State conscription and capitalism dismantled extended rural family structures in Egypt.

Evidence

Social historians have traced the rearticulation of kinship units and networks among the rural population in mid-century and ascribed it both to state and market: forced labor and military conscription, a general decline in the economic condition of handicraft workers and petty traders due to the penetration of European capitalism, as well as the reform of landholding and taxation systems. Thus Judith Tucker notes that although it was common for several brothers to live and work together with their wives and children, sharing goods, livestock, and land in a unit recognized in law as a partnership (shirka), the state’s draconian measures seriously affected the structure of such units and networks. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1112

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to colonial modernity reshaping social structures — echoes themes from previous chapters on how secular/state categories impose new forms on native life.