Governing Labor: Developmentalism, the Welfare State and Industrialization in Egypt (1945-1974)
This research project investigates the history of industrial labor in postwar and postrevolutionary Egypt. It takes this history as a vantage point to examine the dynamics and tensions that shaped the rise of the developmental-welfare state in the decolonizing Third World. Drawing on state archives, sources from international organization, and oral history interviews, the project follows the entangled agendas, practices and struggles that shaped the politics of labor during the era of state-led-development. It examines the various forms of labor mobilization and regulation as well as the conflicts surrounding work, by examining the interactions between a multiplicity of actors: state officials, international experts, social scientists, company executives and workers. The project contributes to a bottom-up history of development which places local actors at the heart of the analysis. It equally seeks to shed new light on the global connections that shaped the history of development by examining South-South networks of expertise.
2018-2020
The Fabric of Development: Transnational Expertise and the Politics of Economic Planning in Egypt (1941-1965)
This project explores the socio-technical history of development in Egypt, from the wartime regime of economic management to the first five-year plan (1941–1965). Moving beyond an analysis of developmentalism as the simple expression of technocratic reason and high modernism, my project pays attention to the knowledge networks, institutional mechanisms and social practices that shaped the politics of development. Moreover, the project examines the complex interactions between global and domestic forces in shaping the politics of development planning, and in doing so, it challenges the national confines of Nasserism and seeks to moves beyond nation-centered narratives about political economy and state formation in Egypt and the Middle East. This research draws on oral history interviews, private papers and archival research in Cairo, London, Washington, New York and Berlin.