Bridges Between Cultural and Digital Worlds in Revolutionary Egypt
Ramesh Srinivasan
Networks are both imagined and directly experienced. While most have trouble concretely explaining what networks are and how they structure our world, very few doubt their prominence in an increasingly globalized world where information moves at a dizzying pace. Networks speak to the link between the local and global – linking an event in a small village in Tunisia to the evening news in London. Yet they not only bind peoples and ideas across distance, but also in proximity. How are such networks imagined by peoples across dimensions of class, religion, gender, and generation in the dynamic environment that is revolutionary Egypt today? This paper presents initial findings from initial ethnographic and interview-focused fieldwork conducted with Egyptians across a range of demographics. It presents insights around how technological, institutional, and human networks coordinate to present convergent and divergent actions, insights that shape an ever-changing Egyptian political reality.