How have the uprisings in 2011 and 2013 affected deprived communities in Egypt? Adopting a social contract approach, this longitudinal study tracks the same individuals in Manshiet Nasser and Menia over a ten-year period (2006-2015) articulating their wellbeing priorities, unfulfilled aspirations, problems and perceptions on the social contract over time. This grounded micro-level study argues that the uprisings; which were meant to end the old social contract that traded off political rights with socio-economic benefits; have in fact post-2013 led to a new bargain that forgoes both sets of rights in exchange for political stability. The analysis shows the persistence of the same wellbeing priorities, problems and unfulfilled aspirations, esp. in employment, income generation, housing and education. This indicates the repeated failure of the state to enact a new social contract that addresses these needs. The burden of the post-revolutionary economic crises fell mainly on the poor, especially female headed households in urban areas and young informal workers - both suffering from high inflation and unemployment. Paradoxically, whilst the January 2011 uprising called for a new social contract promoting 'bread, freedom and social justice', it led post-2013 to a more exclusionary one. Blaming the uprisings for the political turmoil and economic crises, deprived communities were therefore willing to accept a new social contract that not only denies their basic political rights but also undermines the socio-economic benefits guaranteed under the old populist social contract. They thus tolerated the state's failure to fulfil these socio-economic rights in exchange for political stability. The sustainability of the current social contract however remains questionable. Politically, the uprisings had a contradictory effect as they raised political awareness; but undermined feelings of citizenship and led to radicalisation when the democratic transition failed. The new social contract thus not only failed to address the 'revolution of rising expectations' after the uprisings, but also jeopardizes long-term political stability in Egypt. Forging a sustainable more inclusive social contract thus remains a major challenge the current regime needs to address. (C) 2020 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Gender based violence (GBV) refers to any form of sexual, physical, psychological, or economic harm or threat to harm another that is rooted in gender based inequalities and unequal power relations. GBV violates human rights, significantly hampers economic productivity and development, and threatens health and wellbeing of millions worldwide. The WHO notes that over 35% of women worldwide have experienced GBV, however, in Uganda it is up to 74%. While several efforts have been put in place to address GBV, the most popularly used approach in Uganda is women's economic empowerment (WEE). This paper critiques the WEE approach for prevention of GBV in Uganda, arguing that WEE alone cannot prevent GBV. With evidence from empirical research conducted in eastern Uganda in 2017/2018, the paper argues for adoption of a multidimensional approach to addressing GBV.

Capabilities need to be built from the bottom-up. Social innovations at the grassroots seek to present new solutions to existing social problems. However, since the poor suffer from limitations on their individual capabilities and agency, they engage in acts of collective agency to generate new collective capabilities that each individual alone would not be able to achieve. The question is: how can these acts of collective agency be initiated, supported and sustained in practice? What roles can development actors (such as the state, donors and NGOs) play in supporting these acts of collective agency? Drawing on the literature on social innovation, the capability approach, participation and empowerment, the paper argues that three crucial C-processes are integral conditions for promoting successful, scalable and sustainable social innovations at the grassroots, namely: (1) Conscientization; (2) Conciliation and (3) Collaboration. By linking the individual, collective and institutional levels of analysis, the paper demonstrates the importance of individual behavioural changes, collective agency and local institutional reforms for the success, sustainability and scalability of social innovations at the grassroots. The paper acknowledges conflict, capture and cooptation as potential limitations and recognizes the role of contextual factors in initiating, implementing and sustaining social innovations at the grassroots.

The poor suffer from various restrictions on their individual capabilities, such as unequal power relations, gender rules, social norms, unresponsive institutional structures, ineffective legal systems and inefficient government services. To overcome such limitations, the poor use their collective agency to achieve and expand their capabilities. To operationalise the capability approach, this chapter uses the case study of anti-female genital mutilation (FGM) women groups in Egypt to explore what it means to exercise collective human agency and how freedoms and capabilities can be expanded in practise. It sheds light on the different aspects and phases of the collective agency process as well as the different motives and challenges encountered in this process. Agency and freedom are two central concepts in the capability approach; this chapter seeks to explore how these two concepts can be applied in practise through the example of anti-FGM groups. These women agents suffered from inequality and gender-based discrimination as a result of the practise of FGM in their villages. The existing social norm was not only restrictive and abusive to their reproductive health rights, but also violated their body’s integrity and restricted their individual capabilities.

In recent years, the human development and capability approach (HDCA) to development studies has gained increased attention from academics, practitioners and policy-makers. Its freedom-centred view of development, its accounting for interpersonal and intercultural variations, its emphasis on social justice and its stress on public discussion and deliberative democracy have rendered the capability approach (CA) a wider and more comprehensive framework for designing and assessing development policies.

The Rise of Islamists to power in Egypt’s first post-revolutionary parliament surprised the secularist revolutionary forces which made this revolution possible in the first place. Such revolutionary forces not only undermined the role of religion in Egyptian society, but also failed to realise the deep impact of political Islam, especially on highly deprived poor communities. Based on grounded research conducted in two poor communities in Egypt (slum area in Cairo and Menia in Upper Egypt), we may conclude that religion was valued by poor communities much more than income, family and even jobs. So far, the literature has commonly focused on two roles of religion: 1) its use by political forces for public mobilisation and perpetuation of unjust political and social structures; and 2) its danger as an ‘extreme force’ that can lead to fundamentalism, violence and social conflict. These two views, however, are highly biased and fail to provide a constructive view of how religion can be a catalyst for sustainable social change. The aim of this article is, therefore, to unravel the developmental potential of religion and to demonstrate its role in facilitating collective human agency in poor Egyptian communities, and in enhancing grassroots-led social change. Rather than conventionally adopting a single faith-based organisation as a unit of analysis, I use an entire Egyptian village – Tafahna Al Ashraf village in Delta region – as an example. Through this case study, the article demonstrates how religion (in this case Islam) has been used as a moral filter to promote community development. The case study also shows how religion can be used not for political gains or social manipulation, but rather as a catalyst to encourage communal participation in

This article explores the conceptualization of sustainable human development within the Capability Approach. It goes beyond replacing “human needs” with “human capabilities” to extend the sustainable development premise into a sustainable human development discourse. In so doing, the article first presents an in-depth discussion of the meaning of sustainable human development using the Capability Approach and theorizes the dynamics of capabilities that maybe necessary for sustainable human development. It then grounds this theoretical framework in two self-help group models of grass-roots development from India and Egypt. These case studies provide a common conceptual platform within different contexts to explore the “genre” of capabilities being deployed towards achieving sustainable human development. The paper concludes by identifying the determinants and “lubricants” of human agency as well as their impact on sustainable human development.

In the past two decades, “civil society” has become a central organizing concept in the social sciences. Occupying the middle ground between the state and private life, the civil sphere encompasses everything from associations to protests to church groups to nongovernmental organizations. Interest in the topic exploded with the decline of statism in the 1980s and 1990s, and many of our current debates about politics and social policy are informed by the renewed focus on civil society. Broadly speaking, The Oxford Handbook of Civil Society views the topic through three prisms: as a part of society (voluntary associations), as a kind of society (marked out by certain social norms), and as a space for citizen action and engagement (the public square or sphere). It does not focus solely on the West (a failing of much of the literature to date), but looks at civil society in both the developed and developing worlds. Throughout, it merges theory, practice, and empirical research.

Poverty, inequality, unemployment, torture and corruption were among the main reasons why millions of Egyptians protested to end 30 years of Mubarak's rule in January 2011. The speed with which the regime has fallen and its fragility surprised the world. This is mainly because of the false image of a stable, prosperous and progressive Egypt propagated by the state, ignoring another Egypt, a poor, suffering and repressed one. The failure to see the latter Egypt led to the fall of the former. The aim of this article is to tell a 'tale of two Egypts' by contrasting the experiences and voices of poor Egyptians with the misleading figures reported by the state. The analysis shows how the state was able to provide Egyptians with growth without equity, education without inspiration, employment without security, health services without care and voting without any real impact on political processes.

Poverty is usually associated with powerlessness, vulnerability and above all failure of aspirations. Poor people might not be able to achieve their capabilities, but this does not mean that they do not have aspirations they wish to fulfil. The concept of aspirations has been explored in the fields of economics, anthropology, psychology and philosophy, but not extensively in development studies. The aim of the paper is to present a conceptual framework for analysing aspirations based on the capability approach and to apply a new methodology to articulate these aspirations. Using Egypt as a case study, the voices of the poor reveal the interrelationships between failure of aspirations, which not only leads to a downward spiral, but also to an intergenerational transfer of aspirations’ failure. The paper concludes that identifying and addressing the causal relationship between poverty, aspirations and wellbeing could be the starting point for effective and more relevant development policies that help poor people to achieve their aspired but unfulfilled capabilities.

This paper sets out to explore the achievements of civil society in the area of poverty reduction. The focus is mainly on three domains (1) Advocacy; (2) Policy Change and (3) Service Delivery. Three case studies illustrate how poverty can be addressed at various levels and through different approaches: (1) Shack Dwellers International (SDI) operating internationally to advocate for the urban poor’s rights; (2) civil society organizations participating in the formulation of PRSPs to call for pro-poor policy reforms at the national level; and finally (3) the example of BRAC (formerly the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee) providing services to the poorest at the grassroots level. Drawing on these case studies, the paper explains the keys to success and reasons for failure of civil society organizations in tackling poverty reduction effectively. It concludes by pointing out the challenges faced by civil society in the area of poverty reduction and presents recommendations on ‘what is still missing’ for civil society to play a more effective role in poverty reduction.

This article proposes a short list of internationally comparable indicators of individual agency and empowerment 9and the corresponding survey questions). Data from these indicators would enable researchers to explore research and policy issues such as the interconnections between empowerment and economic or human development. The paper surveys definitions of agency and empowerment and adopts the definition from Amartya Sen, supplemented by Rowlands' typology. The proposed "shortlist" of indicators includes: control over personal decisions; domain-specific autonomy; household decision-making; and the ability to change aspects in one's life at the individual and communal levels. The strengths and weaknesses of each indicator are discussed, as is the need to supplement this shortlist with other variables. To ensure the feasibility of the proposal, we rely on previously fielded questions wherever possible.

This paper emphasizes the importance of collectivities for human capabilities. Using the example of self‐help, the paper demonstrates how the poor can act together to expand and exercise new ‘collective capabilities’. The paper argues that the Capability Approach (CA), with its emphasis on freedoms and agency, is a suitable — however insufficient — conceptual framework for self‐help analysis. It points out the limitations of the CA in capturing the interactive relationship between individual capabilities and social structures. To incorporate this ‘collective’ dimension within the CA, the paper re‐emphasizes the intrinsic and instrumental value of social structures, explores the concepts of collective freedoms and collective agency, and compliments the CA with the literature on collective action, institutions and social capital into an integrated analytical framework for ‘collective capabilities’. The paper finally operationalizes this framework through three case studies of self‐help initiatives among the poor in Egypt.