How Egypt's Workers Use Small Projects to Build Economic Survival
A new study reveals how Cairo's lower-middle class use iterative small-scale projects—most never fully completed—to navigate economic uncertainty and create stability. The finding offers insight into informal economic behavior that shapes major policy decisions, including the government's megaproject strategy.
Originaltitel: Projects as an Iterative Pursuit: Egyptian Imaginaries of the Social Agency of the Project Form
<p>This article examines imaginaries of the social agency of the project form in contempo-rary Egypt. Drawing on long-term fieldwork with lower-middle class men in Cairo who contrivesmall-scale investment projects, it demonstrates how projects are envisioned to (1) create the worldanew, (2) shape the ‘near future’ and (3) fashion platforms of relative stability amid unpredictability,hustling and making do. The article also illustrates how the project form’s normative temporalitiesare often distorted, materialising in iterative sequences of never fully completed projects that none-theless ‘make the world move’. In conclusion, I suggest that the same iterative temporality is recog-nisable in the Egyptian regime’s current push for spectacular megaprojects, and that an imaginary ofsocial and temporal agency undergirds the attraction to Egyptian projects across scales.</p>