CRUSHED? CAIROS GARBAGE COLLECTORSAND NEOLIBERAL URBAN POLITICS

PETRA KUPPINGERMonmouth College

ABSTRACT: For decades Cairos solid waste management, based on local garbage collectors (zabal;pl. zabaleen) was among the most uniquely ecological in the world. In recent decades, the zabaleenswork has increasingly been pushed aside, as aspects of their services were contracted to multinationalcompanies. This article argues that, with their continued presence, activities, and savvy understandingof urban dynamics, marginalized groups like the garbage collectors hold on to their livelihood in the faceof economic pressures. The author illustrates how the zabaleen, who have been targets of oppressivepolicies and more recently been slated for economic displacement by neoliberal schemes, have fordecades experienced injustice, poverty, frustration, and humiliation. In the face of such adversity, theydeveloped and enacted their own forms of responses and activities, as they continued to encroach ontourban spaces, pursue economic possibilities, and devise everyday forms of street politics.

In the spring of 2009, when the world was swept by the beginning hype about the swine flu (H1N1),governments around the globe issued statements and initiated programs to keep their populationssafe. The Egyptian government announced the most drastic measure to prevent the disease fromspreading: it ordered the entire Egyptian pig population to be slaughtered. International healthagencies immediately responded that the swine flu was not transmitted from pigs to humans, andthat there was no need for a massive pig slaughter. The Egyptian authorities paid no attention to expertvoices and in May 2009 enforced the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of pigs, most of which werethe property of poor Christian (Coptic) families who worked as garbage collectors in large cities. Thepig massacre seriously hurt or destroyed the livelihood of tens of thousands of garbage collectors(zabal; pl. zabaleen) and their families. Two questions arise: why would a government inflict suchtraumatic damage on families that provided vital services to urban residents and whose livelihoodwas based on raising pigs? What are the rationales as well as the long-term consequences of suchoppressive measures?

To understand the May 2009 pig massacre and its broader context and implications, it is necessaryto examine the history and work of Egyptsand concretely Cairoszabaleen, and their positionvis-a`-vis municipal institutions, official discourses and political ideologies. Examining the politicaland economic field in which the zabaleen operate, it becomes apparent that the pig disaster wasjust one chapter in a longer conflict over rights, territories, access to waste, and urban economicorganization between authorities and garbage collectors. Moreover, with hindsight it becomes clearthat the pig massacre was one of numerous instances of government oppression and violence thatindirectly and unintentionally fed into the Egyptian uprising of 2011. The last two decades havebeen marked by continuous conflict between the zabaleen and urban or national authorities, largelyas the result of the ruthless implementation of neoliberal policies which not only diminished thelivelihood of the zabaleen but ultimately aimed to eliminate much of this livelihood and transfer its

Direct correspondence to: Petra Kuppinger, Department of Sociology/Anthropology, Monmouth College, Monmouth, IL 61462.E-mail: petra@monm.edu.

JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Volume 36, Number S2, pages 621633.Copyright C 2013 Urban Affairs AssociationAll rights of reproduction in any form reserved.ISSN: 0735-2166. DOI: 10.1111/juaf.12073

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revenue to global corporations. In the course of this confrontation, the zabaleen, like other similarconstituencies, learned important lessons about politics and developed and refined tactics used instreet politics (Bayat, 1997).

In this article I introduce the zabaleen and their uniquely ecological waste management systemwith its exemplary recycling rate of about 85% (Aziz, 2004, p. 9; Boyd, 2008, p. 47; El-Dorghamy,2008).1 I analyze controversies of the last two decades between urban authorities and the zabaleen inthe framework of neoliberal urban policies when economic measures, spatial schemes, and concreteprojects intensified long-existing pressures (e.g. of relocation and improvement schemes) exertedon garbage collectors and their communities. Recent conflicts involving the zabaleen and their workand livelihood feature in Egypts economic restructuring, in which resources, economic processes,potential sources of corporate profit, and urban spaces are re-evaluated by political and economicelites and redistributed in their own best and corporate interest. These conflicts illustrate the growingdisparity between elite visions of the city and the lifeworlds of economically marginalized groups asmuch as they illustrate the discrepancy between the interests of those the city is planned for andthose it is planned against (Loukaitou-Sideris & Ehrenfeucht, 2009, p. 223). In this process, localeconomic formations are opened to global exploitation. Instead of improving and investing in effectivelocal economic circuits, officials hand over responsibility and profitable ventures to corporationswho offer dazzling solutions that are often out of tune with local conditions. As Cairos cityscapeis reworked to approximate other global metropolises, functioning urban elements are eliminated orremade to become profitable for global companies and their local brokers. These processes createconsiderable urban tension and individual and communal frustration and humiliation when, forexample, street vendors or markets are removed, housing demolished, or livelihoods endangered.

Examining the history, economic circuits, advanced recycling skills, and fine-tuned practices andtactics of Cairos garbage collectors, I argue that their continued economic and social survival isclosely tied to their intimate knowledge of the city, consistent presence, and quick formulationof new tactics in moments of crisis. Analyzing the zabaleens ongoing struggle for economic andsocial participation, I pay attention to contradictions in the implementation of locally insensitiveand ill-adapted neoliberal schemes and policies. Resulting fissures and ruptures provide possibilitiesfor disenfranchised groups to maintain their economic circuits, or to reinsert themselves and theirservices in altered ways into the mess created by badly tailored large-scale projects. By way of theirart of presence (Bayat, 2010), daily work, spatial and social tactics, and broader survival activities,these groups, with their sheer numbers, deeply rooted local practices, and organization are oftenable to remake new regimes, alleviate shortcomings, or correct worst failures. During the Mubarakera, when the police apparatus allowed for little open or large scale protest, these groups learnedvaluable lessons about the tactics of street politics. Disenfranchised groups like the zabaleen keenlyunderstood that their best bet was to score small-scale local victories by encroaching on everypossible and available territory or opportunity (Bayat, 1997).

Examining struggles and controversies involving the zabaleen, I describe one field of ongoingeveryday street politics where ordinary people in their everyday tactics and art of presence counteredforceful policies which kept producing frustration, suffering, and humiliation. With each blow theyreceived, the zabaleen formulated tactics to return to previous more favorable set ups, devised low-level protests or worked hard to make the best of adverse situations. I argue that the zabaleens recentstruggle against neoliberal policies forms one of the many sites and circumstance where Egyptians,as Mona El-Ghobashy noted, have been practicing collective action for at least a decade, acquiringorganizational experience in that very old form of politics: the street action (2011).

COMPETITIVE CITIES AND PERSISTENT URBANITESAt the turn of the twenty-first century, Cairo joined the race for urban branding and a place

in emerging global city hierarchies. In the face of stiff competition, cities refashion themselvesas commodities that compete for recognition and economic participation (Waitt, 1999; Bauman,2007; Zukin, 2010, p. 231). They enter fierce battles to attract global investors, tourists, events,and spectacles (Sassen, 2001). To remain viable competitors, cities need up-to-date international

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transportation and communication services, upscale shopping, entertainment and leisure facilities,convention centers, cultural and educational institutions, safe residential quarters, and have to beclean. Cleaning here not only pertains to physical materials but often implies also the cleaning-upof popular life (Abaza, 2011, p. 1075) and of unsightly popular quarters (Ghannam, 2002). As theyplan for global recognition, municipal authorities, private investors and public-corporate initiativesand projects alter the face of cities to become the corporate city of transnational headquarters, big-box stores and Business Improvement districtsthe business class city (Zukin, 2010, p. 222). Tokeep up in this cut-throat contest, cities embark on costly ventures to construct and improve airports,hotels, and cultural or leisure facilities. Museums, performance venues, and sports facilities are crucialto illustrate a citys willingness and capacity to invest in competitive luxury spaces (never used bymost local residents), in particular in the Global South. To illustrate their global arrival, citiescompete for globalized spectacles, most notably the Olympics or Soccer World Cup (Broudehoux,2007; Carter, 2006; Hubbert, 2010; Rutheiser, 1996). They similarly vie for smaller events suchas global conferences and regional sports events. As they plan for events and successful futures,authorities push unwanted or marginalized groups momentarily or permanently out of downtownor desired upscale urban spaces (Rademacher, 2008; Amouroux, 2009). Some quarters might in theprocess be given up or deserted by local elites (Abaza, 2011).

After authorities opened government-owned desert land for private investors in the 1990s, Cairogreatly expanded in only a few years as massive real estate developments, among them gatedcommunities, mushroomed on the citys fringes. Numerous malls, clubs, and hotels were built in thecity and beyond (Abaza, 2001, 2006; Kuppinger, 2004). To indicate global arrival, with its superiororganizational and material possibilities, ambitious individuals and groups in Egypt jumped at theopportunity to be an internal bidder in Africas campaign to find a host country for the 2010 WorldCup (BBC, 2001; Boyd, 2008, p. 48). The bid never materialized, but it made some officials look atthe city from a global perspective and reminded them how much remained to be done if Cairo wasto become a site for global spectacles.

Hard-pressed to control urban spaces and alleviate the tension that results from the growing gapbetween rich and poor, and between the glittery, safe, and clean spaces of leisure and consumptionand the neglected spaces of non-consumers (see also Bauman, 2008), elites and investors generallyopt for the gradual segregation of urban lifeworlds (Davis, 1992; Low, 2003; Kuppinger, 2006a,b).Control of urban spaces and populations gives way to the construction of exclusive spaces and regimesof spatial governmentality where new regulatory mechanisms . . . target spaces rather than persons(Merry, 2001, p. 16). Spaces are regulated and offensive behavior excluded rather than attemptingto correct or reform offenders (Merry, 2001, p. 16). Instead of policing the poor, they are locked out(except as service personnel; Caldeira, 2000; Ellin, 1997). Such urban politics and governance oftensucceeded in U.S. contexts (Davis, 1992) or newer cities in the Arab Gulf (Davidson, 2009; Syed,2010; Kanna, 2010, 2011). The messy reality of cities like Cairo, however, is not easily remade.Complex urban forms, everyday practices, spatial and economic configurations can only slowly andincompletely be restructured by way of layered methods of control and surveillance and regimes ofeconomic and spatial governance. Resulting governing structures are incoherent and eclectic. Theyreflect the random, largely reactive, and piecemeal process of their inception. Because concreteventures and their accompanying ad hoc regulatory frameworks are often badly adapted to localcircumstances, their implementation on the one side violently excludes and sometimes randomlytargets the homes, spaces, and economic activities of the poorer classes, but on the other handprovide openings for these groups to insert their long-standing economic activities.

Official policies, regulations and concrete urban projects are frequently faced by stubborn life-worlds of ordinary citizens, as they devise tactics to claim their share of urban resources and spaces(de Certeau, 1984; Lefebvre, 1991). They employ an individual mode of reappropriation in theface of an often powerful and overwhelming collective mode of administration (de Certeau, 1984,p. 96). Asef Bayat talks about the art of presence of disenfranchised populations as they encounterill-suited, harmful or negligent policies (2007, 2010). He emphasizes ordinary peoples

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courage and creativity to assert collective will in spite of all odds, to circumvent constraints,utilizing what is available and discovering new spaces within which to make oneself heard, seen,felt, or realized. The art of presence is the fundamental moment in the life of nonmovements, inlife as politics. (Bayat, 2010, p. 26)

Bayat insists that political and economic practices are formulated in neighborhoods, on streetcorners, in mosques, in workplaces, on bus stops, or in rationing lines, or in detention centers,migrants camps, public parks, colleges, and athletic stadiums (Bayat, 2010, p. 22). In these mundanespaces ordinary people meet, discuss issues, test ideas and practices, and slowly articulate collectiveresponses which are not formulated as political protest or resistance, but as ways to maintain orimprove peoples lives in the face of adverse conditions. Resulting every day acts of work, production,and social relationships might go unnoticed, but could be harbingers of significant social change(Bayat, 2010, p. 26). Some turn into sand in the engine of neoliberal policies.

Global restructuring and subsequent local projects pull ordinary urbanites into larger circuitsof political and economic dynamics and turn individual and communal lifeworlds into terrains ofpolitical negotiations (Bayat, 2010, p. 45). Frustrated by being ignored as citizens, and disillusionedby organized politics and corrupt leaders, disenfranchised individuals and groups move directly tofulfill their needs by themselves, albeit individually and discreetly. In short, theirs is not a politicsof protest, but of redress, struggle for an immediate outcome through individual direct acts (p. 59,emphasis in original). The sum total of disenfranchised groups activities has (unplanned) potentialsto remake larger social and political contexts. James Holston argues that they can remake notions ofcitizenship and might democratize urban spaces and publics spheres (2008, p. 9). In the case of Brazil,Holston notes that conflicts and tensions between the forces of government and the ordinary practicesof citizens are marked by dramatic economic and power differentials.2 Popular action is frequentlymet with merciless responses (p. 18). Like Bayat, Holston argues that, as poor or disenfranchisedgroups enter into such public negotiations, they do so not as a form of political protest, but aremotivated by (collective) self-interest, because it gives them rights, powers and privileges (p. 17).As these groups pursue their immediate interest, they stake out larger terrains of political tension andpossible long-term gains, losses, and transformations. Their combined frustration as well as theirtactics of encroachment and street politics are cumulative and have the long-term potential to feedinto or fuel larger confrontations.

EFFICIENT WASTE MANAGEMENTIn the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, cities in Europe and North America (Gandy,

1994; Miller, 2000; Strasser, 1999), and in the colonized South (Medina, 2007) faced new challengeshandling growing quantities of garbage as a result of rapid industrialization. Political bodies wereslow to address waste management issues (Melosi, 2005; Rogers, 2005). Colonial urban authoritieswasted even less effort on waste than their metropolitan counterparts. Urban populations were left todeal with growing mounds of refuse. In many cities the poorest of the poor became scavengers whocollected and recycled urban waste (Miller, 2000; Pellow, 2004).

At the turn of the twentieth century, migrants from desert oases (wahi, pl. wahiya; those of oasesorigin; Volpi, 1996, p. 14) started to collect waste from wealthier households in Cairo. The wahiyaadded features to existing circuits of waste management where some waste had long been collectedor bought by those in need of these materials. Like their predecessors, the wahiya sold paper andother waste to those who needed fuel like owners of public bathhouses or makers of fuul (a bean dish;Assaad & Garas, 1993/94, p. 2). The wahiya provided a living for themselves, kept the city (especiallywealthier quarters) relatively clean, and instituted networks of recycling. In the 1940s, as quantitiesand types of garbage increased, poor Upper Egyptian Christian migrants became subcontractors withthe Muslim wahiya (Assaad & Garas, 1993/94, p. 2). These migrants, soon called zabaleen, boughtthe organic waste (the largest part of the refuse) for their pigs, which their Muslim employers wereprohibited by their religion from keeping (Fahmi, 2005, p. 156). The wahiya continued to supervisethe waste system, while the zabaleen collected waste (Fahmi, 2005, p. 156; Haynes & El-Hakim,

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1979, p. 102). Middlemen (muallim) set up impoverished new arrivals with a shack, pigs, and apigsty (zeriba). The zabaleen paid for the garbage and their premises (Kamel, 1994, p. 100). Thewahiya oversaw the business as brokers; they owned garbage routes and rented them to garbagecollectors (Haynes & El-Hakim, 1979, p. 102). In the 1950s and 1960s muallims set up zabaleensettlements on the urban fringes (Kamel, 1994) as the wahiya extended services in the growingcity. No municipal waste management plan existed (Haynes & El-Hakim, 1979, p. 104). Zabaleenworked and lived largely untouched by intensifying webs of governmentality (Foucault, 1994). Urbanexpansion repeatedly forced them to relocate to more distant parts of the city. As garbage proliferated,the zabaleen improved their recycling system to include glass, metals, bones, tin, paper, plastic, andrags, which were sold to dealers who resold them to workshops (Haynes & El-Hakim, 1979, p. 103).3They devised organic solutions to problems, as they tailored work regimes, methods, and techniquesto local circumstances.

Around 1970 authorities relocated several thousand zabaleen to the lower plateau of the MoqattamMountains east of Cairo (Assaad & Garas, 1993/94, p. 2). Residents received no municipal services.Children or young girls walked for over an hour to fetch water. The zabaleen persevered, workedtheir daily routes, fed their pigs (an ancient indigenous breed well suited to this lifestyle [Stino,2009]) and sold recyclables to middlemen. The community provided work for thousands. Smallworkshops either in the community or nearby (e.g., Manshiet Nasser) converted, for example, plasticor aluminum into dishes or silverware. Waste that could neither be recycled nor fed to the pigs wasdumped on the outskirts of the community, where it was regularly burned, clouding the area in smellsand pollution. Until the 1980s there was no school or health center in the community (Aziz, 2004,p. 10).

Because the zabaleen sought valuable garbage, they did not service poor neighborhoods. Yet, nomunicipal waste management existed in Cairo through the 1970s. Only public streets and parks werecleaned by municipal workers. Itinerant scrap dealers bought bulk waste or old furniture (Haynes &El-Hakim, 1979, p. 102). Poor people were left to throw their refuse on neighborhood dumps thatwere regularly set on fire. On the urban outskirts, waste was often dumped into irrigation canals,some of which turned into flowing garbage heaps; some stopped flowing altogether. Authoritiesperiodically cleared canals with heavy equipment, or if canals were no longer in use they were filledand turned into streets. In the 1970s, the lack of waste management in poorer quarters did not yetconstitute a pressing problem for the authorities, as the poor were only marginally integrated intoemerging consumer cultures. Urban animal husbandry (chickens, ducks, or goats kept in alleys, onbalconies, and on rooftops) took care of most organic waste.

Being a zabal has always been a family business (Haynes & El-Hakim, 1979). Husbands left thesettlements in the early morning with donkey carts. Children traveled with their father to guard cartswhile the father went into buildings to collect garbage. Upon returning home, the contents of thecart were dumped in the family yard, where women and children sorted the garbage. Pigs or goatsconsumed organic waste (Kamel, 1994; Volpi, 1996). Family dwellings served as huge garbagetransitory stations (Kansouh-Habib, 2009b).

The zabaleens waste system is flexible and innovative, but in the past had tremendous hu-man costs. In 1979 infant mortality among the zabaleen was 40% (Haynes & El-Hakim, 1979,p. 105). In 1983 the garbage collectors ranked in the lowest 10% for urban incomes in Egypt(Fahmi, 2005, p. 157). In the 1970s, the Moqattam community started organizing. With the helpof the Coptic Bishop Samuel, zabaleen founded the first garbage collectors association (Asso-ciation of Garbage Collectors for Development [AGCCD], registered with the Ministry of SocialAffairs in the early 1970s; Kamel, 1994, p. 15). The Moqattam zabaleens suffering was vio-lently augmented in 1976 when almost the entire community burned down twice in one year inaccidental fires. Although nobody was killed, these fires, growing quantities of unserviced waste,and rising awareness of the horrendous living conditions of the zabaleen generated a politicalunderstanding that waste management needed to be addressed. Some advocates emphasized thatimproved garbage schemes needed to include the zabaleen as central stakeholders. They noted thatcapital-intensive, high-tech, and high-energy solutions were inappropriate. Rather, the work of the

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zabaleen should be be improved by eliminating undesirable human costs (Haynes & El-Hakim, 1979,p. 106).

In the early 1980s, local and international agencies started projects in the Moqattam village toimprove living and work conditions. Cleaner work methods and on-site recycling were to add moresanitary and profitable jobs. The local Association for the Protection of the Environment (APE) setup a composting plant for pig manure and organic waste (Kamel, 1994).4 In 1988 a rag recyclingunit was built (Aziz, 2004, p. 14). Its activities included literacy, job training, and health programs(Kamel, 1994, pp. 118). Municipal (electricity, water) and social services (clinics, schools) wereestablished. Individual families slowly replaced their tin shacks with two- to three-story (later evenhigher) concrete buildings where humans and animals lived in separate quarters. In the 1980s thecommunity grew to about 17,000 residents (Assaad & Garas, 1993/94, p. 1). By the early 1990s thezabaleen community had become a neighborhood of its own right (Kamel 1994, p. 128). Despiteremaining hardships and poverty, the quarter prospered.

GOVERNANCE, CONTROL AND PROFITIn 1984 the cities of Cairo and Giza, overwhelmed by waste problems, founded the Cairo and

Giza Cleansing and Beautification authorities (CCBA, GCBA) to design comprehensive metropolitansolutions (Kamel, 2009). As an early step they began to license garbage routes. The zabaleen nowhad to pay the municipality as well as the wahiya. They were responsible for renewing their licenses.For the first time zabaleen were integrated into municipal webs of control and supervision. Licensescould be issued, revoked, or refused renewal. Regimes of control and surveillance were added toearlier policies of neglect. However, control did not replace neglect. Instead they were two featuresof a layered field of modes of engagement authorities employed in seemingly random ways tocircumscribe the zabaleens work.

In 1990 authorities banned the use of donkey carts for garbage collection. The presence ofoverloaded shaky donkey carts was deemed offensive to upper-class residents and tourists, and seenas obstacles for traffic. For the zabaleen, who are largely illiterate, without drivers licenses and fundsfor pick-up trucks, this ban was a serious blow (Fahmi & Sutton, 2010). As a response, zabaleenentered into small cooperatives to purchase vehicles. Some hired drivers. In the end the rule was morestrictly enforced in upper-class quarters than elsewhere, resulting in a certain stratification among thegarbage collectors. Those who could invest in vehicles could continue to service upscale quarters.Those without funds had to withdraw or remain in less affluent areas. This regulation signified acombination between earlier methods of regulation with emerging ones of exclusion. As car owners,zabaleen were integrated into global economic circuits. Also in the 1990s authorities establishedcomposting plants which could have hurt the zabaleen. Yet, ten years later Laila Kamel noted that

the policy led to a trail of poorly managed, poorly operated, poorly maintained plants and facilitieswhich ground to a halt, or years later were at a standstill. Many had become obsolete after fiveyears of operation and others still glistened with their original coat of paint, never having beenused! (2009)

Nonetheless, some larger companies profited from installing these plants. Even as cars ultimatelyeased the garbage collectors work, the composting plants aimed to appropriate a share of thezabaleens livelihood.

The search for waste solutions turned increasingly to high-tech, high-energy, and high-cost meth-ods. Instead of improving the zabaleens recycling operationswhich included facilities and net-works for aluminum, plastic, cloth, paper, cardboard, tin, bones, glass, and organic wasteauthoritiesmarginalized the zabaleen (Kamel, 2009). Regardless, in the late 1990s zabaleen were estimated tohandle about 30%40% of Cairos garbage, about 3,000 tons per day (of a total of about 9,00010,000tons, produced by 14 million residents; Aziz, 2004, p. 9; Kamel, 2009).

By 2003 about 30,000 zabaleen lived in the Moqattam community (Rashed, 2003b). About 70,000garbage collectors serviced metropolitan Cairo (Epstein, 2006). In 2000 local companies were hired

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to take the waste of poorer quarters to public dumpsites where it was burned, producing smoke andpollution (Kamel, 2009). Expanding consumer cultures produced ever more waste. Garbage mounds,smoke over the city, and the pressure to remain globally competitive forced authorities to devisemore comprehensive solutions. In 2002 Cairo and Giza decided to contract multinational wastemanagement companies (Rashed, 2002a) to address this crisis. Alexandria had signed a contract witha French company in 2001 (Rashed, 2002a). In the negotiations for these contracts the zabaleen wereignored as central stakeholders (Aziz, 2004, p. 10; Rashed, 2002a). Their expertise was disregardedand licenses were revoked or not renewed (Fahmi & Sutton, 2010; Kovach, 2003). In June 2002 theCairo governor contracted two Spanish firms to collect about 8,000 tons of garbage per day in partsof the city. The two companies were to receive LE 115 million per year for the next 15 years. TwoItalian companies were to be hired for other quarters. Upon hearing this news, the zabaleen were upin arms. They asked to be included in contracts, but officials refused. The foreign companies venturedinto a potentially profitable niche of the market (Fahmi & Sutton, 2010). These companies wereexpected to collect household garbage, clean the streets, manage existing fertilizer factories, servicemedical waste, and construct a sanitary dump (Rashed, 2002a). The zabaleen were desperate. Oneman pleaded, we want the garbage because it is our lifeline (Rashed, 2002a). The new contractsstipulated that there was to be no more door-to-door waste collection (as the zabaleen did). Instead,containers were placed on streets for households to deposit their waste (Rashed, 2002a). Residentswere angered by this inconvenience (Rashed, 2003c). Companies were required to recycle only 20%of the waste (Kamel, 2009). When the Giza governorate announced its new waste contracts, somezabaleen staged a demonstration. Three men were arrested when they planned a meeting for thezabaleen to organize to face this attack on their livelihood (Rashed, 2003b).

The new system was plagued by problems which largely resulted from its one-size-fits-all op-erational schemes. Residents were angered as they now paid more for less service (Boyd, 2008,p. 48; Rashed, 2002a, 2003b). Heavy company vehicles were too large to enter small residential al-leys (Fahmi & Sutton, 2010) and public garbage receptacles were stolen (Boyd, 2008, p. 48; Kamel,2009). Zabaleen and other scavengers moved through the city at night mining containers and leavinga mess (Kamel, 2009). The companies had difficulty finding workers, as few were willing to workat the pay they offered (Kamel, 2009; Iskander, 2009). A cycle of arguments, fines, neglect, andstrikes resulted. Some zabaleen negotiated informal arrangements with the companies, whereby theywould collect garbage door to door, and were given access to parts of the garbage in return for feesor services (Rashed, 2003a). Zabaleen were contracted for some routes. Many households that couldafford it returned to their zabaleen for reliable and convenient services. Garbage wars lingered andthe waste situation deteriorated. The zabaleen recognized the shortcomings of the new system, andreclaimed as much of their former territories and work as possible.

Experts proposed solutions whereby the zabaleen would be (formally) integrated in a comprehen-sive system with the companies (Rashed, 2002a). In 2003 Laila Kamel explained: These contractsare costing the city big money. Why not spend just 10 percent of such as budget to upgrade theZabaleen system? (quoted in Fahmi & Sutton, 2010, p. 1773). In the meanwhile a conflict eruptedin Giza between Italian International Environmental Services (IES) and the governorate. Officialsaccused IES of not providing proper services. IES insisted that they were not paid the stipulated sumand hence had to cut down on services (Rashed, 2004). The streets became dirtier. IES workers wenton strike and the respective bosses argued for two years (Rashed, 2004). Ultimately the zabaleenweathered setbacks by way of international companies and bounced back to earlier levels of activity.By early 2009 they were processing 6,0007,000 tons of waste daily (private companies collectedan additional 2,000 tons per day; Slackman, 2009a; Williams, 2009).

The new waste system with its trucks and workers clad in colorful uniforms channeled considerablesums into the pockets of both local and global businesses. Stripped of their work and autonomy, thezabaleens only way to return to city streets, at least in the official plan, was as uniformed smallwheels in the new powerful waste machinery (Iskander, 2009). The new system, however, was flawed,because it had not reckoned with local conditions. By 2008 the zabaleen had regained much of theirearlier central position in the citys waste management system. They continued to service about athird of Cairos waste as they worked alongside private companies (Boyd, 2008).

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Despite persistent attempts to marginalize their livelihood, the zabaleen persevered, improved theircommunity, and refined their work methods. Some invested in their dwellings and some buildingsgrew to five or six stories. In 2001 the AGCCD opened the local Recycling School (Iskander,2009). Conceptualized for older boys, the school teaches literacy and math, computer skills, arts,advanced recycling skills, and health and industrial safety issues (Aziz, 2004, p. 21). Keeping upwith consumer developments, younger zabaleen engage the next recycling challenge: electronics andtheir (valuable) ingredients. One young man noted that as Egyptian society evolved and computersor cell phones found their way to the garbage collectors, the ingenuity of the zabaleen is stretchedto keep pace with what is produced (Smith, 2005).

VIOLENT POLITICSCairos municipal policies have repeatedly demonstrated an undefined but persistent long-term

vision to further exclude the zabaleen from waste management. Yet no plan was developed of howto fill the void they would leave. Little attention was paid to the fact that excluding the zabaleenwould produce ecological risks and challenges as huge amounts of additional waste would need tobe deposited in landfills or incinerated. Driven by blind faith in technology, and greed for lucrativejobs and contracts for a few privileged brokers, authorities issued further regulations that limited theparticipation of the zabaleen, but shiny trucks and colorfully clad workers were not enough to replace

traditional waste management systems [that] are embedded in realities which are too complex forofficial, conventional systems to understand. They spring from organic relationships between thepeople who run them and their city . . . They provide the poorest and most destitute segments ofsociety with incomes, livelihoods, trades, occupations and economic growth opportunities whichno other sector provides. (Kamel, 2009)

In the face of ongoing conflicts, arguments, and failure, two waste companies working in GreaterCairo had folded their operations by 2009 (McGrath, 2009). Remaining contracts were continuouslyrenegotiated (Afify, 2010). In the meantime, garbage proliferated as Cairo experienced rapid con-sumption increases fostered by mushrooming consumer cultures. Many argued that only the inclusionof the zabaleen and their effective system could solve the problem (Kamel, 2009; Rashed, 2002a;Loza & Moharem, 2009).

The precarious situation of the Moqattam garbage collectors was exacerbated by real estatespeculation and a construction boom that engulfed the Moqattam plateau situated immediately abovethe garbage town. Garbage collectors, recyclers and producers of recycled items were viewed withsuspicion and marked as polluters of space and air. With the opening of the Al-Azhar Park in 2005,and the ambitious Cairo Financial Center under construction nearby, the Moqattam communitybecame flanked below by the park and by upscale residential communities above. Not surprisingly,investors turned their eyes on the community (Fahmi & Sutton, 2010). As a first step, presentingwhat they regarded as an improvement of the community, the Cairo governorate tried to removerecycling procedures and animal husbandry to Qattameya, a desert settlement 25 kilometers outsidethe city (Fahmi & Sutton, 2010, p. 1771).5 This move constituted a logistical nightmare for zabaleenfamilies. It meant that men would have to leave for the city early in the morning while women wouldready children in Moqattam for school, then travel 25 kilometers to Qattameya with their very youngand older children to sort garbage and tend to animals. Other plans foresaw the relocation of theentire community to this desert location.6

The 2009 swine flu (H1N1) provided an unexpected chance for another blow at the zabaleen.Based on no scientific evidence, and against the counsel of experts, the Egyptian government decidedthat pigs were to blame for the swine flu, even though no Egyptian pigs were infected (Stino, 2009).Before anybody had contracted the disease in Egypt, the government ordered the slaughter of theentire pig population (Whitaker, 2009). In May 2009 an estimated 300,000 pigs were killed (Whitaker,2009; Slackman, 2009a; Williams, 2009).7 After the slaughter, almost 1,000 cases of H1N1 werereported in Egypt (Williams, 2009). The pig massacre signifies the single largest blow in the attacks

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on the zabaleen; unlike the car rule or the contracting of foreign waste companies, this blow wasfinal. There was no room for maneuvering. The pigs, a central source of income (raised and sold in6-month cycles), were irreplaceable.

Fierce debates ensued. Many zabaleen saw this as one more governmental measure to eliminatetheir jobs and push them out of the Moqattam settlement. Some observers commented that theslaughter reflected the growing influence of Islamist groups over the government and the attempt toeliminate the livelihood of the largely Christian zabaleen (Whitaker, 2009; Michael, 2009). As thegovernment came under attack for the pig slaughter, they switched their rationale for the massacreaway from preventing disease to improving the zabaleens lives. An official at the infectious diseasedepartment of the Ministry of Agriculture explained: We want them to live a better live, humanelytreated; its a difficult life (Slackman, 2009a). Some zabaleen received compensation for their pigs,but how long does a limited amount of money last? The zabaleens response was straightforward:with no pigs to feed, they stopped collecting organic waste (Slackman, 2009b). Some stoppedcollecting garbage altogether, because pigs had been their central source of income. Garbage was leftto rot in the streets. They killed the pigs, let them clean the city, a former garbage man remarked(Slackman, 2009b). Garbage mounds and a garbage crisis built up. What seems like a predictableconsequence of the pig massacre came as a surprise to authorities who were apparently puzzledby this dirty aftermath. This government-made garbage crisis illustrates how short-sighted anddisadvantageous the contracts with the foreign companies had been, as they were unable to pick upthe zabaleens load (Kansouh-Habib, 2009a).

The pig slaughter and other policies regarding the zabaleen are not only framed by neoliberaleconomic policies, but also reflect religious politics as increasingly powerful Islamic political forcestarget (poorer) Christian constituencies and their livelihood. The slaughter symbolizes the growingsectarianism of the late Mubarak regime and its overall lax protection of Christians (e.g., the massacrein an Alexandria Church on January 1, 2011; see Fawzi, 2012). Although Muslims and Christiansstood side by side during the revolutionary days in early 2011, this national honeymoon did notlast long; violence against Copts has flared up again and again in post-revolutionary Egypt (e.g.,Suerbaum, 2011; Ezzat, 2012; Fawzi, 2012). In early March of 2011 Copts from Manshiet Nasser,many of them zabaleen, demonstrated against discrimination by blocking the busy Salah Salem urbanhighway (Suerbaum, 2011). The encounter between demonstrators and drivers turned violent. Thearmy moved in to control the situation. This conflict left thirteen people dead and over 100 injured.A number of buildings in the community were burned (Suerbaum, 2011). A few months later, inOctober 2011, Copts demonstrated in front of the TV building. This conflict ended with 20 peoplekilled, and a growing sense that Copts had gained little in the revolution and were still under attack.Individual attacks on Copts or Coptic churches occur again and again (Ezzat, 2012). Copts remainapprehensive about their position in the new Egypt (Fawzi, 2012).

ENFORCED NEOLIBERALISMIn recent decades Egyptian authorities, elites, and investors have created visions, issued projects,

and enforced elements of Cairos globalized future. They planned quarters and edifices for middle-and upper-class consumers and foreign tourists and attempted to beautify upscale quarters of thecities. They tried to clean up unsightly evidence of popular lifestyles and poverty, and relocatedpeople and activities to urban fringes. They abandoned certain urban quarters and left them to declineor to lower-class use. Many plans and projects intentionally or unintentionally worked against theinterests of poor and marginalized groups. Globally modeled high-tech solutions, urban patterns thatprivilege rapid circulation, and consumption-oriented projects took precedence over local forms,potentials, and livelihoods.

The case of the zabaleen illustrates the complexity and dynamic nature of local economic con-figurations and how they engage, oppose, or sometimes undermine high-tech and capital-intensiveschemes. Local stakeholders with their experiences, their continuous and constant presence in urbanspaces, and their sophisticated analyses of local economies and communal needs aptly identify rup-tures and fissures in project designs and their legal frameworks and adapt their work and activities

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accordingly. Authorities in turn initiate further steps and regulations that aim at tighter control andsurveillance of such groups, often giving rise to mounting tensions and frequent struggles. For yearsthe garbage collectors were able to remake their work and technologies to either integrate or circum-vent such efforts. For years the ironic scheme to privatize waste management (which had alwaysbeen private) largely failed. Ultimately, local inflections of neoliberal plans frequently differ fromplanned outcomes, when established stakeholders insist on their continued role and participation(Kanna, 2010).

Without disputing the powerful nature of top-down economic policies and their forceful implemen-tation, the zabaleens experience illustrates how flawed, inadequately planned, and badly carried outmany such projects are. Poor urban residents do not easily concede their livelihood to internationalcorporations, and will do whatever it takes to maintain their stake in the urban economy (Sims, 2010,p. 91). Through a superior understanding of their city and its dynamics, and their continued presenceor art of presence on city streets and spaces, disenfranchised groups exploit the contradictionsof neoliberal schemes. It would be nave, however, to think that their efforts are always crownedwith success, in particular when governments, as the Egyptian pig massacre shows, are willing toemploy violent means to destroy poor peoples livelihoods. While the Mubarak regime scored apartial success in its attempts to violently appropriate the zabaleens sources of revenue, one can onlyspeculate how exactly the anger, frustration, and humiliation experienced by such disenfranchisedgroups fed into the 2011 uprising.

CONCLUDING REMARKSIn this article I examined a field of ongoing struggle between urban residents and authorities

in Cairo where the forceful implementation of neoliberal policies and projects causes tension andsuffering. For decades individuals and communities have been the target of government policiesand control (licensing); urban improvement schemes (regulation of vehicles and routes, enforcedrelocation); neoliberal projects (transference of local sources of income to global corporations);irrational, violent and destructive official measures (the pig massacre); and detrimental future plans(removal of the Muqattam community to Qattameya). In addition, they have faced daily unpredictableencounters with corrupt officials. Over the years the zabaleen resisted, circumvented, or unmade theseconstant attacks on their livelihood and dignity. Faulty official planning of projects unwittingly oftenhelped their efforts and allowed them to either adapt their work or successfully reinsert themselvesinto the ruptures and fissures of plans and projects. However, as much as the zabaleen have beenable to change aspects of government policies, their situation remains precarious. The irrationalityand violence of the pig massacre illustrates their ultimate powerlessness vis-a`-vis government forces.Looking at more than two decades of strugglefor nothing more than access to the citys wastethe overall frustration and anger built up over time by one disenfranchised urban group becomesapparent. Similarly obvious is the fact that the zabaleen were never mute or docile recipients ofdetrimental policies. Instead, by way of the art of presence they struggled for minute gains ofterritories and possibilities based on the understanding that large-scale and more visible resistance(e.g., the arrest of those who wanted to organize a demonstration in Giza protesting contracts withforeign waste management companies) was futile. Understanding the corruption and violence ofthe Mubarak-era police force, the zabaleen and other disenfranchised groups preferred to solve theirproblems locally, incrementally, and possibly beyond the view of the government. While the zabaleenkeenly understand the workings of the government, neither past nor present regimes have ever spentmuch thought reflecting about the pent-up anger, frustration, and humiliation of ordinary citizens.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: An earlier version of this paper was presented at a workshop organized by Najib Houraniand Mona Fawaz at the European University Institute in Florence in April 2011. I am grateful to Mona and Najib fororganizing this amazing workshop. My thanks also go to the workshop participants for their helpful comments anddiscussions, and to Ahmed Kanna and Najib Hourani for organizing this special issue. I greatly benefitted from theinsightful remarks of the anonymous reviewers of the Journal of Urban Affairs that helped me to improve this article. I

II Cairos Garbage Collectors and Neoliberal Urban Politics II 631

would also like to thank Laila Kamel for introducing me to the Moqattam Zabaleen community back in the late 1980sand arranging my participation as a voluntary teachers aid there. Finally my thanks go to my parents for their support,and to my daughters, Tamima and Tala, for their love and patience.

ENDNOTES1 This paper is based on years of fieldwork conducted in Cairo since 1987. I also worked as a voluntary teacher in a

school attached to one of the Coptic Churches on the Moqattam Garbage community from 1987 to 1990. Data forthe recent neoliberal controversies are largely taken from various Egyptian and international media.

2 Holston notes about Brazil: What I call a misrule of law: a system of stratagem and bureaucratic complicationdeployed by both state and subject to obfuscate problems, neutralize opponents, and above all legalize the illegal.This law has little to do with justice, and obeying it reduces people to a category of low esteem. Thus, for friends,everything; for enemies, citizens, the poor, squatters, marginals, migrants, inferiors, communists, strikers, and otherothers, the law. For them, law means humiliation, vulnerability, and bureaucratic nightmare (2008, p. 19). Muchof this applied to Mubarak-era Egypt.

3 By 1979 the zabaleen were recycling 2000 tons of paper per month. They processed cotton and rags to use inupholstery. Tin was reworked into toys, vessels, and spare parts for machinery. Organic waste and pig droppingswere processed into compost (Haynes & El-Hakim, 1979, p. 103).

4 Over the years, USAID, the Ford Foundation, the European Union, private local and international donors, and localand global companies sponsored projects in the Moqattam community (Aziz, 2004, p. 14).

5 Qattameya is a desert development were authorities in recent years have resettled residents from other poorneighborhoods (Fahmi & Sutton, 2010).

6 Zabaleen were not the only group slated for economic elimination. Potters in Old Cairo had their electricity cutand hence their livelihood, when officials blamed bad air quality exclusively on them (Bell, 2000). Others weresimilarly targeted for removal or robbed of their livelihoods or crucial services (see Ghannan, 2002; Hamdy, 2002).

7 In addition to the garbage collectors, others who raised pigs, or processed or butchered pork, were robbed overnightof their livelihoods (Williams, 2009).

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ABOUT THE AUTHORPetra Kuppinger is Professor of Anthropology at Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois. Shehas conducted research on topics of cities, spaces, globalization and consumerism in Cairo, Egypt.More recently she has been working on issues of space, culture and Islam in Germany. She is thePresident-Elect (201214) of SUNTA. Her recent publications include Himmelstochter: A Muslimain German Public Spheres, Journal of Middle East Womens Studies, 2011; Vibrant Mosques:Space, Planning and Informality in Germany, Built Environment, 2011; Factories, Office Suites,Defunct and Marginal Spaces: Mosques in Stuttgart, Germany, in Reshaping Cities, M. Guggenheimand O. Soderstrom (Eds.), 2010; and Globalization and Exterritoriality in Metropolitan Cairo, TheGeographical Review, 2006.