Julia Elyachar
Julia Elyachar is an anthropologist, political economist, and award winning author.
She was trained in anthropology, economics, history of political and economic thought, political economy, social theory, Middle Eastern Studies, and Arabic language. She is an associate professor of anthropology at Princeton University, and associate professor at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. She is a Faculty Researcher with the Dignity and Debt network and serves on the Executive Boards of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, and the Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies.
New book: On the Semicivilized
Julia Elyachar
Julia Elyachar is an anthropologist, political economist, and award winning author.
She was trained in anthropology, economics, history of political and economic thought, political economy, social theory, Middle Eastern Studies, and Arabic language. She is an associate professor of anthropology at Princeton University, and associate professor at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. She is a Faculty Researcher with the Dignity and Debt network and serves on the Executive Boards of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, and the Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies.
New book: On the Semicivilized
On the Semicivilized
Coloniality, Finance, and Embodied Sovereignty in Cairo
On the Semicivilized
Coloniality, Finance, and Embodied Sovereignty in Cairo
On the Semicivilized is a sweeping analysis of the coloniality that shaped—and blocked—sovereign futures for those dubbed barbarian and semicivilized in the former Ottoman Empire.
Drawing on thirty years of ethnographic research in Cairo, family archives from Palestine and Egypt, and research on Ottoman debt and finance, Elyachar theorizes a global condition of the “semicivilized” marked by nonsovereign futures, crippling debts, and the constant specter of violence exercised by those who call themselves civilized, inviting us to rethink catastrophe and potentiality in Cairo and the world today.
More books
Recent articles and chapters
“Public Wealth, Public Enemies, and the Right to Existence: Thinking about Wealth with the Earl of Lauderdale in Cairo and Split.” Current Anthropology, Volume 66, August 2025.
“Relational Finance: Ottoman Debt, Financialization, and the Problem of the Semi-Civilized.” Journal of Cultural Economy 16, no. 3 (February 2023): 323–36.
“Anthropology of Proprioception: Endurance and Collectivity on Unstable Grounds in Post-Revolutionary Cairo.” American Anthropologist 124, no. 3 (September 2022): 525–35.
“Neoliberalism and the Savage Slot: Rationality, Irrationality, and Calculating Value 1920-2020.” In The Neoliberal Present? Political Economies in Flux, William Callison and Zachary Manfredi, editors. Fordham University Press, 2019, pp. 177-195.
“Upending Infrastructure in Times of Revolt.” In Distributed Agency, edited by Paul Kockelman and Nick Enfield (Oxford University Press, 2017), 49–56.
“They Tell Me This Is Jerusalem: Grammars of Belonging in Palestine.” In Naseej, Life-Weavings of Palestine, edited by Arpan Roy and Noura Salahaldeen (Pluto Press, 2024).
About Professor Elyachar
Julia Elyachar is associate professor of anthropology at the Princeton University Department of Anthropology and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. She is the author of the books On the Semicivilized: Coloniality, Finance, and Embodied Sovereignty in Cairo and Markets of Dispossession: NGOs, Economic Development, and the State in Cairo. Her work draws on fine-grained ethnography and regional expertise in the Middle East, Levant, and the Maghreb to open up areas for theoretical inquiry and conceptional innovation in anthropology and the social sciences more broadly.
More about Professor Elyachar
About Professor Elyachar
Julia Elyachar is associate professor of anthropology at the Princeton University Department of Anthropology and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. She is the author of the books On the Semicivilized: Coloniality, Finance, and Embodied Sovereignty in Cairo and Markets of Dispossession: NGOs, Economic Development, and the State in Cairo. Her work draws on fine-grained ethnography and regional expertise in the Middle East, Levant, and the Maghreb to open up areas for theoretical inquiry and conceptional innovation in anthropology and the social sciences more broadly.
More about Professor Elyachar
Events
Oct
3
2025
Mikey Muhanna interviews Julia Elyachar
Afikra Podcast
Interview
Online
The afrika Podcast features experts from academia, art, media, urban planning, and beyond, who are helping document and shape the histories and cultures of the Arab world through work.
LinkFeb
12
2026
Public Talk about On the Semicivilized
University of London
Public Talk
University of London
In the series: "Histories of Capitalism and Race in the Middle East and Beyond," School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.
More events