Nurturing Masculinities

Men, Food, and Family in Contemporary Egypt

By Nefissa Naguib

University of Texas Press

Two structuring concepts have predominated in discussions concerning how Middle Eastern men enact their identity culturally: domination and patriarchy. Nurturing Masculinities dispels the illusion that Arab men can be adequately represented when we speak of them only in these terms. By bringing male perspectives into food studies, which typically focus on the roles of women in the production and distribution of food, Nefissa Naguib demonstrates how men interact with food, in both political and domestic spheres, and how these interactions reflect important notions of masculinity in modern Egypt.

In this classic ethnography, narratives about men from a broad range of educational backgrounds, age groups, and social classes capture a holistic representation of masculine identity and food in modern Egypt on familial, local, and national levels. These narratives encompass a broad range of issues and experiences, including explorations of traditions surrounding food culture; displays of caregiving and love when men recollect the taste, feel, and fragrance of food as they discuss their desires to feed their families well and often; and the role that men, working to ensure the equitable distribution of food, played during the Islamist movement of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2011. At the core of Nurturing Masculinities is the idea that food is a powerful marker of manhood, fatherhood, and family structure in contemporary Egypt, and by better understanding these foodways, we can better understand contemporary Egyptian society as a whole.

In exposing the importance of properly feeding one’s family, and of the enjoyment of food in family circles to Egyptian men’s notions of manhood, Naguib sheds light on a gentler side of Egyptian masculinity, one related to caregiving and social responsibility. The book gives its readers a strong sense of Egyptian men’s commitment to their community and family, as well as of their sociability and sense of humor, through the stories they tell. Bustan: The Middle East Book Review

This utterly unique book takes readers to the streets of Cairo, where working-class men struggle to provide food and sustenance for their families. Nurturing Masculinities challenges dominant tropes of Arab manhood, suggesting instead that masculinities are measured by the care, nurturance, love, and daily bread that men bring to domestic life. A beautifully written and eye-opening account of Muslim men’s food activism, as well as an evocative rendering of Egyptian culinary traditions. Marcia C. Inhorn, the William K. Lanman Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, Yale University

Nurturing Masculinities is an important addition to a growing, both in number and influence, body of ethnographic work on masculinity in the Middle East. Both its theory and ethnography are strong. Lisa Wynn, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Macquarie University, and author of Pyramids and Nightclubs: A Travel Ethnography of Arab and Western Imaginations of Egypt, from King Tut and a Colony of Atlantis to Rumors of Sex Orgies, Urban Legends about a Marauding Prince, and Blonde Belly Dancer

Nurturing Masculinities is well timed and promises to enrich our understanding of gender and food in contemporary Egyptian life. Farha Ghannam, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Swarthmore College, and author of Live and Die Like a Man: Gender Dynamics in Urban Egypt

NEFISSA NAGUIB is a professor of anthropology at the University of Oslo. Her books include Food and Foodways in the Middle East; Women, Water, and Memory: Recasting Lives in Palestine; and Interpreting Welfare and Relief in the Middle East. She also coproduced the documentary Women, War, and Welfare in Jerusalem.