Everyday economic practices as instances of rupture: The hidden transcripts of local Egyptian voices

My dissertation brings to the forefront the significance of local everyday economic practices as instances of rupture and sites of resistance against the neoliberal vision of world order. I do this by providing an intellectual rationale for reasserting the value of alternative experiences and ways of knowing, and by exploring these alternatives in the Egyptian context.;I begin with the premise that any economic landscape is constituted by a diversity of economic practices---capitalist, non-capitalist, feudal, communal---and that it is a misrepresentation of the economy to characterize only capitalist or market activities as "economic". Feminist economists for instance, have argued that the non-market, non-capitalist household sector constitutes a significant part of any economy. Moreover, Postmodern Marxists argue that non-capitalist activities are not the residual remnants of primitive, traditional economic practices, but that in fact non-capitalist economic activities always exist and mediate the various forms of capitalisms that arisen in history. My first motive for unearthing the diversity of economic formations therefore, is to contest the hegemonic representation of capitalism as the singular and inevitable form of economic activity. I use a "labor theory of participation" to unearth the non-capitalist economic practices that exist in contradiction and contestation to capitalist economic activities.;A second motive for conceptualizing the complexity that characterizes an economic landscape is to search for alternative epistemologies. I suggest that the normative content of local everyday activities provide us with alternative ways to conceptualize notions of progress, development and economic justice. In those instances of rupture where local voices and practices assert themselves over the universalizing tendencies of representations of capitalism, we catch a glimpse of what James Scott has call the "hidden transcript" of the backstage discourse of subaltern groups. I contend that the normative content of these hidden transcripts offer alternative, participatory paths to organizing economic activity and hence development.