Paper short abstract:

Based on fieldwork in an Egyptian desert city, the paper examines “the project” as an organizational form where state and popular economy meet. It shows how projects are framed as the path toward improved work, wealth and welfare, and how the viability of megaprojects rests on smaller project dreams

Paper long abstract:

The military-dominated Egyptian state loves to frame improved economic futures through megaprojects. Whether as shiny desert cities, roads, bridges, fish farms, or enormous housing schemes, projects (mashari‘) promise increased employment, better life quality, and growth. Individual Egyptian future making also tends to be project-shaped. Wherever one looks, ordinary citizens launch small business projects (also mashari‘) to carve out economic and social stability in a precarious economy.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Badr City, this paper spotlights “the project” as an organizational form where the state’s megalomanic ambitions and the popular economy meet. Established in the 1980s, in the desert 45 km east of Cairo, Badr was long considered a purpose-built, industrial ghost town. After President el-Sisi’s 2015 decision to build a New Administrative Capital, however, Badr’s location became much more attractive. Today, construction workers, real-estate investors, entrepreneurs and the military all flock to Badr to make their worlds anew through projects.

My material shows that projects are habitually spoken of as the knee-jerk path toward improved work, wealth and welfare in Egypt. Because of its ubiquity and recognizability, the project form entices state actors, capitalists and entrepreneurs alike, rendering dreams of disparate scales structurally similar. I also illustrate how the viability of the state’s megaprojects rests on much smaller project dreams. Badr might constitute an emblematic instantiation of authoritarian planning, but the city’s recent revival only happened when a myriad of individual business projects sprung up in the cracks of a state-led urban development project spinning out of control.