Virtual and Urban Intimacies

“Virtual and Urban Intimacies: Youth, Desires and Mediated Relationships in an Egyptian City examines the technologically mediated navigation of desires for love and marriage in post-2011 Egypt through a focus on the usage of smartphones and other digital communication tools amongst young people in Alexandria. Based on longterm ethnography, the thesis analyses how university students and graduates managed their intimate relationships and marital futures both online and within city gathering places in Alexandria, Egypt’s second biggest city. Overall, this ethnography provides insights into the ways ICTs were used as agency-providing navigation tools and turned into intimate technologies in the hands of young people. In particular, it describes how a shift from shared computers at home to more private and mobile communication tools has enabled secret romances and autonomous searches for a spouse but has also resulted in new forms of surveillance and exposure, blurring the boundaries between public and private.”