Print Culture, Social Change, and the Process of Redefining Imagined Communities in Egypt; Response to the Review by Charles D. Smith of Redefining the Egyptian Nation (IJMES 29, 4 [1997]: 606–22)

Abstract

Charles D. Smith's review essay on our book Redefining the Egyptian Nation in the October 1997 issue of IJMES undertakes a critical analysis of the work. Simultaneously, it raises broader questions about the relevance of some of the insights of theoreticians of nationalism, particularly Benedict Anderson, to the case of Egyptian nationalism. The essay's attempt to evaluate the utility of recent theoretical writing on nationalism for the study of the Middle East is a worthwhile endeavor. However, we believe that the essay's analysis of the book itself is based on a familiarity with only a small selection of the sources relevant to understanding Egyptian nationalism, and that it provides a misleading interpretation of the contents of the work. We also feel that its observations about nationalist theory sometimes misconstrue our use of the same, and in general underestimate the importance of recent theoretical work on nationalism for the study of Egypt and the Middle East.