A Trade Like Any Other: Female Singers and Dancers in Egypt
by Karin van Nieuwkerk
What the back of the book says:
In Egypt, singing and dancing are considered an essential on happy occasions. Professional entertainers often perform at weddings and other celebrations, and a host family's prestige rises with the number, expense, and fame of the entertainers they hire. Paradoxically, however, the entertainers themselves are often viewed as disreputable people and are accorded little prestige in Egyptian society.
This paradox froms the starting point of Karin van Nieuwkirk's look at the Egyptian entertainment trade. She explores the lives of female performers and the reasons why work they regard as 'a trade like any other' is considered disreputable in Egyptian society. In particular, she demonstrates that while male entertainers are often viewed simply 'as making a living', female performers are almost always considered bad seductive women engaged in dishourable conduct. She traces this perception to the social definition of the female body as always and only sexually enticing - a perception that stigmatises women entertainers even as it simultaneously offers them a means of livelihood.
Drawn from extensive fieldwork and enriched with the life stories of entertainers and nightclub performers, from is the first ethnography of female singers and dancers in present day Egypt. It will be of interest to a wide audience in anthropology, women's studies, and Middle Eastern culture, as well as anyone who enjoys belly dancing.
Karin van Nieuwkerk is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands.
