In Shop Floor Culture and Politics in Egypt, Samer S. Shehata provides us with a unique and detailed ethnographic portrait of life within two large textile factories in Alexandria, Egypt. Working for nearly a year as a 'winding machine operator' provided Shehata with unprecedented access to workers at the point of production and the activities of the work hall. He argues that the social organization of production in the factories—including company rules and procedures, hierarchy, and relations of authority—and shop floor culture profoundly shape what it means to be a 'worker' and how this identity is understood. Shehata reveals how economic relations inside the factory are simultaneously relations of significance and meaning, and how the production of wool and cotton textiles is, at the same time, the production of categories of identity, patterns of human interaction, and understandings of the self and others.

Samer Shehata (PhD, Politics, Princeton University) teaches courses on comparative and Middle East politics and political economy, US policy toward the Middle East, Islamist Politics, Egyptian politics and society, culture and politics in the Arab world, and other subjects. During the 2002-03 academic year, Dr. Shehata served as Acting Director of the Master of Arts in Arab Studies Program. Before coming to Georgetown he spent one year as a Fellow at the Society of Fellows at Columbia University and another as Director of Graduate Studies at New York University's Center for Near Eastern Studies. He has also taught at the American University in Cairo. Shehata's research interests include Middle East politics, U.S. foreign policy, Islamist politics, elections under authoritarianism, social class and inequality; labor; globalization and its impact on the Arab world and developing countries; 'development'; ethnography and the Hajj. His writings have appeared in 'The International Journal of Middle East Studies,' 'Middle East Policy,' 'The Georgetown Journal of International Affiars,' MERIP, Arab Reform Bulletin, Slate, Salon, Al Hayat, Al Ahram Weekly and other publications. His PhD dissertation 'Plastic Sandals, Tea and Time: Shop Floor Politics and Culture in Egypt,' received the Malcolm Kerr Dissertation Award in the social sciences from the Middle East Studies Association of North America. In the spring of 2002, he developed a popular course (co-taught with Michael Hudson) on 'The US, the Middle East, and the War on Terrorism', which he continues to teach.

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