Media's street politics: invisible infrastructures of filming in Cairo

Journal article

The relationship between media, especially cinema, and cities is subject to anthropological and media studies inquiries alike. This paper analyzes the labor relations of on-location filming in Cairo, which moves across different urban geographies, from the slum to the elite gated community. These labor relations defy the formal/informal and exploitation/resistance binaries, because they fundamentally operate on communal dependencies while multiplying to scaffold and sustain the media industry economically. The paper explores whether understanding precarious laborers' tactics and mechanics can offer an alternative conception of media's politics that is attuned to the ambivalences and contradictions of life within neoliberal capitalism. Accordingly, it proposes a consideration of ‘vitalist pragmatics' as a potential capacious ‘verb' for the concept of survivance.

Authors: Kelada, M

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Anthropological Society of Oxford
• Journal: Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford Online
• Volume: 15
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 91-113
• Publication date: 2023-12-19
• DOI: 10.5287/ora-bp42pwrrd
• ISSN: 2040-1876
• Language: English
• Keywords: infrastructure; informality; media; Egypt; JASO; vitalist pragmatics; labor