Egypt and the experts

Abstract

Reading Timothy Mitchell’s abrasive Rule of experts: Egypt, techno-politics, modernity forces us to change our way of looking at development policies, experts from international organizations, the social sciences, Egypt’s history following independence... Everything is interrelated; nothing is neutral. Mosquitos are more dangerous than tanks; the system of land tenure is a war machine; cartography underlies the economy; the CIA manipulates anthropology; “Egyptian peasants” have been invented simply to justify the West’s “mission” in the Mid-East. To obtain a clearer view, we must decompartmentalize the social sciences and draw the natural sphere closer to the social one, and technology closer to politics