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Paper short abstract

The paper draws on fieldwork in Egypt to identify the dual temporalities reigning inside and outside projects: an unpredictable hunt for new projects versus a steadier horizon of expectations once a project is underway. It also argues that similar inside-out rhythms define contemporary anthropology.

Paper long abstract

In Egypt today, projects (mashari‘; sing. mashru‘) shape both statecraft and everyday life. While the military regime launches megaprojects to signal its national development ambitions, citizens pursue small-scale business projects to secure income and social improvement. Across scales, the project form structures time, action, and aspirations for improved Egyptian futures.

Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with men in Cario who invest time, efforts, and money in informal mashari‘, as well as on media and propaganda surrounding spectacular infrastructure projects, this paper identifies the dual temporalities that operate inside and outside projects. Whereas the quest for new mashari‘ tends to be haphazard and temporally jumpy, a mashru‘ already in motion spans a predictable horizon of expectations; it empowers project-makers to work in the present towards a future that they feel able to control. This temporal stability appeals both to precarious men seeking stable livelihoods and to the regime constructing a New Republic in the desert.

The paper further notes that similar inside-out project temporalities are recognizable to anthropologists in the field, at the desk, and as they struggle to build academic careers. Both in Cairo’s informal economies and at European universities, the project form not only mitigates precarity but also facilitates a form of dreamwork: a blend of bold dreams of worlds transformed and vision of the concrete work towards their realization. Indeed, one reason why projects are so ubiquitous and attractive is that they specify the smaller steps needed to mold the present into substantially upgraded futures.