TABLE
OF CONTENTS
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From Fox Meadows to Spring
Valley
By John Overington
As we
progress
through this journey of discovery, every port we drop anchor, the
shipboard
community is bombarded with evidence of an epic battle that is taking
place
through the mass media and the vehicles of globalization that most
students/staff
etc. never even acknowledge. The
billboards and advertisements that make each citizen of Egypt
desire other worldly things like ipods and designer homes with compound
walls
and gardens, are reshaping the social context of Cairo. The transnational actors that are the media
and capitalist ventures in and around Cairo
are selling a new product to emerging Egyptians like never before. According to Petra Kuppinger in
her
article “Exclusive Greenery: New Gated Communities in Cairo,"
gated
communities and the lifestyles that
they are supposed to be able to provide is becoming a hot commodity,
and this
contemporary type of living are popping up in one of the oldest
societies in the
history of the world. The fertile valley
of the Nile river is seeing the mass production
of gated
communities for the emerging middle class of Egypt,
one that absolutely exemplifies the complex relationship between
vernacular and
transnational factors in today’s global cities. The
construction companies are the transnational actors in
this case,
and the traditional lifestyle of Egyptians is the vernacular. The gated communities are using all of their
most powerful and potent weapons of persuasion to move citizens from
their
homes in Cairo, to
“estate” homes
on the outskirts. The transnational
builders are employing the full arsenal of influence to convince the
Egyptians
that living in a large house outside the city is the new lush life.
One of the
most
interesting parts of this package that the builders are trying to sell
to the
Egyptian society are the names that the communities are being given. These new communities look and sound like
they have been transplanted straight from the suburbs of Washington
D.C. The
names range from the amusing to the absolutely absurd,
as Kuppinger
describes. Mirage City, Royal Hills,
Gardenia Park,
Paradise Park, Palm Hills, Spring Valley, Moon Land, and the quaintly
French,
Belle Ville, are the types of names that these construction companies
have
decided to use for their new communities. The
most hysterical and seemingly outrageous name for a
community of
this nature is one that is planned to be constructed called Dreamland. What more could one want in a name? It’s the place where your elite Egyptian
dreams come true. This community is
particularly interesting, because as Kuppinger goes on to explain, the
golf
course plans to boast its fantastic views of the Pyramids of Giza. The use of attractiveness of vernacular sights
like the Pyramids in the advertisement of a transnational community, is
saturated with this clash of old and new. The
transnational actor is using the most attractive part
of the old
vernacular as a tool to further their transnational cause.
This “new standard of residential living” and
all of the marketing that is coupled with the sale of these new homes
exemplify
the clash and exploitation of the vernacular by the transnational. The new tools that are at the disposal of
transnational actors, like the ever influential media, are being used
to
bring
Egyptian society to a new way of life, one in which poor and rich are
more
sharply divided than ever before, and the vernacular and
Transnationalism are
muddled together.
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