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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the temporality of Egyptian projects of markedly diverse scales (local football pitches and desert mega projects). It shows that the project time is iterative - a constant hunt with few clear results - and argues that precisely this gives the project form its political purchase.

Paper long abstract:

Projects (mashari') are ever-present in contemporary Egypt. Men from most social classes search for and execute small business projects to supplement meagre wages. The militarised state, likewise, invests heavily in desert projects: bridges, roads, land reclamations, and a New Administrative Capital.

This paper examines a temporal logic underpinning Egyptian projects across scales. Drawing on participant observation with men who construct neighbourhood football pitches and public debates on mega projects, it suggests that projects evoke dreams of prosperity in a future which everyone accepts will never fully arrive. While conjured as manageable platforms for value creation in the 'near future' (Guyer, 2007), projects often end up half-completed, abandoned and deferred. As soon as one is up and running, the promised gains at the horizon, it is time to start projecting anew.

The paper illustrates why an ethnography of circumscribed football projects could cast new light on the state's obsession with mega-projects. Egypt's 'desert dreams' have been duly criticised for never fulfilling their promises (Sims, 2016), yet little has been said about why the authorities continue to plan and project, despite all. Could it be that the pursuit itself makes projects cherished? What if this iterative temporality - continuous action and always new visions - constitutes one of the project forms' true values? If so, sober comparisons between plans and results fail to fully capture what is at stake. Let us instead consider Egyptian projects as attractive dreamwork and masculinised statecraft: idealised avenues for provision, crisis management, and future-oriented, bold action.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the limits of rehabilitation programs developed for individuals with burnout in Finland. Where such projects set self-management as a goal, life had other plans for rehabilitees. Here, I question what plans purport to render visible and what promises it fails to deliver.

Paper long abstract:

Rehabilitative programs for burnout became a steady part of the public health system in Finland in the early 2000s. Based on the identification of this stress disorder by health experts as a "new hazard" of the economic and political policies that altered the nature of Nordic welfare in the past decade, rehabilitative programs became spaces for individuals to "update" themselves. The story of burnout as an emergent disorder framed how rehabilitees were to adapt to economic imperatives of the present and to manage their work-life balance in timely ways. In the set timeframe within which they were to live in a center, rehabilitees were to become aware of their limits and to plan their work accordingly upon their return to the workforce.

Attending to such programs in my fieldwork, however I found that projects for self-management had limitations. The planned return to work often failed or took longer than expected. Plans, though necessary for providing an outline of a certain future can also open spaces of doubt. Here, I explore how plans ironically highlighted to rehabilitees life as divorced from the plan in ways that rendered the plan - a plan - a mere model for what could be. Such a disjuncture, I found, led some to fall into further despair.

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Paper short abstract:

It is said that for every year of armed conflict, a decade is needed to clean up the resultant military waste. What happens when people lacking other economic opportunities begin to see landmine contamination -- and the de-mining jobs it brings -- as a source of stability?

Paper long abstract:

Since the start of the War in Donbas (2014-present), eastern Ukraine has become one of the most landmine-contaminated parts of the world. Although the conflict remains unresolved, military waste (Henig 2012; Zani 2019) clean-up has begun under the leadership of humanitarian de-mining organizations and with the cooperation of the Ukrainian military.

For some eastern Ukrainians, humanitarian de-mining jobs, which promise good salaries, opportunities for advancement, state pensions, and a (supposedly) politically neutral career path, are not only worth the risks, but extremely desirable. This is particularly the case in war-affected communities where economic opportunity was limited even before the violence began. There, the presence of military waste -- and the enormous length of time required to remove it -- seems to promise stable employment not seen since Soviet times.

Or does it? This paper draws on research in a landmine-affected rural community in far eastern Ukraine, where locals, displaced people, military personnel, border guard, and humanitarian de-mining organizations approached de-mining projects from varying scales and with different social commitments and temporal horizons in mind. Focusing on three points of contestation in de-mining project planning and execution -- the employment of female de-miners; the after-hours ban on alcohol consumption; and the detonation (and therefore, destruction) of the mines themselves -- I ask: how does the navigation of multiple and porous social orders (Gershon 2019) both craft and challenge the project form? What consequences and complications arise from anticipating projects without ends?

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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the temporal politics of "time-bound" construction projects in India. It argues that such attempts to render construction projects temporally predictable relies not on the wholesale adoption of a homogeneous time, but rather on the complex negotiations of multiple temporalities.

Paper long abstract:

Construction projects draw together diverse materials, machines, and workers, enveloping them within the carefully regimented space-time of a "site." In India, as elsewhere, these projects are notorious for running over time and over budget, as would-be tenants can wait sometimes up to ten years after a promised completion date. While the government has begun to pass legislation demanding tighter timelines Indian firms have also felt pressure to present their operations as efficient and predictable in order to obtain lucrative deals with foreign real estate investors. The project managers, engineers, and industry experts I spoke to summed up this process by noting that in the current context projects had to be "time-bound," that is adhering to the projected timeline outlined in a plan. This paper explores the temporal politics of such projects. It argues that the imperative to render construction projects temporally predictable relies not on the wholesale adoption of a homogeneous time, but rather on the complex negotiations of multiple temporalities. The project-form relies on even as it semiotically erases heterogeneous temporalities of kinship, migration, and debt. The genres of paperwork and remuneration that mark a construction site as "time-bound" rely, in practice, on social temporalities beyond the project-form. Yet in the image of the "time-bound" project produced in reports and account books, these heterogeneous times disappear into the sequential completion of the project. Focusing on the implementation of the project-form itself elucidates the orchestration and contestation of diverse temporalities at stake in economic development.

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Paper short abstract:

Examining a British post-war child migration project, this paper reflects on complex, conflicting, and co-existing temporalities within projects of social engineering, as well as their long-lasting political repercussions.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines a British child migration project, which sent and resettled select, white children from the UK to colonial Southern Rhodesia between 1946 and 1962, as an example for analyzing diverse and complex temporalities intertwined in project forms. Characterized by future-oriented direction and movement, social projects are launched forward in time in order to achieve worthy objectives of social betterment. Project temporality also includes an idea of a compressed timespan: once its objective is reached, the project makes itself unnecessary and dissolves. In the Rhodesia Fairbridge migration scheme, the children were emigrated with the intention that their movement would enable a better future for themselves as well as secure the continuity and improvement of the racially segregated colonial regime. Drawing on my ethnographic research, this paper aims to contribute to thinking about temporal logics of social projects. I focus on three temporal scales or regimes that intertwine within the child migration project. I first consider a rupture with the past and the rationale of futurity as indicative of the temporal logic of projects and planning. Second, I discuss Imperial inifinity as the political temporality, which framed and rationalized this migration project. Third, I consider the sense and experience of time of the migrant child placed in an educational institution, highlighting its spatiotemporal standstill and clockwork discipline. Through this case, the paper reflects on conflicting, antagonistic, and co-existing temporalities within projects of social engineering and governing, as well as their long-lasting political repercussions.

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Paper short abstract:

International development cooperation is mainly implemented within the scope of projects. What makes the project form an interesting anthropological approach and analytical lens in this context is the fact that the perception of the associated time levels often varies among the different actors.

Paper long abstract:

International development cooperation is mainly planned and implemented within the scope of projects of a certain duration, with a specific goal and a clearly defined, though not always clearly communicated, end. What makes the project form an interesting anthropological approach and analytical lens is the fact that the perception of the associated time levels within development projects often varies among the different actors. Some of the dichotomous tendencies that thereby become apparent are the subject of this paper: While the planning side often focuses on a formulated goal, that has positive connotations and almost takes on the form of utopia, the local partners and the target groups tend to focus on the current course of events and the resulting concrete changes for their working and social life. After the project is completed, some remain only with written reports and portfolios that fit into a few folders while the local communities are left with material remains of a much larger scale: buildings, infrastructure, forests of sign posts etc. These material witnesses can evoke or fuel certain, often negative emotions as well as nostalgia, disappointment or trauma. However, such interpretations are constantly changing and overlaid with subsequent projects as well as their absence. This contribution mainly draws on empirical data from Burkina Faso and focuses on those that are most affected by development projects: NGO actors and beneficiaries. It argues that contrary to some expectations, the project form has not led to a homogenisation of lived realities - neither globally nor locally.

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Paper short abstract:

Based on auto ethnography and interviews amongst local people engaged in internationally funded (mostly peacebuilding) projects in Sarajevo, BiH, the proposed paper explores how this kind of employment shapes people's lives, planning, hope. What old/new temporalities this kind of work produces?

Paper long abstract:

The proposed paper explores relationship between international intervention and reconfigurations of labour in post-war, post-socialist and internationally supervised Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Focussing on short-term project-based employment under the umbrella of a postwar humanitarian, peacebuilding, democratizing intervention, the study asks: what changes has such employment produced in understandings of work as such, life trajectories and subjectivity? On the basis of interviews with local people engaged on these projects for at least 15 years and auto ethnography I trace interlocutors' working trajectories as strategies of social reproduction. How do project-based employment experiences and project logics impact on these workers' broader temporal reasoning? Disclosing both contents and form of their project work, the paper consists of three parts: perceived disadvantages of this kind of work, advantages (that prevail) and identified specific strategies people working on short-term contracts has employed during the last 20 years to 'accumulate continuity', which takes the major part of the paper. Instead of interpreting it against traditional permanent work only (and progressive/linear temporality) or some 'new normal' in labour relationships (see e.g. Ikonen 2018), this paper discloses living between multiple intersecting (often conflicting as well) temporalities reflecting in this way complexities of BiH socio-political context (e.g.as a permanent 'state of exception', legacy of socialist past, etc.) coupled with inevitable global neoliberal influences.

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Paper short abstract:

Focusing on the interplay of multiple temporalities, this presentation examines how a high-profile, intensely politicized 'crisis' is first turned into a project and later realized in the everyday work of the project's employees.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation draws from ethnographic material collected in an on-going project aiming to prevent sexual offenses against minors in a Northern Finnish city. The pilot project was initiated as a response to a series of sex crimes involving adult males of immigration background and local under-age girls. These crimes, which attracted widespread media attention in December 2018 and in early 2019, became to be regarded as a crisis that required government intervention and concrete actions from politicians and the city officials. Consequently, after being promised a generous government grant, the city began to address the 'crisis' through the project form. In this presentation, I reflect on my participant observation with the psychosocial support team working in the project through examining the temporalities of a crisis, on one hand, and the temporalities of a project, on the other. What happens when the project form is mobilized to address a local 'crisis' that ties into national politics and globally powerful discourses on immigration control, crime and children's rights? How do the employees navigate the expectations deriving from the crisis framework through which the politicians and media outlets narrate the events, on one hand, and the expectations linked to the project form and its realities, on the other? Focusing on the interplay of multiple temporalities, then, this presentation examines how a high-profile, intensely politicized 'crisis' is first turned into a project and later realized in the everyday work of the project's employees.

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Paper short abstract:

Through ethnographically exploring a governmental project in rural India, the paper looks at the way the temporal logics of several projects do intersect, and subsequently create as well as recreate the social temporalities, and thereby hindering the projects' achievement towards their goals.

Paper long abstract:

The paper explores the temporal logic of several projects and its socio-political implications for the temporality of peasantry and vice versa in India. The paper examines a governmental project that intended to set up a car industry through acquiring agricultural lands at Singur in West Bengal, an Indian province in 2006, and withdrew eventually because of anti-land acquisition movement on part of the peasants. However, some other projects which include the activists', both social and political, and the researchers' did intervene by way of doing activism and research, and mediate in the ensuing conflict between the government and the peasants. This paper looks at the way the temporal logics of several projects intersect, and thereby complicate matters for the peasants. Drawing on the evidences from ethnographic exploration for about a half-decade (2006-11), the first part of the paper discusses how various projects, both the government and non-government or anti-government, as political technologies shape and reshape the aspirations and activities of the peasantry. The second part of the paper engages the way the multilayered peasantry deals with the temporal logic of governmental project as well as the counter-temporal logic of activists and researchers, and reproduces the temporalities of respective projects. Through exploring different perspectives, contexts, and temporal logics this paper reveals that the ethnographic present is intersected not only by multiple temporalities but also by contrast temporalities, and that the consequences of intersection of all these temporalities while creating and recreating the social temporalities hinder the projects' achievement towards their goals.

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Paper short abstract:

The project is a form of technocratic management that defines much of how contemporary aid work is delivered, whose forms and tools shape what aid workers do. This paper explores the effects on practitioners of the project's short time frames and demanding systems of technical compliance.

Paper long abstract:

The project is a key technocratic form of management that defines much of how contemporary aid work is both conceptualised and delivered. It is also an instrument of governance whose abundance of forms and tools both orchestrate and delineate the possibilities of what aid workers do. This paper explores how practitioners contend with the project's combination of short time frames and demanding systems of technical compliance, in a context where donor exigencies are primary. It examines their views of the demands on their time that the project system produces, as well as how their wider work, including job contracts, are limited by funding tied to project cycles. In their discussions of what tools they use and how they grapple with operationalising these within the constraints of their bureaucratic environments, the project technologies can dominate their daily working lives. The standards in the use of these tools and processes, such as provision of complex series of indicators and evaluations that prove their effectiveness, are related to the demands from donors to demonstrate efficacy. The paper concludes that the spread of standardised project processes and what these entail for the daily work of aid constitute demanding forms of governance and pose significant obstacles to progressive or transformational development.