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3 - Everyday Achievements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2026

Chihab El Khachab
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

This chapter delves into everyday administrative work at the Ministry of Culture, with a specific focus on the Mass Culture Institute, the ancestor of the current General Organisation for Cultural Palaces. Based on the personal papers of Saad Kamel, this chapter provides a brief institutional history of the Institute and the low- and mid-ranking bureaucrats who worked to accomplish its mission of cultivating the rural masses. This mission was influenced by diverging ideas about Arab socialism after the socialist turn of 1961. Thus, this chapter contributes to an intellectual history of Arab socialism, by showing how the Mass Culture Institute enacted a grounded version of ‘the socialism of culture’ (ishtirakiyyat al-thaqāfa). Moreover, the chapter explores the key relationship between responsibility and achievement at the Mass Culture Institute. Low- and mid-ranking bureaucrats are constantly concerned by what falls under their responsibility, which is managed by both avoiding to take responsibility for problems and seeking to take credit for achievements (however small). These everyday achievements embody, on a smaller scale, the postrevolutionary state project.

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  • Everyday Achievements
  • Chihab El Khachab, University of Oxford
  • Book: Constructing the Achievement State
  • Online publication: 05 March 2026
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009769631.004
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  • Everyday Achievements
  • Chihab El Khachab, University of Oxford
  • Book: Constructing the Achievement State
  • Online publication: 05 March 2026
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009769631.004
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Everyday Achievements
  • Chihab El Khachab, University of Oxford
  • Book: Constructing the Achievement State
  • Online publication: 05 March 2026
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009769631.004
Available formats
×