

concentrated in the North). The authorities have favored courses of

tourism development guaranteeing high returns for the government.

This has led them to place major emphasis on formalized tourism

development, focusing on large, multinational resort chains which

invest large sums into development, and from which high taxes and

fees can be extracted.65 In one extreme example, a recent report states

that one of the major casinos in Sharm el-Sheikh pays $24 million in

royalties to the government each year, in addition to its annual taxes.66

While the major resorts undoubtedly pay less, international companies

must maintain the proper permits to operate their businesses, and

these companies have no trouble paying the high fees. This focus

has maximized revenue for the state; however, it has ensured the

marginalization of local inhabitants by channeling revenue ﬂows out of

the local economy and to national projects and foreign shareholders.

The formalization of tourism has made it harder for the Bedouin to

participate in and beneﬁt from Aqaba tourism.

65. Homa, “Touristic Development in Sinai,” p. 252.

66. Adel Abdellah, “Even Tourists and Tourism Operators Say Yes to the

MB,” EgyptVotes.org, Jan. 4, 2012. <http://www.egyptvotes.org/en/

politics/item/400.html>.

Egypt’s Vision for Sinai

59

Smaller hotels have been discouraged due to the perception that

these will not generate the same level of revenue and channel it back

into further development. In a similar fashion, tourism advertising has

focused on expensive resorts and vacation packages aimed at families

and wealthier tourists rather than at backpackers and young travelers.

The government has reasoned that focusing on wealthier tourists will

generate the most revenue per visitor.

This focus on development of formal tourism in Sinai has two

major implications for the Bedouin. The ﬁrst has to do with revenue

leakage, a consequence of the preference for large, foreign-owned

hotel chains. While these chains build resorts that have the potential

to generate signiﬁcant revenues, a majority of these proﬁts ﬂow out of

the locality where they are generated. For example, the Hilton, one of

the largest and most expensive resorts in Dahab, channels most of the

revenue it generates out of Sinai, into the accounts of the company and

its owners and as payments to the Egyptian government for permits

and as taxes, translating into high leakage out of the local economy.67

Formal tourism development, while favored by Egyptian authorities

for its potential to generate high returns, is actually an obstacle to the

Bedouins’ ability to access locally generated tourist revenue.

This is in direct contrast to smaller hotels and local operations,

which guarantee relatively low leakages as they are prone to be

owned, operated, and staffed by locals instead of foreign investors

and migrants. Small-scale tourism is therefore “capable of higher

integration into the local economic structure; it is capable of producing

a higher multiplier effect on the local economy than the formal

tourism sector,” whereas the formal sector relies heavily on foreign

or external elements.68 For the Bedouin, smaller hotels and locally-run

tour companies would ensure a signiﬁcant amount of revenue would

remain in the community, allowing the Bedouin to realize more proﬁt

from economic activities within their territory. However, Egyptian

preferences to work with foreign tourism agencies and international

hotel chains make it harder for the Bedouin to access their share of

the proﬁts being collected. Additionally, the regulations have made it

67. Daher, “Reconceptualizing Tourism in the Middle East,” p. 22.

68. Ibid., p. 24; see also Martin Opperman, “Tourism Space in Developing

Countries,” Annals of Tourism Research 20 (1953).

Chapter 1

60

signiﬁcantly harder for the Bedouin to build and own their own hotels,

which the Egyptians have attempted to replace with larger chains,

using the justiﬁcation that the Bedouin do not meet the safety and

quality standards of the large resorts, and that Egyptian regulations

are for the safety and beneﬁt of its tourists.69

The second implication for the Bedouin is their marginalization

from the tourist spaces in general. As one of Egypt’s main national

goals has been the creation of jobs for Nile Valley Egyptians, migrants

from those areas, not the Bedouin, are considered to have ﬁrst

priority when it comes to access to employment. Additionally, the

Bedouin are considered to be less reliable because they do not have

the professional levels of education favored by the modernization

paradigm; many businesses avoid hiring Bedouin altogether, due to

conceptions of the Bedouin as stupid, lazy, or something more sinister

(see chapter four). For the Aqaba Bedouin, this limits their ability to

engage the formal tourist sectors in any manner more substantial than

as menial employees in the large resort hotels, leaving them searching

for ways to protect their livelihood by ensuring the continuation of

informal economies.70 Primary ways in which they establish informal

economic connections are through hiring out jeeps and pickup

trucks to carry travelers between locations, by organizing Bedouin

cultural events such as camel treks and oasis visits independently of

the resorts, and through the operation of illicit economies such as

drug dealing or smuggling. All of these issues, and how the Bedouin

cope with them, will be discussed in greater depth in the following

chapters. It is important, in any event, to highlight that the nature of

Egyptian development policies have had profound effects on courses

of socioeconomic transformation among the Aqaba Bedouin by

creating obstacles to Bedouin participation in Aqaba tourism.

69. Ben Beasley-Murray, “The Tourism Development Agency uses

environmental rhetoric to justify demolishing Bedouin-owned camps in

favor of big hotels,” Cairo Times, September 30, 1999.

70. Heba Aziz, “Employment in a Bedouin Community: The Case of the

Town of Dahab in South Sinai,” Nomadic Peoples 4.2 (2000), p. 32.

Egypt’s Vision for Sinai

61

Dahab and Development

Dahab has been affected by formalization to a signiﬁcantly lesser

extent than the other major Sinai tourist center, Sharm el-Sheikh,

which is dominated by international resorts. This only serves to

increase Dahab’s signiﬁcance as a center of Bedouin life, as their

access to economic opportunities in Dahab is freer than in Aqaba’s

other tourist centers. This has to do with the origins of tourism in

Dahab, which was pioneered by the Bedouin themselves, as opposed

to state-directed tourism in the resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh.

During the Israeli occupation in the 1960s and 70s, Dahab became

a popular coastal location for Israeli travelers and backpackers. The

Aqaba Bedouin quickly seized upon this concept and began building

campgrounds for the backpackers to stay. As recently as the mid-

1990s, Dahab continued to be dominated by Bedouin-owned

campgrounds.71 As Dahab’s popularity increased among these

low-budget travelers, the number of campsites increased, soon to

be complimented by restaurants, and later, hotels, dive shops, and

surf clubs, increasingly owned by Egyptian businessmen and some

foreigners. Dahab, over the past 20 years, has transformed from

a backpacker destination into a major center for water sports such

as scuba, sailing, and surﬁng, but it continues to be deﬁned by its

laid-back, Bedouin/backpacker character, reﬂecting the informal or

grassroots origins of Dahab tourism.

Large-scale development in Dahab did not truly begin until the

mid-1990s, more than a decade after the Egyptian reoccupation. At

this point, Egyptian authorities began focusing development in Dahab

on formal tourism, and a number of large multinational resorts have

sprung up by the beach, including a Hilton, a Le Meridien, and a Soﬁtel,

in addition to others. However, the smaller-scale tourist establishments

have remained a permanent ﬁxture in Dahab proper, as they were

well established by the time the Egyptian development project began.72

These cater to middle- and lower-budget travelers, such as young

backpackers, and involve the Bedouin to a much greater extent than

resorts such as the Hilton. This has allowed the Bedouin a signiﬁcant

71. Conversation with a Dahab business owner, February 12, 2010.

72. Aziz, “Employment in a Bedouin Community,” p. 32.

Chapter 1

62

role in the economy of Dahab by encouraging the establishment of

informal economic ties directly with tourists, cutting out the state or

its foreign representatives, with limited success.73

Recently, however, state-supported resort tourism development

has begun to expand, and discriminatory Egyptian policies have led

to land appropriation and even the demolition of Bedouin-owned

businesses.74 The number of remaining Bedouin camps has begun to

decline as land is being purchased or claimed for three- and four-star

hotels. With its large Bedouin presence and ever-increasing Egyptian

attempts to force the town to conform to Egyptian ideals, Dahab has

become a primary arena for competition between the Aqaba Bedouin,

attempting to preserve their livelihood, and Egyptian authorities,

attempting to utilize Sinai’s resources to pursue national goals.

The Emergent Reality of Dahab

Development

While development in Sinai has been largely successful, and tourism

along the Aqaba Coast has boomed in the past two decades, one aspect

of the NPDS has been a resounding failure. While initially, Egyptian

authorities were optimistic that Egyptian families could be enticed out

of the cities to settle in Sinai, this rarely occurred; the Egyptians failed

to devise a strategy to settle Sinai with Nile Valley migrant families

and create a new Egyptian society in the peninsula. Very few families

agreed to move to Sinai (most are the families of the few doctors,

teachers, and businessmen working in Sinai, but not of those involved

73. Laleh Behbehanian, “Policing the Illicit Peripheries of Egypt’s Tourism

Industry,” Middle East Report 216 (2000), p. 33.

74. Personal observations from multiple trips to Dahab, combined with

repeated statements from the Bedouin asserting that the discriminatory

treatment of the Bedouin regarding land and economics is getting worse.

See also Beasley-Murray, “The Tourism Development Agency uses

environmental rhetoric to justify demolishing Bedouin-owned camps in

favor of big hotels.”

Egypt’s Vision for Sinai

63

in tourism or other menial labor).75 This has rendered Dahab, similarly

to other tourism towns along the Aqaba Coast, unviable as an Egyptian

community or an Egyptian society as envisioned by early Egyptian

and American planners. Instead, a majority of Egyptian migrants in

Sinai are young, unmarried men traveling in search of work so that

they can make the money necessary to start a family according to

Egyptian social custom.76 A secondary source of Egyptian migrants is

the pool of married, but underemployed, Egyptian males who pursue

migratory labor in Sinai. Egyptian development plans have, to a large

extent, already compensated for this by adjusting their population

goals down and altering the course of development in Sinai’s towns

from residential construction for families to residential construction for

male workers, resulting in dormitory-style living in the town centers.

Egyptian migrants have decided to relate to Sinai employment

in a similar manner to other forms of Egyptian migrant labor, as a

means of making money to send back to support the family at home

in the form of remittances. Egyptian migrants in Sinai interviewed

for this study had stories of migratory remittances, and admitted

that their only interest in living in Sinai was to make money to send

home to support their families, who remain either in rural villages or

in the cities of central Egypt. Sinai, speciﬁcally through tourism, has

become a source of foreign capital for Egyptians. In this way, Sinai

is emerging as an alternative to migratory employment in Gulf oil

industries or education, which, since the 1960s, has been the primary

means to bring foreign capital into Egypt.77 The major difference is

that in Sinai, Nile Valley migrants are favored by authorities, while

those seeking employment in Gulf states are often denied civil rights

and are subject to many other restrictions on their movement and

employment. Egyptian migrants in Sinai say that working there is

preferable to traveling to the Gulf because it is signiﬁcantly closer

75. Conversations and home visits with Egyptian migrant laborers in Dahab,

March 2009–February 2010.

76. Personal observations of Dahab’s demographic structure, multiple trips to

Dahab, March 2009–February 2010.

77. Nazih N. Ayubi, The State and Public Policies in Egypt Since Sadat,

Political Studies of the Middle East Series (Reading, U.K.; Ithaca Press,

1991).

Chapter 1

64

to home and migrants in Sinai are subjected to less discriminatory

treatment from Egyptian authorities. For these reasons, there is

an increasing desire for Egyptians to seek migratory labor in Sinai

than abroad.78 This trend is a clear result of the relative beneﬁts of

Egyptians seeking employment within their own borders.

Many Egyptians come to Sinai from the cities and the villages

of the Delta and Upper Egypt in search of work, and follow their

acquaintances and kin. Jobs are most frequently allocated along kinship

lines or among friends. A majority of laborers interviewed in Dahab

acknowledged that their job came from an opportunity given to them

by an older brother or cousin, who acts as a host to new migrants.

Thus patterns of development and employment in Sinai suggest that

to central Egyptians, Sinai is not a place to settle and raise a family,

but to make money to support the rest of the family at home. This

concept of remittances will appear occasionally throughout this work,

showing the types of employment and settlement patterns resulting

from Sinai development.

Development in Sinai has been closely controlled by the Egyptian

state in order to reﬂect the goals of the Egyptian state as opposed to

the interests and developmental concerns of any periphery. In this,

attempts to increase state presence and instruments of control in the

Egyptian periphery are clearly visible. Egyptian security forces exercise

tight control over the main transportation routes across and around

Sinai, able to regulate or restrict the movement of all but the Bedouin.

Furthermore, Egyptian utilities and services have given the Egyptian

government the role of primary caretaker and distributor of goods

78. None of the Egyptian laborers in Sinai interviewed for this study

challenged this statement; they all declared their preference to remain in

Egypt to pursue work, and many stated that Sinai was their only viable

option, as there were no jobs in the cities of central Egypt. A majority of

migrants from urban Egypt indicated that their desire to move to Sinai

was to seek better paying jobs and escape the crowded conditions of the

city. When asked about the possibility of seeking employment outside of

Egypt, not a single respondent declared a preference to give up their

Sinai jobs for foreign employment. It is clear from their responses that

there is a certain feeling of entitlement among Sinai laborers, that they

feel more comfortable there than in a foreign country.

Egypt’s Vision for Sinai

65

and services in Sinai’s growing towns. Elements increasing Egyptian

control in urban spaces include utilities such as water and electricity,

which have been made widely available, as well as services, notably

health, security, and education, all of which, however, suffer from

under investment, resulting in poor quality public goods. Through

development, Egypt has been able to extend these services to the

towns of South Sinai, increasing the reliance of Sinai’s residents

on Egyptian goods and services. This dependence has developed

unevenly, however, and the Bedouin have, to differing extents, been

able to avoid relying on the outcomes of Egyptian development. As

a trend, the Bedouin living in desert villages enjoy relatively greater

independence than those in the towns. The following chapters

examine a number of consequences of increasing Egyptian control

and increasing reliance on Egyptian goods and services.

While the Egyptian authorities have invested a great deal of time

and effort into determining how best to utilize the available resources

to maximize the beneﬁt to the central state, they did not adequately

prepare themselves to deal with an Egyptian population that was not

ready to commit to national life in Sinai or a Bedouin population that

would attempt to participate in the Egyptian project according to their

own interests. Egyptian goals have clashed with the interests of the

Bedouin and their vision for the future.

Figure 3: Ongoing construction in Dahab.

Photo taken by author, February 10, 2010.

Chapter 1

66

Figure 4: The Dahab Corniche. Photo taken by author,

February 20, 2009.

67

Chapter 2

The Evolving Economies of

the Dahab Bedouin —

Emerging Trends and

Continuities

The development of urban centers along the Aqaba Coast is a new

phenomenon for the Bedouin. Whereas historically, these Bedouin

had to travel long distances to access towns and their markets and

practiced subsistence economics within their tribal territory, Israeli

and Egyptian development has led to the emergence of local towns

with their own markets. This has had a noticeable impact on Bedouin

economic practices by encouraging the Bedouin to participate in the

opportunities these towns generate, producing a perceptible shift

towards greater reliance on the market economy and a simultaneous

decline in the productivity of their subsistence economies. Far from

leading to a rejection of pastoral economies in favor of those in the

towns (a shift from “traditional” to “modern” economies), the Bedouin

have adapted their economic practices to the changing situation by

increasing their presence in tourist centers and altering their lifestyles

to help them access new sources of income while attempting to

preserve the security their subsistence economies provide. These two

economies do not operate independently of one another; rather, each

system is shaped by the limitations of the other, and elements of one

may be applicable in the other. The Aqaba Bedouins’ contemporary

subsistence economy can only be understood in relation to the

prevailing conditions of the expanding market economy.79 A stylized

ideal-type model would view these economies as mutually dependent

79. Emanuel Marx, “Changing Employment Patterns of Bedouin in South

Sinai,” in Emanuel Marx and Avshalom Shmueli (eds.), The Changing

Bedouin (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1984), p. 185.

Chapter 2

68

but separate; however, it would be more useful to understand Bedouin

economic practices as existing on a continuum of “market” on one

extreme and “subsistence” on the other. In practice, all Bedouin

economics fall somewhere in between the two poles, and Bedouin

economic practices simultaneously rely on and beneﬁt from the rules

of both.

The Bedouin have never subsisted from a single-sector economy,

despite popular images that they focus solely on pastoralism. While

a major focus on Bedouin economic practices deals with nomadic

pastoralism, the husbandry of camels, goats, and sheep, the Bedouin

could not possibly subsist off of animal products alone, and the sparse

resources of the Sinai desert render pastoralism unfeasible as a single-

sector economy.80 They have instead engaged in a practice described

by Philip Salzman as “multi-resource nomadism,” which includes not

only animal husbandry, but also some combination of agriculture,

trade, smuggling and raiding, as well as wage labor.81 While Salzman

discusses this phenomenon regarding Baluch nomads, his ideas have

been applied, almost wholesale, to the Arab Bedouin. Of Salzman’s

notion of “multi-resource nomadism,” Emanuel Marx states, “All

Bedouin, except a small number of highly-specialized camel-breeding

groups, engage in a ‘multi-resource economy,’ combining pastoralism

with a variety of other occupations.”82 Similarly, as various studies of

Sinai Bedouin economic practices have revealed, these Bedouin have

80. Aziz, “Employment in a Bedouin Community,” p. 33; cf. Emanuel Marx,

“Economic Change among Pastoral Nomads in the Middle East,” in

Emanuel Marx and Avshalom Shmueli (eds.), The Changing Bedouin,

ed. (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1984).

81. Philip C. Salzman, “Multi-Resource Nomadism in Iranian Baluchistan,” in

William Irons (ed.), Perspectives on Nomadism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972).

Salzman specifically refers to “multi-resource Nomadism,” however

subsequent studies of the Bedouin, notably by Marx, have qualified this

concept by demonstrating that these Bedouin need not maintain nomadic

lifestyles to continue pastoral or multi-resource modes of living. Thus when

considering this ‘multi-resource’ economy of the Bedouin, we should not

assume that it is only applicable to groups that remain nomads.

82. Ann Gardner and Emanuel Marx, “Employment and Unemployment

Among Bedouin,” Nomadic Peoples 4.2 (2000), p. 22.

The Evolving Economies of the Dahab Bedouin—Emerging Trends and Continuities

69

never maintained an autarkic economy, and interaction with centers

of trade and labor has always played a role in their subsistence.83

Reliance on towns and markets, while variable to some extent, has

been a ﬁxture of Bedouin economic practice.

In this way, the economy of the Aqaba Bedouin is varied, and

different aspects of their economy have occasionally assumed more

or less importance due to the sociopolitical circumstances they have

faced. It is not a case where “traditional” aspects of the economy

are in permanent decline, and even with the presence of the town

and its markets, “traditional” or subsistence-based economic practices

continue to hold economic importance for the Bedouin, especially as

a source of economic security.

The major transformation of the Aqaba Bedouin over the past

40 years has undoubtedly been a result of the proliferation of wage-

labor employment in the towns along the coast. While income from

this type of labor has become the primary source of income for the

Bedouin, they have not abandoned other economic practices. Non-

income generating economic practices, such as the preservation of

ﬂocks and orchards, have either been adapted to take advantages of

new economic opportunities or stem from perceptions of political or

ecological instability, not cultural factors demanding the maintenance

of “traditional practices.” While some of these practices have been

preserved, their relative importance to the subsistence of the Bedouin

has changed. Cash-income labor is now the mainstay of the Aqaba

Bedouin economy.

83. See various studies on Bedouin economies, notably in South Sinai: e.g.,

Dan Rabinowitz, “Themes in the Economies of the Bedouin of South

Sinai in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, “International Journal

of Middle East Studies 17.2 (1985); Aziz, “Employment in a Bedouin

Community”; Marx, “Changing Employment Patterns of Bedouin in

South Sinai.” See also Marx, “Economic Change Among Pastoral

Nomads in the Middle East” for a more general discussion of the Bedouin

and “multi-resource” economies.

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70

Wage Labor and Employment

among the Mzeina

Wage labor is not a new practice among the Aqaba Bedouin. In fact,

they have known migrant employment since the mid-1800s, when

it played a supplemental role to Bedouin subsistence. Since then,

wage labor has transformed from a source of supplemental income

into a primary source of Bedouin livelihood; it has risen and declined

in cycles reﬂecting periods of political instability in Sinai, when

employment tends to become insecure and subsistence economies

allow the Bedouin to weather the turbulence. Wage labor is actually

complimentary to the Bedouin economy, and furthermore, is not

a radical new innovation but an increasingly important source of

income.

Before wage labor, the Bedouin of South Sinai relied on a number

of practices to supplement their subsistence economy. While the

Bedouin did operate a pastoral economy, in reality, most of their

food was imported from markets like Cairo and Gaza and had to be

purchased.84 Before the accession to power of Muhammad ‘Ali in

the early 19th century, the Sinai Bedouin, like many other Bedouin

tribes, derived this income from raiding, the extortion of khuwa or

protection money from towns, and the transportation and protection

of people and goods across their tribal territories.85 The income from

these practices would be used to purchase the agricultural products

that the Bedouin relied on but could not produce themselves including

cereals, grain, tea, and sugar, as well as other necessities such as

clothing and weapons. In the 1810s, however, Muhammad ‘Ali began

to pacify the Bedouin in the Egyptian deserts and Sinai.86 Despite

vigorous attempts to resist ‘Ali’s advances, the Tawara Bedouins’ free

reign in the towns of Egypt and their ability to raid caravans traveling

through Sinai was substantially curbed.

84. Emanuel Marx, “Oases in South Sinai,” Human Ecology 27.2 (1999).

85. Rabinowitz, “Themes in the Economies of the Bedouin of South Sinai,”

p. 219.

86. See Gabriel Baer, “Some Aspects of Bedouin Sedentarization in 19th

Century Egypt,” Die Welt des Islams 5.1/2 (1957).

The Evolving Economies of the Dahab Bedouin—Emerging Trends and Continuities

71

Due to the limitations of a pastoral economy, particularly when

relying on territory that is underproductive and undependable, the

supplementation of animal husbandry with some kind of income-

earning practice is necessary.87 Various studies (e.g., Salzman, Marx,

Sweet88) have shown that pastoral nomads must supplement their

animal-based economy. In the past, additional income was largely

derived from raiding and trading; however, the proﬁtability of these

practices has declined as states have used their military might to pacify

the tribes and increase security along trade routes. In response, some

tribesmen began selling their labor to Egyptian industry, including the

manganese mines at Umm Bogmah and the petroleum ﬁelds of Abu

Rudeis on the west coast of Sinai. More substantially, young men

began traveling to Egyptian cities such as Suez and Cairo in search

of employment as migrant laborers.89 Although this work was largely

supplemental, many Aqaba Bedouin did engage in wage labor at some

point in their lives starting from the mid-19th century.

Until the Israeli occupation of the Sinai in 1967, wage labor

functioned as a supplement to the subsistence economy of the

Aqaba Bedouin. A number of factors encouraged a shift towards

greater reliance on a cash economy after the Israeli occupation. First,

increasing Israeli security and policing, as well as the imposition of

an international border at the Suez Canal, brought activities such as

smuggling—an offshoot of raiding that developed independently of

wage labor—to a halt. The Israeli preference to employ the Bedouin

in Sinai development increased both the number and proximity of

jobs, allowing the Bedouin to seek employment signiﬁcantly closer

to home. The Aqaba Bedouin began working in infrastructure and

construction within Sinai, operating motor vehicles, and participating

87. Salzman, “Multi-Resource Nomadism in Iranian Baluchistan,” p. 66.

88. Louise E. Sweet, “Camel Raiding of the North Arabian Bedouin: A

Mechanism of Ecological Adaptation,” in Louise E. Sweet (ed.), Peoples

and Cultures of the Middle East, vol. 1 (New York: The Natural History

Press, 1970). This study demonstrates that the most specialized Bedouin

groups, the Arabian camel-rearing Bedouin, are equally dependent on

markets to accrue their food supplies.

89. Marx, “Changing Employment Patterns of the Bedouin of South Sinai,”

p. 178.

Chapter 2

72

in the budding tourist economy, from setting up camps and coffee

shops to guiding desert safaris to selling drugs to young backpackers.90

After the 1973 War, the Israeli authorities increased their

employment of the Bedouin by giving them free access to towns and

cities in Israel, and the Bedouin began pouring into Eilat and Be’er

Sheva in addition to Sharm el-Sheikh; in the mid-1970s, almost all

working-age Bedouin males were employed in a wage-paying job.91

This had two major consequences. First, the economic opportunities

available to the Bedouin both increased and diversiﬁed, resulting in

a decline in the relative signiﬁcance of pastoralism to the Bedouin

as it comprised a smaller and smaller share of Bedouin economics.

This additionally shifted the foundations of the Aqaba Bedouin

economy from multi-resource nomadism to wage labor, fully realized

in the 1970s. Despite this shift, the animal producing economy of

the Bedouin has been maintained, and at times has even been in

resurgence. Increasing reliance on employment opportunities closer to

home is also leading to a decline in nomadic movement and increased

sedentarization. This has to do both with increasingly secure access to

water and fodder for ﬂocks as well as increasing reliance on the towns

for livelihood instead of the natural environment.

Employment trends among the Bedouin in

Dahab under Egyptian Rule

A consistent and continuing trend under Egyptian rule has been

the increasing localization of employment. While before the 1960s,

employment was limited to Egyptian cities, and during the Israeli

occupation was extended to the large urban centers of Sharm el-

Sheikh, Eilat, and Be’er Sheva, during the neo-Egyptian period, from

1982 onward, there has been accelerating growth of employment

centers even more locally, with the emergence of market towns in

Taba, Nuwayba, and Dahab. The number of jobs is increasing, as is

their proximity to the homes of the Aqaba Bedouin.

90. Aziz, “Employment in a Bedouin Community,” p. 34.

91. Marx, “Changing Employment Patterns of the Bedouin of South Sinai,”

p. 181.

The Evolving Economies of the Dahab Bedouin—Emerging Trends and Continuities

73

Tourism continues to be the primary source of income for the

Aqaba Bedouin under Egyptian rule, but the market has undergone

a signiﬁcant change in transition from Israeli control back to Egyptian

sovereignty. While the Bedouin did not have to compete with Israelis

for jobs, as the Bedouin monopolized the unskilled labor pool and the

tourism industry, under Egyptian rule, competition for employment

between the Bedouin and unskilled migrant laborers has been intense.

These unskilled workers have come to Sinai from both Egypt and the

Sudan to take advantage of the jobs that Egyptian development has

promised them.

In Dahab, patterns of employment in the tourist industry have

experienced a major transformation. In the years of the Israeli

occupation, tourism in Dahab was largely run by the Bedouin

themselves. They set up campsites and restaurants and employed

other tribesmen. Non-Bedouin businesses during this period had

to purchase land directly from the Bedouin. Even after Dahab was

reoccupied by Egypt, development remained slow in the 1980s and

early 1990s, giving the Bedouin a large degree of freedom. This early

period of low-budget tourism development cemented for the Bedouin a

place in the Dahab economy. At the turn of the millennium, however,

the Egyptian government placed higher priority on economic growth

in Dahab, and began implementing large-scale tourism development

along the beaches according to the goals outlined in the NPDS.92 This

gave the Egyptian government the primary responsibility of regulating

Dahab’s tourist economy and deprived the Bedouin of a great deal

of their economic freedom, increasingly forcing them to rely on the

goodwill of the state to maintain Bedouin employment and ownership

opportunities.

Consumerism is a relatively new concept for the Bedouin, but a

major issue when examining social attitudes towards employment. In

a pastoral economy, there are a number of ways to display wealth,

notably through practices of granting hospitality, as the ability to host

others is a sure sign of prosperity, as well as through the production

of luxury items instead of subsistence items, for example raising

92. Interview with owner of a dive shop in Dahab, video archives, May 14,

2009.

Chapter 2

74

horses in Arabia.93 The Western conception of consumption, based

on the concept of saving money to accrue luxury items, appears to

have been imported into Sinai only through the arrival of Israeli and

European tourists, who introduced the Bedouin to consumer goods.94

The availability of these items close to home, coinciding with the rise

of local markets, has been the major factor encouraging the adoption

of consumer lifestyles, which has, in turn, encouraged more and more

Bedouin to pursue wage-paying jobs with the goal of accumulating

capital. This process, however, is incomplete and is supplemented by

a common trend of gift-giving, whereby the Bedouin accrue consumer

items through the relationships they have formed with foreigners. In

this way, the maintenance of close relationships with foreigners is as

important to patterns of Bedouin consumerism as employment, and

wage labor is not the only path to consumerist lifestyles. Furthermore,

these consumer goods are not always kept by the Bedouin; they are

occasionally sold for cash, and should be considered a form of savings

or investment that can be converted into currency when necessary. In

this way, the turn towards a consumerist economic orientation is also

a product of the rising cost of living.

For the Bedouin, employment does not differ signiﬁcantly from

other forms of subsistence: it is a means to provide basic necessities

such as food, shelter, and security, and secondarily for purposes of

consumption. An implication of this approach is that Bedouin attitudes

towards employment differ from those in Western, industrialized

nations: maintaining oneself in a job to ensure a continuous ﬂow

of income is unnecessary, and perhaps even wasteful, taking away

from other activities that contribute equally to the subsistence of

the family or the maintenance of relationships with foreigners. The

Bedouin work to earn the money they require to purchase items the

family needs, mostly food, clothing, and locally available consumer

goods. Bedouin concepts of saving place a higher value on preserving

and storing necessities for times of emergency than on cash, which

has no real utility except in the short term. While the adoption of

93. William C. Young, “The Bedouin: Discursive Identity or Sociological

Category? A Case Study from Jordan,” Journal of Mediterranean

Studies 9.2 (1999). p. 289.

94. Aziz, “Employment in a Bedouin Community,” p. 34.

The Evolving Economies of the Dahab Bedouin—Emerging Trends and Continuities

75

consumerist tendencies is accelerating and wage labor is increasingly

viewed through a lens of consumerism, many of the Aqaba Bedouin

continue to view employment as one of a number of practices geared

towards subsistence.

This being the case, many Bedouin seek temporary employment

in Dahab. This means that a Bedouin will work for a limited period of

time, perhaps one to two weeks, make some money, and then take

an equal or longer period off. A Bedouin working as a waiter at one of

the restaurants on the Dahab corniche explained that he only worked

when he needed the money, whether it was to provide food for the

family or buy a new bathing suit, and that he might work a week or

two to make what he needed and then stop until he needed more.95

This tendency, not uncommon today among the Dahab Bedouin,

has encouraged a view of the Bedouin as lazy and unreliable, leading

to accusations that the Bedouin despise work and prefer poverty.96

Such attitudes, however, reﬂect the values of a capitalist society that

favors steady employment, the accumulation of capital, and saving,

which are necessary to drive a consumerism-based society; they do

not accurately reﬂect the values of the Bedouin. A pastoral economy

simply cannot be maintained by sloth, and claims that it is are entirely

divorced from the reality of life in the desert.

Another Bedouin described his employment history as one of

low duration and high mobility. He changed jobs according to where

the tourists were concentrated and when. His ﬁrst job, as a Bedouin

tour guide, was only successful during the cool winter months, so he

would limit his time working as a guide, and in the summer he worked

as a waiter at his brother’s beachside restaurant before becoming a

Divemaster.97 He explained that he maintained both a summer and

a winter job, not because he needed the constant ﬂow of money for

himself, but so that he would be able to send continuous money home

to his mother and sisters who live in a desert village. Dahab is a source

95. Conversation with a Bedouin employee, September 22, 2009.

96. Proof of the existence of these attitudes needs no citation as it is recounted

in almost every traveler’s journal and official recollection regarding the

Bedouin. These attitudes continue to be held by many Egyptian migrants

working in Dahab. This topic will be addressed in greater detail in chapter

4 of this study.

97. Interview with a Bedouin Divemaster, July 24, 2009.

Chapter 2

76

of remittances for the Bedouin as much as it is for Egyptian migrant

workers. All of the Bedouin living in Dahab have family in Sinai’s

desert villages, and their sedentarization has created permanent

channels for the ﬂow of tourist revenue to the Bedouin not living in

Dahab or other urban centers. Many more Bedouin rely on tourist

revenue than live in Dahab.

Furthermore, these Bedouin have grown accustomed to labor

insecurity, because in addition to political instability having the

potential to undermine their access to employment, they also know

that they can be dismissed by their employers without any notice. This

being the case, the Bedouin value the ability to work in a number

of different occupations and quickly change from one occupation to

another. This allows them to pursue a wide variety of job opportunities

whenever they might be available in order to mitigate the insecurity

of the job market or the potential ﬁckleness of Egyptian employers.

While providing a measure of ﬂexibility for the Bedouin, this practice

has also limited their vertical mobility in the tourist economy because

it has created a lack of specialization among Bedouin workers. This

lack of specialization is caused by reluctance to make risky, expensive

investments in a single skill. This, according to Dan Rabinowitz, “in

turn, limits the Bedouins’ incorporation into the wider economics

on which they are dependent. They tend to perpetuate themselves

as pools of unskilled laborers, available for hire by the economies of

Egypt… at any time.”98 This allows the Bedouin to pursue a wide

range of jobs, but prevents them from progressing beyond the level

of menial employment and generates negative perceptions regarding

their work ethic.

The major exception to the above discussion has been the

increasing employment of young Bedouin, in their early twenties, in

the windsurﬁng clubs attached to the multinational resorts along the

Dahab Lagoon, as well as in a few scuba shops that employ Bedouin

as Divemasters in addition to drivers and gear carriers.99 Many of

these Bedouin began windsurﬁng and diving as a hobby during their

98. Rabinowitz, “Themes in the Economies of the Bedouin of South Sinai,”

p. 225.

99. Divemaster being a high-skilled job and drivers and gear carriers being

low-skilled.

The Evolving Economies of the Dahab Bedouin—Emerging Trends and Continuities

77

teenage years, and have become natural candidates for employment

in these sectors of the tourist economy. More will be said in the next

chapter about the willingness of some foreign employers to work with

the Bedouin, but for now it is important to note that these Bedouin,

who have turned their hobbies into steady careers, represent a small

minority of Bedouin employees in Dahab.

Bedouin employment, for the most part, is limited to the peripheries

of the Dahab tourist economy. Since Egyptians prefer to hire other

Egyptians, there is little Bedouin presence at the larger resorts or the

Egyptian-owned hotels, with a few exceptions. Instead, the Bedouin

occupy jobs that can be considered self-employment such as driving a

jeep or selling handicrafts, working for other Bedouin, or working as

menial laborers in shops and restaurants. These occupations allow the

Bedouin more freedom, both to pursue a wide variety of jobs and to

decide when to work and when not to. While wage labor has become

the primary source of income for the Bedouin, its insecure nature and

reliance on a single sector of the developed economy, tourism, has

led the Aqaba Bedouin to maintain other economic practices as well.

The Maintenance and Adaptation of

Subsistence Economies

The maintenance of Bedouin subsistence economies in the urban

environment, as shown by the previous generation of Sinai researchers,

is a type of economic insurance against political and economic

instability. The Bedouin have experienced this instability in the past

and know that these periods often lead to increased unemployment

or shocks to the tourist market. In times like these, the Bedouin fall

back on their subsistence economy and the social patterns comprising

it.100 These structures help prevent food shortages, deprivation, and

starvation among the Bedouin in times of crisis or instability. The

strength and vitality of the subsistence economy is directly dependent

on the state of the market economy.

A number of events that occurred in the Sinai over the past

century have reinforced the need for the Bedouin to maintain these

100. Marx, “Oases in South Sinai,” p. 343.

Chapter 2

78

modes of subsistence. Most notable were the wars fought in Egypt

and the Sinai: World War I and the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948, 1956,

June 1967, and October 1973, a number of which, most notably

the October War, froze the economies of the Sinai and led to full

unemployment. More recently, the waves of unrest and terrorism

that struck the Aqaba Coast in the early 2000s in Dahab, Taba, and

Sharm el-Sheikh, discussed in the preface, as well as in the aftermath

of the national uprising in January 2011 that I detail in the epilogue,

brought an immediate halt to the ﬂow of tourists, leading to a spike

in unemployment in a depressed tourist economy.101 Through these

events, which had devastating economic consequences in South Sinai,

the Bedouin have learned that they cannot rely on governments to

provide and maintain stable economies and that in times of crisis, the

Bedouin must be able to rely on themselves. Additionally, they have

discovered the fragile nature of international tourism and the danger

of having to rely on a single sector for a majority of their income.

By maintaining a subsistence economy in times of prosperity and

activating it in times of need, the Bedouin have largely avoided major

food and ﬁnancial crises.

Perhaps more importantly, while this alternate economy has often

been viewed as economically unproductive, especially compared

to the wage labor opportunities available in the towns, it has great

contemporary relevance to the Bedouin as they integrate into Dahab’s

tourist market.102 Despite this lack of productivity, these practices have

not been abandoned, nor have the tribal social structures that support

them. Largely based on pastoralism and agriculture and grounded in

tribal social structures, the subsistence system is often viewed as the

remnant of the Bedouins’ “traditional” modes of living. However, they

have been largely adapted to ﬁt the developing reality in Sinai and

are more reﬂective of contemporary conditions, such as the political

101. I had the opportunity to visit Dahab in July 2011, four months after

the end of the January Revolution; tourism had only slightly begun to

recover. Despite the absence of instability in the Aqaba region itself,

the protests led to a virtual disappearance of tourists from all of Egypt

immediately following the uprisings.

102. Marx, “Changing Employment Patterns of Bedouin in South Sinai,”

p. 173.

The Evolving Economies of the Dahab Bedouin—Emerging Trends and Continuities

79

situation and the availability of market opportunities, than of conditions

of the past. Many economic practices have been maintained, such as

herding, ﬁshing, and smuggling, but the form that they have taken is

signiﬁcantly different today, as old practices have been adapted to ﬁt

new circumstances born from processes of urbanization and tourism

development. In fact, a number of these “traditional” practices have

only recently become quite lucrative and have given the Bedouin a

competitive edge in the market economy.

Herding

Perhaps most central to the study of the Bedouin is the role of herding

and pastoralism. One of the most popular images of the Bedouin is

as herders of goats and camels, and it has even been suggested that

herding is the major criterion deﬁning the Bedouin. For the Aqaba

Bedouin, however, pastoralism has always been a limited-value

practice.103

In the subsistence territory, ﬂocks are taken to pasture by the

young girls and camps would move in order to ensure the ﬂocks would

get sufﬁcient food and water.104 Today among the Aqaba Bedouin,

the picture is signiﬁcantly different. The label “nomadic pastoralism”

suggests that camps move in order to ensure the provision of food

and water to their ﬂocks, the source of the nomad’s livelihood. In the

subsistence territory, technological development, notably pumps and

generators, have largely mitigated the need for nomadic movement.

In Dahab, this necessity is further mitigated by the overabundance

of organic waste left around Bedouin neighborhoods. Instead of

having to bring the ﬂocks out to pasture, they are let loose in the

streets of ‘Asala to graze on the heaps of trash available to them (see

Figure 5). As water is also readily available from government-sunk

wells and urban plumbing, the Bedouin do not need to move their

103. Emanuel Marx, “Tribal Pilgrimages to Saints’ Tombs in South Sinai,” in

Ernest Gellner (ed.), Islamic Dilemmas: Reformers, Nationalists, and

Industrialization: The Southern Shore of the Mediterranean (New

York: Mouton, 1985), p. 113.

104. Gardner, “At Home in South Sinai,” p. 53.

Chapter 2

80

ﬂocks in pursuit of water and pasture. Urbanization and technological

development have negated the need for nomadic movement.

While many Bedouin families living in Dahab own goats and sheep,

very few own enough animals from which to subsist. The Aqaba

Bedouin seem to agree that 50 to 60 goats are needed for subsistence.105

In the 1980s, Ann Gardner estimated the average ﬂock size to number

fewer than 20 goats, with a large herd consisting of 40.106 Flock sizes

began to further decline in the 1970s as increasing opportunities for

employment rendered herding less ﬁnancially attractive.107 Today, the

average size of goat ﬂocks is somewhere between six and ten animals,

and their function has not changed. These herds are not for subsistence

purposes; it would be very hard to maintain larger, subsistence ﬂocks

due to the sparse vegetation available for grazing, which needs to be

supplemented by expensive food purchases. Furthermore, the urban

dietary staples of these ﬂocks, consisting mostly of garbage and poor

quality fodder, have undermined the quality of the products derived

105. Marx, “Tribal Pilgrimages to Saints’ Tombs in South Sinai,” p. 113.

106. Gardner, “At Home in South Sinai,” p. 52.

107. Rabinowitz, “Themes in the Economies of the Bedouin of South Sinai,”

p. 223.

Figure 5: Urban herds.

Photo by Eli Sperling, May 15, 2009.

The Evolving Economies of the Dahab Bedouin—Emerging Trends and Continuities

81

from them. The quality of the meat has suffered signiﬁcantly and the

Bedouin have claimed that the milk from urban goats is essentially

useless unless the goats are maintained inside and fed with purchased

grains or vegetables, which quickly become ﬁnancially prohibitive. In a

day-to-day context, these ﬂocks are at best unproductive and at worst

a drain on Bedouin resources. Instead of considering these ﬂocks as

the economic mainstay for the Bedouin, they should be seen as a

nucleus for reactivating the pastoral economy in times of crisis and as

tools for the maintenance of tribal solidarities. Outside of these two

situations, these animals are rarely consumed; their use is primarily

geared towards modes of tribal maintenance, such as slaughtering for

tribal feasts or celebrations aimed at strengthening kinship ties.

According to historical research done by Dan Rabinowitz, this

attitude towards pastoralism is not new, but appears to have been the

modus operandi for the Aqaba Bedouin even in the 19th century.108

Thus, pastoralism has not been the primary mode of subsistence for

the urbanized Aqaba Bedouin, merely a source of food security in

times of crisis. Clearly, herding was never the sole occupation of the

Bedouin.

Fishing

The Mzeina have ﬁshed the waters of Aqaba for as long as they

have lived next to the Gulf, and they have used their catch for both

subsistence and trade. Today, ﬁshing remains a valued economic

pursuit among the Mzeina, who continue to supplement their diets

with dried ﬁsh, but who also have found new markets in which to

sell their catches. Fishing can be considered a traditional economic

activity that they have both maintained and adapted to new sources of

demand in the developing market-based economy.

Fishing was (and remains) a popular summer activity for the Mzeina,

who in the past organized expeditions to spend a number of weeks

ﬁshing from temporary villages by the sea and then would preserve

their catch by salting the ﬁsh to last many months.109 The beneﬁts

108. Ibid.

109. Lavie, The Poetics of Military Occupation, pp. 20–21.

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82

of this practice were twofold. First, the ﬁsh caught in the summer

could be stored by the Bedouin for long periods of time, and could

comprise a signiﬁcant portion of their diet if necessary, even into the

winter. Second, the preservation of the ﬁsh allowed the Bedouin to

bring them to distant markets such as Cairo. In such a market these

Bedouin products were rare, and the Bedouin were able to trade

relatively small amounts of ﬁsh for the grains and other agricultural

products they needed. In this way, the Bedouin did not have to rely

solely on the products they derived from their ﬂocks.

For the Aqaba Bedouin who live in the desert villages, drying and

preserving ﬁsh continues to be an important source of subsistence.

Fishing as an economic activity has been preserved by the Bedouin

and continues to function for subsistence purposes. Simultaneously,

tourism development in Dahab brought a fundamental transformation

in the potential role of ﬁshing for the Bedouin. Along the Dahab

corniche, dozens of restaurants specializing in seafood have opened

and created strong local demand for fresh ﬁsh. Bedouin in Dahab and

Figure 6: Dried, preserved ﬁsh.

Photo by author, September 23, 2009.

The Evolving Economies of the Dahab Bedouin—Emerging Trends and Continuities

83

other tourist centers no longer preserve the ﬁsh for transport and

trade in faraway markets, quite often requiring many days of travel

and hardship, and have instead turned to the local market. Tourism

has created market demand for a number of Bedouin products. The

successful operation of these practices in local contexts has allowed

the Bedouin to cut their reliance on transitory trade and integrate

themselves more fully into local economies using their subsistence

skills.

At the end of a successful ﬁshing trip, the Bedouin can sell their

catch in the Bedouin ﬁsh market in ‘Asala.110 While a majority of the

ﬁsh consumed in Dahab does not come from the Gulf of Aqaba, a

number of restaurants have begun buying their ﬁsh from the Bedouin

market, for it is both cheaper and fresher than the ﬁsh imported from

Suez. Furthermore, while much of the ﬁsh consumed in Dahab is

frozen and shipped in from Suez, every restaurant in Dahab claims the

ﬁsh is freshly caught locally. Tourists seek fresh, local produce, and if

it were not for the manipulation of information by the restaurants, it

is clear that those restaurants selling local, Bedouin-caught ﬁsh would

be favored over those restaurants who import frozen ﬁsh from outside

the region due to the perceived difference in quality.

Additionally, the Egyptian government has declared commercial

ﬁshing in the Gulf of Aqaba illegal, both on an industrial scale, but

also for the Bedouin, essentially rendering a main income-earning

activity of the Bedouin criminal and simultaneously ensuring a role

in Sinai tourism for commercial Egyptian food suppliers. Despite

this restriction, the practice of selling Aqaba ﬁsh to local restaurants

continues and it appears as if the state has decided to look the

other way as a number of seaside restaurants continue purchasing

their stocks from the Bedouin. Despite the legal ramiﬁcations of this

relationship, market forces, notably regarding price and quality, have

induced these businesses and some Bedouin ﬁshermen to assume any

legal risk. Furthermore, with the state’s lack of regulation of Bedouin

ﬁshing practices, the current system of enforcement actually allows

the Bedouin to monopolize ﬁshing in the Gulf of Aqaba. The success

of Bedouin ﬁshing activities in the Dahab market suggests the large

scale ﬁnancial success that some previously-subsistence practices

110. Interview conducted September 18, 2009.

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could have for the Aqaba Bedouin in the developing tourist economy

under prevailing market conditions.

Smuggling and Narcotics

The narcotics trade in South Sinai is both a new phenomenon and a

continuation of a traditional practice. Smuggling was an occupation

adopted after the armies of Muhammad ‘Ali suppressed raiding.

Similar to raiding, successful smuggling activities require extensive

knowledge of the geography of the desert and an ability to move

where government forces cannot. As the ability to raid caravans

and towns declined as a result of greater state control over main

transportation routes, the Bedouin of South Sinai turned increasingly

to smuggling, which focused on transporting goods across territories

inaccessible to government forces, especially after the criminalization

of hashish in Egypt led to a price spike in 1862.111 This practice took

off in the 1930s, and by the Israeli occupation it was a major source

of income for the Aqaba Bedouin, perhaps as much as 30 percent.112

In the period before Israeli rule, the major products being smuggled

were hashish and opium; the Bedouin would convey the drugs from

their points of arrival into the Nile Valley, which has historically been

a major center for the sale and consumption of these two drugs.113

Today, a number of developments have transformed the smuggling

trade in South Sinai.114 Tourism in Sinai has once again provided local

outlets for the distribution and sale of these drugs. Whereas in the

past, most of the drugs transiting through Sinai would exit, now local

111. Emanuel Marx, “Hashish Smuggling by Bedouin in South Sinai,” in Dina

Siegel and Hans Nelen (eds.), Organized Crime Culture, Markets and

Policies (Studies of Organized Crime) (New York: Springer, 2007),

p. 31.

112. Ibid., p. 29.

113. For a history of opium in Egypt, see Joseph Hobbs, “Troubling Fields:

The Opium Poppy in Egypt,” Geographical Review 88.1 (1998), p.

68.

114. I do not detail issues of human and weapons trafficking and international

smuggling practiced by Northern tribes here.

The Evolving Economies of the Dahab Bedouin—Emerging Trends and Continuities

85

demand has shifted the ﬂow of drugs into tourist centers, especially

in Dahab and to the smaller Bedouin-run tourist camps along the

Aqaba Coast such as those in Ras al-Shatayn and Bir Sweir, located

between Taba and Nuwayba.115 These locations have received the

infamous label as centers of narco-tourism, and Dahab has often

been compared to other vacation destinations known for drug use

such as Goa and Phuket.116 Paralleling this has been a rise in Bedouin

consumption and the beginnings of drug cultivation inside Sinai,

which began in the 1980s when Lebanese cultivators, ﬂeeing the civil

war, relocated to Sinai and began teaching the Bedouin cultivation

techniques. No longer just a corridor for the transit of drugs between

major cities, Sinai has become an outlet for the sale of these drugs,

and more recently, the desert has become a haven for cultivation;

many smugglers have made the transition to producers.117 This was

made possible by the rise in local demand stemming from budget-

and backpacker-tourism on the Aqaba Coast and the illicit reputation

circulated in the media and travel guides, which might be considered

“The Lonely Planet effect.”118

The sale of hashish, marijuana, and opium in Dahab is well

established and quite lucrative for the Bedouin. These drugs are not

just sold to tourists, however, and migrant workers as well as other

Bedouin have become equal consumers, maintaining constant levels

of demand. The Bedouin control every stage of local production and

distribution, and just like the smuggling activities from the past, the

current market employs many Bedouin at a number of stages. These

115. The more universal name for Ras el-Shatayn is Ras el-Shaytan (Head

of the Devil), which is an Israeli corruption that stuck. I have preserved

the name conveyed to me by the Bedouin. Ras el-Shatayn is so named

because it is the location of two beaches that meet in a peak, “Shatayn”

being Arabic for “two beaches.”

116. Behbehanian, “Policing the Illicit Peripheries of Egypt’s Tourism

Industry,” p. 33.

117. Hobbs, “Troubling Fields: The Opium Poppy in Egypt,” p. 69.

118. Which is to say that when all the tour guides include a note to travelers

that these places are known as centers of drug consumption, then it is

only natural that the ones convinced to go will be the ones hoping to

participate.

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activities can be grouped in two separate categories: the hashish trade,

which continues to rely on previously-established smuggling networks

since hashish is not produced locally but smuggled into Sinai from

places such as Morocco, and the cultivation of marijuana (see ﬁgure

7), locally referred to as treina, and opium.

Regarding the networks of production and distribution, at the top

there are the cultivators, who hide their ﬁelds in the mountainous

desert to avoid detection, as well as smugglers, who bring the hashish

in from Mediterranean ports such as Port Said and transport them

across the peninsula. In both cases, they sell bulk units to local

Bedouin suppliers who convey them into the towns, avoiding Egyptian

checkpoints and other methods of state control, to supply the local

Bedouin dealers. Egyptian migrants do occasionally attempt to enter

the trade; however, the Bedouin cultivators and distributors refuse

to include the Egyptians due to a lack of trust. Besides attempts by

Egyptian migrants to sell fake or marked-up hashish to tourists, the

Figure 7: Cannibis farm in South Sinai.

The Evolving Economies of the Dahab Bedouin—Emerging Trends and Continuities

87

Bedouin monopolize the drug trade in South Sinai.119 This is another

example of Bedouin labor specialization, where their subsistence skill

set, tribal social structure, and geographical knowledge make them

the only ones able to successfully operate the drug trade in Sinai.

It would be complicated to argue that drug cultivation and smuggling

are part of the Bedouins’ subsistence economy due to the reliance on

the tourism market and the rules of demand and supply. In the past,

the Bedouin received the drugs from international sources and merely

conveyed them across their territories; in return they would get cash.

Thus, smuggling was not based on subsistence but supplement as well

as contact with settled society, just as raiding and trading had been

in the past. The infrastructure supporting this network, however, is

very much part of the Bedouins’ subsistence economy; smuggling and

cultivation are supported and maintained by the same structures that

help maintain the pastoral economy. The movement (but not the sale)

of drugs is based on the same rules as pasturing ﬂocks: all Bedouin

have equal access to territories of other tribesmen.120 Bedouin oases

and gardens, sources of Bedouin agriculture, are also meticulously

maintained as safe havens for smugglers as they move across the

Sinai. Finally, and most importantly, smuggling and cultivation are

supported and reinforced by the kinship bonds that comprise tribal

structure. Tribal social gatherings support smuggling and distribution

activities by maintaining networks and helping to establish new social

ties. The social patterns at the heart of the Bedouin subsistence

economy also regulate Bedouin smuggling. In this way, smuggling is a

practice relying on both market and subsistence economies. Demand

and distribution are based on the rules of the market economy, while

production and supply are made possible by the structures supporting

the subsistence economy. Drug cultivation and distribution, a non-

traditional activity, has been incorporated into the subsistence structure

of the Bedouin. Furthermore, as Dahab lies in the territory of the

Mzeina Bedouin, they enjoy the exclusive right to distribute narcotics

in the town. Similarly, the Jabaliyya Bedouin monopolize the drug

market in the Santa Katerina region, which includes Mt. Sinai, while

the Terabin control the market north of Nuwayba, in the beachside

119. Interview with a Dahab hashish dealer, May 14, 2009.

120. Marx, “Hashish Smuggling by Bedouin in South Sinai,” p. 31.

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88

campgrounds of Bir Sweir and Ras al-Shatayn. This further reﬂects

the importance of tribal structures and boundaries in the operation of

the drug trade in South Sinai.

In contrast to ﬁshing, a traditional activity adapted to the market

environment, smuggling and drug cultivation are external practices

adopted by the Bedouin and incorporated into their subsistence

system, further showing a lack of distinction between “traditional” and

“modern” economic practices. Instead, Bedouin economies should be

viewed as being grounded in two simultaneous systems, one based on

subsistence and one based on market forces. The subsistence economy

is regulated by tribal social structures and patterns. These support

structures have allowed the Bedouin to establish economic networks

to monopolize certain aspects of the developing market economy.

Furthermore, this economy forms the basis for food security in case

the more lucrative market economy is disrupted by factors outside

their control. These two systems are not maintained independently

but overlap in certain areas, even to the extent that a single practice,

such as smuggling, may rely simultaneously on both systems to ensure

its smooth operation. The Bedouin have not abandoned old economic

practices for new, but instead have adapted their old practices to new

conditions and taken advantage of emerging opportunities.

The Role of the Camel to the Sinai

Bedouin: “Traditionalization” of Past

Practices

In practically every state with a Bedouin population, tourism advertising

agencies play heavily on the image of the Bedouin and his camel,

and popular representations envision an intensely close relationship

between the two. This is the case in Egypt, Jordan, the Gulf states,

and even Israel. It is true that the raising and reliance on camels was

a major aspect of Bedouin economies in Arabia. Khazanov explains,

however, that the species composition of nomads’ herds is based more

on geographic and environmental conditions than any social ﬁxation

on a particular animal. He explains that the camel is ideally suited to

the deserts of Arabia and the Sahara, which is the reason the camel

The Evolving Economies of the Dahab Bedouin—Emerging Trends and Continuities

89

and the Bedouin are associated as strongly as they are.121 Bedouin are

not limited to these territories, however, and also inhabit the deserts of

Sinai, the Israeli Negev, Syria, and Iraq. In a number of these settings,

notably Sinai, parts of the Israeli Negev, and the Iraqi cultivable zone,

Saharan conditions favoring camel-breeding do not apply, especially

in the rugged and mountainous terrain of Sinai, which is a desert but

one of radically different topography. In the mountains, sheep and

goats are better suited than camels, which are adapted to range across

great, ﬂat expanses.

This fact has not prevented the image of the Bedouin and the

camel from being applied to the Aqaba Bedouin according to

perpetuated stereotypes, and through this mechanism the camel has

actually come to play a more important economic role for the Aqaba

Bedouin in the age of tourism. Many tourists come to Sinai expecting

to see camels and hope for an opportunity to ride them. While a

number of Bedouin in Dahab own camels, the number of camels

located a signiﬁcant distance from Dahab remains lower, because the

value of the camel is directly related to its proximity to tourist centers,

notably Dahab, Sharm el-Sheikh, and Santa Katarina. Whereas in the

past, the camel was of limited economic value to the Sinai Bedouin,

who did not generate their income directly from the camel but used it

to facilitate other activities, it has today become an important source

of tourism revenue, not for any speciﬁc utility it provides, but for its

symbolism.

In the past, families generally only owned one or two camels,

for use as beasts of burden and transportation, facilitating travel and

transport between home and distant markets or for the conveyance

of travelers and goods across tribal territories.122 While these camels

were, to a limited extent, kept for subsistence purposes, animal

products such as milk and wool more often came from goats and

sheep than camels. This is in stark contrast to the way camels have

been utilized in Arabia, described by Louise Sweet:

121. Anatoly M. Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World (Madison:

University of Wisconsin, 1994), p. 26.

122. Gardener, “At Home in South Sinai,” p. 53.

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90

As a resource of food, wool, leather, and other products, and

as a means of freight and personal transport, the camel, in one

species, provides all these for the Bedouin on a scale that no

other domestic animal or combination of animals in this area

can rival. As highly specialized a desert animal as the camel

is, it is a multipurpose and generalized beast in the Bedouin

economy. It is a primary source of nutrients for the Bedouin,

both directly and indirectly…123

Furthermore, with the advent of motorized transportation, the

camel’s utility as a beast of burden has largely come to an end, with

the exception of certain routes through the mountains that are too

rugged for jeeps and pick-ups. Today, despite this decline in the utility

of the camel to the Aqaba Bedouin for subsistence and transportation

purposes, a number of Bedouin near tourist centers have begun

keeping camels in larger herds for tourist use. In the tourist market,

the method of acquiring camels is completely different from that of

camel-breeding Bedouin; they are purchased, not bred and raised,

which requires years of investment, and thus the camel is not a part

of the Bedouins’ pastoral economy, with the exception of a few select

desert villages who have begun breeding camels.124

Instead, a number of families in ‘Asala keep a small number of

camels, generally only one or two due largely to the expense of their

upkeep, which points to an economic continuity with past practices.

The Bedouin “rent” these camels for the day to other Bedouin who

are active in camel tourism, thus generating cash directly from the

camel without consuming it.125 In this way, there is an economic

discontinuity with past practices. This camel tourism may be

formal, with the existence of agreements to work with speciﬁc tour

123. Sweet, “Camel Raiding of the North Arabian Bedouin,” p. 274.

124. Interview conducted at Wadi Ginea with Bedouin camel guide,

September 18, 2009. Observation and discussion with camel breeding

Bedouin, June 10, 2012—these villages benefit from ideal topographical

conditions that support camel breeding. For a discussion of camel

breeding versus purchase, see Sweet, “Camel Raiding of North Arabian

Bedouin,” p. 274.

125. A Demographic survey of ‘Asala, conducted on February 12, 2010.

The Evolving Economies of the Dahab Bedouin—Emerging Trends and Continuities

91

companies, or informal, with the Bedouin offering to work directly

with the tourists.

Bedouin engaged in informal camel tourism gather their rented

camels in the morning and congregate with these herds near popular

beaches and dive sites around Dahab. These sites are visited daily by

many tourists, often brought on excursions organized by resort hotels

and “safari” operators as well as dive shops; when they are dropped

at the site, Bedouin vendors are there waiting to offer their services.

During my travels, I observed that as the distance from tourist

centers increased, the number of camels kept by tribesmen appeared

to decrease, and furthermore, camels were not kept in herds as they

were closer to Dahab. This is because, outside of tourism, the camel

has greatly declined in value for the Aqaba Bedouin. Their role as

a pack animal was indispensable in the past, but today, the camel

has largely been replaced by jeeps and pickup trucks, which not only

convey people and goods, but also have the ability to carry goats

and sheep. Cars require less maintenance than camels, and across

the Middle East, trucks are replacing camels as primary means of

transportation. Trucks and paved roads have rendered the camel

obsolete in this sense. They have thus been relegated to the realm of

tourism as a Bedouin “tradition.”

In one respect, the signiﬁcance of the camel has diminished. In

another, with the emergence of tourism, the camel has achieved a

newfound signiﬁcance and an economic viability that the environment

of Sinai had previously prevented the camel from attaining. For

these Bedouin, the economic function of the camel has undergone

a process of “traditionalization” to reﬂect a link to these Bedouins’

idealized past. It is this “traditionalization” that has transformed the

camel into a cultural artifact, which gives the camel signiﬁcance to

tourists in pursuit of Bedouin culture and gives the camel a new type

of economic value.

It would be reductionist to attribute the link between Bedouin

and camels to cultural proclivities, especially considering that camels

are not considered luxury goods to the Bedouin; they are not raised

and maintained, at considerable expense, as mere pets. Instead it is

important to examine the economic utility provided by camels, which

varies according to geographical region. From an examination of

where and how camels are kept in the Aqaba region, it is clear that

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92

the camel does not play a signiﬁcant role in the contemporary, non-

tourist economy of the Bedouin. As a source of subsistence, they

have always come second to goats and sheep in Sinai, and as beasts

of burden, they have been replaced by newer forms of technology,

notably motorized transportation, which is both more practical and

more comfortable than transport by camel. This reality, however, has

not in any way impacted the stereotype of the Bedouin and the camel,

and it is precisely through this stereotype that the camel has found an

entirely new type of economic utility for the Aqaba Bedouin.

Externally held understandings of Bedouin culture, in this case made

signiﬁcant through the dialectics of tourism, have the power to affect

the way in which the Bedouin communicate their culture to outsiders.

It is clear from even this short examination of the camel’s role to

the Aqaba Bedouin that they continue to be relevant to the Bedouin

due to the revenues tourism brings to the community. However, due

to the need to legitimize tourist activities as “authentic,” the Bedouin

have had to manipulate the symbolism of the camel to keep it relevant

in a tourist setting. In an article published in the quasi-ofﬁcial Egyptian

newspaper al-Ahram entitled “Of Camels and Bedouin,” Samir Sobi

appears to reﬂect the wholesale acceptance of this manipulation

of the symbol of the camel, even suggesting that “the camel is an

inseparable part of any family unit.”126 This claim is certainly untrue

and borderline absurd, especially considering that many of the Aqaba

Bedouin do not even possess camels. Furthermore, it is unclear

how any society would approach the concept of eating or otherwise

consuming “indispensable” members of the family. In any case, the

wholesale acceptance of the manipulated symbol demonstrates the

effectiveness of the “traditionalization” of such a commodity. It further

shows what kind of role culture plays in the economics of tourism,

and how activities seen as “traditional” play an important role in the

contemporary economy of the Aqaba Bedouin.

126. Samir Sobi, “Of Camels and Bedouin,” Al-Ahram Weekly, English

Edition, Issue No. 1055, July 7–13, 2011.<http://weekly.ahram.org.

eg/2011/1055/special.htm>.

The Evolving Economies of the Dahab Bedouin—Emerging Trends and Continuities

93

Case Study: Friendship Bracelets and the

Adoption of New Economic Roles

Walking along the corniche in Dahab, one phenomenon impossible

to miss is the droves of Bedouin children, usually girls, selling weaved

bracelets to tourists who are shopping or eating. This is a prime

example of the adoption of new roles by various members of the

family, and bracelet-weaving has become a popular activity among

young Bedouin girls only since their presence on the corniche

became a permanent feature of Dahab. While historical evidence and

observations from the Aqaba Bedouins’ subsistence territory has shown

that herding and caring for the ﬂocks were the primary economic roles

of these girls, increasing sedentarization and contact with strangers

has limited these girls’ ability to travel with their animals.127 This had

the twofold consequence of limiting the usefulness of pastoralism and

necessitating the adoption of a new role for the girls. The weaving

and selling of friendship bracelets was the replacement. However, the

adoption of this practice is motivated not merely by economic factors,

but by social necessities as well.

Bracelet weaving as an economic activity has established a

ﬂow of revenue independent of the men of the family, the primary

income generators. It provides the girls with a bit of money to be self-

reliant, which, in turn, has increased its value among the girls, and

consequently among Bedouin boys as well. A number of our Bedouin

interviewees, both male and female, know the skill, having picked it

up during their childhood on the corniche. While past subsistence

roles of boys and girls have been different, in the tourist economy,

both have gravitated towards the bracelets.128 However, boys seem to

afﬁrm Western perceptions of bracelet weaving as a feminine activity,

and this has limited the extent to which they have engaged in bracelet

weaving and selling. Instead, the boys appear more interested in

engaging in drug dealing.

The sale of bracelets to tourists does not hold merely an economic

beneﬁt, but plays a vital social role in the growth of the Bedouin into

127. Gardener, “At Home in South Sinai,” p. 55.

128. Aziz, “Employment in a Bedouin Community,” p. 39.

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94

adults. Bedouin interviewed in this study tended not to hold formal

education in very high esteem; many seemed to believe that the

time they spent on the corniche was more important. This is the

forum through which the Bedouin learn English and business skills,

where they learn how to interact with tourists to prepare for a life

surrounded by the tourism industry and establish personal contacts

with restaurants, vendors, and authority ﬁgures (such as police) that

will allow them to be successful later in life.129 Thus, bracelet weaving

is also a type of investment in skills that will be vital for the future

livelihood of young Bedouin.

A number of Bedouin youths, both boys and girls, have told us that

their English ability comes exclusively from growing up in the streets

of Dahab, and that it is a more important skill than anything learned

in school.130 In this regard, these activities may eventually assume

greater importance for the boys than the girls as it is the boys who

are expected to maintain their presence in town through adulthood.

129. Interview with young Bedouin adults, conducted on video, February 15,

2010.

130. Interview with Bedouin female youths, May 13, 2009.

Figure 8: Bedouin girls selling bracelets.

Photo by Eli Sperling, February 9, 2010.

The Evolving Economies of the Dahab Bedouin—Emerging Trends and Continuities

95

But for Bedouin women in Dahab, bracelets allow daughters to act

as messengers and interlocuters for the mothers, who as adults are

conﬁned closer to home in an urban setting, indicating this activity

plays a second, equally important social function for the Bedouin.131

Young girls have the freedom to move between male and female

spaces, and Bedouin mothers have taken advantage of their children

to mitigate the limitations that maintaining modesty in a tourist center

has required.

The adoption of bracelet weaving is thus a further adaptation

of the Bedouin to urbanization and tourism development; it did not

develop in a vacuum. The Bedouin have used it both to participate

in the economics of the town and to mitigate the social restrictions

of urbanization to maintain the ﬂow of information and contacts

between households, as well as aid in the socialization of Bedouin

children into the environment of the developing market. It is both

an income-earning activity and an educational investment in the skills

they will need to be successful in Dahab’s tourist economy.

Concluding Remarks

It is clear from an examination of a variety of Bedouin economic

practices that the Aqaba Bedouin maintain a broad economy

comprised of multiple sectors. Today, wage labor is the primary source

of income for the Bedouin community, and along the Aqaba Coast a

heavy majority of this is concentrated in the tourism sector. Due to the

instability of tourism experienced by the Aqaba Bedouin over the past

twenty years, coupled with a much longer history of war and conﬂict

in Sinai, they have realized that they must maintain economic systems

independent of tourism that they can operate in times of crisis.

The Bedouin are not permanently shifting away from subsistence

economics in favor of wage labor, but continue to balance the two,

challenging the unilinearity of economic modernization assumptions.

From an examination of the subsistence economy, it becomes clear

that this is not an outdated system in permanent decline, but a survival

mechanism to cope with a sparse environment and an unstable

131. Aziz, “Employment in a Bedouin Community,” p. 37.

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96

political situation, as well as a source of economic utility in the tourism

market. In this way, the two economies are complimentary, with their

primary wage economy focusing on supplying the main needs of the

community, allowing for a certain leakage of “pastoral economics”

into the tourist market, and the other being a backup to cope with

external crises that cut them off from the ﬁrst, either in times of war

or due to other external factors, such as government policies, which

are out of the Bedouins’ control.

The Aqaba Bedouin are not rejecting development to maintain

“traditional nomadism,” which, in any case, was never the Bedouin

condition, but neither are they embracing developing economies at

the expense of their previously-accepted economic system. Instead,

the Bedouin have consistently relied on a balanced approach based

on adaptation, where old practices are adjusted to new opportunities,

and the adoption of new practices, which are incorporated into the

Bedouins’ economic order. As Rabinowitz has shown, the Bedouin

have consistently sought to balance income-earning practices with

subsistence, and Bedouin subsistence has been a core of Bedouin

economic practice only inasmuch as it has historically constituted

their last line of defense against economic insecurity. Furthermore,

the concept of economic “rationalization,” which is a major theme

in the literature on economic development, should not be understood

as a rejection of subsistence economics.132 Consumerism and

revenue maximization do not deﬁne economic rationality. Thus,

it is not accurate to discuss development and “modernization” of

Bedouin economies, or the transition of the Bedouin from completely

“traditional” subsistence economies to completely “modern” market

economies. An examination of economic transformation among

the Bedouin instead demonstrates that the Bedouin instead merely

hold different notions of economic success that have led them to

participate in the emerging market economy according to their own

socioeconomic patterns and interests. As we will see, this has posed

a direct challenge to Egyptian goals for tourism development in Sinai.

132. James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion

and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1976); see also Samuel L. Popkin, The Rational Peasant: The

Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam (Berkeley: University

of California Press, 1979).

97

Chapter 3

Economic Competition and

Marginalization

The thing that makes the Bedouin very angry in Dahab is that there

is no economic equality. And there are some people who don’t

even have a license, a guarantee for his home, and [his family] lived

here 300 years ago.

Bedouin community organizer, May 30, 2012.

Tourism development along the Aqaba Coast has raised the standards

of living for the Bedouin, giving them access to both utilities and

services (water, electricity, education, healthcare, etc.) on the one hand

and economic opportunities on the other. The Bedouin, however, have

not perceived these developments to be purely positive. In fact, despite

objective material gains attained through development, many Aqaba

Bedouin have come to view development as a form of exploitation

and marginalization, notably as Sinai shifted back to Egyptian rule

and Bedouin monopolization of the tourism industry came to an end.

Far from generating gratitude amongst the Bedouin and accelerating

their integration, Egyptian development strategies have actually led

to increasing resentment of Egyptians, whom the Bedouin came to

consider outsiders. These Egyptians, coming to the Sinai as migrant

laborers in search of work, have placed increasing economic pressure

on the Bedouin community as in many cases jobs are being given to

migrants at the expense of the local population. While state policies

and employment preferences largely exclude the Aqaba Bedouin in

favor of Egyptian migrant workers, Bedouin economic activities are

largely closed to Egyptians due to the exclusivity of Bedouin economic

networks stressing solidarity, creating the framework for competition

between the two communities. Egypt’s development policies, while

creating greater returns for the Bedouin, are actually restricting the

Bedouins’ employment opportunities.

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98

Many Egyptians and Sudanese come to Sinai in search of the

same opportunities available to the Bedouin, and Egyptian policies,

favoring the employment of Egyptian migrants, have made it easier

for a newly arrived migrant to secure employment than a Bedouin

who has lived in Dahab his whole life. The Bedouin are forced to

compete with unskilled migrants who enjoy the support of the state

regarding the allocation of jobs and other resources, who have

experience dealing with Egyptian bureaucracy, and who appear to be

more qualiﬁed due to higher levels of formal education. The Bedouin

are at a disadvantage for all of these reasons.

As tourism development proceeds along the Aqaba Coast, Egyptian

and foreign-owned companies have increasingly come to control all

major elements of the tourist economy in Sinai, including hotels, sport

clubs, restaurants, and shops.133 This is partially a consequence of

better access and more experience in development among Egyptian

businessmen, but is to some extent ensured by Egyptian authorities,

who clearly assist Egyptian and foreign employers in establishing

the permanence of their business, even at the expense of Bedouin

businesses that are occasionally shut down to make way for Egyptian

or foreign development. Recently, Egyptian policy has related to the

Bedouin as more of a nuisance or a problem than as a group entitled

to equitable government treatment. The state has treated certain

attempts to establish businesses or assert claims to certain pieces of

land as criminal activity instead of a legitimate claim to certain rights

or privileges. Government treatment of the Bedouin in the sphere of

economics and development has largely shaped their perception of

marginalization.

Egyptian policies regarding two issues in particular have combined

to create an atmosphere of dispossession: land tenure and business

ownership/employment. In both these categories, the Bedouin

see ofﬁcial support for giving to the Egyptians what belongs to the

Bedouin according to their customary rights, and the Bedouin have

been unable to effectively confront this problem. While each Bedouin

household uses less land now than in the past, and many took up

permanently settled residence when they moved to Dahab, the

133. Homa, “Touristic Development in Sinai, Egypt,” p. 239.

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99

Bedouin believe the Egyptians are gaining the most valuable pieces

of land, those pieces that the Bedouin can use to establish their own

businesses, and fear that the loss of this land will equate to the loss of

income and security.

Land Tenure, the Bedouin, and the State

Generally, tribal notions of land tenure support the corporate claim

of a tribe to the entirety of the land it controls. Within this territory,

individual tribesmen have the right to claim and develop plots of

land according to an accepted formula based on customary right,

not purchase. For the Mzeina, both of these statements hold true.

The territory of the Mzeina, stretching between Nuwayba and Sharm

el-Sheikh along the east coast of the peninsula, is available for any

Mzeina to exploit or develop.

According to Mzeina customary law, there are three ways an

individual can stake a personal claim to tribal land. First, the family

can plant fruit trees.134 The recognition of control over a piece of land

in return for agricultural development is incentive for the Bedouin

to plant trees and create orchards. A second method for claiming a

piece of land is by building a permanent house on it. While in South

Sinai, temporary shelters such as tents or palm huts (‘arishas) may

be established anywhere, even in the territories of other tribes, a

permanent structure, such as a brick house, is a sign of ownership.

Thus, if a member of the tribe builds a permanent structure on a

plot of land, customary law recognizes that land as his (or hers for

that matter, as women, as family matriarchs, can also “own” land).135

Finally, it is possible to claim a piece of land by digging a well, another

sign of development. A plot of land containing any of these three

developments is considered owned by an individual or family according

to Bedouin customary law, and it is not surprising that most Bedouin

homes clearly display these three features.

134. Interview with Bedouin homeowners about land tenure and housing,

September 18, 2009.

135. Interview about Bedouin land ownership in Dahab, July 22, 2009.

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What does the term “ownership” mean regarding corporate land?

Common notions of tribal land tenure recognize the usufructory

rights of tribesmen, as well as their right to pass the land to their kin.136

They would not, however, have the ultimate right of alienation, such

as the ability to sell the land to someone outside the tribe. However,

with processes of urbanization and development, Bedouin have begun

settling permanently and staking claims to available pieces of land,

especially in Dahab and other tourist centers. This land, while claimed

according to the tenets of tribal law, is presently conceived of by the

Aqaba Bedouin in terms of pure ownership instead of corporate

ownership. The Aqaba Bedouin, therefore, consider land they have

claimed to be available for them to develop or sell.137 When tourism

development began in Dahab, but before the Egyptians had formalized

their own system to grant land permits, many Bedouin claimed

valuable pieces of land in order to sell them to Egyptian and foreign

developers. This land was sold at greatly deﬂated prices for individual

tribesmen to earn quick cash, and in this way, much of the prime

land along the Dahab bay passed out of the hands of the Mzeina into

the ownership of Egyptian and foreign businessmen. By the time the

problem became clear to the Bedouin, it was too late to reclaim these

valuable plots. In game theory parlance, this is a classic example of

the “social dilemma” where the rational pursuit of individual interests

produces suboptimal outcomes for the entire group.138

Egyptian policy regarding Bedouin land in Dahab has been to

aggressively dispute their remaining claims to valuable pieces of

property and encourage the sale of tribal land to developers. The

Egyptians have developed two major avenues to gain control of tribal

land from the Aqaba Bedouin in and around Dahab. The ﬁrst has been

an offer of compensation; in return for land the government wants,

they offer to reimburse the claimant with a plot of 200 square meters

somewhere in the desert away from development.139 The government

136. Austin Kennett, Bedouin Justice: Law and Customs Among the

Egyptian Bedouin (London: Kegan Paul Int’l Ltd., 2000), p. 89.

137. Interview with Bedouin Land activists about land and land sales, May

14, 2009.

138. Peter Kollock, “Social Dilemmas: The Anatomy of Cooperation,” Annual

Review of Sociology 24.1 (1998), pp. 183–214.

139. Ibid.

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101

thereby hopes to move the Bedouin away from areas targeted for

economic development, physically removing them from sources of

tourist income. This program has largely been a failure. According to

the Bedouin, there is no need to be compensated because both the

land by the coast and the land in the interior belong to the Bedouin,

and furthermore, the Bedouin do not wish to trade a claim on an

economically valuable piece of land near the coast for a plot far from

tourist centers. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the Bedouin

who have already agreed to this deal with government authorities

claim that they were ultimately never compensated. The Bedouin

have been hesitant to make agreements with the Egyptian authorities

because they do not trust that the authorities will fulﬁll their promises.

The second avenue the state has used to dispute a Bedouin claim

to a plot of land is to merely not recognize its legality and maintain the

claim that all land is state land. This is possible due to the ideology of

the state system that the state should have ultimate sovereignty over its

territory, as well as the fact that it does not recognize the legitimacy of

any of the customary signs of Bedouin land ownership; the Egyptians

only recognize ownership based on possession of legal papers, which

generally only wealthier Bedouin possess due to their expense. The

concept of state-ownership of land dates to the Ottoman Land Code

of 1858, a piece of land legislation whose main principles have been

maintained by many post-colonial Middle East governments. Thus,

the Egyptian state, since it governs the Sinai Peninsula, has ultimate

control and ownership of the land there, and has the “legitimate”

right to claim plots of land considered by the Mzeina to be part of

their tribal territory. The Egyptian state further argues that since the

Bedouin cannot show proof of having purchased this land according

to legal standards, the possession of the aforementioned permit, the

government does not have to recognize tribal claims.

One Bedouin interviewee described his attempts to build a

house before getting married. He had tried to settle on a piece of

undeveloped property claimed by his family to build a house, a

common requirement to be considered ready for marriage. The

police, however, prevented him from settling on this land, claiming

that since he could not present legal proof of ownership, he had no

right to develop it. The only way to get this proof was to purchase a

permit from the authorities at el-Tor, the main center for Bedouin-

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government contact in the South Sinai Governate. He said that the

permits were quite expensive, perhaps 200 LE for a single square

meter.140 While traditionally, the Bedouin could simply claim a piece

of tribal land to build a house by developing it, the Egyptian system

has made it very costly and stressful for Bedouin to acquire ofﬁcial

permission to build.

This land, now claimed by the Egyptian government, had been

under the control of the same family since the Israeli occupation. Our

interviewee, who remembers the Israeli occupation, highlighted the

dilemma when he said, “The Egyptians want to see our papers proving

we own the land. What can we show them, I asked, a contract with

the Israeli government?”141 The state’s legal claim to all land in the

Sinai is contested by the Bedouin, who reject the principle of eminent

domain and assert their own legitimacy due to customary notions of

duration, occupation, and development. They cannot, in any case,

confront the powerful Egyptian authorities directly; they believe their

choices are to leave the land or be thrown off by Egyptian forces.142

The main avenue to contest Egyptian claims to Bedouin land has

been the organization of sit-ins by Bedouin women at plots of land

claimed by their families, especially in the aftermath of the uprisings

that toppled President Husni Mubarak. While at ﬁrst this was a largely

symbolic struggle, as the women did not presume that they would be

able to prevent Egyptian occupation through force, after the collapse

of the Egyptian government, the Bedouin have been more successful

in developing land previously denied to them. Bedouin development

has expanded dramatically since February 2011.

Before 2011, women tended to occupy the land instead of men

because they believed that the authorities would be less willing to

interfere with Bedouin women. Yet there were a number of instances

reported to us in which Bedouin women had been arrested and even

assaulted by Egyptian police ofﬁcers, who then removed them from

the land forcibly.143 This, however, was a last resort for the Egyptian

140. Interview with a Bedouin Divemaster, July 24, 2009.

141. Ibid.

142. Interview with Bedouin land activists about land and land sales, May 14,

2009.

143. Conversation about Bedouin land tenure in Sinai, July 22, 2009.

Economic Competition and Marginalization

103

authorities, who preferred to ignore the Bedouin presence for as

long as possible. In one instance, two Bedouin ‘arishas (palm huts)

occupied a plot of land in the path of Egyptian residential development

on what was then the fringe of Dahab (see Figure 9). The Egyptians

continued to build apartment blocks without waiting for the Bedouin

to vacate their lot. Finally, the women were presented with the fait

accompli that their ‘arishas were blocking the last construction lot

and were interfering with the building process, since there was only

one apartment left to be built. In this way, the women were forced

to vacate this plot of land without compensation.144 Across Dahab,

a number of Bedouin women maintain claims to plots of land in this

manner. The Egyptians have taken to ignoring them until the moment

they need the disputed land or else using force to displace the Bedouin

“squatters.” Once the state stakes a claim to the land, it is very difﬁcult

for the women to maintain their own claim.

144. Personal observations from multiple trips to Dahab, March, May, and

July 2009. The pace of construction is so quick that over a period of

three to five months, this entire scenario conducted itself from start to

finish. While in March, the ‘arishas were the only structures on the strip

of land, by July, the apartments had been completed and tenants had

begun to move in. The ‘arishas have all disappeared.

Figure 9: Bedouin ‘arisha competing with Egyptian construction.

Photo by Eli Sperling, May 14, 2009.

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During one of our research trips, we were woken early in the

morning by one of our friends who told us that at sunrise, the Egyptian

authorities had entered his family plot and set ﬁre to the ‘arishas after

plundering them for valuables such as blankets and propane tanks.145

This had been the ﬁrst night in over a week that the women did

not spend the night at their plot, and they were convinced that the

authorities had been watching them to determine when they could

enter the land and attempt to clear it of signs of Bedouin possession.

When asked why the government tried to burn the ‘arishas, the

women responded that the Egyptians wanted to take this land and sell

it to Egyptians in order to build hotels, villas, and even a golf course.146

While this practice is being carried out on empty land, for which

the government is preparing purchase permits for commercial and

residential construction, the Bedouin are convinced that the Egyptians

are equally interested in clearing the Bedouin off their plots in order to

sell this land as well. This event caused great anguish among the two

Bedouin women. They accused the Egyptians of taking everything

from the Bedouin, such that soon there would be nowhere left for

them to go. They were quite explicit when they said they believed

the government was alienating Bedouin property and rights for the

beneﬁt of the “outsider” Egyptians.147

Since the uprisings in 2011, however, the Bedouin claim that

state presence in Dahab, as regards the land disputes, has practically

disappeared. While my trips to Dahab in the post-Mubarak era have

indicated a continued expansion of state-directed construction, this has

largely focused on areas where the Bedouin have not staked claims to

pieces of land. Additionally, it appears that more and more Bedouin

have begun staking claims to new pieces of land around Dahab and

have begun their own development, leading to the emergence of new

Bedouin neighborhoods around Dahab that did not exist before the

fall of the Mubarak regime. In keeping with the traditional notions of

ownership mentioned above, this development began with very modest

permanent dwellings, constructed from cinderblocks, as well as large

145. Interview with Bedouin land activists, on film, February 16, 2010.

146. This claim is not as outlandish as it might seem—there are golf courses

in both Sharm el-Sheikh and Taba.

147. Interview with Bedouin land activists, February 9, 2010.

Economic Competition and Marginalization

105

gardens, which were often completed before the houses themselves.

Thus far, the state has avoided any confrontation with the Bedouin

over these lands. However, when I asked about the construction, a

number of Bedouin told me that they were unhappy with the current

state of things, that the houses were “ugly” and underdeveloped. When

pushed on the subject, they admitted that this was not due to a lack

of taste or aesthetics, but to a concern that the state would eventually

decide to demolish them, discouraging the Bedouin from investing

more resources and energy into their buildings.148 This conforms to

anecdotal evidence from the Bedouin of the Israeli Negev, who also

report that the constant threat of home demolitions is the primary

factor discouraging them from constructing more permanent homes.

The dispossession of land is a primary concern for the Aqaba

Bedouin. Not only have they not been able to buy back land that

has been sold, due to sharply rising prices, but they have been

increasingly helpless to retain economically proﬁtable plots, such

as those along the beach, and this is infringing on their ability to

maintain ties with the tourist economy. The value of property is in its

proximity to tourist centers, and the Bedouin are seeking the same

land that the government has claimed for development. The NPDS

(National Project for the Development of Sinai, discussed in section

1.2) allocated a large percentage of this land for development under

the assumption that a tribal (read: nomadic) society would place the

same value on this land as would the development authorities. The

Bedouin have, however, sought to participate actively in the tourist

economy, but have had trouble retaining land on which to establish

their own hotels and businesses due to ofﬁcial development strategies

adopted by the Egyptian state. Only the wealthiest Bedouin families

have successfully retained plots on the beach to develop campgrounds

and hotels. For the most part, this wealth came from selling other

plots of land for cash.

148. Day in a new Bedouin neighborhood, June 4, 2012.

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Ownership and Employment in Dahab

A majority of smaller tourist businesses are owned by Egyptians, and

the large ones are primarily owned by multinational resort chains

such as Hilton and Accor. This, combined with the proliferation of

resort-package tourism, has affected the ability of the Bedouin to seek

employment and especially to establish their own businesses. Lack of

education is certainly an issue, but it is not the only factor blocking

Bedouin access to employment and ownership. Equally important

are the development policies favored by the state, the negative

stereotypes that Egyptians hold regarding the Bedouins’ work ethic,

and the convoluted bureaucracy regulating tourism development.

These factors, coupled with the relative growth of the formal resort-

tourism sector, have led to a decrease in employment and ownership

opportunities for the Aqaba Bedouin.

Lack of formal education is a major reason that Egyptian business

owners claim they avoid hiring Bedouin workers. Even a Bedouin

owner of one of the medium-sized hotels in Dahab, a member of the

‘Aleqat tribe, admits that he prefers to hire Egyptians because they

are better educated. Despite the fact that both migrants and Bedouin

go into the unskilled labor pool (Egyptian professionals such as

teachers, doctors, and lawyers are not considered here), the Egyptians

have better formal academic qualiﬁcations. Instead, the Bedouin have

largely maintained their traditional employment patterns as unskilled

laborers, notably drivers and menial laborers, focusing on skills they

can acquire directly in the marketplace and using them in the informal

tourist sector.149 However, there are a number of unskilled sectors of

the Dahab economy where the Bedouin face stiff competition, notably

the service-sector and construction. Many migrants come to Dahab

from Upper Egypt and seek menial labor jobs, such as driving taxis

or carrying equipment for scuba divers, in the same manner as the

Bedouin. As for construction, a majority of laborers hail from Upper

Egypt and Sudan, and there is little Bedouin presence in the booming

construction industry.

The Bedouin can certainly be considered “unskilled labor” because

of a lack of schooling, but this does not mean that the Bedouin have

149. Aziz, “Employment in a Bedouin Community,” p. 33.

Economic Competition and Marginalization

107

no skills that development authorities and tourism operators would

consider useful, such as mechanical abilities, the knowledge of multiple

languages (often as advanced than their Egyptian counterparts if not

more so), and intimate familiarity with the desert. Despite these very

real skills uniquely suited to the Sinai, negative perceptions regarding

the Bedouin and their education have led Egyptians to avoid hiring

them.150

The formalization of tourism and the preference to develop

package- or resort-tourism has further limited the ability of the Aqaba

Bedouin to participate in the Dahab economy. Increasingly, resort

tourism aims to present an entire vacation package to the tourist, and

the hotels in Sinai are ever more able to address a tourist’s every

need, tempering the desire to leave the conﬁnes of the experience

provided by the hotel. This is true not only regarding food, but also

recreation, desert excursions, and souvenirs. These offerings are

arranged through the hotel, which either operates its own excursion

company or establishes a formal business arrangement with one

that is often run by Egyptian or foreign operators. The availability of

these goods and services through the resort, coupled with the resort’s

unwillingness to hire Bedouin, has led to a decline in the ability of

the Bedouin to engage the tourist economy. Bedouin run their own

desert safaris in town and make and sell their own handicrafts, but as

tourists are encouraged more and more to stay within the conﬁnes

of the resort, where there is no Bedouin presence, the Bedouin are

separated from sources of revenue.

Resorts in Dahab and Sharm el-Sheikh organize excursions for

their guests to popular beaches as well as dive trips. In the morning,

these tourists are loaded into jeeps run by Egyptian operators, who

convey them to their destination. In many cases, this includes a stop

in the shopping center of Dahab. Many Bedouin vendors claim that

these tourists are brought directly to the Egyptian-owned shops. A

Bedouin community organizer, who is also quite active politically,

unsuccessfully tried to confront this problem. He began to encourage

shops who hired and purchased from the local community to mark their

products and hang signs indicating that their shops worked with the

Bedouin in order to encourage tourists to direct their money to these

150. Ibid.

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establishments. However, after a short while, he was approached by

the police who demanded that these signs be removed and threatened

action over it. The signs did not last more than a few days.151 He

could not come to any other conclusion except that the authorities did

not want to draw tourists’ attention to the fact that many shops did

not engage the local community, which might decrease their income

as tourists may prefer to “buy local.”

Another example of the conﬂict between the formal and informal

tourism sectors was explained to me by an older Bedouin guide. He

had been offering his services as a sea-guide (he described himself

as a Divemaster but holds no formal certiﬁcation) since the Israeli

occupation, operating a boat to take divers to sites around Dahab.

As we spoke, he turned my attention to the better known dive sites in

Dahab and, knowing that I am an avid scuba diver, asked my opinion.

My reply was that the diving in Dahab was incredible, but… “There

are too many people!” he jumped in and ﬁnished my thought for me.

This was exactly the problem with the dive shops, he complained, and

he said that the value in the services that he offered was his ability

to take divers to secluded and pristine dive sites uncluttered by the

shops, restaurants, and other divers that have become permanent

features of the popular dive sites around Dahab. And for twenty

years, he claimed, his business was excellent, and those who engaged

his services were quite satisﬁed. However, during the past decade he

had been subjected to increasing harassment by the authorities, who

told him that he was no longer allowed to take divers out unless he

was employed directly through a dive shop. He claimed he had been

threatened by the police to shut down his service, because it was

taking business away from the established dive shops.152

The Egyptian government has consistently sided against the

Bedouin in business conﬂicts to ensure Egyptian dominance in the

ﬁelds of ownership and operation. This has allowed Egyptian business

owners to break contracts and leases with Bedouin to ensure they

151. Interview with a Bedouin community organizer, May 30, 2012.

152. Interview with a Bedouin guide, June 5, 2012. Of course, as a scuba

instructor myself, I am always sensitive to issues of risk assumption and

liability, so this story is not so cut and dried. Still, this is but one example

of the trend to favor businesses paying taxes to the state.

Economic Competition and Marginalization

109

would continue to control certain establishments on Bedouin land;

it has also allowed Egyptian authorities to disassemble Bedouin-

run establishments to make room for Egyptian-run businesses. Two

notable examples made the Cairo Times in 1999 when a number

of Bedouin-owned camps in Dahab were demolished by Egyptian

authorities to clear space for a foreign-owned resort.153 While the

Bedouin had legitimate claim to the land, Egyptian authorities used

the excuse that these camps did not meet the international health and

safety standards of the resorts. The Bedouin camps were completely

demolished to make room for Egyptian-owned hotels and the Bedouin

were never compensated for the damage or the land they were

required to vacate.

Another example of this policy was related to us by a Bedouin

interviewee in Dahab. He told us of an Egyptian businessman who

had leased a plot of land on the coast from his father in order to

build a hotel. This land was given to the Egyptian to operate for a

period of ten years, and according to the agreement, at the end of

the term the land could either be re-leased or would revert back to

his father’s control. The Egyptian had leased this land for a small

sum, certainly less than it was worth, and ten years later its value had

increased tremendously. At the end of the lease, the Bedouin refused

to renew because of the signiﬁcant increase in the land’s value. When

approached by the Bedouin, the Egyptian businessman refused to

recognize the legitimacy of his claim to the property or that his lease

had expired. Instead, he claimed that he had rightfully purchased the

land, and he refused to renegotiate the terms of his occupancy. When

the Bedouin approached the government, Egyptian authorities upheld

the businessman’s claim, siding against the Bedouin, and allowed the

businessman to retain both the land and his business.154 The Egyptian

government has not expressed any willingness to disrupt Egyptian jobs

153. “Green Lines: The Tourist Development Agency Uses Environmental

Rhetoric to Justify Demolishing Bedouin-Owned Camps in Favor of Big

Hotels,” The Cairo Times, September 30, 1999; see also “Bedouin

Camps Demolished: The Claims of Sinai’s Indigenous Tribes Are Swept

Away by the Tidal Wave of Development,” The Cairo Times, July 22,

1999.

154. Interview with a Bedouin waiter, April 10, 2009.

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110

or businesses for the beneﬁt of the Bedouin. On the contrary, they

have repeatedly intervened against the Bedouin on behalf of Egyptian

businesses and business owners.

However, it is entirely possible that the contract signed by this

particular landowner was a bill of sale instead of a lease. I have heard

such a claim repeated a number of times by various Bedouin in

Dahab, as Bedouin appear to be at a disadvantage when it comes to

negotiating land deals because of their unfamiliarity with contemporary

contract practices. They claim that this lack of experience is being

taken advantage of by the state and development authorities in order

to acquire land from the Bedouin at deﬂated prices, further contributing

to their marginalization from the tourist industry.155

Due to their status as unskilled laborers, combined with the

prioritization of resort tourism, the Bedouin have found it increasingly

difﬁcult to own businesses, and even to seek employment in tourism

along the Aqaba Coast. While it would be signiﬁcantly easier for

the Bedouin to seek employment with other Bedouin, Egyptian

preferences have made it difﬁcult for the Bedouin to establish and

retain their own hotels and restaurants due to the high standards and

costs mandated by multinational resort chains and supported by the

Egyptian government. These standards have been used both to deny

building permits to the Bedouin as well as to shut down Bedouin

camps that already exist on pieces of land desired by the government

and resorts.

The exceptions to this rule are non-resort foreign-owned hotels

and businesses, notably the dive operators and surf clubs mentioned

in the previous chapter, which have shown a willingness to work with

Bedouin in a number of professional capacities such as divemasters

and windsurﬁng instructors. These Bedouin consider themselves

extremely privileged to have acquired these jobs and acknowledge

that it is very difﬁcult for Bedouin to access this type of employment,

especially due to the prevalence of Egyptian ownership over foreign

ownership.156 In addition to the relatively warmer social relations

between foreigners and the Bedouin, there is an element of economic

cooperation that beneﬁts both parties. This has allowed Bedouin

155. Interview with a Bedouin community organizer, May 30, 2012.

156. Conversation with a Bedouin windsurfing instructor, February 13,

2010.

Economic Competition and Marginalization

111

youths to pursue permanent careers doing something they love to do.

These are the only Bedouin who I have ever heard say “I love my job

and I love my boss.” For the owners, hiring the Bedouin is quite cost

effective, for while these Bedouin are making more money than they

would in menial jobs, at the same time, owners have the ability to

pay the Bedouin somewhat less than might be demanded by foreign

windsurﬁng and dive instructors.

Bedouin have maintained their ability to earn income mainly

through maintaining their contacts with budget tourism via informal

economic interaction, which is maintained in and mediated by the

town, not the resort. Examples include selling drugs, operating taxis,

offering services as guides, and selling hand-made goods to tourists.

This is the main difference between the formal resort sector and

the informal budget tourism sector: the town is subject to fewer

rules and regulations than the resort, enabling increased freedom to

pursue employment or income, while undermining the ability of the

government to extract revenue from these types of activities.

The Turn to Illicit Economies

As the Bedouin have been actively excluded from formal sectors of the

Sinai economy, many have turned to illicit economies to supplement

their income. While the previous chapter focused on the “how” of

Bedouin smuggling and drug dealing, this section examines why this

sector is so important to Bedouin economics in South Sinai. The drug

trade, as an illegal and unregulated activity, is completely open to

the Bedouin and has recently been a lucrative source of income for

Aqaba Bedouin, who ﬁnd it more difﬁcult to access jobs considered

“legitimate” and regulated by the authorities. While Egyptian

authorities view these types of activities as criminal, the Bedouin do

not. They see the cultivation and sale of cannabis or opium to be

just as legitimate as any other economic enterprise, reﬂected by the

level of social acceptability among Egyptians and the many tourists

who form the basis of the market, as well as the rise in Bedouin drug

consumption.157 Furthermore, it has been estimated that the narcotics

sector in South Sinai, comprised mainly of opium and cannabis, has

157. Marx, “Hashish smuggling,” p. 30.

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112

at times provided up to 30 percent of the income for the Bedouin

community, and therefore the Bedouin consider it a vital part of their

economy.158

The adoption and growth of this activity appears to be a response

to the economic opportunities available to the Bedouin. When

questioned as to the reason he turned to opium cultivation, one

Bedouin replied in the mid-1990s, “Twenty years ago [under Israeli

rule], every able-bodied man had a job. Now there is no work,” but

that working in drug cultivation was reliable as there was little worry of

a drop in demand.159 However, when presented with safer alternatives

to drug cultivation, such as owning hotels and running tourism

activities, many of the Bedouin cultivators declared their willingness

to abandon narcotics production.160 This is due to the labor-intensive

nature of cultivating drugs and the relative risk of being caught. While

the cultivators and dealers have assumed the risk because the margins

are better than pastoral or urban alternatives, drug cultivation is not

compatible with the concept of “multi-resource economics”; it is a

single-source activity within an immediate territory due to its illegal

nature and the risk the ﬁelds pose to other activities in close proximity,

notably tourism.161 The cultivation of drugs is a limited value activity

that, if replaced with a legal alternative, might be abandoned in favor

of less risky jobs. The present trend of marginalization, however, has

meant the Bedouin have continued to occupy this illicit niche.

As in other parts of the world, there has been a perception among

the Egyptian authorities that the criminalization of these drugs would

discourage the practice, but this has not been the case. While in other

countries, illegal activities, especially the drug trade, have been coopted

by organized crime, in South Sinai the Bedouin have monopolized

this sector on their own, and the trade is largely non-violent. This

is somewhat of a double edged sword as well, and it appears that to

some extent, and depending on political conditions, the authorities

may turn a blind eye to Bedouin narcotics distribution as they have

158. Ibid., p. 29.

159. Hobbs, “The Opium Poppy in Egypt,” p. 71.

160. Joseph J. Hobbs, “Speaking with People in Egypt’s St. Katherine’s

National Park,” Geographical Review 86.1 (1996), p. 15.

161. Hobbs, “The Opium Poppy in Egypt,” p. 78.

Economic Competition and Marginalization

113

come to realize what an important part of Dahab’s economy it truly

is. This claim should not be overstated, however, and anti-narcotics

operations in Sinai continue apace.

As clearly stated in the Global Commission on Drugs report

published in June 2011, more active forms of government repression

of the drug trade often instigate violent responses and the establishment

of organized crime.162 Although Bedouin cultivators are armed, violent

confrontations between the Bedouin and Egyptian anti-narcotics

enforcement in South Sinai seem to be quite rare according to the

Bedouin themselves, despite the fact that the Egyptian authorities

attempt to use Bedouins’ involvement in the narcotics trade as proof of

their criminal or violent behavior. In fact, there have been a number of

instances of violent clashes between Bedouin and Egyptian authorities

in direct response to anti-narcotics operations. This hit home for me

personally during my most recent stay in Dahab during the summer

of 2012, when two American tourists were captured and held by

members of the Tarabin tribe in retaliation for the arrest of a fellow

tribesmen who had been caught carrying a large quantity of cannabis

through a checkpoint.163 While Bedouin in Dahab acknowledged

the importance of the narcotics trade for their economy, they were

furious that the smugglers had resorted to kidnapping because of the

damage inﬂicted on the rest of the tourism sector, highlighting the

complicated relationship between tourism and the drug trade. After

162. See War on Drugs: Report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy.

Rep. Global Commission on Drug Policy, June 2011. Web. <http://

globalcommissionondrugs.org>. While receiving little fanfare, this

commission, launched at the behest of the UN, was composed of some

of the most influential politicians and businessmen in the world including

EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana, ex-Mexican President Ernesto

Zedillo, former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, former US

Secretary of State George Shultz, former chairman of the FED Richard

Volker, and magnate Sir Richard Branson. This short list hardly does the

commission justice. The study examined cross-national data on narcotics

prevention, enforcement, and treatment.

163. “U.S. Tourists Freed Unharmed in Sinai,” Reuters, May 31, 2012.

<http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/31/us-egypt-sinai-

kidnapping-idUSBRE84U0DL20120531>.

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less than 24 hours of negotiations, both the tourists and the arrested

smuggler were freed; both parties hoped to avoid incurring the ire

of the US in the event that anything happened to the two American

tourists. In any case, this event appears to support the previously-

mentioned Commission Report’s conclusions that harsher methods of

anti-narcotics enforcement often leads to outbreaks of violence. In this

setting, the impact on tourism may explain why conﬂicts are relatively

rare.

While engagement in the narcotics trade is not necessarily

connected to a cultural tendency towards violence and criminality,

the Sinai Bedouin have come to be associated with drugs, especially

hashish and heroin. This has contributed to the conﬂict between the

Sinai Bedouin and the Egyptians (and even created tensions within

the Bedouin community itself), and reinforced a reputation of the

Bedouin as dangerous criminals. Many Egyptians blame the Sinai

Bedouin for being a major cause of the drug problem in Egypt, and

the authorities and the media are doing what they can to reinforce

this perception.164 Involvement in the drug trade has cast a shadow

over the Sinai Bedouin, over the relationships between the Bedouin

and young backpackers, often accused of being addicted to drugs, and

over Dahab as a whole, which has received the reputation as an illicit

drug den in both regional and international news, in guide books, and

in the attitudes of Egyptian ofﬁcials in their treatment of both Bedouin

and backpackers.165

164. “Six arrested, drugs seized in south Sinai bust,” Agence France-Presse,

February 27, 1997; see also “Four Foreigners Sentenced for Drugs,”

Middle East Times, 2001, issue 41; see also Hobbs, “The Opium

Poppy in Egypt,” p. 79. Hobbs discussed the government’s exaggeration

of the Sinai drug problem and the attitudes these reports have generated

within mainstream Egyptian society.

165. Behbehanian, “Policing the Illicit Peripheries of Egypt’s Tourism

Industry”; I further base this claim on personal observations of treatment

at the hands of Egyptian authority figures. The fact that we, as tourists,

were consistently stopped and questioned only in the presence of our

Bedouin friends is a clear indication that these attitudes are associated

with the Bedouin.

Economic Competition and Marginalization

115

During one of our ﬁeld trips, we organized a day excursion from

Dahab to Sharm el-Sheikh to explore Bedouin economic participation

in the tourist center of Na‘ama Bay. As we approached the city, we

were stopped by Egyptian ofﬁcials at the outermost military checkpoint

and told to get out of the car. We were made to stand next to a group

of Egyptian soldiers with automatic riﬂes while another group began

tearing through the vehicle, clearly searching for something. After

a few minutes, the ofﬁcer approached one of our Bedouin friends

and demanded to know where the hashish was; he had assumed that

two Bedouin youths and two American youths would naturally have

drugs with them. Upon hearing our adamant denials, they continued

searching the car, evidently not believing us, but were unable to ﬁnd

anything illegal with which to hold us. There had never been hashish

in the car. Far from catching a lucky break, we were instead the victims

of the illicit reputation of Dahab, the Bedouin, and backpackers in

general. Over the course of our ﬁeld research, we became accustomed

to this attitude toward us and our Bedouin companions on the part of

Egyptian authorities; it has become an institutional part of the system

that regulates social dynamics in South Sinai. Without fail, every time I

traveled with more than one Bedouin, we encountered this suspicious

treatment.

While some Bedouin have adopted drug cultivation and distribution

as a consequence of their marginalization from more central forms

of employment, the Egyptian authorities’ reaction has reﬂected a

perception that Bedouin participation is a result of certain cultural

traits. As a consequence, the Egyptian response has been to target

the Bedouin rather than the market factors and policies responsible

for increasing demand and relative proﬁtability for the Bedouin.

The publicity that Dahab has received as a center for illicit activities

including sex and drugs has only served to increase its popularity for

narco-tourism, fuelling demand among young budget travelers and

ensuring the Bedouin will continue to supply. The unequal distribution

and availability of urban employment has made some Bedouin turn to

other methods of interacting with the tourist economy.

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Bedouin Niches and Egyptian Attempts

to Occupy Them166

As previously mentioned, the Bedouin heritage has given them a

special role in Sinai tourism. While a major goal of the NPDS for this

sub-region was the creation of a “Red Sea Riviera,” resort and beach

tourism are not the only strengths of the Aqaba Coast. Heritage and

culture tourism also play a major role. This tourism has two major

sources. The ﬁrst is the monastery of Santa Katarina at Mt. Sinai,

the namesake of the Santa Katarina region mentioned earlier as the

territory of the Jabaliyya Bedouin, which has drawn religious visitors

for hundreds of years and has recently become an UNESCO World

Heritage site. The second is Bedouin culture tourism. The Bedouin

discovered that they could proﬁt from sharing their culture with

tourists in the 1960s and 70s, especially from what have come to be

known as “Bedouin hospitality” events. Since then, Bedouin culture

has been a major tourist theme, especially in Dahab, which attempts

to attract tourists to its “authentic Bedouin atmosphere.”167 While

the Bedouin are in a natural position to provide these services to the

tourists, non-Bedouin Egyptians (migrant workers), have also come to

understand the proﬁtability of Bedouin cultural activities, and they have

increasingly attempted to occupy this niche, partially marginalizing

the Bedouin from an activity that is uniquely theirs.

In Dahab, Bedouin culture has been linked to the atmosphere of

relaxation permeating the “Riviera.” The beachside restaurants offer

“authentic” Bedouin tea, hotels offer evenings at Bedouin camps, and

guides offer camel rides as an “authentic” Bedouin activity. The town

and its experiences are thus unique, as they have a special “Bedouin”

character which has become a major draw for tourists. The important

role that Bedouin culture plays in Sinai tourism has given the Bedouin

a unique niche in the tourism sector, which has allowed the Bedouin to

proﬁt by sharing their culture with outsiders. In its own way, this niche

166. The theme of this section was frequently stressed by the Bedouin

themselves, who asked me to discuss the issue. They appear to consider

it a larger problem than I was able to witness personally.

167. Interview with a Bedouin Divemaster, July 24, 2009.

Economic Competition and Marginalization

117

could have been a consolation for the marginalization of the Bedouin

from resort tourism, and the two sectors might have complimented

one another, which to an important extent they do.

While a discussion on the merits of these activities as “authentic” is

beyond the scope of this chapter, the importance is that these activities

are increasingly being offered by non-Bedouin in an attempt to

increase their market share of the cultural tourism sector.168 A majority

of tourists do not understand the difference between an “Egyptian”

and a “Bedouin,” and this has allowed Egyptians to pass themselves

off as Bedouin as well as to appropriate elements of Bedouin culture

as “Egyptian” in order to gain a foothold in the Bedouin culture

market.169 For example, a number of Egyptian-owned restaurants on

the Dahab and Sharm el-Sheikh corniches have Bedouin names and

attempt to convince the customers that eating there will constitute a

“Bedouin experience,” offering such selections as Bedouin calamari

and Bedouin tea. A prominent example of such a restaurant is the

Egyptian-owned “Bedouin Bar” in Sharm el-Sheikh, where employees

dress up in Bedouin garb.

Competition between Bedouin and Egyptian migrants in the ﬁeld

of Bedouin culture tourism has had two notable consequences. First

is the expected marginalization of Bedouin from their own economic

niches. This has only served to increase the economic competition

between the Bedouin and the Egyptians, as the Bedouin cannot rely

on culture tourism as a protected Bedouin-only activity, but cannot

themselves break into a number of Egyptian activities. The second

consequence has perhaps even greater implications. By occupying

Bedouin economic niches and proﬁting from Bedouin culture, the

Egyptians, as the Bedouin perceive them, are attempting to deprive

the Bedouin of the features that make them culturally distinctive. The

Egyptians have accomplished this by coopting symbols of Bedouin

culture and communicating them, not as Bedouin, but as broadly

Egyptian. The Bedouin are very concerned with maintaining their

cultural distinctiveness and see Egyptian encroachment as part of a

larger attempt to impose Egyptian uniformity on the Bedouin, ﬁrst by

168. See Hobbs, “Speaking with People in Egypt’s St. Katherine’s National

Park,” p. 14.

169. Interview with a Bedouin Divemaster, June 11, 2012.

Chapter 3

118

denying them their cultural uniqueness and second by the imposition

of Egyptian cultural symbols and values on the Bedouin community.

As such, defense of their economic livelihood is also a defense of their

cultural distinctiveness.

Case Study:

Dahab versus Sharm el-Sheikh

Dahab and Sharm el-Sheikh are the two most popular tourist

destinations along Sinai’s Aqaba Coast. While both have been

subjected to accelerating tourism development over the past twenty

years of Egyptian rule, these towns differ from each other signiﬁcantly,

due to differing origins and development trajectories. Dahab began its

development as a Bedouin oasis, a space where Bedouin would spend

their summers harvesting, ﬁshing, and strengthening social contacts.

Tourism development began with Bedouin setting up tourist camps

for Israeli backpackers. Sharm el-Sheikh was chosen for its strategic

position, beginning its life as an Egyptian, and later Israeli, military

outpost. Development here was always controlled by forces of the

state, and tourism has always been a large-scale development project.

While Dahab has retained a fair share of its small scale, low-budget

character, Sharm el-Sheikh has grown to become a huge tourism

city replete with ﬁve-star resorts, multinational restaurant chains, and

bustling beach-side nightclubs. If Dahab, with its illicit reputation and

budget character, has been a disappointment for Egyptian tourist

development, Sharm is undoubtedly Sinai’s greatest success. Dahab

has been targeted by the Egyptian government for development

aimed at bringing it more in line with Sharm el-Sheikh.

While the Bedouin presence in Dahab allowed them to be the ﬁrst

to set up their own tourist camps and restaurants, the lack of a similar

Bedouin presence in Sharm el-Sheikh made it signiﬁcantly easier for

developers to acquire land there. Additionally, the absence of anything

but resort tourism in Sharm el-Sheikh has translated into very few

employment opportunities for the Bedouin; few Bedouin work in the

town. The Bedouin see the situation in Sharm as a likely outcome

for Dahab if the appropriation of tribal land on behalf of developers

Economic Competition and Marginalization

119

and multinational resorts continues, highlighting the importance of

protecting what land they still control in Dahab.

For the Aqaba Bedouin, Sharm el-Sheikh and Dahab represent

two fundamentally different possible outcomes of development.

Dahab, as a Bedouin social space and a center for budget tourism,

has allowed the Bedouin to maintain informal economic networks and

has become a center for urban Bedouin employment and trade. Even

though the volume of tourism in Dahab is lower than in Sharm el-

Sheikh, the Bedouin have been able to generate signiﬁcantly higher

income in Dahab. Egyptian development has had to contend with this

legacy and has been unable to effectively replace it. Sharm el-Sheikh,

on the other hand, has, to a large extent, succeeded in excluding

the Bedouin from the economic life of the city. There are very few

Bedouin-owned shops, restaurants, or hotels, and furthermore, no

Bedouin are allowed to work in Sharm el-Sheikh unless employed

directly by one of the resorts or businesses. As a consequence, the

number of Bedouin proﬁting in Sharm el-Sheikh is quite small. The

Bedouin feel less attachment to Sharm el-Sheikh than they do to

Dahab, and they correctly see that for the Egyptians, Sharm el-Sheikh

is an ideal model for tourism development. For the Bedouin, Sharm

el-Sheikh as a concept generates high levels of discomfort. In it, they

see the authoritarian policies of the central government as well as

their own vulnerability.

While the Aqaba Bedouin have the freedom to live and seek

employment in Dahab, the rules for the Bedouin in Sharm el-

Sheikh are quite restrictive. In fact, the state has devised a system

to physically exclude them from the economies of the city and have

kept the Bedouin on the economic margins of Sharm. We had

a chance to see the limitations imposed on the Bedouin on one of

our excursions to Sharm el-Sheikh. While our primary goal was to

examine social interactions in the city center, we had the opportunity

to spend time with two of our Bedouin friends who were in Sharm

for the week selling handicrafts. We drove along the main road until

we found ourselves leaving the developed part of the city. Parking by

an abandoned construction site, we exited the car and began walking

toward the ocean, where we found the women sitting in an ‘arisha

next to a half-completed building about 200 meters outside the limit

of Na‘ama Bay, the tourist center of the city. The limit was delineated

Chapter 3

120

by a chain-link fence with a gate guarded by members of the Egyptian

tourist police. On the near side of the fence lay the public beach and

a number of ongoing construction sites, on the far side, the resorts,

restaurants, and shopping that constituted Na‘ama Bay. Tourists

have the freedom to move at will through the gate in order to access

the public beaches; however, Bedouin vendors are prohibited from

passing through the gate into the town.

In Dahab, many Bedouin, both men and women, sit on the

corniche in the center of town selling handicrafts, competing with the

industrially manufactured goods sold in the shops, while children sell

bracelets to tourists (See Figure 10). In Sharm, the authorities have

legally prohibited these practices and forced Bedouin vendors out of

the town. In this way, Egyptian authorities have maintained Sharm as

an exclusively Egyptian commercial space.170 The Bedouin are allowed

to sell their goods outside the fence, but are not allowed in unless

formally employed by a business in town, forcing their conformity to

formal employment preferences instead of allowing them to freely

pursue economic opportunities. This policy highlights the perception

of discrimination among the Bedouin and demonstrates how the

government creates policies to limit the informal tourism industry.

170. Personal observations, Sharm el-Sheikh, April 12, 2009.

Figure 10: Bedouin selling handicrafts on the Dahab Corniche.

Photo by author, February 20, 2009.

Economic Competition and Marginalization

121

The marginalization of the Aqaba Bedouin from Sharm el-Sheikh

is a consequence of the type of tourism development undertaken by

the Egyptian authorities. The successful acquisition of tribal land and

the supremacy of resort tourism have allowed authorities to prevent

the Bedouin from participating in the booming economy of Sharm

by giving primacy to large multinationals and wealthy Egyptian

businessmen. The Bedouin recognize this as a possible future for

Dahab, and equate government support for Egyptian development as

an attempt to seize control of Dahab in order to transform it into

a new Sharm el-Sheikh. This comparison highlights the inability of

the Bedouin to penetrate the resort sector of the tourist economy.

Egyptian development schemes have encouraged this trend and the

authorities see tourism in Sharm el-Sheikh as a major success of Sinai

development.

While marginalization of the Bedouin may not be explicitly linked

to this success, it does show that Egyptian development goals aim to

grant the government sweeping control of tourist centers, making it

easier for them to implement their preferences for development and

employment. In fact, in the spaces where the Bedouin have been

able to maintain contact with the tourism industry through informal

economic ties, Egypt has perceived a failure to implement its vision

for tourism development. Dahab is a manifestation of this trend;

Sharm el-Sheikh is the opposite. The Egyptian authorities do not

explicitly blame this failure on the presence of the Bedouin, but the

same factors preserving Bedouin participation have acted as obstacles

to the crystallization of resort tourism in a town such as Dahab. This

has necessarily linked Bedouin presence to Egyptian disappointment,

further helping to shape ofﬁcial attitudes towards the Bedouin. Thus

the Bedouin have come to be associated with the illicit reputations of

a town such as Dahab, and the Egyptians have treated them as more

of an obstacle than as potential partners.

Concluding Remarks

The Bedouin are at a distinct disadvantage vis-à-vis Egyptian migrants

due to Egyptian development preferences and bureaucratic norms,

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122

which have led to their increasing marginalization through the

imposition of legal barriers frustrating the equitable participation

of the Bedouin in certain sectors of the economy. Moreover, as

development proceeds, the Egyptian government is claiming more

territory and using more of Sinai’s scarce natural resources while

excluding the Bedouin from a protected role in emerging economies.

The Egyptian state’s claim to the best pieces of property along the

shore for tourism development, as well as their enactment of a number

of legal restrictions on Bedouin activities, have further limited the

Bedouins’ access to business opportunities as well as ﬁshing sites and

coastal date oases. Development is replacing the Bedouins’ traditional

social space, but Egyptian policies have attempted to block Bedouin

incorporation into the emerging market.

The Bedouin, excluded from the formal tourist economy and

exceedingly pushed from their land, have viewed this marginalization

as an attempt by the central Egyptian authorities to grab territory

and resources from the Bedouin for themselves, and even more

drastically, to destroy their cultural uniqueness and heritage in the

Sinai. Economically, they have coped with this marginalization by

turning to illicit economic activities to supplement their dwindling

informal contacts. This has led to ofﬁcial perceptions of the Bedouin

as dangerous, dishonest, and even criminal, which has helped shape

the adversarial nature of the relationship between Egyptian ofﬁcials

and Aqaba Bedouin.

While original Egyptian goals for tourism development created a

system whereby the native Bedouin population could be excluded from

the developing economy, tourism development in Dahab has ensured

a Bedouin role in the future economies of the town. The Bedouin

are well established in Dahab and are well connected within Dahab’s

tourist economy, but they have nevertheless had to compete with

Egyptian migrants to acquire jobs. This competition has shaped the

social patterns of Dahab, involving the Bedouin, Egyptian migrants,

and foreign tourists. The economic roles assumed by each group and

the competition between them have largely shaped the social patterns

regulating the town.

123

Chapter 4

Evolving Social Contacts

and Frameworks

Sinai development has fundamentally changed the nature of the

Aqaba Coast Bedouins’ social space. In addition to an accelerating

inﬂux of foreign tourists and Egyptian migrant workers, new sources

of income and access to services concentrated in tourist towns have

facilitated a process of sedentarization, leading Bedouin populations

to seek permanent settlement in urban neighborhoods such as ‘Asala

in Dahab. Furthermore, participation in the developing economy

and the increased presence of state authorities have necessitated

the establishment of individual contacts between the authorities

and tribesmen, undermining the persistence of tribal corporatism.

Additionally, the continuing expansion of tourism has created for the

Bedouin a reality of daily contact with foreign social groups, leading

to a self-perception embedded in a much wider social space than

merely Sinai or even Egypt. The institutionalization of the relationship

between the Bedouin and these different groups has played a major

role in the processes of cultural change and identity transformation.

The very nature of Bedouin contact with Egyptian ofﬁcials

and migrants is playing a differentiating role in reinforcing identity

boundaries. While the Aqaba Bedouin and Nile Valley Egyptians share

an increasing number of cultural similarities, including the adoption

of similar patterns of urban settlement, acculturation and increasing

contact are not leading to an erosion of a particularistic identity for

the Bedouin. Instead, uneven Egyptian development policies and

the resulting economic competition have been the primary factors

deﬁning the Bedouin-Egyptian relationship, which is marked by mutual

exclusion and hostility. In examining the nature of the social ties that

have formed between the Aqaba Bedouin and the Egyptians, as well

as the sources of cultural change favored by the Bedouin, it is clear

that there is a link between the economic and social relationships that

have formed between these groups. Egyptian development policies,

Chapter 4

124

which played a primary role in shaping the economic contacts between

the Bedouin and the Egyptians, have also assumed an important role

in the evolving social relationship that has formed between these

Bedouin and central Egypt.

Bedouin contact with foreign tourists has had a signiﬁcantly

different effect than contact with Egyptians. While the conﬂict-ridden

relationship between Egyptians and Bedouin stems from a competitive,

adversarial relationship, the economic complementarity between

foreigners and the Bedouin has led to the establishment of relationships

of a different nature. A major element of the Bedouin-foreigner

relationship is its quid pro quo character. While many travelers seek

out the Bedouin to learn about their culture and experience it as part of

their vacation, the Bedouin have in turn actively absorbed many values

and interests of the tourists. Bedouin attitudes towards consumerism,

entertainment, social mobility, and even to some extent sexuality in

South Sinai have all been affected by the relationship with visitors

from the cosmopolitan global North. Slowly but surely, the Bedouin

are becoming increasingly familiar with a global, cosmopolitan society,

incorporating and communicating various elements of Northern culture

into their own cultural frameworks. Furthermore, the articulation of

current forms of Bedouin self-identity, especially among the youth,

cannot be understood without referring to cultural symbols that might

be considered foreign to the Bedouin.

Transforming Patterns of Social

Organization — A Decline in “Tribalism”

Perhaps the most fundamental transformation among the Bedouin

in response to development in Sinai has been the start of a process

of sedentarization and urbanization, with Bedouin families moving

into neighborhoods in expanding urban centers such as Dahab. It is

equally clear that the previously-mentioned economic consequences of

sedentarization, for example the decline in the importance of pastoral

migrations and the maintenance of subsistence economies, have been

accompanied by analogous social consequences. The major social

effect of these processes has been a weakening of patterns of “tribal”

organization; in the transition to life in the town, reliance on tribal

Evolving Social Contacts and Frameworks

125

social structures and sources of authority has decreased. While this

type of transformation has often been identiﬁed as a transition away

from “traditional” societies, it should instead be primarily understood

as the social manifestation of economic adaptation to urban markets.

Emanuel Marx has theorized that the tribe functions as a unit of

subsistence whose members work together to exploit the resources

of a given territory. He further shows how tribal divisions and

genealogies, based on the dual concepts of agnation and kinship, play

the vital role of establishing position and membership (belonging) in

this unit and how they regulate the way in which tribesmen cooperate

to exploit their territories and resources.171 In light of this approach,

tribal structure may be understood as an organizational system geared

towards regulating the subsistence economies of the Bedouin, aimed

at solving problems of resource distribution. From this perspective,

we may hypothesize that tribal structures and ties of solidarity will

be at their strongest when tribesmen must activate and rely on their

subsistence economies and kinship networks, and they will be at

their weakest when non-subsistence or socially diverse opportunities

are widely available. As it turns out, both of these predictions hold

true. Various researchers have demonstrated that tribal maintenance

activities intensify in times of economic uncertainly, such as in the

wake of the October War of 1973, when tribesmen had to fall back

on their subsistence economies to mitigate the effects of conﬂict.

I have also observed a decline in tribal solidarity in the wake of

sedentarization and participation in the urban economy, for example,

in various expressions of economic individualism that have come at

the expense of tribal strength and cohesion, the younger generation’s

shaky knowledge of their genealogies and kinship ties, as well as the

declining inﬂuence of tribal shaykhs among urbanized Bedouin.

For the young, urban Bedouin, tribal social structures have not

played a vital role in governing emerging forms of social organization

because they are not needed to regulate their economic patterns

within the town. Furthermore, when asked about tribal genealogies

or the structure of their tribe, the Bedouin who were born and grew

171. See Emanuel Marx, “The Tribe as a Unit of Subsistence: Nomadic

Pastoralism in the Middle East,” American Anthropologist 79.2

(1977).

Chapter 4

126

up exclusively in an urban setting were unable to discuss these topics

in any speciﬁc manner. On the other hand, among the Bedouin who

have had the experience of living outside of an urban, market-driven

setting, knowledge of tribal structures and their genealogies has

remained intact. These two processes, urbanization on the one hand

and a relative weakening in tribal social organization on the other, are

linked. However, they are not unidirectional, meaning that it is not

valid to express this as a one-time process of “sedentarization” leading

to the rejection of tribal patterns of organization. Instead, social

reorganization among the urbanizing Bedouin should be conceived

in a manner similar to their economic transformation, an attempt to

balance opportunity with security and self-reliance. Thus, in addition

to a certain level of social reorganization within the town, a number

of social practices that could be considered traditionally tribal have

been maintained, such as the respect for Bedouin customary law,

gender and generational relations within the Bedouin community, as

well as broader tribal loyalties. Notably, however, non-tribal Egyptian

populations tend to reﬂect similar values, suggesting there is nothing

inherently “tribal” about many of these cultural practices.

As Marx points out, “Where secure employment is found outside

the pastoral ﬁeld, the maintenance of boundaries and control over

access to territory becomes less important, and this may lead to a

reorganization of tribesmen in other frameworks.”172 This is exactly

what is happening in the urban centers of the Aqaba region, but

it has not led to a fundamental change in the social identity of the

Bedouin, merely the adaptation of certain social structures to help

the Bedouin integrate into a sedentary, urban, and market-driven

environment. Tribal membership has been maintained, but the social

organization of the urban Bedouin community has changed to reﬂect

the necessities of urban life. Similar conclusions have been presented

by Lila Abu Lughod, who showed that urbanization, notably in the

Egyptian coastal city of Marsa Matruh, often led to weakening kin

structures, which were in many cases replaced with forms of urban

solidarity, sometimes described as “ethnic” mobilization.173

172. Ibid., p. 344.

173. Abu Lughod, Veiled Sentiments, p. 77.

Evolving Social Contacts and Frameworks

127

The Bedouin and the Egyptians

The Egyptian is sick from ful and tamiyyah. It makes him act crazy.

174

I do not like Egyptian people, whatever they tell you, don’t trust them.

175

The Bedouin, they are a stupid people. Not like the Egyptian people.

176

The Bedouin have tried to avoid Egyptian migrants on a social level;

there is very little contact between the two groups outside of necessary

economic exchanges and the limited instances of Bedouin employment

in Egyptian businesses. While the Bedouin and the Egyptian migrants

in Dahab compete in town for economic opportunities, the two

communities are socially self-segregating. As Bedouin prefer to work

with other Bedouin, and Egyptians prefer to hire other Egyptians,

Dahab as a market is not a forum for the establishment of extensive

economic ties between the two groups, and cooperation is limited.

This has translated into little social interaction.177

Additionally, there exists a physical social divide in Dahab. The

southern areas of Masbat and Mashraba are dominated by Egyptians

and the northern areas, known as the Lighthouse, Eel Garden, and

‘Asala, as well as the few scattered bars and nightclubs, are centers

of Bedouin-tourist social interaction. While during the day there is

a fairly high level of overlap, after business hours, each community

conﬁnes itself to its respective area. By night, Mashraba has come

to resemble a small neighborhood in Cairo, dotted with cafes where

migrant workers smoke shisha, watch football or the news, and

play checkers or backgammon with other migrants. The restaurants

claim to serve “real Egyptian food,” which from their menus, is often

koshary, kofta, and ta‘amiyya (Egyptian falafel).178 It is quite rare for

any Bedouin to be seen in this area in the evenings, just as it is rare to

174. Statement by Bedouin in conversation, May 14, 2009.

175. Statement by Bedouin in conversation, April 12, 2009.

176. Interview with Egyptian shop owner, February 10, 2010.

177. This is not categorical; there are many Bedouin in Dahab who have

formed friendships with migrants from Egypt. It should also not be taken

as a claim that there is a lack of civility between the two communities.

178. Koshary and Kofta are two foods commonly found in central Egypt.

Kofta is a type of kebab made from ground beef, while koshary, often

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see Egyptian migrants in Bedouin neighborhoods or in the bars and

clubs frequented by Bedouin youths.

While the Bedouin continue to honor hospitality, a number of

Bedouin have told us that they would never invite an Egyptian back

to their homes.179 In fact, there is practically no Egyptian presence in

the Bedouin neighborhoods outside of business and the few Egyptian

families that have permanently settled there; Egyptian migrants

avoid entering them. I have noticed that a number of Egyptians have

purchased “vacation homes” in these areas, much to the dismay of

their Bedouin neighbors, who complain about their bad habits, which

generally involve some type of behavior that disrupts the tranquility

of the neighborhood.180 The Bedouin claim that Egyptians are not

welcome, and a number of our Bedouin acquaintances have even

declared a willingness to confront any Egyptian who is found near

their homes after dark, asserting that Bedouin spaces would be

dangerous for Egyptians to enter. This attitude does not appear to

reﬂect a fear that the Egyptians would harm the Bedouin or pose

any kind of threat, for the Bedouin do not communicate any sense of

fear regarding potential Egyptian actions in Bedouin neighborhoods.

Instead, it merely highlights the high level of hostility many Bedouin

hold against Egyptians. Bravado or not, this constitutes yet another

manifestation of their view of Egyptians as outsiders and reveals

the great social distance that exists between the Bedouin and the

Egyptians in Dahab.

The stories that are told of Bedouin-Egyptian interactions generally

involve confrontation and violence. I occasionally hear stories of

groups of Egyptians entering Bedouin neighborhoods. The response,

according to these stories, is a mobilization of Bedouin to confront the

Egyptians, generally leading to some kind of argument or even clash

between the two groups. This trend of action and reaction is fairly

normative in Bedouin accounts. A Bedouin interviewee described one

such encounter, which ended in an outbreak of hostilities necessitating

police intervention. He explained that the conﬂict had started when a

attributed to military innovation, is a combination of rice, lentils, and

pasta covered in tomato sauce with various toppings.

179. Interview with a Bedouin resident of ‘Asala, April 10, 2009.

180. Conversation with Bedouin residents, July 5, 2011; May 26, 2012.

Evolving Social Contacts and Frameworks

129

group of Egyptians confronted a Bedouin one evening near his home

regarding a contract dispute between two individuals; the conﬂict

soon escalated beyond simple words. When news of the arrival of this

group of Egyptians spread around the neighborhood, many Bedouin

went to support their co-ethnics, leading to an outbreak of violence

in the streets of ‘Asala. He went on to explain that this is a typical

reaction from the Bedouin in such a situation, because hostility and

confrontation were an expected part of Bedouin-Egyptian social

encounters.181 He further explained that these conﬂicts were most

frequently centered on some type of economic dispute, often over

land or money, reﬂecting the economic motivation behind much of

the Bedouin-Egyptian social tension.

During my time in Dahab, I witnessed a number of Bedouin-

Egyptian disputes over land or money, but have never personally

witnessed an escalation of this type; I cannot discount the possibility

that these stories may be displays of bravado aimed to impress. In

either case, they demonstrate popular perceptions and attitudes held

by many Bedouin towards Egyptian migrants. Such a story may even

be more revealing of Bedouin attitudes if the event did not actually

take place but rather was imagined, due to its scripted nature.

The Egyptian government has not given the Bedouin a signiﬁcant

voice in determining development policies in Sinai; they instead

proceed according to their needs and force the Bedouin to cope with

changes without any support or acknowledgement of their hardships.

In a number of related ways, this has led to the categorization of the

Bedouin as an “indigenous people” in Sinai. As an indigenous people,

the Bedouin, a non-state group, have been forced into conﬂict with

the central state; the state seeks to impose the values and identities

of dominant society while the group seeks ofﬁcial recognition of

their cultural and territorial rights.182 This is not an inherent conﬂict

between two competing social groups, but a consequence of trends

in development and integration policies as the state aims to increase

its level of control over the full extent of its territory and population.

Territorial disputes and heritage defense in the face of radical

181. Interview with Bedouin about Egyptians, February 11, 2010.

182. Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Revival (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1981), p. 6.

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transformation and marginalization spurred by the state are major

elements of the conﬂict between indigenous peoples and the state,

instigated by hegemonic state policies.

One notable consequence of this situation is the inability of those

controlling the central government—i.e., the hegemonic social group

within the state—to extend their identity to the indigenous periphery.

Instead, the Bedouin believe that state policies, whether intentional

or not, pose a danger to the continued existence and wellbeing of the

Bedouin as an autonomous social group. This has led the Bedouin

to mount a defense of their cultural distinctiveness and distance

themselves from dominant national identities while claiming privileged

access to local territory. This process is directly linked to the clash of

economic interests described in the previous chapter. Like the basic

incompatibility between Bedouin and Egyptian goals of economic

development, the divergence between the Egyptians and the Bedouin

in terms of social values plays a role in deﬁning and regulating the

identity boundary between them.

Both the Bedouin and the Egyptians have created negative

stereotypes of the other, and the attitudes of each group regarding

the other can be found in their statements and characterizations.

These images and stereotypes provide valuable insight into how the

Bedouin perceive the Egyptians as well as themselves and vice versa.

An examination of these attitudes is a necessary step to illuminate the

social boundary and decipher the processes of identity transformation

among the Bedouin.

The attitudes of the Aqaba Bedouin towards Egyptians reﬂect

the statements of other Bedouin groups regarding settled Egyptian

society, notably the Awlad ‘Ali Bedouin studied by Lila Abu Lughod.

First and foremost, the Bedouin perceive an incompatibility between

an Egyptian and an Arab identity. The Bedouin interviewed in this

study did not conceive of themselves as Egyptians; the statement “I

am not Egyptian, I am Bedouin” was common.183 The Bedouin claim

origins in the Arabian Desert, and consider themselves to be true

Arabs. Egyptians, on the other hand, originate in the Nile Valley and,

183. Personal observations and conversations with the Bedouin about their

legacy and identity; see also Gardner, “At Home in South Sinai,” p.

49.

Evolving Social Contacts and Frameworks

131

according to the Bedouin, are not true Arabs. In a conversation with a

group of Bedouin on the beach in Dahab, an Egyptian was pointed out

to me. One of my Bedouin friends leaned over and in a conspiratorial

tone whispered “Hatha pharown” (he is Pharaonic), to which I replied

“Mish ‘Arabi?” (not Arab?). Smiling, he responded “Aywah, mish

‘Arabi” (yes, not Arab), clearly pleased that I was able to distinguish

between their conception of Arabs and Egyptians.184 For the Bedouin,

there is a fundamental incompatibility between the images of Egypt’s

Arab character and its pre-Islamic history linked to the legacy of the

Pharaonic and Coptic periods; in the eyes of the Bedouin, Egypt’s

pre-Islamic heritage has undermined its Arab and Muslim legitimacy.

This presents a fundamental challenge to notions of common descent

despite the Arab Muslim character claimed by both populations.

The Bedouin conceive of the Egyptians as descended from a pagan

riverain (Nilotic) past, which they contrast with their noble Arabian

desert origins.

In a similar manner to the Western Desert Bedouin, the Sinai

Bedouin disparage Nile Valley Egyptians as “farmers” (fellahin),185

a label to which many negative qualities have been attributed. At

the most basic level, the Bedouin portray the fellahin as dishonest

thieves. In contrast, the fellahin attribute to themselves the quality of

karama’ (nobility or generosity). The Bedouin vigorously contest this

claim by attaching pejorative qualities to them such as lack of honesty,

honor, and intelligence. This can be directly related to Abu Lughod’s

discussion of Awlad ‘Ali attitudes towards Egyptians, in which she

shows that the Bedouin consider the fellah to lack sharaf (honor),

sadag (honesty), and karama (generosity).186

Abu Lughod has further shown that the Western Desert Bedouin

perceive Egyptian behavior to be feminine and dishonorable. I have

heard similar comments from the Aqaba Bedouin, who also view

Egyptian men as feminine and Egyptian women as manly; in general,

184. Day at the Laguna, April 11, 2009.

185. The literal translation of the Arabic fellah is ‘peasant,’ however, the

Aqaba Bedouin use the English term ‘farmer’ instead when referring to

fellahin. This translation has been reproduced by the author to reflect

Bedouin statements.

186. Abu Lughod, Veiled Sentiments, p. 45.

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Egyptian behavior is often described in feminine terms. One notable

example is the dim view they take of Nile Valley male bonding

habits, including men hugging and kissing each other in greeting and

holding hands while walking together down the street (see Figure 11).

According to our interviewees, Bedouin men would never behave

in this way, as such behavior is only an activity for women.187 They

furthermore criticize Egyptian men for being subordinate to their

women, for following behind them in the street and for doting on

them. The Bedouin agree that true masculine behavior means the

man must set the boundaries and control his wife.

As the greatest source of competition between the Bedouin and

the Egyptians has been in the economic sphere, the Aqaba Bedouins’

greatest criticism of the Egyptians revolves around business practices.

The Bedouin accuse Egyptian migrants of constantly hassling tourists,

187. Interview with Bedouin (men and women) about Egyptian male bonding,

May 15, 2009.

Figure 11: Cairene youths strolling in the Khan al-Khalili.

Photo by author, September21, 2009.

Evolving Social Contacts and Frameworks

133

trying to convince them to spend money, and claim that this has given

both the Egyptians and the Bedouin a bad image in the eyes of the

tourists. A number of Bedouin complained that Egyptian migrants

traveled to Sinai solely to make money from the tourists, but that their

business practices were dishonorable and their tendencies to lie and

cheat their customers have given tourists bad impressions of the people

who work in town. This has created a situation in which the Bedouin

communicate a belief that poor Egyptian behavior will alienate the

tourists from the towns of South Sinai, which will have devastating

economic consequences for the Bedouin.188 In their view, the Bedouin

are not merely victims of aggressive Egyptian economic policies, but

have also fallen victim to dishonorable Egyptian behavior.189 These

types of statements support the argument that social perceptions are

closely linked to economic conditions.

In turn, negative stereotypes of the Bedouin are perpetuated among

Egyptian migrants and ofﬁcials in Sinai.190 Some of these attitudes

were described earlier, but here it becomes important to examine the

deeper signiﬁcance behind them. First of all, the Egyptians believe the

Bedouin are lazy, that they prefer poverty to manual labor, and that

furthermore, they are primitive and will retain primitive economies

because they are incapable of integrating into “modern” economic

systems without radical transformation. Reinforcing this stereotype is

the perception of the Bedouin as unskilled and uneducated, leading

to frequent descriptions of the Bedouin as stupid, as expressed

in the quotation at the beginning of this section. This attitude was

reﬂected in the 1985 Sinai Development Study, and appears to have

remained the basic assumption regarding Bedouin behavior on the

part of the Egyptian authorities to this day despite visible signs of

Bedouin integration into the urban economy. Despite this focus on

transformation, Egyptians continue to “see” the Bedouin through an

188. Conversation with Bedouin about Egyptians, April 12, 2009.

189. Conversation about trip to Cairo, September 22, 2009.

190. During interviews in Cairo, I found that those who have had little

exposure to the Bedouin in reality tended to take a more ambivalent

attitude towards the Bedouin and speak in the abstract. They reflected

the media’s negative portrayal, but often added that the Qur’an refers to

the tribes as “noble.”

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essentialist lens, where the label “Bedouin” automatically implies the

above social characteristics. And despite clear signs of integration,

many Egyptians believe that to be “Bedouin” means to remain

traditional and nomadic, and there is a powerful tendency to view

them as such.

A second but related stereotype is of the Bedouin as dangerous

and untrustworthy. This is a stereotype perpetuated by Egyptian

authorities, who have come to associate the Sinai Bedouin with

activities such as drug cultivation, smuggling, human trafﬁcking,

and even terrorism and espionage along with a number of smaller

vices frequently mentioned in the Egyptian media. Reinforcing this

stereotype is the hostility the Bedouin hold against the government

and Egyptian migrant workers. Egyptians perceive the hostility to

them as a general tendency to be hostile to all outsiders, and they

have attempted to present the Bedouin as dangerous.191 In the event

that Bedouin and backpackers are seen traveling together, there is

an immediate suspicion that they are participating in some kind of

illegal activity. In one such event, I was detained for over four hours in

el-Tor, evidently due to a suspicion that my traveling companion and

I, who were in el-Tor with three Bedouin friends, were Israeli spies

sent to gather information on Egyptian elections. This is the level of

mistrust and suspicion in which the authorities hold the Bedouin and

their associates. While the incident was largely a misunderstanding,

one major question posed to us was why we felt we had to travel with

three Bedouin. In the future, the authorities suggested, it would be

better to hire an ofﬁcial taxi.

How can these attitudes be analyzed? Anthropology conceives of

stereotypes as a method for members of social groups to “ﬁt their

neighbors and acquaintances into categories which determine the mode

of behavior towards them.”192 In this way, stereotyping is a method

191. “Six arrested, drugs seized in south Sinai bust,” Agence France-Presse,

February 27, 1997; see also Hobbs, “The Opium Poppy in Egypt,” 79-

80. See also the volumes of news articles tying the Bedouin to the terror

attacks of the 2000s in Southeastern Sinai and the reports of Bedouin

violence and agitation against Egyptian authorities.

192. J. Clyde Mitchell, The Kalela Dance (Manchester: Manchester

University Press, 1956), 32. While this quote was written in the 1950s,

Evolving Social Contacts and Frameworks

135

of ordering the social world, delineating categories of people based

on generalized concepts of who they are and what they do. A similar

deﬁnition, put forth by a social psychologist, conceives of stereotyping

as “a means whereby kinds of objects (people) are classiﬁed on the

basis of perceived properties, thus facilitating a meaningful response

to those objects.”193 Along these lines, stereotypes do not need to

reﬂect reality, but they must be generally accepted by others in order

to have social meaning.194 While there are a number of possible uses

for stereotypes, the Bedouin and Egyptian examples represent two

distinct cases.

First is the case of Bedouin stereotypes of Egyptians. These

stereotypes focus heavily on putting down Egyptians by attaching

pejorative qualities to them to which Bedouin qualities can be

positively contrasted, notably regarding attributes considered to be

honorable. Thus, while the Bedouin see themselves as noble and

generous, they label the Egyptians as dishonest and greedy, focusing

their stereotypes on perceptions of invasion and aggression. This sets

and hardens boundaries between social groups. These stereotypes

“inform the individual of the virtues of his or her own group and the

vices of the other, and thereby serve to justify thinking that ‘I am an

X and not a Y.’”195 In this way, negative stereotypes of Egyptians

are one form of defending one’s own culture from an encroaching,

foreign culture. In terms of identity boundaries, these stereotypes are

tools to communicate fundamental cultural incompatibilities between

two social groups, reinforcing the perception that members of group

Y (Egyptians) do not share the same basic values as members of

group X (Bedouin), undermining the value and legitimacy of Egyptian

identity in the eyes of the Bedouin.

In the case of Egyptian stereotypes of the Bedouin, these attitudes

shape the way in which Egyptians interact with the Bedouin,

contemporary social anthropologists, especially those focusing on

ethnicity and ethnic relations, agree that this function of stereotyping

continues to have social relevance today.

193. John C. Brigham, “Ethnic Stereotypes,” Psychological Bulletin 76.1

(1971), p. 18.

194. Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism, p. 25.

195. Ibid.

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providing justiﬁcation for their unbalanced policies. By labeling the

Bedouin primitive and unskilled, there is ex ante motivation and ex

post validation for the marginalization of the Bedouin from the fruits

of economic development. Furthermore, by labeling the Bedouin as

dangerous or criminal, authorities justify maintaining tighter control

over the population and distancing the Bedouin from tourists, although

the true reason may be a desire to limit Bedouin-tourist interaction

for the beneﬁt of Egyptian migrants. In terms of Bedouin identity,

these stereotypes are prescriptive and constraining. Such stereotypes,

created and perpetuated by dominant social groups, enable those

controlling the state to place certain restrictions on the Bedouin

and perpetuate negative attitudes while also having the function of

ascribing “acceptable” roles and relationships the Bedouin may adopt

in their national context. The main difference between stereotypes

created by hegemonic groups and those created by peripheral groups

is the power—coercive, constitutive, and institutional—that lies behind

hegemonic stereotypes.196 While it may appear that the Bedouin and

the Egyptians use these stereotypes in different manners, in fact both

employ stereotypes to regulate inter-group interaction. And while

such stereotypes may be entirely false at the outset, in time such

groups may come to internalize some of their images, leading to a

cycle of ascription and reﬂection known as altercasting, a subject that

will arise again in the next chapter.197

This is a consequence of the uneven power relations that exist

between the hegemonic social group and the periphery; the state

has the capability of reifying its perceptions of other social groups

through its ofﬁcial policies and enforcement mechanisms. Returning

to Wendt’s maxim “If men deﬁne situations as real, they are real

in their consequences,” I suggest a reﬁnement of this statement to

include a consideration of power: If men deﬁne situations as real,

and have the power to reify those deﬁnitions, then they generate real

196. For a discussion of different types of power, see Michael N. Barnett and

Raymond D. Duvall, “Power in International Politics,” International

Organization 591 (2005), pp. 39–75.

197. Eugene A. Weinstein and Paul Deutschberger, “Some Dimensions of

Altercasting,” Sociometry 26.4 (1963).

Evolving Social Contacts and Frameworks

137

consequences.198 This power is why the state has the ability to ascribe

acceptable roles and relationships, whereas the Bedouin can merely

contest these deﬁnitions. Furthermore, this explains why state law

consistently dominates Bedouin customary law except in zones the

state is unable to penetrate. The importance of this type of social

interaction for identity formation is not merely in the conception of

“who we are,” but of “who we are in relation to everyone else,” which

focuses on roles and relationships “acceptable” (as deﬁned by the

dominant power) within heterogeneous social contexts.

Stereotyping is a method in which social groups deﬁne

boundaries and membership and give order to a heterogeneous social

arena. This order is manifested by patterns of social interaction that

reﬂect concepts of social distance, such as barring Egyptians from

Bedouin neighborhoods, and value incompatibility, reﬂected in the

competition between Egyptian goals and Bedouin interests for Sinai

development. It is a primary way of dealing with the institutionalization

of social relations between distinct groups and of coping with

processes of integration. Importantly, cultural stereotypes develop in

situations of close contact between social groups. The presence of

stereotypes is one indicator of the presence of boundaries between

distinct social groups, and they contribute to the ordering of relations

between them.

The Bedouin and Tourists

As opposed to the hostility that developed between the Aqaba

Bedouin and Egyptian migrants, relations between the Bedouin and

foreign tourists are often marked by warmth and a high degree of

cross-cultural exchange. While the Bedouin perceive the Egyptians as

a threat to their livelihood and heritage, tourists play the opposite role.

Not only do tourists not pose a threat to Bedouin social distinctiveness,

they actually provide an outlet for the Bedouin to communicate and

proﬁt from their culture. Conversely, while the Bedouin have openly

rejected Egyptian cultural symbols and values, they consume tourist

198. Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, p. 330.

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culture, representative of the global North, with fascination. Tourism

has provided the primary medium through which the Aqaba Bedouin

adopt new values and symbols. While for the purposes of tourism,

Bedouin culture reﬂects a high level of traditionalization (the defense

of concepts of tradition and an attempt to maintain them), there is

no denying that the culture of the tourists has had a profound effect

on the social patterns of the Dahab Bedouin. This not only includes

the adoption of new tastes in music and dress, but also changing

perceptions of modesty and social mobility.

Many among the younger generation of Bedouin in Dahab are

genuinely interested in forming close relationships with foreign tourists

and experiencing their culture. They describe these relationships as

free, as opposed to the social conventions regulating relationships

between the Bedouin, or the hostility regulating Egyptian-Bedouin

relations. A number of Bedouin have even conﬁded that they feel they

relate to foreigners better than they do to older Bedouin, indicating

the emergence of a rather wide generational gap in the Bedouin

community.199 These relationships are forged in Dahab and are

maintained through visits and the establishment of permanent lines of

communication between the Bedouin and their friends. Most recently,

this has been accomplished through the internet and social networking

sites such as Facebook, which has become the forum for Bedouin youth

to maintain relationships with foreigners. Through these connections,

the Bedouin are able to maintain their links outside of Sinai and

achieve a greater understanding of foreign culture, increasingly able

to place themselves in a global context instead of merely an Egyptian

one. Foreign cultural symbols have become a daily part of Bedouin

life through interaction with tourists, exposure to foreign television

such as MTV and BBC, as well as the internet. For their part, the

Bedouin are actively absorbing these cultural symbols and taking pride

in being able to show the impact of foreign culture on their own lives.

199. Conversation with Bedouin women about relationships with foreigners,

April 12, 2009. I also had the opportunity to witness a rather rude

interaction between a group of urban Bedouin youth and their elders at

a wedding to which the youth brought alcohol and tourist women who

were considered inappropriately dressed. Their response was that their

elders are behind the times.

Evolving Social Contacts and Frameworks

139

Furthermore, these Bedouin have begun to understand their existence

in a global context and begun to express themselves as part of a global

youth culture that connects them to the foreigners visiting Dahab. In a

number of cases, they have begun deploying adopted foreign symbols

to express evolving Bedouin values.

Pop Culture and Dress

The popular culture preferences of the Aqaba Bedouin are largely

informed by processes of media globalization through television and

internet, which are now widely available in Bedouin homes in Dahab,

and by their social interactions with tourists. Through these channels,

the Bedouin have begun to embrace certain symbols of Northern

culture, adapting them to reﬂect both local values and values they see

as shared with foreign youth.

MTV has become a popular station among the Bedouin youth,

and their exposure to international media has allowed them to follow

Northern popular culture. Among the Aqaba Bedouin, Hip Hop and

R&B are two genres of music that have become immensely popular.

One Bedouin, just a few years younger than myself, has even organized

a Bedouin break-dancing troupe consisting of himself and four of his

friends, performing to the songs of artists such as Akon and 50 Cent,

icons of the American Hip Hop scene. The Bedouin see this music as

a reﬂection of a romantic life of freedom and prosperity (associated

with the images contained in their music videos), and have begun to

identify with this genre of music. They have furthermore begun to

identify with HipHop as a form of counter-culture expression, seeing

themselves in a similar context to oppressed groups in other states,

such as African Americans or French Muslims, for whom Hip Hop is

also a popular form of expression.

The Bedouin have adopted these symbols and have begun to

reﬂect them as an organic part of their own culture.200 To an extent,

Bedouin youth identify with African-American expression due to their

perception that they, like the African-American community, have

200. These Bedouin occasionally brag that it was the Arabs who first invented

Hip Hop through their tradition of extemporaneous poetry.

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been the victims of discrimination by their government. As a result,

a number of Bedouin have adopted African-American social symbols,

such as “bling” (large chain necklaces), wide-brimmed baseball caps,

and as mentioned above, Hip Hop. These adopted symbols have not

been adapted to reﬂect traditional Bedouin values, but reveal that the

Bedouin are identifying with and adopting foreign values that reﬂect

similar a sociopolitical contexts and status. It is important to note that

they still express a strong sense of Bedouin identity despite these

transformations. This type of social change does not undermine their

“Bedouin” identity, which is communicated as entirely complimentary,

but is deployed as a challenge to “Egyptian” identities and Egyptian

processes of nation-building. This relation to the political condition

of social groups in other states, as opposed to the acceptance of

national (Egyptian) solidarities, clearly proves the extent to which

the Bedouin are aware of their role in Egyptian society as well as

in expanding global culture. It further indicates the possibility that

similar government policies, irrespective of national borders, have the

potential to elicit similar identity processes that transcend nationalism

or national identities.

The standard dress for Bedouin males has been the jalabiyya, the

robe worn by the Bedouin as well as many Egyptians. This dress is

the only style among many older Bedouin, but among the younger

generation, the jalabiyya is beginning to lose its popularity. For many

Bedouin youth, it has become a traditional dress, worn only on special

occasions when participating in tribal activities. In Dahab, on the other

hand, many Bedouin have adopted what they might consider the

“traditional dress” of the tourists, which is frequently a ﬂashy t-shirt

and a pair of board shorts or jeans. This uniform is common among

younger Bedouin males, as are items such as European football

jerseys and baseball caps. Notable sports clubs, such as FC Barcelona,

Manchester United, and the New York Yankees, have become popular

among the Bedouin, who now follow their favorite European sports

teams on television and the internet. In this way the Bedouin are able

to present themselves as socially similar to the tourists, with patterns

of dress and popular culture communicating familiarity.

Among young Bedouin women, there is alimited trend towards

decreasing personal modesty in the presence of foreigners. In the

Evolving Social Contacts and Frameworks

141

presence of elder Bedouin, Bedouin women maintain a high level of

modesty, continuing to cover their head and body with a black abaya.

In the presence of their foreign friends, however, these girls often

uncover their faces, and even occasionally remove the hijab (headscarf)

altogether. Bedouin concepts of modesty have been tempered when

interacting with foreign friends. One female Bedouin, 26 years

old, said that she felt uncomfortable in the black abaya because it

drew attention to the fact that she was different among her foreign

friends.201 While inter-Bedouin relations, notably between genders and

generations, continue to be regulated by social convention, increasing

contact with foreigners has induced a number of Bedouin to embrace

external cultural values.

Clearly one of the ways the Bedouin are attempting to maintain

ties with foreigners is the adoption of foreign cultural symbols, which

increases familiarity and comfort among both Bedouin and tourists

201. Conversation with Bedouin female about relationships with foreigners,

February 12, 2010.

Figure 12: New forms of Bedouin dress.

Photo by author, February 11, 2010.

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in their interactions. In this way, the adoption of tourist culture is an

expression of tourist-Bedouin social compatibility. While empirical

cultural markers between the Bedouin and tourists can occasionally be

quite signiﬁcant, warm relations reﬂect a perception of social proximity

or compatibility, based on the economic and social relationship that

has emerged between them.

Sexuality and Gender Relations

Perhaps the most radical social transformation among the young

Aqaba Bedouin has been their changing attitudes towards romance,

marriage, and relationships, especially as relates to the formation

of relationships between Bedouin and foreigners. Many Bedouin

youths maintain romantic relationships with foreigners. While this

phenomenon has been reported among Bedouin (and occasionally

Egyptian) men in Dahab, I was surprised to discover a limited number

of Bedouin girls, in their late teens and twenties, who conﬁded that

they, too, occasionally maintained relationships with foreign men, but

that they had to be kept secret from their elders.202

For the young Bedouin men, notably those who work closely with

foreign tourists, social interactions, especially at bars and nightclubs,

are opportunities for engaging in sexual relationships with female

tourists.203 Simply put, many young women come to places like Dahab

hoping to have an “exotic” sexual experience.204 One woman I met in

Dahab even went as far as to proudly explain that she was traveling

the world having sex with as many “locals” as possible because she

was planning on writing a book about her “exotic” experiences. Due

to the high turnover rate of tourists, who often stay for a week or

less, there is a constantly replenished pool of women in Dahab, and

moreover, relationships tend to be ﬂeeting. It should not come as a

202. Ibid. and various other discussions.

203. Multiple evenings at a Dahab nightclub, May-June 2012.

204. Much work has been done on this subject. For a local example, see

Jessica Jacobs, “Have Sex Will Travel: Romantic ‘Sex Tourism’

and Women Negotiating Modernity in the Sinai,” Gender, Place &

Culture 16.1 (2009).

Evolving Social Contacts and Frameworks

143

surprise that sexual prowess is a status symbol among young Bedouin

men, who frequently discuss their sexual exploits with others. This is

not to link these attitudes to tribal culture in any way, but instead to

acknowledge that this is a fact of youth culture throughout the North,

in places such as America and Europe. It appears to be expressed

even more strongly in vacation destinations such as Dahab, where

tourists tend to be a bit more hedonistic than they might otherwise

be. In a similar vein, the Bedouin tend to be more hedonistic with the

tourists than with members of their own community.

Among both men and women, relationships with foreigners are

preferable to relationships with other Bedouin because they are less

regulated by social convention and are, in an important way, less

demanding. The availability of foreigners for platonic and romantic

relationships has undermined the value of endogamy among the

Bedouin. This has spurred some Bedouin men to seek marriage

outside of their own community (women have not attained this

freedom). Furthermore, the Bedouin have come to greatly appreciate

the freedom that surrounds these relationships, as opposed to the

regulations regarding modesty and respect that exist both within

Egyptian and Bedouin society regulating cross-gender relations.

Whereas in the past, marriage was restricted to fellow tribesmen, often

agnatic kin (such as a paternal cousin), and many would never have

considered marrying outside their tribe, let alone marrying someone

from a settled, non-Muslim population, today, many Bedouin youths in

Dahab say they would prefer to date and marry a foreigner, perceiving

that these relationships grant them greater social freedom. On the

other hand, such relationships and potential marriages carry the risk

of social insecurity. If they become public, the result is often social

ostracization by fellow tribesmen, and if they should fail, it is quite

hard to regain the “face” already lost. Bedouin that rely on the social

security provided by the tribe, even in urban settings, are constrained

in their ability to pursue relationships with foreigners. The ones with

the greatest freedoms are those who are economically self-reliant and

socially closer with the foreign tourists, which once again means those

employed in windsurﬁng and scuba clubs.

When asked about this preference to carry on relationships and

eventually marry outside the Bedouin community, one interviewee

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described how marrying a Bedouin would limit his opportunities

later in life for two primary reasons. First, a foreigner is a symbol of

social mobility for the Bedouin, who are, to an extent, a suppressed

group. Bedouin have limited access to certain areas and are treated

as second-class citizens by the Egyptian authorities. A foreign spouse

would allow the Bedouin to overcome this restriction and escape the

limitations of being Bedouin in Egypt. Prominent examples of the

beneﬁts of marrying a non-Bedouin include the ability to leave Egypt

and get citizenship in another country, the ability to travel around

Egypt on vacation to visit places like Sharm el-Sheikh without being

confronted by Egyptian authorities, and ﬁnally, freedom from the

marriage responsibilities of tribal life, such as the necessity to provide a

home and a ﬂock for his future wife.205 Another interviewee described

the desirability of marrying a foreign girl simply: “The European

women, they don’t need goats.” For Dahab’s Bedouin youth, the

requirement to have already provided for a wife has made marriage

almost prohibitive due to Egyptian laws and regulations.

Case Study:

‘Asala — A Developing Bedouin Center

Egyptian, German, Russian, English—everyone comes to Dahab.

Dahab now is an international city. Everybody lives in one land,

with Egyptians, Bedouin, everybody together. We are neighbors

now. My neighbor is Russian. But the city mentality is too much

for many people here. There are many people who aren’t ready for

city life—and nobody trains them or gives them education about

the city, how to live and make business, how to deal with life in the

city. It’s different.

Bedouin community organizer, May 30, 2012.

The neighborhood of ‘Asala is the focus of Bedouin urban

sedentarization in Dahab. The patterns of Bedouin settlement,

social organization, and dependence stemming from processes of

205. Various conversations with Bedouin males regarding marriage, July 22,

2009; September 17, 2009.

Evolving Social Contacts and Frameworks

145

development can best be studied within this social space. Not only are

we interested in how the Bedouin have adapted their social patterns

within an urban environment, but we are also interested in the extent

to which patterns of Bedouin settlement mirror patterns of Egyptian

migrant settlement in their goals and structures. This will allow us to

draw conclusions about the main factors encouraging speciﬁc types of

social change, notably whether this transformation is fuelled by culture

and tradition, or by certain factors within the process of development

itself.

The most basic examination of ‘Asala involves mapping

demographic patterns of Bedouin settlement within the town stemming

from natural growth as well as migration from desert villages. Looking

at basic demographics, the major difference between the social space

of the town and the village becomes clear. Bedouin villages in Sinai

are frequently based on kinship ties, and each village has the freedom

to regulate its social organization. The town, on the other hand, does

not permit the same kind of freedom due to restrictions on physical

space, which generally leads to clustering and vertical construction as

towns and cities continue to expand. For the sedentarizing Bedouin,

there is a clear preference to reproduce village structures within the

town, that is, to keep kin units in close physical proximity. Where

space is available, brothers and cousins frequently live in neighboring

houses. This not only provides a certain bubble of familiarity and

comfort within the urban space, it also provides natural avenues of

migration for villagers looking to move to the town. It is frequently

the case that young Bedouin from the desert villages of Sinai move

into urban spaces with older kin, giving them a support structure in an

unfamiliar environment.

In these patterns of settlement, there is remarkable similarity to

trends of rural-to-urban migration within central Egypt as shown by

Janet Abu Lughod, notably regarding attempts to reproduce village

structures in urban settings to provide a system of support for new

migrants.206 These settlement patterns create a channel between the

town and the villages to allocate and distribute resources. A number

of Bedouin describe their relationships with their villages of origin and

206. For more on rural urbanization in Cairo, see Abu Lughod, “Migrant

Adjustment to City Life: The Egyptian Case.”

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their reasons for moving into Dahab in a manner identical to Egyptian

migrants, as a means to earn a living and to send money back to

their families that have remained in the village. Thus, the model of

migration and remittance is also applicable to the Bedouin. Dahab,

then, has become a source of external income that is sought by

individuals from different social groups for the purpose of supporting

both themselves as well as their villages of origin, which have come

to depend on ties established with urban economies for maintenance.

In this way, Bedouin villages in South Sinai have become dependent

on income from tourism even though they are not directly involved in

tourist activities.

Unlike the social freedom of village organization, however, the

urban environment has a major limitation, that of space. In many

instances, kin are prevented from living in close proximity due to a lack

of available space. This has necessarily forced some Bedouin in ‘Asala

into situations in which they ﬁnd themselves living next to complete

strangers, unable to ensure their privacy, as well as situations in which

a young Bedouin may have to select a location for his marriage-home

that is quite far from the rest of his kin.

Urbanization, then, has had a major effect on issues such as

familiarity and modesty, and has led to a transformation in the social

space of the Bedouin. The greatest effect has been on women, who

have been forced to spend more of their time indoors in order to

avoid interactions with strangers. The urban space is highly restrictive

due to issues of unfamiliarity. In the Bedouin neighborhoods of ‘Asala

this problem was clearly visible; women and children would vacate

the streets as we walked through them, obviously uncomfortable

with being seen in public by strangers.207 This is not only a Bedouin

207. While this might seem to contradict my earlier statement regarding

decreasing personal modesty around foreign friends and a desire to

form relationships with foreigners, the major issue here is familiarity,

not a general sense of openness. The formation of relationships

between Bedouin women and foreign men is fundamentally connected

to the issue of increasing familiarity, and modesty must continue to be

maintained between strangers. This is not a prohibition against seeking

to increase familiarity, but one against immodesty in close contact with

strange men.

Evolving Social Contacts and Frameworks

147

condition, but one applicable to Egyptian women from rural villages,

who, as Janet Abu Lughod aptly explains, have increasingly been

forced indoors and into a life of solitude due to the social restrictions

of unfamiliar contact in an urban environment. Lila Abu Lughod

presents a similar discussion regarding changing social restrictions on

Awlad ‘Ali women in the Western Egyptian Desert as a consequence

of sedentarization and the proximity of unfamiliar neighbors and

visitors.208 Social patterns within urban spaces continue to be regulated

by social convention, even to a greater extent than in villages, despite

changing social realities. Urbanization has inherently undermined the

ability to maintain public modesty, leading to greater restrictions over

women’s freedom and necessitating greater segregation between men

and women.

In Dahab, ‘Asala has grown well beyond its original status as a

loose cluster of Bedouin settlement. As more and more Bedouin

are moving to Dahab, Bedouin neighborhoods are becoming more

crowded. Additionally, the Egyptian and foreign populations of

‘Asala have grown signiﬁcantly in recent years. While ‘Asala began

as a Bedouin space, the Bedouin have not been able to shape the

demographic patterns of the town to prevent strangers from settling

in close proximity. Egyptian development in ‘Asala has begun to hem

the Bedouin into a limited pale, as the building of Egyptian residences

have created a boundary on the north and west edges of the town,

bounding the Bedouin neighborhoods by Egyptian neighborhoods on

two sides, the sea on a third, and the resorts and hotels of tourist

Dahab on the forth. The Bedouin currently have a bit of room to

continue expanding, but will soon have to decide between living in

close proximity to the Egyptians and beginning to build vertically to

maintain connections with their kin. These challenges will inevitably

lead to issues such as poor construction and overcrowding, which

plague other urban centers in Egypt.

Perhaps the most signiﬁcant transformation visible in ‘Asala has

come from the proliferation of commercial centers in the town square.

‘Asala is now complete as an urban space, providing for all the needs

of the Bedouin as well as making available consumer and luxury items.

208. Abu Lughod, Veiled Sentiments, pp. 73–74.

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148

Figure 13: Two photos of ‘Asala Center.

Photos by author, February 12, 2010.

Evolving Social Contacts and Frameworks

149

This includes a number of supermarkets, pharmacies, and clothing

stores, as well as electronics and computer stores, hardware stores,

furniture stores, and even a liquor store. The availability of these

services and goods has led to a major transformation of Bedouin social

and economic patterns. For example, the presence of supermarkets

mitigates the necessity to maintain a nomadic lifestyle. It has allowed

the Bedouin to become sedentary without having to worry about

feeding themselves and their ﬂocks. Clothing and luxury items are

now available signiﬁcantly closer to home, rendering transitory trade

obsolete. Finally, the concentration of consumer stores as well as

hardware stores has allowed the Bedouin to invest signiﬁcantly more

into their houses, which no longer need to be movable, leading to

an increase in consumer items and amenities within Bedouin homes.

For example, most Bedouin houses are now wired for electricity and

running water and contain a number of amenities such as refrigerators,

televisions, and even air conditioners and the internet. A number of

Dahab Bedouin admit that they have become quite used to these

luxuries, and could not picture returning to life in the desert without

them.209

Furthermore, due to the growth of the urban setting and the

proliferation of luxury items and consumer goods, wealthy and poor

neighborhoods are beginning to emerge in ‘Asala, betraying an

increasing gap between rich Bedouin, who live in neighborhoods

closer to the sea, and poor Bedouin, who live further west. This

situation is becoming plainly visible in ‘Asala by the size and amenities

of the houses. Close to the sea, houses have tall, picturesque fences

and extensive garden courtyards. These houses might have garages

or large gates, as well as their own water pump, all signs of wealth

expressed through Bedouin home construction. More modest homes

continue to be constructed from cinderblocks and corrugated metal,

and do not contain extensive gardens like the wealthier Bedouin. One

notable consequence of urbanization has been declining perceptions

and expressions of Bedouin egalitarianism and an increasing wealth

gap within the community (see Figures14 and 15).

209. Statement by Bedouin Youth in Dahab, February 15, 2010. Video

Archives.

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From this short examination of patterns of Bedouin settlement, it is

clear that urbanization has led to similar transformations in the social

patterns of both the Bedouin and migrant Egyptians. Urbanization,

then, is a process leading to cultural convergence due to the availability

of similar services and amenities and entrance into similar markets. A

Figure 14: Wealthy Bedouin home, showing a cobblestone outer wall and an

extensive garden.

Figure 15: Poorer Bedouin home.

Photos by author, February12, 2010.

Evolving Social Contacts and Frameworks

151

notable consequence is the reorganization of certain economic and

social frameworks, allowing the Bedouin to integrate into an urban

setting. Furthermore, urbanization has led to demographic patterns

signiﬁcantly different from Bedouin villages and subjected the Bedouin

to a heterogenous social setting where the Bedouin inevitably

encounter Egyptians, who own a majority of the shops in ‘Asala

center, and foreign visitors, many of whom prefer to stay in ‘Asala.

Thus, it is no surprise that the Bedouin have had to adapt their social

patterns to urban conditions. These social adaptations are bringing the

social patterns of the sedentarizing Bedouin in closer alignment with

those of other Egyptian groups. This transformation is a consequence

of urbanization processes instead of speciﬁc cultural notions regarding

“proper” forms of social organization.

The Sources and Extent of Social Change

The above discussion should not be taken as a claim that the entire

Bedouin community of Dahab reﬂects a homogenous degree of social

transformation. To the contrary, the balancing of opportunities in the

market economy with the security of the subsistence economy, as

discussed in chapters two and three on Bedouin economic change,

can be directly applied here. The social order of the Bedouin reﬂects

a continuum of transition between individuals remaining in their

subsistence territory and continuing to reﬂect values more closely

associated with tribal social structures, and those who have settled

in Dahab, found steady employment, and formed close social ties to

foreign tourists. Naturally, this variation has caused tension within the

community, a not uncommon occurrence within groups undergoing

extensive social transformation.

What, then, accounts for this variation and what can be said

about the mechanisms through which social transformation occurs?

At the macro level, there is striking coincidence between social

transformation and tourism. The emergence and differentiation of the

tourist economy closely correlates to the spectrum of social change

visible within the Bedouin community, implying some important link

between economic and social transformation. Styles of dress and new

tastes in music correlate to trends in European and American popular

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culture brought to Dahab by tourists, and relationships between the

Bedouin and these tourists are the avenue through which the Bedouin

absorb this culture. To some extent, certain sub-cultures are even

emerging, notably between those engaging with the windsurfers,

who reﬂect a bit more of a “hippie” demeanor and carefree attitude,

and those who engage with the scuba divers, who tend to be a bit

more professional. In turn, particular relationships tend to map onto

employment trends. Bedouin engaged in windsurﬁng are generally

friends with the windsurﬁng tourists, while the Bedouin engaged in

diving are generally friends with the divers, even to the extent that

Bedouin in one group occasionally disparage members of the other.

Taken together, these observations strongly suggest that tourism is the

factor to which the Bedouin are reacting. This is not, however, to claim

that tourism, in and of itself, is the causal factor driving speciﬁc patterns

of social transformation. Instead, tourism should be understood as a

phenomenon that entails the disintegration of barriers of isolation,

leading to increasing contact between culturally different groups and,

consequently, new forms of social differentiation. The importance of

isolation and contact, linked to patterns of self-conception and identity

articulation, will be discussed in the next chapter. What is important to

distinguish here is that tourism has been the channel through which

new social symbols have entered the Bedouin community and thus

constitutes a ready “pool of availability” that accounts for speciﬁc

manifestations of socialization in Dahab.

As a general observation it is a minority of younger Bedouin

who have undergone the most extreme social changes. Many of

the younger Bedouin, while certainly affected by their transforming

social environment, do continue to wear “traditional” forms of dress,

pray ﬁve times a day, and avoid alcohol and the nightlife of Dahab

to various extents. Upon closer inspection, the particular extent of

social change undergone by individual Bedouin appears to be quite

closely connected to the job he holds. Those working very closely with

foreign tourists reﬂect the most extreme social changes, while those

who have very little contact with the tourist market may reﬂect very

little social transformation. Finally, there are those in the middle.

One clear example of an intermediate stage of social transformation

is that oft hose involved in the hashish and opium trade. Since they

are required to exist both in the pastoral economy and the tourist

Evolving Social Contacts and Frameworks

153

economy (see chapter two), they appear to have struck a balance

between social transformation and social conservatism, often speaking

excellent English and being able to carry on conversations with foreign

tourists about their own culture (especially drug culture), while at the

same time continuing to reﬂect more conservative patterns of dress

and social conduct (such as refraining from drinking). Drivers also

exhibit an intermediate state of social transformation, not because

they necessarily exist in both economies, but because while they work

in the tourist economy, they have signiﬁcantly less face-to-face social

contact with tourists, instead merely conveying them from one point

to the next; other Bedouin act as brokers, insulating drivers from direct

contact with the tourists. In this way, the aforementioned balance of

the Bedouins’ “dual economies” can be applied to their triangulation

of social transformation. These two processes work together. But once

again, the evidence demonstrates that this is not a case of “either/or”;

it instead exists along a continuum, blending cultural conservatism and

transformation, with a major correlate being the extent of contact

with foreign groups.

While this might lead to the conclusion that the particular form

of employment is the causal factor determining the extent of social

change, we should not be so quick to draw causal inferences from

these observations. The micro-level mechanisms that are driving

these transformations and mediating the relationship between

tourism and social transformation are a bit harder to identify.210 Issues

such as reverse causality and circular causation must be considered

seriously. Upon closer examination, powerful selection effects can be

readily identiﬁed.211 It is not the case that all Bedouin behave in a

homogenous manner until they acquire jobs, and furthermore, they

are not randomly assigned to employment, but rather self-select into

jobs depending on their own tastes. Finally, connections between

family and friends mean that there is no “unit-independence” among

the Bedouin, and this has a strong inﬂuence on social development.

These issues undermine an easy ability to draw neat, strong causal

inferences linking employment to social change.

210. Henry E. Brady and David Collier (eds.), Rethinking Social Inquiry:

Diverse Tools, Shared Standards, 2nd ed. (Lanham: Rowman &

Littlefield, 2010).

211. Ibid. See especially, “Introduction to the Second Edition.”

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154

Many Bedouin youths spend their evenings in Dahab’sbars and

nightclubs, interacting with tourists and other Bedouin. However, it

is not just the Bedouin “of age” who frequent these establishments,

and there is often a large group of younger Bedouin, in their early

teens, who remain on the sidelines.212 While they are too young to

be drinking and pursuing women, they come anyway; this appears

to be an important avenue of socialization for younger Bedouin, who

absorb this tourist culture and learn proper modes of behavior from

their “elders,” Bedouin in their twenties. Eventually, when they get

old enough, they self-select into peer- and employment-groups. These

younger Bedouin are often siblings or friends of older Bedouin, and

family ties to particular groups of older Bedouin appear to have an

equally important effect in determining the extent of social change

as well as the employment decisions that come a bit later in life.

Thus, while there is a very high correlation between employment and

social transformation, the above process observation suggests that

employment alone is not the primary causal factor determining the

extent of social change; family environment and youth experiences

are also important elements of the story. This should be unsurprising

considering what we know about youth socialization in other settings.

While I have often heard arguments claiming that the Bedouin are a

socially closed off community hostile to outside culture, it is clear from

this discussion that avenues of Bedouin socialization differ little from

those of youth living in Brooklyn, London, or Lagos. What might make

this surprising are assumptions that Bedouin society is less developed

than others, rendering the Bedouin a case of “least likely.” This issue

will be discussed in greater depth in the following chapter.

As in any community experiencing rapid social transformation,

a debate has emerged among the Dahab Bedouin regarding the

appropriate extent of transformation vis-à-vis tradition. I often hear

criticism directed at the most transformed Bedouin youth from their

more conservative elders and peers. Again, these opinions exist on a

continuum, where some Bedouin who criticize the most transformed

youth for their laziness or carefree manner (usually in regards to

the windsurfers) are in turn criticized by their more conservative

peers for their own employment and life decisions, for example the

212. Notes on an evening at a Dahab nightclub, May 25, 2012.

Evolving Social Contacts and Frameworks

155

decision to open a hotel. Social transformation clearly has its limits,

and this process continues to be negotiated. However, the ability of

the Bedouin youths to make their own living has undermined their

reliance on more conservative members of their community as well as

any sanctioning mechanisms that might be used to bring these youths

back into line.213 This has naturally caused a high level of tension

between groups within the Bedouin community in Dahab, and further

highlights the nature and limits of social transformation, as well as the

friction associated with processes of social and economic change.

In light of the obstacles to drawing valid inferences, can a causal

argument still be made for sources of social change? Shifting the

argument around to account for endogeneity, it is possible to

claim that the socialization process strongly inﬂuences the career

decisions made later in life. Taken alone, this is neither surprising nor

particularly interesting. Yet this raises a question as to what extent

these preconceived social attitudes may change with changes in

employment. That is to say, the problem of endogeneity can be found

when examining whether a change in employment predicts a change

in social attitudes; however, if it can be shown that the employment

decision is exogenous and that social attitudes were subsequently

affected, this increases the plausibility of a causal argument. A speciﬁc

example is illustrative:

One of my earliest Bedouin acquaintances in Dahab owned a shop

selling handmade Bedouin souvenirs to tourists. Socially, he ﬁt into

what I would call the progressive side of the Bedouin order: he drank

alcohol and spent his evenings in nightclubs chasing girls with his

foreign friends. He spoke frequently of marrying a foreign girl so he

could leave Egypt and settle elsewhere. He listened to American music

and seldom prayed. Furthermore, perhaps linked to the fact he worked

213. James P. Habyarimana, Macartan Humphreys, Daniel N. Posner,

and Jeremy M. Weinstein, Coethnicity: Diversity and the Dilemmas

of Collective Action (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2009);

see also James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Explaining Ethnic

Cooperation,” American Political Science Review 90.4 (1996).

Significant work in Political Science focuses on sanctioning mechanisms

for pressuring interethnic conformity. Habyarimana et.al. point to

sanctioning to explain intra-ethnic cooperation; Fearon and Laitin focus

on sanctioning to explain inter-ethnic cooperation.

Chapter 4

156

closely with Bedouin culture tourism, he was quite chauvinistic when

it came to his identity. He constantly spoke with pride about Bedouin

culture and slandered Egypt and Egyptians. Two years after I made

his acquaintance, his shop was suddenly closed; the Egyptian-owned

resort from whom he rented the space apparently wanted it back,

depriving him of an outlet through which to sell his goods. Unable to

ﬁnd another source of steady employment, he subsequently turned to

drug dealing.214 Initially, his change in occupation was accompanied

by little social change; he still spent much of his time at nightclubs

with foreigners and continued to drink and listen to foreign music.

However, as time passed, I began noticing clear changes in his

behavior. He began to refuse alcohol and eventually started spending

less time at nightclubs, until the point at which he categorically

refused to attend bars or parties where there might be alcohol. He

also began to pray consistently and regularly wear a jalabiyya, which

he once claimed he hated. Currently, he is attempting to secure a plot

of land so that he can marry a Bedouin girl. As these changes were

happening, the gap between him and his friends began to widen until

he selected out of his peer group and into another that was clearly

more socially conservative. His former friends now refer to him as

“boring,” while he refers to them as “not good people.” Finally, as

a signiﬁcant portion of his clientele is now Egyptian, I ﬁnd that he is

much less hostile to Egyptians than he once was.

While I cannot categorically say that it was the switch from

one employment position to another that caused these social

transformations, the timing is suggestive and I cannot identify any

other factor unique to him that can account for these transformations.

For example, the intuitive link between increasing contact with

Egyptian clients and attenuated hostility suggests the inﬂuence that

the change in employment has wrought. An alternative explanation,

that the passage of time account for his change (a maturity argument),

can be rejected on the grounds that this passage of time is constant

for everyone, and within his peer group he was the only one who

214. This should not be understood as in any way accusatory or disparaging.

While this statement might carry connotations of stigmatization and

illegitimacy in other parts of the world, it is considered a legitimate form

of self-employment within the Bedouin community.

Evolving Social Contacts and Frameworks

157

underwent this process; he was simultaneously the only one who

switched jobs in this manner. As for an increase in religious sentiment

potentially being the cause, it appeared to me that his increase in

religiosity was itself an outcome of his change in job. Moreover, while

he prays, he does not speak often about his religious beliefs to the

same extent as I have heard from other religious Muslims.

While I would not argue that tourism or employment is mono-

causal, I argue that employment does exert social inﬂuence which

shapes attitudes and values. So in what sense is this causal? Tourism

is a mechanism that generates face-to-face contact between culturally

different individuals. It is precisely this interaction which creates

moments of social and identity change. In this way, tourism is one of

a number of mechanisms that increase the breadth of social contact,

in a manner similar to industrializing urbanization in the Copperbelt

of Africa studied by Mitchell and Epstein.215 Additionally, the speciﬁc

sites for current trends in Bedouin socialization are closely related to

the tourist market: resorts, nightclubs, restaurants, popular beaches.

Employment determines, to a signiﬁcant degree, the type of social

contacts that an individual will develop, which explains why pre-

existing social preferences are such an important factor determining

employment selection. On the other hand, in situations in which

employment is not a matter of self-selection, it clearly creates

somewhat of a path-dependent channel that encourages the adoption

of certain social values. These two factors explain the correlation, in a

loosely deterministic and dialectic manner, between employment and

social transformation. This has important implications for patterns of

identity transformation, to be discussed in the ﬁnal chapter.

Concluding Remarks

The changes in the Bedouins’ social space are consequences of

economic development and transformation. Among the Bedouin, social

patterns are, to a large extent, predicated on modes of subsistence

215. Mitchell, The Kalela Dance. See also A. L. Epstein, Politics in an

Urban African Community (Manchester: Published on Behalf of the

Rhodes-Livingstone Institute by Manchester University Press, 1958).

Chapter 4

158

and economic organization. The stability of tribal structures has

ﬂuctuated inversely with political stability and economic opportunity

in Sinai development. With the beginnings of sedentarization and

integration, the tribal structures and sources of authority prevalent in

a Bedouin subsistence economy have declined in relevance, reﬂecting

the social needs of the urban population. Fluctuations in the strength

of tribal structures, in a manner similar to the extent of social change

undergone by individuals, reﬂects the balancing of the Bedouins’ dual

economies, suggesting that social organization is to a large extent

predicated on patterns of economic organization.

Increasing contact with Egyptians and foreigners is driving social

transformation among the Bedouin, leading to changes in how the

Bedouin perceive themselves and their role in the state. Egyptian

development policies were the major factor in shaping social relations

between Bedouin and Egyptian migrants, and the social patterns

pursued in Dahab mirror the economic competition that developed

between the Bedouin and the migrants, as well as the economic

relationship established between the Bedouin and foreign tourists.

One conclusion that can be readily drawn from this discussion is

that the Bedouins’ social frameworks are evolving; increasing contact

with outsiders has transformed the Bedouins’ social space as well

as their conception of self. Economic competition and government

policies marginalizing the Bedouin have reinforced negative

perceptions of Egyptians and the boundary between the Bedouin and

Egyptian social groups. Simultaneously, the presence of foreigners is

causing high leakage of Northern symbols and values into many parts

of urban Bedouin society. The Bedouin are consciously orienting

themselves away from Egyptian symbols and society by incorporating

cultural symbols brought by foreigners and communicating them as

part of “Bedouin” culture. In this way, the Bedouin have reacted

to economic development by orienting themselves towards a social

order that is noticeably cosmopolitan and barely Egyptian as a way to

maintain themselves as a distinct social group within Egyptian society.

While this new culture is signiﬁcantly different from what is considered

Bedouin “tradition,” it has allowed the Bedouin to retain a unique

and differentiating identity from other Egyptian groups and reﬂect

values that some Bedouin have come to embrace as a response to the

direction of development.

159

Chapter 5

Ethnicity, Nationalism, and

Identity Transformation

among the Aqaba Bedouin

Economic development in Sinai is increasing Egyptian state control

over a territory previously characterized by the state’s limited presence.

As we have seen throughout this study, the major consequences of

increasing state presence and economic development for the Aqaba

Bedouin have been processes of economic transformation and

social reorganization spurred by a number of integrative processes

including urbanization, sedentarization, expanded communications

and transportation infrastructure, and the emergence of local but

integrated markets. As the Egyptian state seeks to establish its

authority, it is simultaneously working to disseminate and standardize

national ideologies and identities. But it must be stressed that these

processes, instead of leading to the homogenization of identities, are

actualizing reactive processes of identity formation that are dependent

on a number of external pressures. And it must further be stressed

that there is a difference between these identities themselves and the

“politics of difference” in which these identities form the bases of

sociopolitical categorization and interaction. This chapter focuses on

the latter: the nature of the social politics, or identity politics, of South

Sinai and how this is connected to a broader sense of “Bedouin”

identity.

As my experiences in Sinai strongly suggested, Bedouin identity

is an extremely complicated topic that cannot be addressed without

due consideration of the academic and political debates surrounding

identity and ethnicity. A holistic understanding of contemporary

political identity is impossible without appealing simultaneously to

essentialist, instrumentalist, and constructivist traditions, each of

which deﬁnes a different aspect of identity. While it is undeniable that

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identity as a badge is quite “sticky,” this does not imply that the roles

and signiﬁcations of identity are necessarily ﬁxed and unchanging

across varying political contexts.216 And as we will see, identity

formation often occurs below the national level. In Sinai, and even

just in Aqaba, Bedouin cultural identity is in certain ways distinct from

other Bedouin cultures, even within Egypt. For example, comparative

studies of Bedouin groups in other settings would probably challenge

the claim that something like Hip Hop, discussed in the previous

chapter, constitutes an important element in the expression of

Bedouin identity. This variability in expressions of identity suggests

the situational nature of certain aspects of identity.

In the modern state system, deﬁned by discrete, territorially-bounded

polities (states) comprised of socially heterogeneous populations,

identity politics are closely linked to the spread of national interests

and ideologies and a clash with particularist, sub-national ones that

for one reason or another have not been absorbed through nation-

building strategies. The particular local form this identity assumes is

encouraged by the contemporary sociopolitical needs of the group

and its elites and is largely articulated as a foil to nationalism, deﬁned

here slightly differently than those understandings adopted by scholars

such as Gellner, for whom nationalism was “primarily a political

principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be

congruent.”217 Instead, I deﬁne nationalism as the ideology that both

legitimizes the authority of the territorially-bounded national state and

shapes its social programs.218

Nationalism provides the ideological basis for dominant national

identities, which seek to assert their universal applicability in an

attempt to cover social divisions within state borders. As it is this

territorial state that has been identiﬁed as the basic arena for group

competition, it is against these national identities that alternative

216. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, p. 66.

217. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell,

2006), p. 1.

218. Thomas H. Eriksen, “Ethnicity Versus Nationalism,” Journal of Peace

Research 28.3 (1991), p. 263. In the words of Benedict Anderson,

“nation-ness is the most universally legitimate value in the political life of

our time.” Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 3.

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161

identities, or expressions of collective solidarity, form. This solidarity

is structured on “certain qualitatively distinct characteristics,” which

form the basis for familiarity and group feeling and constitute the

elements of identity.219 This sense of solidarity is vital to the social

being (symbolic existence) as well as the political organization (practical

existence) of groups. This produces a conclusion identical to that of

Abner Cohen in his work Two Dimensional Man, that identities play

two primary roles, a symbolic legitimizing role and a practical political

role.220 These dual functions will be repeatedly addressed. Once

again, the distinction must be made between the identity itself and the

contemporary political role that these identities play.

What, then, is the role of “ethnicity” in the politicization of identity

and how does any of this apply to a discussion of the Bedouin?

Scholars from all ideological streams have come to recognize that

“nations have a historical core” that is based on certain primordial

culture elements of the core (dominant) social group.221 In this way,

national identities and the legitimacy of the nation-state are quite often

articulated in the language of “ethnicity,” based on notions of social

continuity, common descent, and shared cultural symbols and values.

Instead of attempting to claim “ethnic status” for the Bedouin, my

preference to use ethnicity theory stems from the analytical leverage

that this scholarship lends to the question at hand. The wholesale

219. Jeffrey C. Alexander, “Core Solidarity, Ethnic Outgroup, and Social

Differentiation: A Multidimensional Model of Inclusion in Modern

Societies,” in Jaques Dofny and Akinsola Akiwowo (eds.), National and

Ethnic Movements (Beverley Hills: Sage Publications Ltd, 1980), p. 6.

220. Abner Cohen, Two-dimensional Man: An Essay on the Anthropology

of Power and Symbolism in Complex Society (Berkeley: University

of California, 1974). See chapter 4 “The Political Man, the Symbolist

Man.” See also Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States, p. 80. Joel

Migdal links these aspects of identity to patterns of “social control” in

the politics of contemporary states: “Effective social control depends

first on the regulation of resources and services. Beyond that, it entails

the effective use of symbols to give meaning to social relations.”

221. Alexander, “Core Solidarity, Ethnic Outgroup, and Social

Differentiation,” p. 10; see also Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations,

p. 14. In the words of Anthony Smith, identity mainly relates to a sense

of community based on history and culture.

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acceptance of ethno-nationalism as a dominant ideology regulating

the state system has simultaneously legitimized the politicization of

culture and identity as an effective basis for contemporary political

solidarities in national contexts. From an instrumentalist point of view,

all political identities can be considered “ethnic,” whether based on

race, religion, or even country of origin.

Since ethnicity is a primary source of identity and solidarity in

nationally deﬁned situations, as the Aqaba Bedouin become integrated

into the fabric of Egyptian society, they have increasingly begun to

express their collective identity in an ethnic idiom, a process scholars

refer to as ethnogenesis. This chapter will explore issues of identity

transformation and articulation among the Aqaba Bedouin in response

to Egyptian development as well as other state- and nation-building

strategies explored in previous chapters. First, I will discuss what is

meant by ethnicity, especially as it operates in contemporary contexts;

we must arrive at a satisfactory analytical deﬁnition of ethnicity for

it to be useful. Next, issues of identity and ethno-nationalism in

the contemporary Egyptian state will be explored. This will lead to

a discussion regarding the speciﬁc shape and circumstance of the

identity communicated by the Aqaba Bedouin. By way of conclusion, I

will discuss the lessons that the case of the Aqaba Bedouin present for

questions of political identity more broadly.

What Is Ethnicity?

Among partisans of identity, there remains disagreement over what,

precisely, ethnicity is. This debate has led to the emergence of two

main camps. First are the primordialist-essentialists, who assert that

ethnicity is a product of highly identiﬁable and measurable culture

traits that can be traced into the past and which are objective “givens”

for analysis. Second are the instrumentalists and constructivists,

who claim that ethnicity is a speciﬁcally modern phenomenon that

is adaptable as circumstances require.222 However, instead of seeing

222. For discussions on the primordialist-modernist debate, see Anthony D.

Smith, Myths and Memories of the Nation (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2000), p. 98; see also Rabinovich and Esman, Ethnicity,

Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Identity Transformation among the Aqaba Bedouin

163

these arguments as rigid deﬁnitions for ethnicity, they should instead

be understood as two sides of the same coin: ethnicity, in fact, relies

on contemporary and primordial elements to give it both relevance

and legitimacy.

By understanding ethnicity as simultaneously grounded in both

primordial structures and contemporary contexts, we arrive at a

deﬁnition of ethnicity quite similar to that of Anthony Smith, who

acknowledges the importance of both essentialist and instrumentalist

elements but agrees that neither, on their own, sufﬁciently explains

ethnicity.223 Ethnic categories are deﬁned as “populations distinguished

by outsiders as possessing the attributes of a common name or

emblem, a shared cultural element, and a link with a particular

territory.”224 Overall, Smith identiﬁes six major components that

comprise ethnicity: an identifying name, a myth of common descent,

shared historical memories, one or more elements of a common

culture, and a link to a territorial homeland. Questions regarding the

origins and symbols of ethnic identity, and additionally their sources

of legitimacy, can only be answered by primordial elements. While

Smith grounds his deﬁnition of ethnicity in these primordial elements,

he agrees with the instrumentalists on the contemporary functions of

these identities, if not their origins.

According to instrumentalist arguments, ethnicity is the

categorization of individuals in a heterogeneous society for the purposes

of interaction and identiﬁcation, allowing a person to categorize a

complex social world and achieve self-deﬁnition.225 Ethnicity, in this

Pluralism, and the State in the Middle East, p.12. I am not attempting

to conflate Instrumentalism and Constructivism; they are not equivalent.

However, the contingent and constructed nature of ethnicity according to

these schools of thought establishes a useful distinction from essentialist

understandings.

223. Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Revival (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1981).

224. Smith, Myths and Memories of the Nation, p. 12.

225. Fredrik Barth, “Introduction,” in Fredrik Barth (ed.), Ethnic Groups and

Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (Boston:

Little, Brown, and Company, 1969), 13; see also Cohen, “Introduction:

The Lessons of Ethnicity” in Urban Ethnicity.

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sense, is a product of the interaction of social groups who consider

themselves distinct, informing the normative patterns of interaction

between these groups in a collective environment.226 Thomas Eriksen,

another instrumentalist, qualiﬁes this deﬁnition: “Ethnicity is the

property of a social formation and an aspect of interaction; both

systemic levels must be understood simultaneously.”227 Ethnicity, as

he understands it, is simultaneously a property of a group formation

(essentialism) as well as a co-constituted property of sociopolitical

forces (instrumentalism).

Ethnicity, as it emerges from contact between distinct groups,

cannot, then, be based merely on objective cultural markers of a group,

which can be measured in a vacuum. It instead uses “culture” as a

symbolic way of regulating contact between distinct groups operating

within a bounded system. This deﬁnition identiﬁes the contemporary

political role that ethnic identity plays but fails to identify the sources

of ethnicity. Smith provides the missing link: myths of common

descent provide legitimacy for the identity and its special interests, and

cultural symbols play a vital unifying role where values, memories, and

customs form the basis for group solidarity in addition to markers of a

boundary.228 Ethnicity is necessarily grounded both in primordial and

contemporary elements. Primordial elements serve to legitimize the

identity, both internally, as these cultural elements form the basis for

group feeling, as well as externally, where the recognition of historical

continuity and cultural unity form the basis for external groups to

understand and recognize the legitimacy of the group:

It is this sense of history and the perception of cultural

uniqueness… which differentiates populations from each other

and which endows a given population with a deﬁnite identity,

both in their own eyes and in the eyes of outsiders.229

226. Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, p. 12.

227. Thomas H. Eriksen, “The Cultural Contexts of Ethnic Differences,”

Man, New Series 26.1 (1991), p. 132.

228. Smith, Myths and Memories of the Nation, pp. 14, 61–62.

229. Quote by Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, p. 22; see also Barkey

and Parikh, “Comparative Perspectives on the State,” p. 531.

Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Identity Transformation among the Aqaba Bedouin

165

The more grounded in recognized historical realities, the greater

the basis for the legitimacy of the group. Identities are more easily

contested if they are not grounded in primordial elements, which

provide the visible basis for their “objective” existence.

Contemporary elements, on the other hand, function to give this

identity political relevance. Instrumentalists have shown that cultural

variation between ethnicities is not ﬁxed, but is constructed and

communicated to reﬂect tension between ethnic categories and is

exploited to serve political ends. In other words, while the essentialists

clearly demonstrate that identities and their symbols must have

historical basis to be considered universally legitimate, thus contributing

to the subjective “strength” of a given identity, the meanings that

are associated with these identities can be highly contingent, based

on sociopolitical relations and power asymmetries operating in a

particular ﬁeld of interaction. Smith is in full agreement:

Such [an objectively existent ethnic] ‘reality’ as we shall impute

to an ethnie is essentially social and cultural: the generic

features of ethnie are derived less from ‘objective’ indicators…

than from the meanings conferred… on certain cultural, spatial,

and temporal properties of their interactions and shared

experience.230

This explains why ethnic boundaries may shift depending on situational

circumstances and ethnic patterns that regulate society in a particular

state will not be equally applicable to societies in other states.231 The

focus of this discussion should be understood as the transformation

of existing identities as they are mobilized politically, not the formation

or emergence of new ones.

As many societies once considered “traditional” are undergoing

major social transformations as responses to processes of national

integration, ethnic identity is strengthening instead of weakening.232

While ethnic identity relies on the communication of culture, often

through primordial symbols, “heritage” becomes a tool for the

legitimation of group identity in the contemporary arena. I deﬁne

230. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, p. 22.

231. Mitchell, “Perceptions of Ethnicity and Ethnic Behavior,” p. 23.

232. Cohen, Two-dimensional Man.

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tradition along similar lines, as sets of normative behaviors from

the past that are no longer utilitarian in contemporary contexts but

continue to be deployed because of their symbolic value. These shared

practices point to common ancestral pasts and suggest common

descent, and have the purpose of strengthening group solidarity as

well as distinguishing social groups from one another.

The above discussion suggests that both essentialist and

instrumentalist accounts are vital to a broader understanding of

what ethnicity is. On the other hand, it is clear that each school of

thought addresses a fairly speciﬁc set of questions regarding this type

of identity in a contemporary setting. Essentialism is necessary to

address questions of where, when, and what, relating to the origins of

ethnic identity as well as the symbols that comprise relevant cultural

forms. Furthermore, this aspect of ethnic identity helps explain

questions of legitimacy that plague identity contestation. Overly

“modernist” and “post-modernist” approaches to identity have been

unable to address such issues appropriately. On the other hand,

overly essentialist accounts of ethnicity tend to focus too strongly on

the past, making broad assumptions about “process” or lack thereof,

especially as it relates to transform ability of social groups and the

mutability of identity. They may wrongly assume that such groups are

unchanging and that myths of common descent are socio-historical

“facts” when the reality may be quite different.233 There is little use in

studying identity without focusing on the contemporary role that these

identities play, which has been the focus of instrumentalist accounts

and theories of identity. These accounts focus on questions of why

and how, especially relating to issues of identity politics and group

mobilization. As contemporary identity politics can undoubtedly be

characterized as the “politics of difference,” instrumentalist theories

of identity boundaries and intergroup relations may assume greater

analytical relevance than essentialist characterizations of the sources

of identity. Due to the primary focus of this analysis on Bedouin

identity in contemporary interactions with the national state, such

instrumentalist approaches have been the most valuable in my analysis

of Bedouin identity in transformation. My analysis does not focus on

233. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, p. 66. Horowitz discusses the

mutability of antecedent historical conditions, malleable “within limits.”

Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Identity Transformation among the Aqaba Bedouin

167

“what is ethnicity?” but rather “how is identity used in contemporary

political interactions?”

An effective way to further understand the difference between

essentialist and instrumentalist focuses of ethnic identity would be to

consider the differences between symbol and stereotype. Symbols of

cultural identity are closely related to concepts of tradition and arise

from within a culture group. Stereotypes, on the other hand, relate

to identity boundaries and relations between distinct social groups,

and in this way arise from the interaction of culture groups that see

themselves as distinct. Symbols fall into the realm of essentialism;

stereotypes are instrumental.

Symbols play a cognitive and emotional role. Like “tradition,”

symbols are objects or practices imbued with social and historical

meaning that, through the “politics of similarity,” form the basis

for social solidarities by eliciting similar cognitive and emotional

responses from those identifying with them. The purpose of cultural

symbols is to homogenize cultural production within a given social

community. The goal is to create a situation whereby all of the

members of an ethnic community infer the same meanings from a

given symbol, creating a shared response which reinforces the idea of

group membership and in-group solidarity. Symbols derive from the

collective experiences of an ethnic group and thus exist regardless of

the particular constellation of social groups interacting in the broader

political system. That is to say that the historical symbols of Bedouin

communities are largely uniform whether those communities are

located in Egypt, Israel, or Saudi Arabia. That is not to say, however,

that the precise repertoire of symbols deﬁning speciﬁc communities

of Bedouin must be uniform across borders, but that speciﬁc, shared

symbols must generally have the same subjective meanings if they are

going to successfully generate group feeling. These meanings arise

from the shared historical experience of the broader ethnic category.

Symbols can only be exogenously forced on a community through

the mediation of history –such as the symbolism of the antique key or

the olive grove for Palestinians, signifying dispossession at the hands

of another. Symbolic differences are not always invoked, but always

remain available to deﬁne a boundary between the two social groups.

Similarly, while “Egyptians” and “Bedouin” share many cultural

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similarities, the lack of tribal afﬁliation is one of the examples cited by

Bedouin showing that Egyptians are not part of their culture group. In

this way, tribal afﬁliation has acquired an important social symbolism

for the Bedouin as a means of distinguishing themselves as a distinct

social group.234

Stereotypes are also cognitive and emotional, but play a very

different function. Instead of structuring solidarities within a given

community, they structure relations between different social groups.

Another important difference between symbols and stereotypes

is that while primordial cultural symbols are largely uniform across

borders, stereotypes can be highly contingent, based on the interests

and perceptions of other groups with which the ethnic community

must interact. This statement receives additional empirical evidence

through a number of studies, notably by Daniel Posner, whose work

with dyads of ethnic groups on either side of the Malawi-Zambia

border shows that the remarkable consistency in individuals’ abilities

to identify cultural symbols of the other group does not extend to

stereotypes, which differed signiﬁcantly. Attitudes of social distance

were based, not on differences between the communities’ symbols, but

on the stereotypes that emerged on either side of the border, reﬂecting

political relations between the groups.235 While internal conceptions

of identity may be fairly well established through the strength of

cultural symbols and traditions, acceptable roles and relationships can

be ascribed through the standardization and reiﬁcation of stereotypes

imposed on the community by politically powerful groups. Symbols

may display their own consistency, but stereotypes generally indicate

the presence of a social boundary.

234. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, p. 71. This is a process Horowitz

refers to as “Differentiation”—the invocation of a cultural difference in

order to define a boundary.

235. Daniel Posner, “The Political Salience of Cultural Difference: Why

Chewas and Tumbakas Are Allies in Zambia and Adversaries in

Malawi,” American Political Science Review 98 (2004), p. 533. I

remain agnostic as to the causal mechanisms posed by Posner; however,

the evidence from the surveys is unambiguous. Posner finds in a series

of logit regressions that there is no significant correlation between social

distance and the number of cultural “differences” between groups as

identified by survey respondents.

Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Identity Transformation among the Aqaba Bedouin

169

Despite similar cultural symbols, the sociopolitical implications

of a Bedouin identity in Egypt are quite different than they are in a

state such as Saudi Arabia. As a more globally familiar example, an

Arab or Muslim identity in Egypt has signiﬁcantly different political

implications than it does in the United States, even more so after

September 11, 2001 than before. The relationships and constraints

ascribed to identity categories through processes such as stereotyping

are products of sociopolitical forces interacting at the national (system)

level, notably the particular constellation of ethnic groups in the

system and the alliances forged between them, as well as the ideology

and material interests of the hegemonic or ruling social group. When

discussing identity categories, scholars and politicians alike must take

care to distinguish between the questions “what does it mean to be an

X?” and “what does it mean to be an X in this particular context?” It

is almost always the case that the answer to these two questions will

differ.

Ethnicity in a Modern State System

As ethnicity is grounded to a certain extent in primordial elements,

ethnies, according to Smith’s deﬁnition of ethnicity, have been

identiﬁed in pre-modern and even ancient periods. While ethnies are

not unique to the system of territorial states, the form and function

that ethnic identities have assumed in contemporary contexts have

differed signiﬁcantly from those of the pre-modern period. One of

the reasons I have shown such favoritism for Smith’s deﬁnition

of ethnicity is that he clearly identiﬁes the political role of ethnic

identities in contemporary, national contexts, and he does not

attempt to isolate ethnicity from its role in the construction of national

identities. This study is interested in contemporary expressions of

ethnic identity along the lines articulated above, speciﬁcally how and

why they are deployed in contemporary, nationally-deﬁned situations,

i.e. in the politics of contemporary states. Notably, ethnic identities

frequently form at odds with dominant nationalist ideologies.236 This

is because in many cases, national identities attach themselves to

236. Eriksen, “Ethnicity Versus Nationalism,” p. 263.

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ethnic identities, rendering most nationalist conﬂicts a type of ethnic

conﬂict, for example in Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland, and Israel.

This phenomenon is well recognized by scholars of nationalism, as

evidenced by the myriad of works entitled Ethnicity and Nationalism

or some variation that have proliferated over the years.

The territorially-deﬁned nation-state, as it is the primary source of

sovereignty in the contemporary international system, is the primary

arena for the activation of social conﬂict, especially in an inter-ethnic

sense.237 It is important to recognize the centrality of nationalism to

this argument, as it has provided the context against which other

identities mobilize. Nationalism is expressed through cultural symbols

and traditions, based on myths of common descent and historical

continuity, and is thus articulated in the language of ethnicity.238 Most

nationalisms are, in fact, entho-nationalisms. The concept of language

games and competition explains why ethnicity has become a powerful

and effective means of contesting nationalism, forming the basis for

the social articulation of politics. Language games, ﬁrst described by

Wittgenstein, implies that all interactions must be conducted in the

same “language” or an “intersubjective ﬁeld tied to a particular context,

which is reproduced by the individuals [or groups] interacting.”239 This

means that any type of interaction can only be meaningful if conducted

using compatible, mutually agreed-upon frameworks or perceptions

of the “particular context” in question.

Nationalism, in this sense, may be considered the strategy

adopted by central states and dominant social groups in their national

interactions to pursue their interests and promote their legitimacy. In

other words, it is useful to think of nationalism “as a political activity

contesting or upholding a particular type of political order… In this

sense, nationalism is not simply about imagined communities; it is

much more fundamentally about a struggle for control over deﬁning

communities [my emphasis].”240 As a social ideology, nationalism

237. Rabinovich and Essman, Ethnicity, Pluralism, and the State in the

Middle East, p. 4.

238. Smith, Myths and Memories of the Nation, p. 9.

239. Eriksen, “The Cultural Contexts of Ethnic Differences,” p. 132.

240. Mark R. Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the

Soviet State (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002),

p. 18.

Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Identity Transformation among the Aqaba Bedouin

171

stresses conformity to the values and identity of the central state, which

may or may not be egalitarian across the wider spectrum of society,

especially in post-colonial states and states dominated by single social

groups.241 In this sense, nationalism is necessarily hegemonic, seeking

to delegitimize and under communicate social differences within the

state and instead claim social uniformity based on the identities and

interests of the core. In the words of Ernest Gellner, nationalism

“insists on imposing homogeneity on the populations unfortunate

enough to fall under the sway of authorities possessed by the

nationalist ideology.”242 This is an attempt to assert that the goals and

ideologies of the center are equally applicable across the population,

legitimizing the core’s pursuit of its own interests as national interests;

nationalism always legitimizes the interests of the hegemonic social

group. Contemporary identities cannot be studied or understood

divorced from issues of national interests, goals, and values, for their

formation is linked. In order to contest nationalism then, peripheral

social groups have increasingly adopted the language of ethnicity,

which becomes the most effective basis to contest ethnically grounded

nationalist ideologies on the basis of the previously-mentioned

common intersubjective framework structured around historical and

cultural legitimacy.

While these identities are articulated in the language of ethnicity,

they are not assumed as mere foils to national identities, but

increasingly to national ideologies.243 In other words, if the state

attempts to treat all of its constituent social groups equally, then these

groups will generally be less likely to react against dominant values

and identities, which are seen as distributive and inclusive instead of

potentially restrictive or exclusionary.244 This further suggests that the

241. Eriksen, “Ethnicity Versus Nationalism,” p. 263.

242. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, p. 44.

243. Smith, The Ethnic Revival, p. 6. “It is tautologically true,” wrote

Smith, “that if the nation-state and its agencies can satisfy the perceived

needs in ways acknowledged by its citizens, then its inhabitants become

nationalists,” implying a direct link between coincidence of interest and

the acceptance of identities.

244. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States, p. 27. Joel Migdal

wrote, “Social control rests on the organizational ability to deliver key

components for individuals’ strategies of survival.”

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mobilization of identities for political purposes is often a reaction to

material and psychological conditions that state policies create for

social groups.

Perceptions of unequal treatment and discrimination on the part

of central authorities often lead to a reaction away from national

identities, through the development of both distinct social identities

and distribution networks. Which identity will be mobilized, however,

is not entirely up to social groups and their elites. In many cases, state

policies use pre-existing social categories as a basis for organizing

distribution and exclusion. As will be demonstrated below, it is often

the case that systemic political conditions “pre-select” and activate

speciﬁc identities.

A state’s legitimacy among its population rests on its ability to act

as an equitable distributor. In contrast, social groups may continue

to favor non-state modes of organization which are structurally

incompatible with organizational forms favored by the state. These

forms will often appear threatening to state interests and will be

labeled “subversive”—for example, the Bedouins’ desire to pursue

their own forms of employment and labor in Dahab’s tourist economy

rather than be subordinated to state development.When presented

with this choice, social groups will generally follow the path of greatest

utility, further contesting the state’s claim to universally represent the

identities and interests of its population.245 In the event that these

ideologies and values are not deemed universally applicable to the

state’s heterogeneous population, national identities are more likely to

be rejected by peripheral groups who will instead turn to particularistic

identities.

This form of ethnic expression is primarily a symbolic way to

assert a separate existence from hegemonic forms of nationalism,

which simultaneously seek to impose a particular set of interests and

values that operate alongside distinguishing forms of culture. Once

again, identity simultaneously plays two roles, one symbolic, in the

form of cultural identities, and the other political, in the form of group

interests. Elements of ethnicity, then, constitute the primary tools of

identity transformation and resource competition in national contexts.

245. Smith, The Ethnic Revival, p. 6.

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173

Ethnicity is viewed as an organic form of solidarity as well as an

effective means of mobilization to contest national ideologies.

Within the Arab world, nation-building strategies in Morocco

and Algeria represent perfect cases of hegemonic forms of cultural

national identity clashing with particularist sub-national identities.

Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, in a study of the Amazigh cultural awakening

in these two states, shows how state policies supporting a program

of Arabization and Islamo-Arabic supremacy were instrumental in

motivating reactions from these states’ Amazigh populations, who

mobilized to defend their sociolinguistic heritage. Maddy-Weitzman

continues: “No less important [to the Amazigh cultural awakening]

was the poor performance of the state in satisfying both material and

social-psychological needs, leaving an ideological vacuum,” which

was a primary factor cementing a formal social boundary between

Arab and Berber social groups and mobilizing the Berbers.246 This

reﬂects both the material and symbolic needs of the community.

Such a cultural awakening was largely absent in the period before

the state’s program of Arabization began to systematically marginalize

the Amazigh language and legacy, suggesting this movement was a

reaction to speciﬁc state policies.Mobilization occurred despite the

existence of tribal divisions within the Berber ethnie, showing that

multiple forms of identity may exist simultaneously and tribal divisions

do not preclude the possibility of a broader sense of ethnic solidarity.

In national contexts, these tribal groups have turned to an ethnically-

articulated identity that generally de-emphasizes tribal divisions in

favor of a pan-tribal culture group.

Expressions of National Identity in Egypt

and Their Implications for National

Solidarities

Egypt provides a perfect example of a strongly-rooted ethno-

nationalism based on links to the ancient civilization of the Nile River,

246. Maddy-Weitzman, “Contested Identities: Berbers, ‘Berberism’ and the

state in North Africa,” p. 24.

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that in the words of Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, “generat[es]

a particularist and exclusivist Egyptian national identity.”247 National

identities and forms of expression in Egypt strongly reﬂect the

historical continuity of the Nile Valley from Pharaonic through Islamic

times.248 Thus, Egyptian national identity is based on two historical-

cultural elements: Pharaonism and Islamism. While this identity is

very strongly tied to the essence of Egypt’s territorial history, it is a

particularistic legitimacy that has created a strong national core but

has created problems for peripheral nation-building.

Expressions of Egyptian national identity are identiﬁable in

three main arenas: art and literature, tourism, and Egypt’s national

institutions and symbols. The articulation of Egyptian national identity

emerged in the writings of early Egyptian nationalists in the 1920s

and 30s, coinciding with the rise of Pharaonic and Hellenistic imagery

in art and literature.249 This national literature aimed at focusing

Egyptian mass culture on the uniqueness of Egyptian history and

heritage. In these expressions of Pharaonism there was an attempt

to present the idea that Egypt has been more or less preserved since

Pharaonic times as a natural entity. In the period after World War II,

many more Egyptian writers focused on the particularist history of

Egypt, including Taha Hussein and Tawﬁk al-Hakim.250 Gershoni and

Jankowski provide examples of nationalist expression in numerous

247. Israel Gershoni and James P. Jankowski, Commemorating the Nation:

Collective Memory, Public Commemoration, and National Identity

in Twentieth-century Egypt (Chicago: Middle East Documentation

Center, 2004), p. 52.

248. Donald M. Reid, “Nationalizing the Pharaonic Past: Egyptology,

Imperialism and Egyptian Nationalism, 1922–1952,” in Israel Gershoni

and James Jankowski (eds.), Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab

Middle East (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 149.

Despite more recent trends toward Arabism and Islamism, Reid

states, “A current identification with Ancient Egypt … seems to have

become an independent and self-sustaining element of modern Egyptian

identity.”

249. Vatikiotis, The History of Modern Egypt, p. 494.

250. Mahmud Ismail, Nationalism in Egypt before Nasser’s Revolution

(PhD Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1966) (Ann Arbor, MI:

University Microfilms International, 1978), pp. 171–176.

Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Identity Transformation among the Aqaba Bedouin

175

forms of art, notably in the expressions of Nahdat Misr (The Egyptian

Renaissance), showing how Egypt’s particularist national identity is

enshrined in its art and architecture in addition to its literature.

At that time, the future of the ﬁeld of Egyptology became a focal

point for the Egyptian national struggle against the British, and the

political struggle for independence incorporated a strong element

of reclaiming and defending cultural and historical legacies.251 This

observation helps to explain why Pharaonism played such an important

role in cultural and even political expression during the 1920s and

30s, forming a major basis for the anti-colonial struggle: Egyptian

nationalists attempted to “reclaim” their history from the Europeans.

In addition to the aforementioned nationalist authors, Pharaonic

symbolism was adopted by many of the nationalist political parties

including the Wafd, the Umma party, and the Watani party, as well

as a number of political newspapers, notably al-Siyasa operated by

Muhammad Husayn Haykal. Despite the relative decline of Pharaonism

and the later rise of Islamism and Arabism, Reid incisively points out

that “territorial patriotism, Arabism, and Islamism are incompatible

only in the abstract and unreal world of ideal types.”252 Even at the

height of Egypt’s pan-Arabism, Nasser did not attempt to erase the

legacy of ancient Egypt from the memory of the Egyptian nation, he

continued to strive for the nationalization of the ﬁeld of Egyptology,

and he worked for the preservation of Egypt’s ancient archaeological

spaces.253 Instead of interpreting the relative decline of Pharaonism

in the 1940s and beyond as a turn away from this historical legacy, it

could instead be seen as an attempt to harmonize this theme with the

others to create an identity with broader appeal. Today, the symbols

of Egypt’s Pharaonic past coexist alongside expressions of Arabism

and Islamism in Egypt’s nationalist spaces.

251. Reid, “Nationalizing the Pharaonic Past.”

252. Ibid., p. 149.

253. Ibid., p. 147. See also James P. Jankowski, “Arab Nationalism in

‘Nasserism’ and Egyptian State Policy, 1952–1958,” in James P.

Jankowski and Israel Gershoni (eds.), Rethinking Nationalism in

the Arab Middle East (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997),

pp. 150–167.

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The second arena for the expression of Egyptian national identity is

tourism, which has become a primary avenue for the communication

of national heritage and culture to insiders as well as outsiders.254 In

Egypt, as previously identiﬁed, tourism is predicated primarily on

the history of ancient Egypt, in showcases such as the pyramids, the

Egyptian museum’s focus on its ancient civilization, the Temple of

Karnak and the Valley of the Kings in Luxor. In an internet Google

image search for “Tourism in Egypt,” by far the most popular image

returned was of the Sphinx and the pyramids, followed by pictures of

Karnak, the Nile, Abu Simbel, and mummies. A secondary source of

heritage tourism, notably in Cairo, derives from the legacy of Islam

and the Arab conquests. Tourist spaces supporting this aspect of

Egyptian history include the many mosques frequented by visitors, as

well as the walls of medieval Cairo and the medieval Khan al-Khalili.

All of these spaces focus on links to two epochs of Egypt’s history:

Pharaonism and Islam.

This serves to disseminate Egyptian national identity to a non-

Egyptian audience and further reinforce the pride Egyptians take in

their identity. Tourism plays a role in reinforcing the cultural symbols

of a nation in the minds of the lower classes, as opposed to merely

upper-class elites frequently associated with discussions of nationalism

and literacy, because it is the masses that are quite often involved in

the economics of cultural transmission as touts, guides, and vendors.

As their economic livelihood relies on their internalization of the

myths of this idealized past, these symbols leave a lasting imprint on

the consciousness of all those engaged in tourism. The discussion

of the past few paragraphs cannot be overstated, as these issues of

political struggle with a “colonial power” as well as the impact of

cultural tourism on identity can be applied directly to the Bedouin case

that is the focus of this study. These Bedouin are engaged in a form

of tourism that reproduces their particularist culture, as opposed to a

national “Egyptian” culture.

The museum, a fundamental element of tourism, is constructed to

reﬂect historical continuity between the past and the present.255 This

is applicable to culture museums as well as archeology museums.

254. Daher, Tourism in the Middle East, p. 4.

255. Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 181.

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Museums not only allow the state to construct spaces fuelling identity,

but also allow states to attach their own meanings to such artifacts and

draw their own historical connections which serve to legitimize the

state’s sociopolitical program. The display of such artifacts also aids

the state in a process Benedict Anderson refers to as “logoization,” or

the forging of past images into contemporary symbols.256

Furthermore, the museum is a tool that allows the state to draw

identity boundaries and establish historical narratives. In the Egyptian

case, there are a number of important cultural and archeological

museums, including the so-called “Egyptian Museum” (in fact the

Pharaonic Museum of Egyptian Antiquities), the Nubian Museum,

and the Coptic Museum. That the Copts and Nubians have separate

museums expresses an underlying political meaning. Nubian and

Coptic history have been deliberately left out of the “Egyptian

Museum,” as they are considered to be minority or peripheral

groups and do not carry the same type of “Egyptian” identity. While

the Nubians (non-Pharaonic, and indeed non-Arab) and the Copts

(non-Muslim) are excluded from the core Egyptian identity, their

representation through these museums reﬂects an ofﬁcial recognition

of their collective existence as minorities and their categorization as

such.The Bedouin, on the other hand, have no museum and are not

considered an ofﬁcially recognized minority.

Reid presents another interpretation, one organized temporally

instead of culturally but which leads to the same conclusion. The

ofﬁcial narrative of Egyptian identity is enshrined in the dedication

of four major museums in Cairo to one major historical era: the

Pharaonic, the Greco-Roman, the Coptic, and the Islamic.257 Again,

this progression reﬂects the historical continuity of the Nile and

diverges from Bedouin perceptions of their historical narrative. In

this way, the Bedouin’s existence as an autonomous social group in

a socio-historical sense is contested by the state, further fuelling their

preoccupation with heritage defense and their desire to communicate

themselves as culturally different from “Egyptians.” This has led the

Bedouin to perceive that they have been “left out” of the Egyptian

narrative, further alienating them from a sense of Egyptian solidarity.

256. Ibid., p. 182.

257. Reid, “Nationalizing the Pharaonic Past,” p. 146.

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This feeling of sociopolitical marginalization parallels their economic

marginalization. As opposed to Copts and Nubians, who are merely

marginalized by the state, the Bedouin are denied by the state,

meaning the very existence of their collective identity is contested.

Finally, national institutions and bureaucracies are important

sources of socialization and transmit Egyptian national identity,

reﬂecting the coexistence of Islamic and pre-Islamic history. This

takes on a number of forms. At the most basic level of symbolism

is Egyptian money, which is designed to reﬂect the two sources of

Egyptian identity. On all denominations of Egyptian paper currency,

the basic design is to place a Pharaonic symbol on one side and an

Islamic symbol on the other. For example, the 100 LE note displays

a picture of the Sphinx on one side and the Mosque of Sultan Hassan

on the other, while the 20 LE note displays images of Egyptian

hieroglyphs on one side and the Muhammad ‘Ali Mosque on the

other. In addition to currency, there are other outlets for the display

of national symbols such as postage stamps, the architecture of public

spaces (such as parks, malls, and public squares), and street names.

These symbols, taken from archeological and historical spaces, have

been forged into reproducible logos that have come to represent Egypt

and are designed to evoke a sense of national identiﬁcation and pride

around which group feeling is structured. In this way, certain aspects

of Egyptian history have become symbols of collective identity, easily

recognized and reproduced, around which Egyptians have come to

structure their cultural self-image. While these symbols appear wholly

organic to many Egyptians, certain groups, the Bedouin included, see

them as alien.

Institutions with more active socializing functions include education

and the media. In his ﬁrst edition of Imagined Communities,

Benedict Anderson stated, “so often in the nation building policies of

the new states, one sees… a systematic, even Machiavellian, instilling

of nationalist ideology through the mass media, the educational

system, administrative regulations, and so forth.”258 While Anderson

subsequently backed away from this statement in his second edition,

it is clear that in many single party states with tight control over

258. Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. 113–114, 1st edition.

Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Identity Transformation among the Aqaba Bedouin

179

education and the media, these organs have been used to instill a

nationalist ideology supportive of state-disseminated histories and

identities. In the Middle East, the life’s work of Sati al-Husri and his

impact on nationalist education in Syria and Iraq is illustrative of this

claim.259 Not without substantiation is the suggestion that “liberal” or

“democratic” states do the same.

Images of Egyptian identity are reproduced in the national press

as well as public education. The Egyptian press “provides numerous

examples of the widespread effort to link contemporary Egypt with its

Pharaonic past.”260 Even the names of major Egyptian media outlets

reﬂect this endeavor. Two notable examples are the radio station el-

Nil (the Nile) and the newspaper al-Ahram (the pyramids). Public

education focuses on the Pharaonic origins of the Egyptian nation.261

In Sinai, Bedouin school children are confronted with stories glorifying

ancient Egypt in their school books, full of tales of the pyramids and

the Pharaohs, which they consider to be quite alien to their own

cultural narrative. These socializing institutions are avenues through

which central authorities disseminate symbols of national identity and

nationalist ideologies (national values), and strive towards national

integration by inculcating society with a singular set of symbols,

values, and a uniform world view around which social solidarities are

structured.262

Egyptian national identity is clearly particularistic, reﬂecting the

uniqueness of Egypt’s core, increasing its legitimacy for national

existence. However, the acceptability of this identity among non-core

elements of Egypt’s population has been problematic, further showing

that Egyptian national identity is not considered universal among all

segments of Egypt’s population; instead it is only applicable to the

core of Egyptian society, identiﬁed as Nile Valley Sunni Muslims (the

intersection of the legacies of the Nile and of Islam). Among other

259. William L. Cleveland, The Making of an Arab Nationalist: Ottomanism

and Arabism in the Life and Thought of Sati al-Husri (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1971).

260. Gershoni and Jankowski, Commemorating the Nation, p. 52.

261. Ibid., p. 53.

262. James Turner, “Universal Education and Nation Building in Africa,”

Journal of Black Studies 2.1 (1971), pp. 3–13.

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social groups in Egypt, such as the Coptic Christians, the Nubians,

and the Arabic-speaking Muslim Bedouin unconnected to the legacy

of the Nile, this identity has been perceived as exclusionary.

This leads to the problem of minority formation within states.

Minorities form in precisely this situation where social boundaries

have been drawn to exclude certain social groups from national

membership.263 This may potentially occur when the state disseminates

very narrow ethnic identities, if it discriminates against speciﬁc social

groups, or in situations where equally applied laws inherently favor

one group over another, for example, by supporting inequitable

status-quo situations such as land and employment allocation in

South Sinai. Smith links the formation of minorities to expressions

of ethno-nationalism, where “only people of a presumed descent can

be members of the ethnic nation.”264 While nationalism constitutes

a drive towards homogenization and the implementation of cultural

uniformity, it is simultaneously exclusionary, “creating outsiders

within,” by placing rigid constraints on national membership.265

The formation of minorities relates not only to national sentiment,

but also to greater issues of political and economic inequality and

discrimination. This is because members of the national core, or

those ascribing to dominant identities and ideologies, are generally

privileged by the state when it comes to allocation of resources. The

case of the Bedouin and the Egyptian migrant workers in Sinai is a

powerful example of this phenomenon, where the distributive role of

the Egyptian state gives priority to the migrants and sets the stage

for the competition between them and the Bedouin, leading to the

simultaneous emergence of an identity boundary between the Bedouin

and the Egyptians. Smith elucidates this issue and deserves to be

quoted in full:

Not only are jobs and houses reserved for members of the

dominant ethnie… aliens within become politically suspect or

vulnerable. In these circumstances they may be discriminated

263. Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism, p. 108.

264. Smith, Myths and Memories of the Nation, pp. 187–192.

265. Ibid., p. 197.

Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Identity Transformation among the Aqaba Bedouin

181

against, harassed, segregated, and ﬁnally expelled or even

exterminated…

More often, ethnic nationalism does not involve a speciﬁcally

racist component, but manages to exclude non-members within

and deny them their rights while preserving their essential

humanity.266

These groups are seen as a threat to national solidarity and

nationalist goals, and will often be the subject of attempts at forceful

transformation or suppression. Yet again there is a strong link

between identity and ideology. In the context of contemporary states

and nationalism, ethnicity is a powerful method of contesting the

legitimacy of nationalism and national ideologies.

Identity Transformation and the Aqaba

Bedouin

What, then, is driving the observed patterns of identity transformation

among the Aqaba Bedouin and how is this identity manifested? First

and foremost, we have seen that identity transformation occurs in

periods of increasing economic and political integration stemming

from processes of state- and nation-building. Smith identiﬁes two

particular instances where ethnogenesis is most likely to occur. First

is what he refers to as “incipient secularization,” or “the nub of a

wider clash of cultures, usually between a technologically superior…

civilization and a more traditional, backwater one.”267 Second is

“incipient commercialization… breaking down the community’s

isolation and involving it in an external economic network based on a

superior material culture and technology.”268 Rabinovich and Esman,

in their look at ethnicity, come to a similar conclusion: “Conditions

that give rise to ethnic [mobilization] are (1) control by the modern

state of the political and economic resources that are vital to the

security and wellbeing of its inhabitants and (2) tensions between the

266. Ibid.

267. Ibid., p. 84.

268. Ibid.

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pluralism of society and the claims of the state to regulate the lives of

all who live within its territorial boundaries.”269

Both of these deﬁnitions suggest that ethnic mobilization is most

likely to occur in reaction to processes of state- and nation-building and

periods of accelerating integration, especially when the interests of the

core clash with the interests of the periphery. In Sinai, it is clear that

Egyptian preferences for development have not been wholeheartedly

accepted by the Bedouin, who fear attempts to suppress their

heritage (symbolic) and deprive them of their resources (political).

In concurrence with this rejection of Egyptian goals and ideologies,

seen as threatening, the Bedouin have also rejected Egyptian national

identities, seen as particularistic and exclusive. They have chosen an

ethnically-articulated “Bedouin” identity as a preferred alternative.

The strength of the Bedouin reaction appears to be directly related

to the intensity of the attempt to forcefully disseminate an “Egyptian”

identity and pursue national programs, just as the strength of the

previously mentioned Amazigh revival was directly related to the

intensity of Morocco’s Arabization program.

The Aqaba Bedouin, as a social category, fulﬁll Smith’s basic

requirements to constitute an ethnic category: they have a collective

name, they believe in a myth of common descent, they see a relatively

shared history based on their shared culture, and they lay claim to

a speciﬁc territorial component (or type) within Egypt. It should be

kept in mind, however, that it is not merely the successful attainment

of these elements that give these groups ethnic legitimacy, but the

extent to which they can claim these elements and to which these

elements are externally recognizable. It is not, then, legitimate to

reject a Bedouin ethnic category because of the existence of an Arab

ethnicity, which, incidentally, also does not conform exactly to Smith’s

notion of ethnie because of issues of weak solidarity, contestations of

common descent, and speciﬁc notions of shared culture. Additionally,

as Gershoni and Jankowski identify in the Egyptian case, “Nationalists

rediscover, reconstruct, and in some cases invent narratives of

a glorious past,” showing that national identities can be socially

269. Esman and Rabinovich, Ethnicity, Pluralism, and the State in the

Middle East, p. 3.

Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Identity Transformation among the Aqaba Bedouin

183

constructed and the clash of identities is largely a political struggle.270

Identity is necessarily an abstraction from reality, not a claim that

individuals within a group are identical in all ways. This leaves open

the possibility for contestation of different identities based on different

types of abstraction.

Thus, the existence of the Egyptian nation is no more objective

than the existence of a Bedouin ethnie; the primary existence of each

construct is in the minds and expressions of its partisans.271 Instead,

“Egyptian nation” and “Bedouin ethnie” should be understood as

competing sources of primary solidarity whose relative legitimacy is

not objective, but is the source of competition between the identities.

Once again, the identity that will be favored is the one that holds

the most utility for its proponents. There is little sense in working

to mobilize an identity with zero contemporary relevance just as

there is little sense in working to mobilize an invented identity with

zero historical legitimacy. This is not, however, an attempt to assert

that the Bedouin constitute a “nation” or an incorporated ethnic

community. Instead, Bedouin ethnogenesis is a rejection of attempts

to make the Bedouin into “Egyptians,” which rigid Egyptian policies

have rendered practically impossible anyway, or otherwise force them

into conformity with Egyptian goals.

Major elements of Bedouin cultural identity have evolved to

legitimize the separate existence of the Bedouin as an ethnic category

by focusing on elements of a shared, distinct culture, claims to a

territory, and myths of common descent. Most important of these

elements are those that highlight the major cultural differences between

the Bedouin and central Egyptians, and that present Bedouin values as

superior. These elements have become the primary characteristics in

deﬁning a Bedouin identity. For example, the Bedouin communicate

themselves as generous and hospitable while they assert that the

Egyptians, because of their authoritarian development policies, are

greedy and subjugating. The Bedouin also stress their attachment to

the desert, contrasted to Egyptian dependence on the Nile and urban

spaces. For the Bedouin, the desert symbolizes freedom and nobility

while the river and the city symbolize dependence and subjugation.

270. Gershoni and Jankowski, Commemorating the Nation, p. 8.

271. Daher, Tourism in the Middle East, p. 19.

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To this they add conceptions of honor and masculinity, casting

Egyptian social behavior as feminine and dishonorable. Key elements

of Bedouin identity, then, have been articulated to contrast with their

perceptions of Egyptian identity: that the Bedouin are noble and free

while the Egyptians are slaves. This dichotomization serves to establish

a boundary between “self” and “other,” as well as an uneven power

dynamic where “self” identity is a source of pride in direct contrast

to the identity of the “other,” which is portrayed as inferior. This

maintains distinct boundaries between the two social groups as well as

aids in the formation of value-system bases for group solidarity.

The primary factors encouraging the transformation of

identity among the Bedouin are those processes identiﬁed by the

instrumentalists, notably Barth, Cohen, and Eriksen. These identities

provide the basis for effective group mobilization and solidarity, seen

as preferable to dominant, hegemonic core identities, as well as a way

to regulate resource competition. They emerge in reaction to uneven

political and economic development between core and peripheral

social groups. An important aspect of these identities is that they are

assumed in reaction to certain shortcomings of nationalist ideology—

primarily the falsehood that nationalism is universal and egalitarian.

In actuality, nationalism is either too particularistic and cannot apply

to all the social groups inhabiting a socially heterogeneous state (as

in issues of Egyptian core national identity), or it is too universal and

does not give individuals clear placement in their social environment,

generating the need to add an additional element of identity, for

example, hyphenated ethnicities in America.

In both of these situations, ethnicity remains a powerful source

of mobilization and is often adopted as an alternative to dominant

national identities. This is not to say that groups will turn to pre-

existing ethnic identities, but that, just as nationalism is legitimized

by history, culture, and descent, these alternative identities have been

articulated in the same way. An identity previously unrecognized as

“ethnic” may begin to adopt ethnic elements as national integration

accelerates and the contest between groups becomes political. The

Aqaba Bedouins’ increasing integration into the urban environment of

Dahab and Egyptian society has motivated a turn towards a political

form of identity and solidarity designed to contest expressions of

Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Identity Transformation among the Aqaba Bedouin

185

Egyptian national identity. Their place within the Egyptian state and

its society is the primary concern for the Bedouin.

This, further, does not require the forging of extensive ties of

solidarity across the entirety of the group, especially in situations

of limited contact. For better or worse, it is often the case that a

sense of ethnic identity means loyalty to an identity as a badge or

imagined community, not necessarily to the individual members

of that community. In tribal contexts, a number of studies of North

African Berbers and Native Americans show that ethnogenesis can be

motivated in divided tribal societies based on state policies that relate

to them as a single category.

In North Africa, ethnically articulated tensions between Arab

and Berber groups have peaked in times of intense nation-building,

when authorities have attempted to promote one cultural identity

over another or, in the case of Libya, attempted to forcefully

repress certain expressions of alternate cultural identities.272 This

systematic categorization was the primary factor establishing the

basis for collective Berber mobilization that crossed tribal boundaries.

While there was, to a certain extent, a transnational element to this

cultural movement, Maddy-Weitzman clearly demonstrates that the

movements themselves focused on national politics in both the

Moroccan and Algerian cases, even though this identity may have

crossed national borders.273 Jonathan Wyrtzen, in his study on Berber

identity formation in interwar Morocco, comes to a similar conclusion

for a previous era, that French colonial attempts at state building

provided a framework for a “Berber” ethnicity by institutionalizing the

category across from an “Arab” ethnicity through policies of divide

and rule.274

Similarly, Eugene Roosens identiﬁed the emergence of what he

called “pan-Indian culture” in Canada that encompassed all Native

American tribes by conforming to general, positive stereotypes

272. Soleiman, “Denied Existence: Libyan-Berbers under Gaddafi and Hope

for the Current Revolution.”

273. Maddy-Weitzman, “Contested Identities: Berbers, ‘Berberism’ and the

state in North Africa.”

274. Wyrtzen, “Colonial State Building and the Negotiation of Arab and

Berber Identity in Protectorate Morocco,” p. 229.

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held within Canadian society. Despite historical enmities between

individual tribes, pan-Indian mobilization “unites all Indians against all

outsiders.”275 This type of mobilization was made possible due to the

singular approach the Canadian government took regarding all Native

American tribes. By conceiving of them as a single society, even in

a case where there were signiﬁcant internal linguistic and cultural

divisions, the Canadian government created the basis for shared

interest and group mobilization. In a number of different states, tribal

groups have proven equally vulnerable to the social consequences of

national politics by reacting to state policies through forging inter-tribal

solidarities in the cases where tribally divided groups are conceived of

as a single and relatively homogenous society.

The Aqaba Bedouin have been subject to similar treatment by

Egyptian authorities, who see the Bedouin as constituting a singular

type of “traditional society.” The legitimacy of the separate existence

of these Bedouin, however, is more easily contested and has been

suppressed to a much larger extent than those of the Berber and

Native American tribal groups. This is primarily because the Bedouin

share the same religion and language as dominant national society and

thus appear culturally similar, as opposed to the Amazigh and Native

Americans, who clearly constitute a separate sociolinguistic category

in their respective states. Ironically, this has created somewhat

of a paradox of identity for the Aqaba Bedouin: while Egyptians

conceive of them as “Bedouin,” characterized as a particular type

of “traditional” society distinctly separate from their own “modern,”

national society, they contest the existence of a Bedouin identity

category. Simultaneously the state categorizes the Bedouin and denies

them.

However, these claims about sociolinguistic uniformity are also

largely political. For while it is easy to claim that all Egyptians speak

“Arabic,” this covers deep linguistic divisions within the Arabic

language. This is by no means limited to a discussion of “national

dialects,” which merely serve to reinforce the ﬁction of social

homogeneity within national borders. In my discussions with the

Bedouin, a number have told me that they have encountered major

275. Eugene Roosens, Creating Ethnicity (London: Sage, 1989). See also

Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism, p. 70.

Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Identity Transformation among the Aqaba Bedouin

187

linguistic obstacles when trying to communicate with Egyptians in

Cairo.276 One even remarked that he was forced to resort to English

because no one in Cairo could understand his dialect. Furthermore,

several Bedouin reported that during trips to central Egypt, they were

often considered foreigners, with “Saudi” being the most common

categorization, based not merely on language, but also on dress and

even skin color and body-type:

One time I was in Tahrir Square during the revolution, and I

was there with my Jalabiyya. Some people came to me and

said, “You are Saudi Arabian, you support the government [of

Mubarak].” And I said, “I am not Saudi, I am Egyptian.” And

no one believed. I showed them my ID card and they told me

that it was fake. And I said, “No man, I am Egyptian. I come

from Sinai, I am Bedouin.” And one old guy came over and

said, “It’s good, it’s ok, the Bedouin.” And the people left, but

they had wanted to ﬁght with me.277

These Egyptians are clearly conﬂating “Saudi” and Bedouin, which

further demonstrates the way in which ethnicity and nationalism

are tied together as well as how ethnic identity often presupposes

cultural and ideological characteristics and relations between people.

More importantly for this argument, despite political claims to social

uniformity—as a “category of practice” instead of merely an abstract

“category of analysis”—distinctions are often drawn between Egyptian

and Bedouin social groups, even to the extent that Egyptian Bedouin

are occasionally “informed” that they are not Egyptian.

But in any event, as this examination of ethnicity has demonstrated,

identity is not necessarily grounded in a concrete number or type of

cultural structures such as language or religion, and in the case of the

Aqaba Bedouin, their distinctive identity is based, not on language

or religion, but on a more general type of culture based on origins

and descent, elements that can deﬁne a boundary between Bedouin

and Egyptian categories. In the Egyptian context, the Arabic language

276. Interview with Land activists, May 14, 2009; Interview with Bedouin

Divemaster, July 24, 2009; Interview with Community Organizer, May

30, 2012.

277. Interview with a Community Organizer, May 30, 2012.

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and the Islamic religion do not constitute major aspects of Bedouin

identity used in their heritage defense, as this would undermine their

claims to social uniqueness. Instead, the Aqaba Bedouin focus on

those things that they do not share with “Egyptians,” such as their

tribal afﬁliations and nomadic descent. While these aspects of Bedouin

culture undoubtedly form legitimate bases for ethnic mobilization,

the conventional wisdom on ethnicity does not often hold these

characteristics in the same regard as language, religion, or certain

“racial” qualities such as skin color. Such an identity might therefore

be considered “less legitimate” and thus more easily contestable by

essentialists and state authorities.

Despite this legitimacy dilemma, these major aspects of Bedouin

culture have formed the basis for group interests and inter-tribal

solidarities. While tribally-based divisions continue to exist, there is

now a clearly identiﬁable “Bedouin culture” and singular government

policies are setting the stage for group mobilization.278 In this way, tribal

divisions may continue to limit the type of ties that might be formed

between members of different tribes, but in national contexts, an

ethnically-articulated Bedouin identity is presented as an alternative to

Egyptian identity, not an identity grounded in speciﬁc tribal afﬁliations,

which form a different type of solidarity that operates in different

contexts. Furthermore, the Bedouin are increasingly articulating an

emerging “Bedouin culture” in their expressions, and recognize that

it is forming the basis of shared interests. Now, when discussing their

traditions with outsiders such as tourists, they do not say “We, the

Mzeina, do X,” instead they increasingly say “We, the Bedouin, do

X,” where “Bedouin” is a socio-cultural category operating in national

political contexts.

As the Sinai increasingly becomes “state space,” deﬁned as territory

under effective control of state forces, the Egyptian authorities are

more and more able to apply laws and regulations that institutionalize

278. Barkey and Parikh, “Comparative Perspectives on the State.” This

supports their claim, “it has already become evident that state policies

constituted one of the major determinants of mobilization and shifting

identity patterns.”

Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Identity Transformation among the Aqaba Bedouin

189

this social boundary.279 While it is clear that the Egyptian authorities

are not undertaking a concerted effort to create any institutional

antagonism between the Bedouin and the Egyptian migrant workers,

as French colonial policy of divide and rule often did in North Africa,

the outcomes have not differed signiﬁcantly due to the prioritization of

central Egyptian interests over local Bedouin interests. Furthermore,

as it becomes clear that the authorities conceive of the Bedouin as

a separate category, they are providing a pre-determined avenue

for political mobilization by the Bedouin, even if this mobilization

is suppressed in a non-democratic environment. Thus, the basis

for a cross-tribal solidarity emerges, one that includes all tribes that

consider themselves “Bedouin” and are seen that way by the Egyptian

government, often conceiving of the Bedouin as tribal and Egyptians

as non-tribal. In this case, perhaps ironically, it is the very fact that

Bedouin individuals in Egypt hold tribal identities that constitutes the

basis for cross-tribal ethnic solidarities.

We have seen instances of cross-tribal Bedouin solidarities in

Dahab, where members of the Mzeina tribe prefer to work or associate

with members of the Aleqat or Jabaliyya tribes instead of mainland

Egyptians.280 We have also seen more removed expressions of this

solidarity as well, in interactions between the Mzeina and a visiting

Jordanian Bedouin, who was welcomed by the Sinai Bedouin as one

of their own despite having different national and tribal origins.281 As

we were walking along the Dahab corniche, we were invited into a

Bedouin tent that had been erected on a hotel construction site owned

by a local Bedouin. As we spoke with the group, they referred to one

of the men and informed us that he was not from Sinai, that he was

279. James C.Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist

History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press,

2009). See especially chapter two, “State space: Zones of Governance

and Appropriation.” See also Wyrtzen, “Colonial State Building and

the Negotiation of Arab and Berber Identity in Protectorate Morocco,”

p. 230.

280. Observations from Bedouin-Bedouin and Bedouin-Egyptian encounters

in Dahab.

281. Observations from an afternoon with an Anize Bedouin from Jordan in

Dahab, February 11, 2010.

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190

a member of an Anize tribe from Jordan, in Egypt on business but

in Sinai for a short vacation.Despite different national origins, they

referred to this Bedouin as a cousin due to similar ethnic origins. It

did not matter that he was Jordanian, not Egyptian, or even that he

was Anize, not Mzeini, all that mattered is that they considered him

to be a “Bedouin,” which provided the basis for their feelings that

this visitor was part of their core solidarity group.This identiﬁcation

involved a certain amount of triangulation, leading to the selection

of this particular identity as opposed to wider (national) or narrower

(tribal) possibilities, which could have increased their perceived social

distance if selected. Furthermore, in our conversation, the Anize

Bedouin stated that he very much enjoyed his time in Sinai and always

visited Dahab after his business in Cairo was concluded. He felt very

comfortable in Dahab because there were many Bedouin, to which he

contrasted his feelings of discomfort in “Misr” (Egypt proper), which

he described as loud, crowded, and inhospitable.

The ability of a “Bedouin” identity to trump tribal divisions in

these cases has to do with arenas in which identities are deployed. All

individuals hold multiple identities including religion, nationality, tribe,

gender, etc. These is often referred to as “levels of identity”; however,

I prefer not to use the term “levels” as I do not view these multiple

identities in a strict hierarchy where one is necessarily overshadowed

by another. Instead, it is preferable to identify the arenas in which

each identity operates; the primary identity deployed is contextual,

not strictly segmentary.282 In tribal contexts, or in the absence of state

authority in Sinai, tribal identities might be best suited to regulate

intergroup dynamics between different tribes, which would create

meaningful divisions between solidarity groups. However, in the

context of state interactions, which have increased dramatically over

the last half century, these tribal identities no longer have the same

practical function, as the Egyptian state does not treat individual tribes

differently and conceives of all as simply “Bedouin.” Furthermore,

continued inter-tribal competition would render this group less

282. Identity selection is not, however, an individual choice. It should instead

be understood as shaped by collective decision-making processes and

power-relations within the arenas in question. This is one aspect of

identity formation that Posner does not address.

Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Identity Transformation among the Aqaba Bedouin

191

able to compete in national interactions. Categorization creates a

natural avenue for collective mobilization based on shared interests

that develop in reaction to policies targeting the group. It further

shows the extent to which identities can be imposed externally and

how categorization can create the basis for solidarity through these

aforementioned shared interests. As a hypothetical counter factual,

if Egyptian policies differentiated between tribes or tribal groupings,

for example, between the Tawara (South Sinai) and the Tiyaha

(Central and North Sinai), it is probable that these identities would

be deployed and developed as state policies would have given them

political signiﬁcance, and they might thus form the basis for group

mobilization and competition. While this statement is impossible to

test within this study, it is the case that in other Arab states—notably

Saudi Arabia and several other Gulf states, as well as Saddam’s Iraq

after the Gulf War—tribal identities have proven quite signiﬁcant as

avenues for deﬁnition and resource distribution and, consequently,

competition.283

In Sinai, this is not the case and it does not make political sense

for the Bedouin to mobilize along tribal lines in interactions with the

state.Similarly, it does not make practical sense to mobilize along

religious lines, even though the Bedouin hold an Islamic identity.

While in Egypt, there is an element of Muslim-Christian conﬂict, in

the Bedouins’ sociopolitical space this conﬂict is largely absent, and

further, Islam is not a source of distinction between the Bedouin and

the groups with which they are in conﬂict. Thus, there would be little

utility in adopting and communicating an Islamic element as a primary

indicator of group distinctiveness.This is why “Bedouin,” and not

some other source of collective identiﬁcation, has become the primary

source of identity for the Aqaba Bedouin in this context.

In the aftermath of the national uprisings of January-February

2011 that drove President Husni Mubarak from power, the Egyptian

283. For example, see Joseph Kostiner, “Transforming Dualities: Tribe and

State Formation in Saudi Arabia,” in Philip S. Khoury and Joseph

Kostiner (eds.), Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). On Iraq, see Amatzia

Baram, “Neo-Tribalism in Iraq: Saddam Hussein’s Tribal Policies 1991–

96,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 29.1 (1997).

Chapter 5

192

state cannot be considered any less “authoritarian.” Yet the temporary

power vacuum and state of disorganization have created an opening

for Bedouin political mobilization. In Sinai in March 2011, Bedouin

across Sinai laid the groundwork for a number of ethnically-oriented

structures, including an all-Bedouin television station as well as an

inter-tribal Bedouin council to interact with the Egyptian military

regime.284 On a more local level, a Bedouin business owner in Dahab

has been trying to organize a Bedouin community center in Dahab

for the express purpose of allocating resources such as employment

as well as providing a center for cultural activities in the town, once

again reﬂecting Cohen’s dual roles of ethnic identity. Regarding the

previous lack of Bedouin political mobilization, a Bedouin journalist

from Sinai stated, “We [the Bedouin] have been neglected for a long

time and prevented from expressing ourselves,” suggesting that the

lack of ethnically-articulated Bedouin institutions stemmed not from a

lack of solidarity or will, but from the active suppression of civil society

by the Egyptian regime.285 Even this journalist’s statement is reﬂective

of the recognition of both a shared culture and political interests. The

early attempts at ethnic mobilization following the collapse of the

Egyptian regime reinforce his claim.

It is clear from the Bedouins’ own expressions of their cultural

self-image that they are conforming closer to concepts of ethnic

“Bedouin” identities over other, notably tribal, forms of identity. As

this ethnic identity is less objectively distinctive than the other tribal

examples cited earlier, notably the Amazigh and Native Americans,

the legitimacy of a Bedouin identity is far more easily contestable.

However, this does not in any way mean that the processes involved

are not having signiﬁcant impacts on Bedouin identity. In fact, this

contestation of a Bedouin identity can be seen as a fundamental

element of social conﬂict.

One last point must be made about identity formation and the

Bedouin, which is that this phenomenon is clearly not unique to this

group, and these patterns of socioeconomic change and identity

transformation in response to state building are phenomena that

284. Amirah Ibrahim, “Push and Pull,” Al-Ahram Weekly, March 3–9,

2011. <http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2011/1037/eg41.htm>.

285. Ibid.

Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Identity Transformation among the Aqaba Bedouin

193

can be found in practically all developing countries, for example the

adoption of certain tastes of sports and music. Why, then, are these

Bedouin an interesting case study? I believe it has to do with the

distinction between what some scholars have labeled the third and

fourth worlds, where the third world, now that the Cold War is over, is

a term that refers to developing states, and the fourth world is a term

that nominally refers to indigenous people or what are conceived of

as “traditional societies,” often seen as autarkic and static.286 This is

clearly not the case, and the idea of the “unchanging Bedouin” is as

inaccurate as the idea, once quite popular, of the “unchanging East”

that motivated past Orientalist discourse. What was once perceived as

a conﬂict between the Developed and the Developing Worlds during

the Age of Imperialism has shifted to one between the Developing and

the Indigenous Worlds in the Age of States. In this way, socioeconomic

transformation and identity formation are directly linked; both are

reactions to state development policies geared at state- and nation-

building. Furthermore, under these conditions, the most likely type of

identity to develop is ethnic in nature, articulated along cultural lines

to maintain a distinctive group identity.

Towards an Environmental Theory of

Identity Transformation

From the discussion above, focused on the question “What can

ethnicity theory tell us about Bedouin identity?,” we inevitably arrive

at the opposite question: What, if anything, can the Bedouin and

their increasing interaction with the state tell us about identity and

its transformation? I believe the answer is quite a bit, especially in

comparison with the other examples discussed in this chapter. Taken

together, an interesting pattern begins to emerge, one based on the

role of external forces. While often marginalized in the study of identity,

286. See George Manuel and Michael Posluns, The Fourth World: An Indian

Reality (Collier: MacMillan Canada, 1974). For another definition of

Fourth World, see “International Day of the World’s Indigenous People,”

Asian Center for the Progress of Peoples.

Chapter 5

194

it should be evident from this analysis that external perceptions and

sustained interactions appear to have a powerful inﬂuence in shaping

identities and their articulation. Theories of constructivism already

acknowledge the importance of processes of interaction in shaping

and sustaining certain identities.287 This observation simultaneously

provides an explanation for the primordial elements of identity,

represented by the cultural symbols and labels attached to certain

identities, as well as the contingent nature of identities, or more

speciﬁcally their contextual deﬁnitions, which hinge on interactions

with particular sociopolitical groups whose own identities and interests

vary from state to state.

A number of the empirical and theoretical works cited above

seem to support this claim, as their own analyses acknowledge the

importance of outsider perceptions in their discussions of legitimacy

and meaning. For example, Smith’s deﬁnition of ethnic legitimacy

hinges on the recognition of history and cultural distinctiveness “in the

eyes of outsiders,” and even his deﬁnition of ethnicity hinges on the

recognition of traits “by outsiders.” Furthermore, as Maddy-Weitzman

and Wyrtzen demonstrate, periods of heightened cultural mobilization

in North Africa appear to be responses to attempts at suppression

by politically powerful others. My own observations support these

claims. Reid, in his discussion of Egyptian national identity, suggests

that Pharaonism became a key element of Egyptian identity as a result

of British and French attempts to monopolize and appropriate the

ﬁeld of Egyptology.Too, anthropologists such as Cohen and Mitchell

discuss the activation of identity conﬂict, which is what Eriksen means

when he analyzes ethnic identities as a product of interaction.

But again, these claims should not be taken to mean that identities

themselves do not exist independent of interactions with others.288 I

once again appeal to the distinction between stereotype and symbol

to clarify the distinction between the constructivist elements of identity

and the “primordial.”

287. Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social

Construction of Power Politics,” International Organization 46.2

(1992), p. 421.

288. Or otherwise stated, that these identities cannot be sustained outside of

the initial interaction that produced them.

Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Identity Transformation among the Aqaba Bedouin

195

The psychological concept of altercasting has the potential to

contribute a great deal to our understanding of identity transformation

through interaction. While this concept has been studied in the ﬁelds

of social psychology, marketing, and to a limited extent, international

relations, it has rarely been applied to theories of ethnicity and identity

formation. However, with slight modiﬁcations it may provide valuable

insight into the manner in which hegemonic political actors deﬁne

social groups and project roles onto them. Altercasting is deﬁned as

“a technique of interactor control where ego [self] uses tactics of self-

presentation and stage management in an attempt to frame alter’s

[other] deﬁnitions of social situations in ways that create the roles in

which ego desires alter to play.”289 In this way, deﬁnitions assumed by

the state and reiﬁed through the formation of policies are projected

onto social groups with the expectation that these groups will behave

in the manner described. It should be clear that attempts to impose

“legibility” represent less active (at least in their articulation) attempts

to align state expectations with the behavioral patterns of the social

groups in question.290

In the application of the concept of altercasting, a major input in

the transformation of identity is the state, whose policies provide a

set of constraints that crystallize a structural reality for social groups

within that ﬁeld. This structure should be considered both economic

and social, ascribing both acceptable economic roles as well as

“ofﬁcial” social deﬁnitions to particular groups. The marginalization of

the Bedouin stems not merely from uneven economic policies favored

by state authorities, but also from the suspicious attitudes projected

towards the Bedouin, which shape the manner in which authorities

treat them, a quintessential example of altercasting. In turn, these

projected attitudes shape the manner in which the Bedouin conceive

of their role in Egyptian society as well as their relationship to state

authorities and other social groups within the state.

Another element of altercasting is the role that political power plays

in the direction of this projection. It has been clearly demonstrated that

both the state and the Bedouin have perceptions of the other that are

quite different from their own self-perceptions. In a situation where

289. Wendt, “Anarchy is what states make of it,” p. 421.

290. Scott, Seeing Like a State.

Chapter 5

196

both groups try and cast the other, what can be said about which

side prevails? There is little doubt that power asymmetries play a

signiﬁcant role in determining the outcome of this interaction, and the

deﬁnitions perpetuated by the state have penetrated further than the

deﬁnitions perpetuated by the Bedouin. Returning to the modiﬁcation

of Wendt’s maxim, “If [powerful] men deﬁne situations as real, they

are real in their consequences,” we might conclude that power is

what gives state authorities the ability to impose their interests and

social deﬁnitions on other social groups.

Of course, this does not necessarily say anything about where and

when identity conﬂict will break out, since it is not necessarily the case

that an incorrect essentialization of a social group will activate conﬂict;

groups may accept the stereotypes and roles ascribed to them and

comply with their subordination. In fact, for our current purposes, let

us assume that the state is always incorrect in its essentialization of

social groups (this may not be categorically true but is unproblematic

for this argument). In this situation, identity conﬂict is activated when

the essentialized social group refuses to accept the roles ascribed

to them and instead continues to pursue its own interests through

other paths. I label this process “assertion” which can be constructed

diametrically against “subordination.” When expectation diverges

signiﬁcantly from self-presentation, especially in situations where ego/

self is not interested in updating its expectations but instead desires to

force its expectations onto alter/other, this will create friction between

the two groups manifested in sociopolitical conﬂict.291 One possible

explanation for an ability to resist is relative capacity: if the social

group has the power to contest roles of subjugation, and it is the case

that the utility of resistance minus the resulting sanctions is higher

than the utility of subjugation, it is probable that they will do so.292 In

Aqaba, despite the state’s moral claims to legitimacy of power, their

291. On expectation versus self-presentation, see Weinstein and

Deutschberger, “Some Dimensions of Altercasting,” p. 456.

292. Formally resistance comes when Ua – P > Us where U is the utility

function for assertion (a) and subordination (s) and P represents the

sanction from attempts to resist. For an excellent formalization of the

political economy of identity, see Moses Shayo, “A Model of Social

Identity with an Application to Political Economy: Nation, Class, and

Redistribution,” American Political Science Review 103 (2009).

Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Identity Transformation among the Aqaba Bedouin

197

capacity is relatively weak. This levels the playing ﬁeld for the Bedouin

and undermines the state’s ability to sanction the Bedouin for failing

to conform to “acceptable” identities projected by the state. The state

has paid the price for their attempt to over-cast the Bedouin in a

situation where their repressive apparatus is too weak to back it up

with appropriate coercion.

Consequently, the emergence of a particular identity in a particular

context should be an equilibrium in which the identity adhered to

yields the greatest utility contingent on the decisions of all the other

actors in the arena and the structures that deﬁne it.293 This approach

is undeniably instrumental; however, it does not claim that individuals

may simply choose any identity they desire, a common accusation

directed against instrumentalist accounts of identity formation. Instead,

it suggests that we should be able to predict which identities will be

chosen as long as we know the institutions and actors within an arena

of contestation.

By creating policies that institutionalize a boundary between

national identities and “others,” the state has created a predetermined

avenue for identity mobilization. From a rational perspective, the state

has already done much of the “start-up” work for identity mobilization,

providing a set of shared interests and, on a psychological level,

reinforcing the idea that individuals are already members of that

group.294 This lowers the cost of mobilization for elites, increasing

the potential payoffs. This also provides a plausible mechanism that

explains the centrality of state policies in shifting identity patterns.

And alongside a discussion of the cognitive power of cultural symbols,

this further explains why identities are contingent as well as quite

persistent, external perceptions and structural conditions “pre-select”

and activate certain identities. Groups do not necessarily have the

ability to impose self-deﬁnitions of their own identity as sociopolitical

facts. This can be considered an “environmental” theory of identity

transformation.

293. This brings us to the type of equilibrium defined by John Nash in

1951. This is one of the central concepts of game theory. John Nash,

“Non-Cooperative Games,” The Annals of Mathematics 54.2 (1951),

pp. 286–295.

294. Weinstein and Deutschberger, “Some Dimensions of Altercasting,”

p. 456.

199

Conclusions

Tourism development along the Aqaba Coast by the Egyptian state

has instigated major socioeconomic transformations among the

Aqaba Bedouin. Through processes such as sedentarization and

urbanization, these Bedouin are becoming increasingly integrated

into emerging and developing urban structures in Sinai. The identity

processes that the Bedouin are currently undergoing are reﬂective of

these transformations and highlight processes of integration and state

building along a national periphery. The shape of this integration, as

well as the speciﬁc reaction of the Bedouin, is driven not by Bedouin

cultural peculiarities but by their reactions to the approach Egyptian

authorities have taken regarding Egypt’s Bedouin population and

Sinai development. Socioeconomic transformation among the

Bedouin in Dahab is a reaction to the shape of state development

schemes; increasing integration has resulted in increasing vulnerability

to, and reliance on, the institutions of the state. Simultaneously, as

the integration of the Bedouin accelerates, the identity processes that

have helped the Bedouin distinguish themselves from the population

of central Egypt have also accelerated. These identity processes are

not a cause of Bedouin attempts to increase their autonomy; they

are instead reactions to homogenizing processes of integration and

acculturation, leading social groups to become more concerned with

the expression of cultural continuity and group cohesion. In the face

of acculturation and social homogenization, the Bedouin are ﬁghting

to maintain a distinctive and distinguishing identity.

Egyptian development in Sinai has produced two major

transformative reactions among the Aqaba Bedouin. The ﬁrst is

a process of economic transformation as Bedouin economies have

been reorganized to take advantage of emerging opportunities.

This has frustrated Egyptian development policies, based on the

prioritization of core national interests at the expense of peripheral

interests. The Egyptians did not prepare to share the Sinai with the

Bedouin. Instead, development reports indicate an expectation that

the Bedouin would essentially “become Egyptian,” discarding their

Conclusions

200

traditional values and modes of socioeconomic organization in a

manner similar to the assumptions of modernization theory. This has

been the primary factor encouraging the emergence of a competitive

economic relationship between the Egyptians and the Bedouin in

Dahab. We may conclude from the clear empirical evidence that the

assumptions regarding the effects of the modernization paradigm for

development—notably that the homogenization of identities would

follow economic development—have proven unfounded.295

The second reaction has been social, as the Bedouin settling in

Dahab have adopted new social patterns to regulate their transforming

lives. The presence of foreigners has, perhaps, had the greatest social

effect on the Bedouin, leading to the adoption of many aspects of

Northern, globalized culture including dress, music, and the increasing

adoption of consumerist tendencies. The foreign symbols adopted

by the Aqaba Bedouin reﬂect increasing awareness of globalizing

culture as well as identiﬁcation with foreign groups subjected to similar

state policies as opposed to greater identiﬁcation with the values of

dominant social groups within their own state. This is a clear rejection

of nationalist ideology among the Bedouin, or more speciﬁcally, a

rejection of national interests and ideologies of the Egyptian state.

The Bedouin do not consider themselves Egyptian despite being

de jure citizens of the Egyptian state. This is because Egyptian policies

favoring the core interests of the central state have created an unequal

relationship beneﬁting Nile Valley Egyptians over the Bedouin; the

Bedouin are not granted the same rights or privileges. These issues of

Egyptian national interest, expressed through Egyptian development

policies and integration processes in Sinai, have resulted in reactive

identity processes that have led the Bedouin to reject Egyptian identity

due to an incompatibility with the Bedouins’ interest in defending their

resources and heritage. The Bedouin have instead sought to express

their identity through other avenues. Their orientation towards the

symbols and values of the tourists is one of the methods the Bedouin

have chosen to distinguish themselves from the rest of Egypt. A turn

towards an ethnically-articulated “Bedouin” identity has been another.

This identity focuses on symbols of Bedouin culture that differ from

295. Daher, “Reconceptualizing Tourism in the Middle East,” p. 21. See also

Huntington, Political Order in Changing Society.

Conclusions

201

Egyptian symbols and thus work to distinguish the Bedouin from

“Egyptians.” While it cannot be said that these symbols deﬁne the

boundary, since this boundary emerges from sociopolitical and

economic conﬂicts, they help render this boundary socially legible.

Through a fusion of elements of both distinguishing traditions as

well as adopted symbols, the Bedouin have been able to articulate an

identity that reﬂects local conditions and evolving values.

This is not to say that the treatment of Nile Valley Egyptians in a

setting such as Cairo is necessarily better than the treatment of the

Aqaba Bedouin. State authorities, especially the feared state security

apparatus run by the Interior Ministry, came to rely on repression

and intimidation in many cases, and instances of torture and violence

against Egyptians were not uncommon. The sheer brutality of security

forces, resulting in the deaths of some 846 unarmed protestors

during the national uprising of January and February 2011, clearly

demonstrate that Egyptian citizens do not have as harmonious a

relationship with the state as my discussion of Bedouin perceptions

might otherwise suggest.296 However, these actions are far less visible

to the Bedouin than the perceived favoritism shown to the Egyptians

in Dahab and across Sinai, and it is state conduct within this arena,

more than in faraway settings such as Cairo and Alexandria, that has

shaped Bedouin understandings of state attitudes towards the Bedouin

and other social groups within the Egyptian state. Bedouin perceptions

have formed within their primary sociopolitical environment, the Sinai

Peninsula.

While Egyptian policies are largely responsible for shaping the

framework of Bedouin economic transformation, including their

296. At the moment, it is unclear what direction this relationship will take.

However, following the collapse of the Mubarak regime in February

2011, the security apparatus of the Interior Ministry was more or less

replaced with that of the military. Death toll figures taken from: Mulakhas

al-Taqrir al-Niha’i li-Lajna al-Tahqiq wa-Taqassi al-Haqa’iq bi-Sha’n

al-Ahdath allati Wa¯qabat Thawrat 25 Yanayir 2011 (Summary of the

Fact Finding Committee for the Events Accompanying the Revolution

of 25 January 2011), National Committee for the investigation and

fact finding regarding the events of January 25, Arab Republic of Egypt

(Arabic), http://www.ffnc-eg.org/assets/ffnc-eg_final.pdf.

Conclusions

202

marginalization from resort tourism and their adoption of illegal

or illicit practices, the Egyptians have placed responsibility on the

Bedouin themselves, attributing these patterns of Bedouin economics

to a set of inherent cultural traits that force the Bedouin into the

category of a “traditional” society. Furthermore, the Sinai Bedouin

have quite often been associated with crime and terrorism, especially

in state pronouncements which eschew all responsibility for instability

in the Sinai and instead blame the Bedouin, reinforcing their negative

reputation. Once again, this has been attributed to certain cultural

characteristics of the Bedouin themselves and not, in any way, to the

harsh economic circumstances to which the Egyptians have subjected

the Bedouin and the relative beneﬁts of illicit activities.

Instead of addressing the causes of Bedouin involvement in such

activities, Egyptian authorities have resorted to repressive measures

that have reinforced these perceptions, increased Bedouin involvement

in such activities, and occasionally sparked violent confrontations

between the Bedouin and Egyptian forces, especially in the north

of the peninsula. In recent years, this issue has been receiving

increasing attention in the media, with many press accounts focusing

on clashes between the Northern Sinai Bedouin and the Egyptian

police and army, portraying the Bedouin as restive and dangerous.

Increasingly, though, the media has given attention to the perspective

of the Bedouin, notably in an article published in The Economist in

August 2010, which examined the causes of Bedouin discontent,

stating, “Native tribes in the north of the peninsula complain they

have been marginalised and left impoverished, while Egyptians from

the Nile Valley have colonised choice lands on its southern coast for

tourism,” motivating their turn towards illegal practices.297 However,

since the collapse of the Mubarak regime, outbreaks of violence

between Bedouin and security forces as well as instances of Bedouin

kidnappings of tourists have only served to reinforce their reputation

for dangerous and criminal behavior, undermining any progress

towards greater cooperation with the state.

Egyptian authorities are targeting the symptoms and not the causes

of the conﬂict, institutionalizing a repressive relationship instead of a

297. “Egypt’s Restive Bedouin: Why the Bedouin of the Sinai Peninsula Are

Angry,” The Economist, August 5, 2010.

Conclusions

203

potentially constructive one. Instead of addressing certain deﬁciencies

in their own policies encouraging this marginalization, they have

instead chosen to blame the Bedouin for failing to conform to the

standards set by the government and development agencies. By

stereotyping the Aqaba Bedouin with labels of criminality, Egyptian

authorities have cast their behavior as deviant as opposed to the

“legitimate” actions of the state, ensuring a marginal or subordinated

position for them in economic development. In this way, Egyptian

authorities have attempted to use this negative image to undermine

budget tourism as undesirable and focus development on multinational

resort tourism, promoting the agenda of the central government.

It is clear that at no point did the Egyptian authorities undertake

a concerted campaign to marginalize the Bedouin, and furthermore

that Egyptian policies are not purposefully constructed to discriminate

against them. The problem is one of perception. The Egyptian

authorities have come to view the Bedouin as a “traditional” society

due to their assumptions about who the Bedouin are and what

they do.298 These assumptions, based on faulty premises, have led

the Bedouin to consider Egyptian development as a neo-colonial

expression of domination. The question that remains, and which I

prefer not to address for lack of real substantiating evidence, is whether

the state’s essentialization and its claim to have a responsibility to

modernize “traditional groups” truly reﬂects authorities’ perceptions

of such groups or whether the state is merely attempting to justify its

preferred policies.

Bedouin Identity in Contemporary

Contexts

Despite processes of socio-economic transformation among the

Bedouin, a strong Bedouin identity has lingered in some form or

another. As this identity does not conform to ideal-type patterns of

Bedouin organization, the concept of the Bedouin as an objective

298. Dames and Moore, Sinai Development Study, vol. 6, “Settlement and

Social Development.”

Conclusions

204

occupational deﬁnition will not enrich our understanding of

contemporary Bedouin. Instead, it constrains our ability to examine

social transformation among integrating peripheries as we focus our

search on rigid and outdated typologies looking for this “traditional

society.” In other words, a lingering focus on Bedouin typologies

will prevent researchers from examining the social construction of

contemporary identities and the roles that they play in the age of states.

Both William Young and Dale Eickelman reach the same conclusion,

that Bedouin identities are “primarily social categories, not empirical

ones,” which will inevitably vary depending on context.299 Thus, it

is not useful to classify a group as Bedouin according to a speciﬁc

combination of culture traits; Bedouin identity comes from somewhere

else. In the words of Eickelman, “Perhaps the best question to ask

is not ‘What is a Bedouin?’ but ‘Who says of which group they are

Bedouin and why?’”300 Instead of searching for the Bedouin according

to deﬁned typologies, it is better to seek to understand how and why a

Bedouin identity can be successfully deployed in national contexts.

In the context of economic development along the Aqaba Coast,

the best way to understand the manner of identity transformation

among the Bedouin is to return to Samuel Huntington’s Political

Order in Changing Societies. While Huntington remains a bit more

agnostic than myself in his attitudes towards the economic and political

aspects of modernization, he clearly identiﬁes the complex relationship

between economic transformation, political development, and social

identity. A transformed Bedouin identity in Aqaba has been successful

precisely because it has been able to “achieve a new consciousness and

become the basis for new organization,” in turn because it is capable

of “meeting many of the needs of political identity, social welfare,

and economic advancement which are created by the processes of

299.

Dale F. Eickelman, Middle East and Central Asia: An Anthropological

Approach, 4

th

ed. (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2001), pp. 73–

74. See also Young, “‘The Bedouin’: Discursive Identity or Sociological

Category?”

300. Eickelman, The Middle East and Central Asia: An Anthropological

Approach, p. 74.

Conclusions

205

modernization [my emphasis].”301 While this identity as an idealized

type has remained largely unchanged, as have the communicated

symbols and values of the community, this study has unequivocally

shown the signiﬁcant social and economic transformations already

experienced by the community.

In the contemporary era, deﬁned by a system of territorially

bounded nation-states, this emergent Bedouin identity is most

effectively articulated in the language of ethnicity. This is an almost

inevitable result of state-building because it results in a situation

where “all groups, old as well as new… become increasingly aware

of themselves as groups and of their interests and claims in relation

to other groups [my emphasis].”302 In the context of the Aqaba

Bedouin, it serves to contest dominant, hegemonic national identities,

maintain cultural solidarity, and regulate intergroup interactions in

an increasingly heterogeneous social space. It plays the dual function

of providing avenues for the distribution of privileges and resources,

as well as providing a sense of belonging and social deﬁnition. This

identity is communicated through the deployment of cultural symbols

reﬂecting common descent, shared culture, and historical continuity,

which form the bases for group legitimacy in a nationally-deﬁned

setting.

The effectiveness of ethnicity as a source of solidarity and deﬁnition

has to do with the importance of culture and history to notions of

familiarity and group feeling, as well as the centrality of ethnicity in

the articulation of nationalism.303 While this identity focuses on the

communication of primordial ties and culture, as we have seen and

as researchers like Salzmann, Eickelman, and Young have shown, the

Bedouin do not conform to ideal typologies, which themselves are

301. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, p. 38. Huntington’s

“processes of modernization” are almost identical to the processes

I describe as “integrating.” I have removed the label “modernizing”

because of a lack of definition distinguishing precisely what is modern

from precisely what is traditional. Huntington appears unconcerned

with this distinction and focuses on “processes of modernization.”

302. Ibid., p. 37.

303. See Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations; see also Smith, Myths and

Memories of the Nation.

Conclusions

206

rooted in strong notions of occupational primordialism. How then,

can this seeming paradox be resolved? The answer comes from the

works of the instrumentalist writers, notably Eriksen and Cohen, who

show that while primordial elements legitimize these identities, the

purpose of the identity itself is to address challenges of contemporary

sociopolitical organization.

Acculturation and social transformation among the Aqaba Bedouin

has not led to the loss of their Bedouin identity. It has, instead, spurred

the Bedouin to defend their heritage, which they see as under threat

from Egyptian state policies due to the aforementioned integrative

processes that have led to a convergence in “operational culture,” that

is to say normative patterns of socioeconomic organization, between

Egyptians and the Bedouin. This convergence is incomplete due to

a different set of constraints imposed on each community; but from

discussions of patterns of urban settlement, issues of modesty, and

patterns of remittances, there is ample evidence showing that similar

structural conditions elicit similar responses from groups considered

culturally different. These and other similarities have led the Bedouin

to over-emphasize the traditional aspects of their culture in order to

maintain links to their ancestral pasts. Despite this focus on Bedouin

“traditions,” there is no denying that the Bedouin in Dahab have

embraced their socioeconomic transformations and are taking pride

in their new cultural forms. These new forms, however, have not

led to the adoption of national identities or the loss of primordially-

motivated solidarities.

Identity and Culture in the Contemporary

Arena

A number of Bedouin youths in Dahab have begun to lament the

seeming “disappearance” of Bedouin culture due to the sedentarization

of the Bedouin and their increasing acculturation.304 This does not

indicate that the Bedouin perceive that their identity is in decline or in

danger of disappearing, but that practices considered by the Bedouin

304. Conversation with Bedouin youth in Dahab, February 9, 2010.

Conclusions

207

to be traditional are disappearing in the face of development. The

Bedouin communicate this understanding by stipulating that Bedouin

culture remains alive in the desert villages, where practices that are

no longer utilitarian in an urban setting continue to form the basis for

Bedouin organization in the desert. The importance of maintaining

these “traditions” is that they form the symbolic basis for group feeling

and solidarity; they are what the Bedouin believe deﬁne them as a

culturally distinct community.

This concern creates somewhat of a paradox, in that while these

Bedouin continue to assert a strong sense of Bedouin identity,

they are increasingly concerned that they are conforming less and

less to notions of what it means to be a Bedouin. However, these

Bedouin admitted that after being exposed and growing accustomed

to the luxuries of settled life and technological development, notably

television, internet, and air conditioning, they are completely unwilling

to give these things up for the sake of returning to “tradition.” In any

event, this disappearance of culture is a perennial concern for the

Bedouin, in some ways motivating their preoccupation with heritage

defense. This is intimately connected to the issue of globalization,

which is a homogenizing process. While economic globalization, as it is

sometimes argued, is a continual process that began perhaps centuries

ago, the most recent wave of globalization has been increasingly

social instead of merely economic, leading to the proliferation of what

might be considered globalized forms of culture. The global adoption

of similar aspects of culture, including forms of entertainment and the

proliferation of global consumer items, have a homogenizing effect

in which distinct social groups—be they nations, ethnic groups, or

religions—are becoming culturally more similar. This has been made

possible through the availability across the globe of speciﬁc forms of

culture. One example is the globalization of MTV and even just the

news, which has allowed various groups to access identical pieces of

information. The internet is an additional step beyond, allowing for

the global sharing of information and rendering national boundaries

increasingly socially irrelevant.

A consequence of this homogenization has been the perception that

culture is disappearing, or that globalization entails a “loss of culture”

in which culture has been replaced by “consumerism” as a source of

Conclusions

208

self-deﬁnition.305 Since social groups tend to become more concerned

with their distinctiveness during periods of homogenization, they

have become very concerned with the consequences of globalization,

notably what they see as a loss of their unique identities. This only

serves to increase the importance of ethnic identities as a way to tie

people to their heritage and to continue to categorize and give order to

an increasingly homogenous social world marked by the disintegration

of “traditional” social frameworks. These are perceptions stemming

from the weakening of solidarity networks, such as the ethnic group,

that provide individuals with context and group feeling.

Compounding this pressure is the commercialization of culture,

where a reiﬁed culture is packaged for consumption. Through tourism,

another manifestation of globalization, Bedouin traditions, many of

which have lost their original signiﬁcance due to transformation over

time, have assumed economic utility and have become a major source

of livelihood.306 Tourism as an avenue for the commercial transmission

of heritage is a primary vehicle for the display of culture both among

peripheral populations as well as the state. This is especially true for

groups such as the Aqaba Bedouin, since tourism as an industry is the

primary economic activity within their territory. As a consequence of

the commercialization of this culture, heritage defense is not merely

political and symbolic, but economic as well.

In this way, ethnogenesis has been a reaction to globalization and

homogenization; additionally, it is a way to compete with national

identities and core interests. It serves the purpose of maintaining

solidarity groups through the transmission of culture, which forms the

basis for familiarity and group feeling. Culture, in this context, is the

primary tool to link the individual to a group through the deployment

of shared symbols which form the basis of group feeling. In the

contemporary era, individuals look to the past and “tradition” as a

source of identiﬁcation that ascribes “belonging” or deﬁnition to the

individual. Thus, globalization is not leading to the “loss of culture,” but

instead to the “homogenization of culture,” which is simultaneously

leading to a crisis of social identity necessitating the emergence of

305. Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism, pp. 165, 166–168.

306. For a discussion on the role of tourism in processes of globalization, see

Daher, “Reconceptualizing Tourism in the Middle East,” p. 30.

Conclusions

209

ethnically-articulated identities. Culture is the primary tool of these

identities, which is why cultural defense is so vital to the social being

of such groups.

Additionally, globalization has resulted in the transcendence of

nationalism among these peripheral populations. In many respects

it has provided an alternative source of identity, allowing the Aqaba

Bedouin to identify with social groups outside the boundaries of their

state. This process undermines the claim that nationalism is the most

organic form of solidarity by providing a different framework based

on transnationalism. This framework understands that nations are not

homogenous and that similar positions within a social hierarchy can

also form the basis for a certain type of group feeling across national

borders. We might understand that globalization can encourage the

formation of “role solidarity,” or the identiﬁcation with a social group

that exists outside national boundaries but which occupies a similar

role within their own national society, by adopting and communicating

similar cultural vehicles or symbols. One example of this sense of

solidarity has been Bedouin identiﬁcation with African-American

culture due to the perception that both are repressed or marginalized

groups within their respective societies (see Figure 16). The adoption

of similar cultural symbols, for example Hip Hop, is symbolic of this

solidarity. In this way, the adoption of certain aspects of global culture

can be manifestations of local conditions.

This view of acculturation and identity transformation poses a

direct challenge to the assumptions of modernization, which predicts

a convergence of different groups’ values through the decline and

discarding of traditional identities for “modern” identities, values, and

patterns of solidarity. As this study shows, none of the sociopolitical

assumptions of modernization actually occurred, further suggesting

that the basic tenets of modernization theory do not constitute a

useful paradigm on which to base national development policies for

development. Perhaps a more accurate model of social change is

presented in a theory called “post-traditionalism” which allows us to

reconsider exactly what is meant by “tradition” and what a process

of acculturation implies.307 Simon suggests that it is better to view

307. Simon, “Development Reconsidered,” pp. 193–194.

Conclusions

210

tradition as “the accumulated amalgam of practices and beliefs from

previous epochs and domains,” challenging the dichotomy between

“traditional” and “modern” and instead presenting “tradition” as

the result of change over time.308 Post-traditionalism accepts this by

predicting a blending of tradition and acculturation, where evolving

cultural forms reﬂect “cross-cutting continuity and change, of old,

new, and hybrid identities, of reason and reaction, of gender and

power relations, of the preservation versus the transcendence of

categories, and of how and by whom they are negotiated, deﬁned, and

safeguarded [= elites].” This approach explains many manifestations

of transforming Bedouin culture and more accurately approximates

avenues of cultural change and identity formation in contemporary

contexts. It furthermore allows for the adoption of new cultural forms

and the simultaneous retention of primordial solidarities.

308. Ibid.

Figure 16: Grafﬁti on a wall in a Bedouin neighborhood.

Photo by author, May 3, 2010.

Conclusions

211

The Implications of Development along

National Peripheries

From the study of the developing relationship between the Aqaba

Bedouin and the central Egyptian authorities, a number of conclusions

regarding nation-building and peripheral development can be drawn,

especially as relates to issues of integration and identity formation.

It is clear that a lingering tendency to predicate development

strategies on a modernization paradigm, while perhaps maximizing

state revenue, is complicating issues of integration and socialization

due to the sheer incongruence between the social expectations of

modernization and the social realities of development. This is not to

argue that all states and development authorities base their projects

on modernization theory, nor is it an accusation that development

agencies such as USAID, whose involvement in Sinai development

was discussed in chapter one, do this categorically. However, it is clear

that there is much congruence between the modernization literature

and the development rhetoric of the Egyptian state in Sinai. This has

necessarily undermined the fruits of national development programs,

leading to increasing tension and hostility between the core of national

societies and the margins as dominant social groups attempt to extend

national values and identity to the peripheries.

Transformation of identity in this context is a reaction based

on the particular form of state policies and social interaction. Of

primary importance is the structural position of a speciﬁc group

within a society, which results from socioeconomic relationships

developing between social groups within a state as well as between

the government and various social groups. If government policies lead

to the marginalization or repression of a non-dominant social group,

no amount of socialization, speciﬁcally through institutions such as

education and media, will convince this group to accept dominant

symbols or identities, which would be considered threatening or at

least alien instead of complimentary. More likely, as this study has

shown, peripheral social groups will turn to alternative identities that

provide greater utility and might successfully contest the assumptions

of dominant national identities. The Aqaba Bedouins’ rejection of

Egyptian cultural symbols in education—expressed through imagery

Conclusions

212

and nationalist histories as presented in lectures and state-approved

textbooks—is a perfect example of how socializing institutions such as

education and the media play a secondary role in identity formation.

The Bedouin claim that these symbols are culturally meaningless to

them and further claim that “the government doesn’t put Bedouin

history in the books at school. One hundred years from now, my

children won’t know who I am and where I came from.”309 This also

suggests that (a) the adoption of national identities is not a natural

or inevitable consequence of economic development or increasing

integration, and (b) it is impossible to force social conformity to

speciﬁc identities through coercive measures as long as state policies

and institutions favor the adoption of alternatives.

The only way to ensure the successful socialization of these groups

into dominant national identities is the articulation of these identities

to be able to reﬂect values considered universal within national

boundaries. This means that national ideologies cannot represent a

national core at the expense of peripheral social groups; if it does,

then a clash of interests will inevitably frustrate attempts at the

incorporation of these groups into national society. This also means

that if authorities hope to avoid ethnic or other social tensions, state

policies cannot beneﬁt one group over another, nor can they seek to

appropriate group resources or undermine group distinctiveness by

attempting to suppress their history and heritage. These situations have

created marginal minorities, undermining national solidarity and often

stoking social conﬂict. However, as states such as the United States

demonstrate, wide, inclusive identities often lead to the emergence of

narrower “hyphenated-identities” that still subcategorize.

The conﬂict between the Bedouin and the Egyptian authorities

in Sinai resembles an indigenous peoples’ conﬂict, but this does

not mean that all Bedouin in all Middle Eastern contexts can be

considered “indigenous peoples” according to the deﬁnition given by

anthropologists and adopted in chapter four. In fact, in a number of

Middle Eastern states, Bedouin heritage and values play a dominant

role in national identities, such as in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. For

example, Saudi state-building was based strongly on tribal modes of

309. Interview with a Community Organizer, May 30, 2012.

Conclusions

213

alliance building, and Saudi identity contains a strongly “Bedouin”

element, notably in the relations between Saudi rulers and their subjects

and in patterns of solidarity and networks of distribution.310 In Jordan,

Bedouin descent plays a strong element in “Jordanian-ness,” notably

in opposition to Jordan’s “Palestinian” population. The Palestinian-

Jordanian dichotomy, interestingly enough, closely mirrors notions

of settled versus nomadic descent, implying that being “Jordanian”

means being of Bedouin descent, and Jordanian national identities

and values reﬂect these cultural origins.311 Furthermore, tribal identities

continue to play an important role in Jordanian society, and tribal

solidarities have been identiﬁed as a major source of stability for the

Jordanian state, as well as a shaper of voting patterns.312 That the role

of Bedouin identities varies across state boundaries is a consequence

of the social construction of national and ethnic identities and the

dominance of the state as the ultimate arbiter of social identity.

The particular case examined in this study is quite unique to the

conditions present in Dahab, and as a result must be considered a

micro study of local factors. However, while this study focused on the

conditions and consequences of state-building and development in

the Aqaba region of Sinai, and so cannot be said to be speciﬁcally

comparative, this does not mean that the phenomena under study

are unique to Egypt or that the processes described are not equally

applicable to other cases throughout the developing world. Indeed,

it should be self-evident from even a superﬁcial glance at the

socioeconomic conditions within other developing states that similar

310. For an in-depth discussion on Saudi state-building and patterns of

national identity, see Kostiner, “Transforming Dualities: Tribe and State

Formation in Saudi Arabia.”

311. Yoav Alon, The Making of Jordan: Tribes, Colonialism and the

Modern State (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009), 156–157.

312. Yoav Alon, “The Tribal System in the Face of the State Formation

Process: Mandatory Transjordan, 1921–46,” International Journal

of Middle East Studies 37 (2005), pp. 213, 235. For a discussion of

voting patterns in Jordan, see Linda L. Layne, “Tribesman as Citizens:

‘Primordial Ties’ and Democracy in Rural Jordan,” in Linda Layne (ed.),

Elections in the Middle East: Implications of Recent Trends (Boulder,

CO: Westview, 1987).

Conclusions

214

types of conﬂicts are present within their borders, and that issues

of incorporation, socialization, and solidarity are primary problems

facing these countries today. In these countries, it is often the case

that economic development and the fuller integration of the state’s

territory and inhabitants have been primary preoccupations for the

regimes in control. Many of the states that have adopted an approach

towards economic development similar to Egypt’s have faced similar

clashes between national identities and peripheral ones. While

in the mantra of “modernization,” it is easy to view this conﬂict as

one between “modern” (national, core) identities and “primitive” or

“traditional” (peripheral) societies, it would be presumptuous to assert

that all “national” identities, by virtue of their being the dominant or

core identities of controlling regimes, are necessarily “modern,” or

that peripheral identities are necessarily traditional. Without delving

into a discussion of colonialist mentalities, we can nevertheless say

that it is exactly this understanding that legitimized the colonial

enterprise and which has lingered to dominate the thinking of statists

and modernists, often guiding the ideologies of governments focused

on development. Furthermore, it is in precisely this manner that

state-building and development might be considered “neo-colonial”

enterprises. While none of the Bedouin ever speciﬁcally used the term

“colonial” or “neo-colonial” during my time in Sinai, the language

they used to describe the Egyptians and their perception of Egyptian

development left no doubt that this was, in fact, their view.

Perhaps the greatest lesson to be taken from this study is the

importance of careful and deliberate planning when it comes

to peripheral development. Many states place primary value on

growth and revenue extraction. However, as this study has clearly

demonstrated, development is not merely an economic process. It

is also a social process leading to the adoption of new patterns of

organization, new social contacts, and often processes of acculturation

motivated by the need to adapt to changing environments. However,

it is apparent that authorities do occasionally neglect the social aspects

of development and express surprise at the “unintended” effects of

their development efforts. It is vital that state authorities understand

the structure and interests of peripheral populations and take careful

steps to ensure their incorporation into dominant identities by

Conclusions

215

coordinating development with the values and interests of both the

center and the periphery. This might require compromise on the part

of governments and development authorities to ensure cooperation

and that the interests of marginal populations are receiving due

attention. Under these circumstances, states will be more successful

instilling a sense of national solidarity in their peripheral populations

by tying them to the interests of the center. This is valid not only in

Egypt, but in all developing states dealing with issues of peripheral

development and nation-building.

217

Epilogue

July 2011– June 2012

In the aftermath of the events that shook Egypt following the January

25, 2011 uprisings, a question regarding the Sinai has arisen: To

what extent has the uprisings that led to the collapse of the Mubarak

regime altered the situation in the Sinai? Without a doubt, the issue

of Sinai has been a continual concern in 2011–2012, with repeated

attacks against the Israel–Egypt gas pipeline, clashes between the

Egyptian army and Bedouin in the north of the peninsula, the August

2011 attack on a bus load of civilians in the south of Israel, and the

August 2012 attack on an Egyptian police station, which led to armed

incursions into North Sinai by the Egyptian military. These events

have cast a negative light on the Sinai and its Bedouin inhabitants.

But all of these events occurred in the north of the peninsula, among

a socially and economically differentiated group of Bedouin.

The situation in the South has been quite different, but no less

traumatic. The incidents involving the kidnapping of tourists or factory

workers, which occurred throughout 2012 and continues in 2013,

as well as armed clashes between security forces and Bedouin in the

remote Wadi Firan in June 2012, represented an open challenge to

the Egyptian state, revealing its truly limited ability to control Sinai.313

313. “U.S. Tourists Freed Unharmed in Sinai,” Reuters, May 31, 2012,

<http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/31/us-egypt-sinai-

kidnapping-idUSBRE84U0DL20120531>; “Egypt Bedouin Kidnap

Two Brazilian Tourists,” Ahram Online, AFP, March 18, 2012, <http://

english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/37078/Egypt/Politics-/

Egypt-Bedouin-kidnap-two-Brazilian-tourists.aspx>; “U.S. Tourists, Guide

Kidnapped by Bedouins in Egypt’s Sinai Freed,” Al-Arabiya, February

3, 2012, <http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/02/03/192306.

html>; “U.S. Tourists Freed Unharmed in Sinai,” Reuters, May 31,

2012, <http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/31/us-egypt-sinai-

kidnapping-idUSBRE84U0DL20120531>; “Bedouin Tribesmen,

Police Clash in Egypt’s Sinai, One Dead: Sources,” Reuters, June 4,

Epilogue

218

While demands have been made by the Bedouin for greater inclusion,

to which the SCAF314 and subsequently the government of Muhamad

Mursi, paid lip service, at the time of this writing, there appears to

be little ability or motivation on the part of the state to truly address

Bedouin complaints. In the aftermath of the attack on a police station

in North Sinai in August 2012, it instead appears that the state will

attempt to respond to continuing unrest with military force.

With the exception of the armed clashes between Egyptian police

and Bedouin in Wadi Firan, unrest in South Sinai has been far less

violent than in the North. The attention Sinai is receiving, which

often characterizes the peninsula as “lawless,” with its inhabitants

representing “criminal” elements—notably smugglers, human

trafﬁckers, and terrorists—engaging in human rights abuses such as

rape, murder, torture, etc., the truth is that while there cannot be

any doubt that smuggling groups operating near the Israeli border are

conducting themselves in this manner, this characterization does not

apply to all of Sinai or even most of Sinai. Additionally, the militant

Islamist groups purported to be operating in Sinai, in which a number

of Bedouin are believed to be participating, continue to be largely

situated in the North as had been the case before 2010.

While the sensationalism of the stories of anarchy and violence in

the media has attracted overwhelmingly negative attention to Sinai

since the fall of the Mubarak regime, the reality in the South has

been far more subdued. Economically, little has changed: the Aqaba

Bedouin still face the same pressures for stability in a tourism market.

Despite the Aqaba region’s relative calm during the uprisings of

2010 and afterwards, national unrest has had a noticeable impact on

tourism in Sinai. As I detailed in chapter two, a theory advanced by a

number of anthropologists of tribalism is that in times of instability, the

Bedouin have learned to fall back on their subsistence structures. The

corollary, discussed in chapter four, is that this will be accompanied

by a reinvigoration of kinship ties within the Bedouin community.

During the course of my research I had the opportunity to see such

2012, <http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/04/us-egypt-sinai-

idUSBRE85310Z20120604>.

314. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the group that seized power

from Mubarak in February 2011.

July 2011– June 2012

219

structures, but due to the lack of political instability until 2010, they

remained largely dormant; I never thought I would have a chance

to see what they looked like ﬁrst-hand. In the aftermath of the Arab

Spring, however, I had the opportunity to visit Dahab in July 2011

and again in June 2012 and witnessed this phenomenon. The streets

of Dahab were strikingly empty. The Bedouin I spoke with complained

that without tourism, there was very little opportunity for work and

money was scarce. In these conditions, it appeared as if my friends

had fallen back on a more “traditional” pattern of social relations, with

the exception of those who maintain steady employment at scuba and

windsurﬁng clubs. One of my Bedouin friends began spending more

time with his father’s family, even going to lengths to prepare a plot

of his father’s land to begin building a house in case he decides to

marry. Another of my friends, who I had never seen wear anything

but jeans and a t-shirt, had begun wearing a jalabiyya, even though

he once told me he hated it. This shift towards greater conformity

with “traditional” patterns of social relations (read: those practiced by

the older generation) was conspicuous.

I have no doubt these changes in the face of the Egyptian revolution

are signiﬁcant, but what, exactly, do they signify? Does any of this

challenge my original set of conclusions about the pace and direction

of social transformation? Or does it perhaps reinforce the theory of

security in kinship unconnected to issues of political identity? I think

that by looking only at this situation frozen in time, these questions

are exceedingly difﬁcult to answer, and furthermore, it is far too

early to come to any lasting conclusions, especially when the future

of the Egyptian state itself is still so murky. When I asked my friend

why he was suddenly so concerned with securing a plot of land and

building a house, he replied, “What if the tourists do not come back?”

lending signiﬁcant credence to the security argument. And while it

was clear from my last visit to Dahab that a more “traditional” set of

Bedouin social values were asserting themselves, another aspect of

Egyptian state collapse gave me cause for great optimism regarding

my conclusions.

While the Mubarak regime expended great energy to prevent

political mobilization, its collapse and the subsequent disorder that

gripped Sinai permitted precisely the type of mobilization that I

Epilogue

220

earlier posited, with the tentative emergence of Bedouin-oriented

organizations such as the television station, the inter-tribal Bedouin

council, and the Bedouin community center mentioned in chapter

ﬁve. (So far I have, unfortunately, been unable to follow up on the

ﬁrst two and the third is still in its incipient phase.) This substantiates

the claim that the lack of Bedouin ethnic institutions was not a result

of a lack of a cross-tribal Bedouin identity or solidarity, but one of the

suppression of these forms of political mobilization in an authoritarian

state. The Bedouin continue to face a coordination dilemma that may

prove insurmountable, and the undeniable tension between tribes is

an obstacle to closer cooperation. However, with the collapse of the

Mubarak regime, and the seeming inability to reassert a strong sense

of sovereignty in the Sinai, it will now be up to the Bedouin to succeed

or fail on their own instead of attributing their failure to state policies

that attempt to prevent political mobilization.

The eventual outcome of the struggle in South Sinai will depend

on whether future Egyprian governments respect ethnic pluralism

and minority rights, and whether they continue supporting the

development paradigm that was the source of tension between the

Bedouin and Egyptian migrants in the ﬁrst place. Furthermore, with

the continued conﬂict between the Egyptian security apparatus and

the Bedouin in North Sinai, it is difﬁcult to imagine an Egyptian state

strongly inﬂuenced by its military interests giving greater freedom to

the Bedouin or making a concerted effort to integrate them more fully

into the economic fabric of Sinai.

In another regard, the Aqaba Bedouin have exploited this disorder

for gains in ways not so dissimilar from the Bedouin in the North.

While the presence of Egyptian authorities constrained the Bedouins’

ability to assert what they believed were their legitimate land rights,

the virtual disappearance of Egyptian security forces have led the

Bedouin to increasing boldness. The pace of their attempts to develop

the plots of land they have claimed have accelerated signiﬁcantly.

Plots of land that contained simple cinderblock structures in my

previous visit have been augmented with gardens and property walls.

New neighborhoods, absent in 2009 and 2010, have emerged.

Furthermore, the visible police presence in Dahab has practically

disappeared. The Bedouin openly disparage the authorities and now

claim that while in the past they were afraid of the police, it is now

July 2011– June 2012

221

the turn of the police to be afraid of the people. Grafﬁti declaring “La

lil-Hukuma” (No to the government) had appeared in a number of

places in ‘Asala between my visits in 2011 and 2012.

Clearly, the Bedouin have seen the recent instability as an

opportunity to advance their own interests, and their actions have

been met with some rather harsh criticism by Egyptians and foreign

residents I spoke with in Dahab. One foreigner living in Dahab,

an employee at an apartment rental agency, suggested that this

opportunism was selﬁsh and inappropriate at a time when Egyptians

should be coming together to build a better future and doing what

they could to help ensure stability. I think this clearly demonstrates

the rather large gap in perceptions between the Bedouin and other

groups in Dahab, who relate to the Egyptian establishment in Sinai

quite differently. More signiﬁcantly, it appears quite suggestive of

Bedouin tendencies to contest state authority and speaks to the age-

old idea that tribes and states are fundamentally opposed institutions.

This, however, is a subject for another study.

Figure 17: Grafﬁti in ‘Asala declaring “No to the Government”

Photo by Author, June 2, 2012.

Epilogue

222

More central to this study is the idea that the processes I describe

are not solely unidirectional, but are dynamic and largely situationally

dependent. The strengthening of tribal kinship structures that I

witnessed gives credence to the idea that the causal mechanism driving

identity transformation lies within economic conditions and state

policies, or more fundamentally, the ability of the state to implement

its policies and enforce them. As with much else in life, only time will

tell.

223

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Contesting Identities in South Sinai: Development, Transformation, and the Articulation of a "Bedouin" Identity under Egyptian Rule

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