Carl Rommel

Fieldwork among big and small projects in Cairo

Anthropologist Carl Rommel studies the function of large and small projects in urban spaces in Egypt. In a Zoom conversation between Uppsala and Cairo, he talks about the anthropological research process and what perspectives the discipline contributes.

Carl Rommel has lived and conducted research in Egypt's capital Cairo more than ten years. He is currently working on the project "Egypt as a project: Dreamwork and masculinity in a projectified society", financed by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.

-During my years in Cairo, I have noticed that there is close to an obsession with projects, both among ordinary people and institutions. In my current fieldwork, I am following men from the lower middle classes who are engaged in various projects to make life better for themselves and their families. It's basically small businesses and investments, like buying a taxi or getting some land to build a soccer field or a parking lot to rent out. In recent years, many people are also building backdrops for wedding photography. What the projects have in common is that they provide something extra beyond the regular job and add something to life in the form of social status or money, which is often needed in Egypt, which is facing a severe economic crisis.

Carl gives an ethnographic example to illustrate what the projects can be about.

-Samir is a bachelor in his 50s who has always helped children in the area to play soccer. But as squares, parks and dead-end alleys are privatized or built on, areas for playing football have disappeared. That's why Samir has long wanted to set up his own soccer field. It is partly to raise money, but also to provide young guys somewhere to play. This in turn makes Samir an important person in the neighborhood. A few years ago, he manage to get a deal with a local school and has built two artificial-turf fields in the schoolyard. Samir's story shows that the projects have many values: making money, getting some recognition and giving back to the community, although Samir also charges the children to play there.

Model cities in the desert

Another type of project that Carl studies is the large cities that the Egyptian state is building in the desert.

- The military regime that has been in power since 2013 is really obsessed with launching infrastructure projects in the desert. 95% of Egypt's population lives along a narrow strip of land along the Nile, which is often described as overpopulated. There has long been a dream to use the desert to get more space and the government has been trying to build desert cities since the 1970s. This work has accelerated in the last 10 years. Currently, a clean, stylish and modern “New Republic” is being constructed from scratch in the desert. What we see is a kind of model cities that are meant to attract people to move away from the problems of the old world. Among other things, a whole New Administrative Capital is being built for 6 million inhabitants, 60 kilometers east of Cairo and is due to open soon. The entire state apparatus will be relocated to the desert together with Africa’s largest Mosque and the world’s highest flagpole. The overall purpose of my research is to understand these two levels of projects and the links that connect them.

By analyzing Samir's dreams and goals with the football project, Carl found an opening to understanding the state's projects better.

- Samir often talks about his football field as a calm space in a chaotic environment that is very volatile and full of people, sounds and impressions. Cairo is a city of 25 million inhabitants, informal residential areas and deafening traffic. Many people live with the feeling of always being out in the city, struggling and sweating, without ever getting anywhere. In Arabic, that feeling and state of being is called al-bahdala. It seems to me that the projects are a way to carve out a platform of stability for yourself where you can make some money and become someone. To get away from al-bahdala. Thinking in those terms also applies well to the desert cities. The government’s gigantic projects, too, are associated with the feeling of getting away from the chaos where you only fight for survival and never feel undisturbed. They represent a clean place where you can work efficiently. Precisely these sentiments also gives some legitimacy to the regime to build these cities even though they are an economic and environmental disaster. As an anthropologist, I look at the small to understand the big, it's an important perspective that the discipline contributes.

Carl also thinks that projects are an interesting organizational form to think with theoretically.

-Since the 80s and 90s, the project form has infiltrated our lives in Sweden as well. It is an organizational form that is very flexible, and which can be transferred to different scales. Public activities such as research, international aid and infrastructure are carried out as projects today. Even private activities such as self-development and relationships are talked about in these terms. A question that I am interested in is: what does this way of organizing time, resources and activities make possible and impossible? Projects are always short-term in the sense that they have a beginning and an end. They are also usually forward-looking. This suits certain activities, but values that do not have a well-defined end might risk being marginalized in this way of thinking. One example of such a value is care.

Cultural differences and similarities

In his research on projects, Carl sees both similarities and differences between different places and contexts, which is an important anthropological perspective.

-There is a specificity in Cairo, such as the authoritarian regime and the economic crisis, which pushes people to do projects. But at the same time, the project form is general and can just as easily be related back to us in Sweden. One of the most classic and important tasks within Anthropology is to make what might seem strange familiar and the familiar a little bit stranger. By studying other worlds, we can find both differences and similarities in how people deal with specific situations; culturally, economically and politically. A current example is that we in Sweden could have much to learn from Egypt, where people have long experienced living with inflation and economic crisis. Here in Cairo, you have a different way of thinking about how to save and lend money at a time when it is rapidly losing value. Saving is pointless. You have to put your money to work, meaning investing them in different projects.

Carl is one of the department's researchers who teaches the introduction course in Anthropology. He emphasizes that cultural relativization is anthropology's perhaps most important perspective.

- Through our focus on thorough and long-term fieldwork, anthropological research is better than other disciplines at displaying differences and similarities in how people live in different contexts. In this way, we can problematize the idea that what we do here is universal and the norm for all humanity. It is a simple but important message and, in my opinion, anthropology's most powerful contribution. Students don't have to read a lot of Anthropology to get the basic tools for problematizing statements about "mankind" and universal norms. This is very important to teach, Carl concludes.

Text: Jennie Sjödin, year 2023