Merchants, Entrepreneurs and Public Piety: A Political Economy of Emergent Forms of Islamist Contestation in Egypt and Syria

The main objective of this project is to examine the relationship between, on one hand, the emergence of the entrepreneurial and merchant classes as a socio-political force in Egypt and Syria and, on the other, the production and articulation, by these classes, of new forms of Islamic public piety as both an element of social differentiation and as an expression of identity and contestation.
It will analyse and compare the forms and expressions of public piety within the emergent merchant and entrepreneurial classes in Egypt and Syria, and situate them in relation to macro-economic and societal changes, state-society relations and the power relations between and across various social strata.
Using ethnographic methods, primarily open-ended interviews with merchants and entrepreneurs in Cairo and Damascus, the study will examine why and to what extent these forms of piety come to serve as mechanisms of distinction and as markers of social identity that give shape to political positioning vis-à-vis the state and other socio-political actors.
An integral part of this inquiry is to examine the links that the merchant and entrepreneurial classes have with politically active organisations and institutions with a view to grasping and better understanding the actual and potential role of these classes as forces of contestation.