Cairo's Poor: Dilemmas of Survival and Solidarity

Children on the edge of the City of the Dead in Cairo. •l"hn TordniThe dearth of cooperative and contentious collective action on the part of the Egyptian urban poor by no means implies a lack of grassroots activism.Conditioned by political and cultural constraints, the poor instead resort to an alternative strategy-that of quiet encroachment.Qualitatively different from defensive measures or coping mechanisms, this strategy represents a silent, protracted, pervasive advancement of ordinary people-through open-ended and fleeting struggles without clear leadership, ideology or structured organization-on the propertied and powerful in order to survive.