Snapshots of daily life: before and after.This is the third interview in a series on the dilemmas and contradictions researchers undertake in conducting research in the Middle East. These interviews attempt to focus on questions of methodology, and the obstacles encountered by researchers when doing fieldwork in enduring political upheavals. In this interview with Leila Zaki Chakravarti, Mona Abaza explores how these issues apply within the context of contemporary Egypt.
Mona Abaza (MA): Your pre-Arab uprisings research is published as a formal, in-depth ethnography of a working garment assembly plant in Port Said. Yet your more recent work consists of shorter, what you call ‘ethnographic snapshots’ of daily life in Cairo before and after Egypt’s January 2011 revolution. How much of this shift in research approach is down to external factors relating to Egypt’s uprising, and how much of it is just a matter of personal development and preference?
Leila Zaki Chakravarti (LZC): I don’t know of a single Egyptian who couldn’t tell you where they were at the time Tahrir Square erupted into revolution. I myself was in London, watching the astonishing scenes on TV. It wasn’t different from a time of war, when the homeland takes on a vivid, concrete presence in one’s overseas location. I was as confused as the rest of my friends (some of whom took the first flight home to become part of the change) over what to make of it all, and how far things might go. The repercussions of those heady days are still tangible in the lack of consensus and prevailing confusion over whether the events of January 25 constituted a popular revolt, or formed part of the wider regional agenda of political Islam, or were simply a soft military coup aimed at the ultimate preservation of the system. Even families are not able to reconcile their differences on these issues.
