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To Live and Die Like a Man: Gender Dynamics in Urban Egypt, by Farha Ghannam. Stanford, CA: Stanford Uni- versity Press, 2013. 240 pages. Cloth $85, Paper $24.95, E-book $24.95.
Reviewed by Mona L. Russell
In this groundbreaking work, anthro- pologist Farha Ghannam utilizes 20 years of field research in the working-class neighborhood of al-Zawiya al-Hamra' to deconstruct the notion of masculinity. She is aware that her own status greatly changed over these years as she went from newly- married grad student to established profes- sor with child. Additionally, her accessi- bility was also affected by her association with American universities, and mediated by her Jordanian origins and her religion (Islam). It is clear that she established close ties through her many years in the neigh- borhood with the same families.
In this study, Ghannam examines the meaning of masculinity through several processes: growing up, marriage, finding a career, aging, and death. While these stories are told through the lives of a handful of her close interlocutors, the voices of other men, women, and children around them ring loud and clear. Women, in particular, are impor- tant for a number of reasons. First, Ghan- nam chose to "adhere to social norms when it came to male/female...