Egypt as a Project: Dreamwork and masculinity in a projectified society
This research project explores social and political implications of dreams that take the shape of projects in Cairo. As in most parts of the world, projects have become the default route to envision and actualise brighter futures in Egypt. Men from most social classes devise small-scale business projects for profit making and social improvement. The military-backed regime undertakes spectacular mega projects to showcase its grandeur and national-development ambitions.
The research analyses project dreams as a pivot of contemporary economy and society. How do projects shape, and limit, visions of personal and national futures? What activities and subjectivities does ‘projectification’ encourage, preclude and heroize?
The project is based on 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork with lower-middle class men in Cairo, who contrive, finance, and launch small business projects. It also examines a few futuristic mega projects through media material and press archives. Studying Egyptian projects as projects provides an empirical entry point for analysing what I call ‘project dreamwork’: a combination of imaginative dreams and hard labour, conditioned by material and legal circumstances, culturally specific notions of value and gender, and the project’s distinct organisational form. The study will shed light on the predicaments and promises of an increasingly projectified economy and society and on a particular masculinity – the Projector – who personifies President el-Sisi’s Egypt.
The research analyses project dreams as a pivot of contemporary economy and society. How do projects shape, and limit, visions of personal and national futures? What activities and subjectivities does ‘projectification’ encourage, preclude and heroize?
The project is based on 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork with lower-middle class men in Cairo, who contrive, finance, and launch small business projects. It also examines a few futuristic mega projects through media material and press archives. Studying Egyptian projects as projects provides an empirical entry point for analysing what I call ‘project dreamwork’: a combination of imaginative dreams and hard labour, conditioned by material and legal circumstances, culturally specific notions of value and gender, and the project’s distinct organisational form. The study will shed light on the predicaments and promises of an increasingly projectified economy and society and on a particular masculinity – the Projector – who personifies President el-Sisi’s Egypt.
Final report
Purpose
The project aimed to investigate the social and political implications of dreams of “projects” (mashari‘) in contemporary Cairo. In Egypt — much like in many other parts of the world — the project form has become the dominant way of imagining and pursuing improved futures. Men from different social classes develop small-scale business ventures as a means of earning an income and contributing to social development. In parallel, the military-backed regime launches spectacular megaprojects to signal its national development ambitions.
The research was guided by questions such as:
- How does the proliferation of projects shape — and constrain — personal and national futures and aspirations?
- What forms of action and subjectivity does “projectification” encourage, exclude, or valorize?
The study was based primarily on ethnographic fieldwork — interviews and participant observation — with lower-middle-class men in Cairo who dream of, finance, and establish small-scale business projects. These included football pitches, cafés, taxi enterprises, restaurants, and venues along the Nile where wedding couples are photographed against elaborate backdrops. Across these settings, I examined how the project form packages aspirations and structures people’s efforts to realize them. I also documented state-led megaprojects by analyzing public debates, media coverage, press archives, and secondary literature.
My empirical inquiry was guided in the analytic notion of “project dreamwork”: a fusion of imagination and labor shaped by material conditions, legal frameworks, culturally specific ideas of value and gender, and the organizational logic of the project form.
One overarching aim of the research project was to situate project dreams of different scales — from small entrepreneurial initiatives to major government investments — within a shared analytical framework. By reading small projects through large ones, and vice versa, it became possible to identify common patterns in how futures are imagined, shaped, and governed in today’s Egypt.
Implementation
The project ran from March 2022 to November 2025. During the first two years, I conducted a total of eleven months of fieldwork in Cairo. The work largely followed my original plan: I followed a dozen men who ran various types of investment projects in central Cairo and documented debates and propaganda surrounding the regime’s megaprojects.
Over time, an increasing share of the study took place in Badr City, a satellite city in the desert 50 kilometers east of Cairo. Planned already in the 1980s, Badr was long regarded as a “failed” new town with few residents and a weak economy. This has changed dramatically over the past decade after the current military regime decided to build a New Administrative Capital just south of Badr. Since then, the city has expanded rapidly, with new residents, investments, and infrastructure. As the former ghost town began to flourish, Badr also became an attractive location for men seeking to invest in projects (mashari‘). My research in Badr led to a growing ethnographic focus on projects on desert lands — a shift I had not initially anticipated but which proved analytically valuable.
From May 2024 onward, I devoted myself primarily to data analysis, conference and seminar presentations, and writing. I began this phase with five months as a visiting researcher at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin, followed by two follow-up research trips to Cairo in October 2024 and April 2025.
In total, I spent thirteen months in Cairo, slightly more than the ten months originally planned. However, as part of this time was also spent writing, the effective duration of fieldwork roughly corresponded to what was outlined in the project proposal.
Some results and conclusions
By bringing together large and small scale project dreams in an original manner, the research sheds new light on several key dynamics in contemporary Egypt. Urban planning, authoritarian governance, and people’s efforts to improve their lives all take the shape of projects. The study demonstrates how large state initiatives and ordinary citizens’ aspirations for stability and dignity are linked through a shared project logic. Although projectification is a global trend, the Egyptian case displays distinct ethnographic characteristics. The Arabic term mashru‘ carries somewhat different connotations than the Latin-derived “project,” emphasizing initiation above transformation. My ethnography also shows that Egyptian project dreams are strongly tied to locally idealized notions of “stability” (istiqrar), understood as controlled and productive forward movement rather than stasis.
The research also offers new insights into the appeal of Egypt’s emerging desert cities. Many informants are drawn to the sense of renewal and purity conveyed by projects in the empty desert — an appeal that indirectly reinforces the regime’s legitimacy. Even if it cannot deliver democracy or welfare, the regime “gets things done”: the military is demonstrably skilled at initiating and managing projects. At the same time, the study shows how these often sterile environments come alive through small-scale, informal business ventures. Here, a surprising symbiosis emerges between state megaprojects and individual initiatives.
Finally, the project contributes to theorizing the project form at a more abstract level. Together with my colleague Andrew Graan (University of Oslo), I am working to establish “the project” as an object of anthropological inquiry — an organizational form that is ubiquitous yet often overlooked. Our joint publications examine, among other themes, how the project form structures time, shapes imaginaries of social agency and change, and influences both political practice and anthropological writing.
New research questions
The most important new questions not included in the original application concern “The New Republic,” a political project that aims to build a new world in the Egyptian desert and that has become increasingly central to the Sisi regime over the past five years. The new desert cities under construction express a particular vision of the future while simultaneously reflecting the regime’s self image. Examining more closely what this militarized and nationalist project entails will be crucial for anthropologists and political scientists studying Egypt in the coming years. There is also a need to systematically analyze what this project — dominated by military control, security logics, and large scale infrastructure — can teach us about authoritarian political systems in a broader perspective.
Collaboration
From the outset, the project has been affiliated with the French research center CEDEJ (Centre d’Études et de Documentation Économiques, Juridiques et Sociales). At CEDEJ, I collaborate with several leading Middle East scholars and participate in seminars, reading groups, and expert panels organized by the center. I also presented parts of my research at CEDEJ in June 2024.
Another important collaboration partner was the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin (ZMO), where I spent five months as a visiting researcher during the summer of 2024. During this period, I worked primarily with anthropologist Samuli Schielke and presented my research at two seminars.
Communication of research results
The results of the project have so far been published in five journal articles, two special issues, and one book chapter. In addition to presentations at CEDEJ and ZMO, I have been invited to present my research at seminars in Oslo, Utrecht, Stockholm, Uppsala, and The American University in Cairo, and I have given thirteen further presentations at international workshops and conferences in Europe, the United States, and Egypt. During the course of the project, I also organized panels at four international conferences.
In November 2022, urban historian Håkan Forsell and journalist Dan Hallemar visited me in Cairo for four days. We toured several of the sites where I conduct fieldwork, and I introduced them to the central concepts and questions guiding my project.
The visit resulted in two episodes of Forsell and Hallemar’s popular Swedish-language podcast Staden:
- https://www.stadenpodcast.se/avsnitt/kairo-1
- https://www.stadenpodcast.se/avsnitt/kairo
The episodes offer a historical, social, and political introduction to Cairo and help make my research accessible to a broader audience.
In May 2025, I organized a workshop at Uppsala University together with Andrew Graan (University of Oslo), funded by the project. The workshop, Toward an Anthropology of Projects: Ethnography, Theory, Politics, brought together eleven prominent anthropologists from Europe and the United States who have conducted research on various types of projects (infrastructure, development, entrepreneurship, and others). The aim was to explore how anthropology might develop if the project form were approached more explicitly as an ethnographic and analytical object. Serving as the concluding event of my research project at Uppsala University, the workshop included both a public roundtable discussion and closed sessions. It will result in an edited volume, An Anthropology of Projects, co-edited by Graan and myself. We are currently contacting publishers, and the volume is planned for publication in 2027.
In 2026, I will write a monograph based on the material collected during the project. The book will combine previously published and new material. It will offer a comprehensive analysis of project dreams in contemporary Egypt — from the military regime’s megaprojects to citizens’ everyday initiatives, in both the old city along the Nile and the expanding desert cities. The monograph is scheduled for publication in 2028.
The project aimed to investigate the social and political implications of dreams of “projects” (mashari‘) in contemporary Cairo. In Egypt — much like in many other parts of the world — the project form has become the dominant way of imagining and pursuing improved futures. Men from different social classes develop small-scale business ventures as a means of earning an income and contributing to social development. In parallel, the military-backed regime launches spectacular megaprojects to signal its national development ambitions.
The research was guided by questions such as:
- How does the proliferation of projects shape — and constrain — personal and national futures and aspirations?
- What forms of action and subjectivity does “projectification” encourage, exclude, or valorize?
The study was based primarily on ethnographic fieldwork — interviews and participant observation — with lower-middle-class men in Cairo who dream of, finance, and establish small-scale business projects. These included football pitches, cafés, taxi enterprises, restaurants, and venues along the Nile where wedding couples are photographed against elaborate backdrops. Across these settings, I examined how the project form packages aspirations and structures people’s efforts to realize them. I also documented state-led megaprojects by analyzing public debates, media coverage, press archives, and secondary literature.
My empirical inquiry was guided in the analytic notion of “project dreamwork”: a fusion of imagination and labor shaped by material conditions, legal frameworks, culturally specific ideas of value and gender, and the organizational logic of the project form.
One overarching aim of the research project was to situate project dreams of different scales — from small entrepreneurial initiatives to major government investments — within a shared analytical framework. By reading small projects through large ones, and vice versa, it became possible to identify common patterns in how futures are imagined, shaped, and governed in today’s Egypt.
Implementation
The project ran from March 2022 to November 2025. During the first two years, I conducted a total of eleven months of fieldwork in Cairo. The work largely followed my original plan: I followed a dozen men who ran various types of investment projects in central Cairo and documented debates and propaganda surrounding the regime’s megaprojects.
Over time, an increasing share of the study took place in Badr City, a satellite city in the desert 50 kilometers east of Cairo. Planned already in the 1980s, Badr was long regarded as a “failed” new town with few residents and a weak economy. This has changed dramatically over the past decade after the current military regime decided to build a New Administrative Capital just south of Badr. Since then, the city has expanded rapidly, with new residents, investments, and infrastructure. As the former ghost town began to flourish, Badr also became an attractive location for men seeking to invest in projects (mashari‘). My research in Badr led to a growing ethnographic focus on projects on desert lands — a shift I had not initially anticipated but which proved analytically valuable.
From May 2024 onward, I devoted myself primarily to data analysis, conference and seminar presentations, and writing. I began this phase with five months as a visiting researcher at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin, followed by two follow-up research trips to Cairo in October 2024 and April 2025.
In total, I spent thirteen months in Cairo, slightly more than the ten months originally planned. However, as part of this time was also spent writing, the effective duration of fieldwork roughly corresponded to what was outlined in the project proposal.
Some results and conclusions
By bringing together large and small scale project dreams in an original manner, the research sheds new light on several key dynamics in contemporary Egypt. Urban planning, authoritarian governance, and people’s efforts to improve their lives all take the shape of projects. The study demonstrates how large state initiatives and ordinary citizens’ aspirations for stability and dignity are linked through a shared project logic. Although projectification is a global trend, the Egyptian case displays distinct ethnographic characteristics. The Arabic term mashru‘ carries somewhat different connotations than the Latin-derived “project,” emphasizing initiation above transformation. My ethnography also shows that Egyptian project dreams are strongly tied to locally idealized notions of “stability” (istiqrar), understood as controlled and productive forward movement rather than stasis.
The research also offers new insights into the appeal of Egypt’s emerging desert cities. Many informants are drawn to the sense of renewal and purity conveyed by projects in the empty desert — an appeal that indirectly reinforces the regime’s legitimacy. Even if it cannot deliver democracy or welfare, the regime “gets things done”: the military is demonstrably skilled at initiating and managing projects. At the same time, the study shows how these often sterile environments come alive through small-scale, informal business ventures. Here, a surprising symbiosis emerges between state megaprojects and individual initiatives.
Finally, the project contributes to theorizing the project form at a more abstract level. Together with my colleague Andrew Graan (University of Oslo), I am working to establish “the project” as an object of anthropological inquiry — an organizational form that is ubiquitous yet often overlooked. Our joint publications examine, among other themes, how the project form structures time, shapes imaginaries of social agency and change, and influences both political practice and anthropological writing.
New research questions
The most important new questions not included in the original application concern “The New Republic,” a political project that aims to build a new world in the Egyptian desert and that has become increasingly central to the Sisi regime over the past five years. The new desert cities under construction express a particular vision of the future while simultaneously reflecting the regime’s self image. Examining more closely what this militarized and nationalist project entails will be crucial for anthropologists and political scientists studying Egypt in the coming years. There is also a need to systematically analyze what this project — dominated by military control, security logics, and large scale infrastructure — can teach us about authoritarian political systems in a broader perspective.
Collaboration
From the outset, the project has been affiliated with the French research center CEDEJ (Centre d’Études et de Documentation Économiques, Juridiques et Sociales). At CEDEJ, I collaborate with several leading Middle East scholars and participate in seminars, reading groups, and expert panels organized by the center. I also presented parts of my research at CEDEJ in June 2024.
Another important collaboration partner was the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin (ZMO), where I spent five months as a visiting researcher during the summer of 2024. During this period, I worked primarily with anthropologist Samuli Schielke and presented my research at two seminars.
Communication of research results
The results of the project have so far been published in five journal articles, two special issues, and one book chapter. In addition to presentations at CEDEJ and ZMO, I have been invited to present my research at seminars in Oslo, Utrecht, Stockholm, Uppsala, and The American University in Cairo, and I have given thirteen further presentations at international workshops and conferences in Europe, the United States, and Egypt. During the course of the project, I also organized panels at four international conferences.
In November 2022, urban historian Håkan Forsell and journalist Dan Hallemar visited me in Cairo for four days. We toured several of the sites where I conduct fieldwork, and I introduced them to the central concepts and questions guiding my project.
The visit resulted in two episodes of Forsell and Hallemar’s popular Swedish-language podcast Staden:
- https://www.stadenpodcast.se/avsnitt/kairo-1
- https://www.stadenpodcast.se/avsnitt/kairo
The episodes offer a historical, social, and political introduction to Cairo and help make my research accessible to a broader audience.
In May 2025, I organized a workshop at Uppsala University together with Andrew Graan (University of Oslo), funded by the project. The workshop, Toward an Anthropology of Projects: Ethnography, Theory, Politics, brought together eleven prominent anthropologists from Europe and the United States who have conducted research on various types of projects (infrastructure, development, entrepreneurship, and others). The aim was to explore how anthropology might develop if the project form were approached more explicitly as an ethnographic and analytical object. Serving as the concluding event of my research project at Uppsala University, the workshop included both a public roundtable discussion and closed sessions. It will result in an edited volume, An Anthropology of Projects, co-edited by Graan and myself. We are currently contacting publishers, and the volume is planned for publication in 2027.
In 2026, I will write a monograph based on the material collected during the project. The book will combine previously published and new material. It will offer a comprehensive analysis of project dreams in contemporary Egypt — from the military regime’s megaprojects to citizens’ everyday initiatives, in both the old city along the Nile and the expanding desert cities. The monograph is scheduled for publication in 2028.