Testing the Theory of Social Area Analysis: The Ecology of Cairo, Egypt

The Social Area Analysis hypothesis that at least three separate dimensions-social rank, familism and ethnicity-are required to account for observed variations in census tract populations in American cities has often been substantiated by factor analytic tests. Relatively investigated is the corollary that in societies of smaller "scale" intra-urban differentiation is less complex. An indirect test of this hypothesis was afforded by a factorial analysis of the ecology of Cairo, Egypt. To study the structure of that city, principal axes factor analysis was used to extract orthogonal factors from replicated 13X13 matrices of census variables reflecting the socio-economic status, familial and ethnic characteristics of populations in 206 subdivisions of Cairo in 1947 and 1960. In each data year, half of the total matrix variance was accounted for by a single "life-style" vector on which loaded heavily not only variables of social rank but of family life as well. The coalescence of these two dimensions was more extreme but in a direction consistent with previous investigations of Rome, some African and a few southern U.S. cities. Theoretical propositions that explain these "deviant findings" are presented and a further test suggested.