{"product_id":"on-the-semicivilized-julia-elyachar-9781478028635","title":"On the Semicivilized: Coloniality, Finance, and Embodied Sovereignty in Cairo","description":"\u003ci\u003eOn the Semicivilized\u003c\/i\u003e by Julia Elyachar is a sweeping analysis of the coloniality that shaped--and blocked--sovereign futures for those dubbed barbarian and semicivilized in the former Ottoman Empire. Drawing on thirty years of ethnographic research in Cairo, family archives from Palestine and Egypt, and research on Ottoman debt and finance to rethink catastrophe and potentiality in Cairo and the world today, Elyachar theorizes a global condition of the \"semicivilized\" marked by nonsovereign futures, crippling debts, and the constant specter of violence exercised by those who call themselves civilized. Originally used to describe the Ottoman Empire, whose perceived \"civilizational differences\" rendered it incompatible with a Western-dominated global order, \u003ci\u003esemicivilized \u003c\/i\u003ecame to denote lands where unitary territorial sovereignty was stymied at the end of WWI. Elyachar's theorizing offers a new analytic vocabulary for thinking beyond territoriality, postcolonialism, and the \"civilized\"\/\"primitive\" divide. Looking at the world from the perspective of the semicivilized, Elyachar argues, allows us to shift attention to embodied infrastructures, collective lives, and practices of moving and acting in common that bypass lingering assumptions of territorialism and unitary sovereign rule.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Julia Elyachar\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1478028637\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781478028635\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Duke University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 05\/20\/2025\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 248\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.26lbs","brand":"Julia Elyachar","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":46795307843839,"sku":"9781478028635","price":102.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_ec430f43-0062-4f69-81c3-519da4e09b19.jpg?v=1744947216","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/on-the-semicivilized-julia-elyachar-9781478028635","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}