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Staying Alive: Negotiating Life with the Contamination of Kitchener Drain.
This thesis explores how rural communities in Kafr El Sheikh governorate, Egypt, negotiate everyday life with the contamination of Kitchener Drain, the largest agricultural drain in the central Nile Delta. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in three villages at the tail-end end of the drain, the stud...
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AUC Knowledge Fountain
2025
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| _version_ | 1867613428219117568 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | hassib, zein |
| author_browse | hassib, zein |
| author_facet | hassib, zein |
| author_sort | hassib, zein |
| collection | Thesis |
| description | This thesis explores how rural communities in Kafr El Sheikh governorate, Egypt, negotiate everyday life with the contamination of Kitchener Drain, the largest agricultural drain in the central Nile Delta. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in three villages at the tail-end end of the drain, the study explores how water contamination shapes social and ecological, social life for farmers living in the catchment of the drain. The thesis situates the farmer’s present experience within the broader history of colonial and modernist national irrigation reforms and developments highlighting how systemic neglect and uneven governance reproduce conditions of vulnerability. At the same time, the thesis looks at contaminated spaces as simultaneously being zones of abandonment and zones of freedom from structure, where creative life forms can come to be. By bringing together anthropological theories of water, contamination, and value with a Deleuzian framework of events, the research demonstrates how Kitchener Drain is both a site of precarity and of persistence, where survival entails negotiating the entanglement of life and death. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:fount.aucegypt.edu:etds-3640 |
| institution | American University in Cairo (Egypt) |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:35:59.467Z |
| license_str | Not specified — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from AUC Knowledge Fountain — bepress |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| publishDateRange | 2025 |
| publishDateSort | 2025 |
| publisher | AUC Knowledge Fountain |
| publisherStr | AUC Knowledge Fountain |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | AUC Knowledge Fountain — bepress |
| spelling | oai:fount.aucegypt.edu:etds-3640 Staying Alive: Negotiating Life with the Contamination of Kitchener Drain. hassib, zein This thesis explores how rural communities in Kafr El Sheikh governorate, Egypt, negotiate everyday life with the contamination of Kitchener Drain, the largest agricultural drain in the central Nile Delta. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in three villages at the tail-end end of the drain, the study explores how water contamination shapes social and ecological, social life for farmers living in the catchment of the drain. The thesis situates the farmer’s present experience within the broader history of colonial and modernist national irrigation reforms and developments highlighting how systemic neglect and uneven governance reproduce conditions of vulnerability. At the same time, the thesis looks at contaminated spaces as simultaneously being zones of abandonment and zones of freedom from structure, where creative life forms can come to be. By bringing together anthropological theories of water, contamination, and value with a Deleuzian framework of events, the research demonstrates how Kitchener Drain is both a site of precarity and of persistence, where survival entails negotiating the entanglement of life and death. 2025-09-07T07:00:00Z thesis application/pdf https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/2586 https://fount.aucegypt.edu/context/etds/article/3640/viewcontent/5._Staying_Alive_Negotiating_Life_With_The_Contamination_of_Kitchener_Drain_NC.pdf https://fount.aucegypt.edu/context/etds/article/3640/filename/6/type/additional/viewcontent/Zein_Disclosure_of_AI_Use_Form.pdf Theses and Dissertations AUC Knowledge Fountain Egypt Irrigation Delta Rural Egypt Contamination Colonialism Peasant farming Arts and Humanities Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Social and Behavioral Sciences |
| spellingShingle | Egypt Irrigation Delta Rural Egypt Contamination Colonialism Peasant farming Arts and Humanities Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Social and Behavioral Sciences hassib, zein Staying Alive: Negotiating Life with the Contamination of Kitchener Drain. |
| title | Staying Alive: Negotiating Life with the Contamination of Kitchener Drain. |
| title_full | Staying Alive: Negotiating Life with the Contamination of Kitchener Drain. |
| title_fullStr | Staying Alive: Negotiating Life with the Contamination of Kitchener Drain. |
| title_full_unstemmed | Staying Alive: Negotiating Life with the Contamination of Kitchener Drain. |
| title_short | Staying Alive: Negotiating Life with the Contamination of Kitchener Drain. |
| title_sort | staying alive negotiating life with the contamination of kitchener drain |
| topic | Egypt Irrigation Delta Rural Egypt Contamination Colonialism Peasant farming Arts and Humanities Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Social and Behavioral Sciences |
| url | https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/2586 https://fount.aucegypt.edu/context/etds/article/3640/viewcontent/5._Staying_Alive_Negotiating_Life_With_The_Contamination_of_Kitchener_Drain_NC.pdf https://fount.aucegypt.edu/context/etds/article/3640/filename/6/type/additional/viewcontent/Zein_Disclosure_of_AI_Use_Form.pdf |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT hassibzein stayingalivenegotiatinglifewiththecontaminationofkitchenerdrain |