Capitalization, Nature, and the City
Economics and the Invention of the Economy
History and Politics of Egypt and the Middle East
Capitalization, Nature, and the City
“Stone Now Cuts Like Cheese.” With Adie Mitchell. In Everlasting Plastics. Catalogue for the US Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, curated by Tizziana Baldenebro and Lauren Leving. Columbia Books on Architecture and the City. 2023
“Economy Shall (No Longer) Mean Economisation,” Journal of Cultural Economy, published online 9 September 2022, DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2022.2120056
“Uber Eats: How Capital Consumes the Future,” in Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, eds, Critical Zones: The Science and Politics of Landing on Earth. MIT Press, 2020. Copublished with ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe.
French translation: “Uber Eats. Comment le capitalisme dévore l’avenir,” Trans. Christophe Jaquet. Revue du Crieur, No 15, Feb. 2020.
Greek translation: “Uber Eats: Πώς ο καπιταλισμός καταναλώνει το μέλλον,” dëcoloиıze hellαş. Trans. Vangelis Poulios.
“Infrastructures Work on Time,” in New Silk Roads, E-flux Architecture, Jan. 2020.
Turkish translation: “Altyapılar Zaman Üzerine Çalışır,” Sabah Ülkesi, sayı 67, Nisan 2021
“The Body Politic that Captured the Future,” in Bruno Latour, Simon Schaffer, and Pasquale Gagliardi, eds, A Book of the Body Politic: Connecting Biology, Politics and Social Theory. Venice: Fondazione Giorgio Cini, 2020, pp. 49-59
“Étudier les infrastructures pour ouvrir les boîtes noires,” Tracés: Revue de sciences humaines, vol. 35, 2018
“The Capital City,” in The Arab City: Architecture and Representation, ed. Amale Andraos and Nora Akawi. Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2016.
“Thinking Against the Sovereignty of the Concept,” with Omar Jabary Salamanca and Nasser Abourahme. City, 20:5, 737-754, 2016.
“Life of Infrastructure,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, 34(3), 247-9, 2015.
“Afterword: Are Environmental Imaginaries Culturally Constructed?” (.pdf) in Environmental Imaginaries of the Middle East and North Africa: History, Policy, Power, and Practice, edited by Diana Davis and Edmund Burke, Ohio University Press, 2011.
“Can The Mosquito Speak?,” Ch. 1 of Rule of Experts (University of California Press, 2002), pp. 19-53.
Polish Translation in Prace Kulturoznawcze, issue XVIII, 2015.
Spanish Translation in Cosmopolíticas: perspectivas antropológicas. Ed. Montserrat Cañedo Rodríguez. Madrid: Editorial Trotta, 2013.
Oil and Energy Politics
“Carbon Democracy” (.pdf), Economy and Society. Vol. 38/3, August 2009, pp. 399-432.
Italian translation in 900: Per Una Storia del tempo presente, 4/10, 2011.
Expanded French translation of “Carbon Democracy” together with “Fixing the Economy,” published as Petrocratia: la démocratie à l’âge du carbone, trans. Nicolas Vieillescazes (Editions ère, 2011, 128 pp.). Also published in French as chapter 1 of Carbon Democracy: Le pouvoir politique à l’ère du pétrole, trans. Christophe Jacquet (Paris: La Découverte, 2013, 328pp).
Revised version: “Hydrocarbon Utopia,” in Utopia/Dystopia: Conditions of Historical Possibility, edited by Michael Gordin, Helen Tilly, and Gyan Prakash (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 117-147.
“The Resources of Economics: Making the 1973 Oil Crisis” (.pdf) Journal of Cultural Economy, Vol. 3, No. 2 (July 2010): 189-204.
Reprinted in: The Limits of Performativity: Politics of the Modern Economy. Edited by Franck Cochoy, Martin Giraudeau and Liz McFall. London: Routledge, 2014.
“Peak Oil and the New Carbon Boom,” Dissent Online, June 25, 2013.
“La place du travail dans la transition énergétique,” La Fondation de l’Ecologie Politique, trans. Benoit Monange, 2014.
“Economentality: How the Future Entered Government” (.pdf) Critical Inquiry, Vol. 40, no 4, 479-507, 2014.
“Cycle of Oil and Arms,” In Global Middle East: Into the Twenty-First Century, edited by Asef Bayat and Linda Herrera. University of California Press, 2021. (Excerpted from Carbon Democracy).
“Ten Propositions on Oil,” in Joel Beinin, Bassam Haddad, and Sherene Seikaly, eds, A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East and North Africa. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020, pp. 68-84.
“Carbon Democracy at Ten: An Interview with Timothy Mitchell,” Imre Szeman and Caleb Wellum, Cultural Studies, published online 30 March 2022
For more on oil and energy politics, see Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (Verso Press, 2012).
Area Studies and Disciplines
“The Middle East in the Past and Future of Social Science.” In The Politics of Knowledge: Area Studies and the Disciplines, edited by David L. Szanton. University of California International and Area Studies Digital Collection, Edited Volume No. 3, 2003.
Translated to Spanish in Papeles de Trabajo: Revista de ciencias sociales. Trans. Fernán Gaillardou, vol. 10, no 18, 2016 pp. 49-98.
Translated to Chinese in Kongjian yu Wenming: Guobie he Quyu Yanjiu de Lilun yu Fangfa (Space and Civilization: Theory and Practice of Area Studies). Oriental Publishing Center Ltd., Shanghai, 2023.
“Deterritorialization and the Crisis of Social Science.” In Localizing Knowledge in a Globalizing World: Recasting the Area Studies Debate. Edited by Ali Mirsepassi, Amrita Basu, and Frederick Weaver. Syracuse University Press, pp. 148-170, 2003.
“Contemporary Debates in Political Economy,” in Getting the Question Right: Interdisciplinary Debates at Makerere University. Edited by Mahmood Mamdani. Kampala: Makerere Institute of Social Research, pp. 183-197, 2013.
“The Work of Economics: How a Discipline Makes its World.” European Journal of Sociology, vol. 47, no. 2, pp. 297-320, 2005.
Translated to Croatian in Diskrepancija, Vol.12/18, 163-188, 2013.
See also: “How Neoliberalism Makes a World.” In The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective. Eds. Philip Mirowski and Dieter Plehwe. Harvard University Press, 2009.
“Les savoirs de l’économie” (.pdf) co-authored with Timothy Shenk. Translated into French by Clara Breteau. In Histoire des sciences et des savoirs, vol. 3: Le siècle des technosciences. Edited by Christophe Bonneuil and Dominique Pestre. Paris: Le Seuil, 2015.
Neoliberalism and Development
“Can The Mosquito Speak?,” Ch. 1 of Rule of Experts (University of California Press, 2002), pp. 19-53.
Polish Translation in Prace Kulturoznawcze, issue XVIII, 2015.
Spanish Translation in Cosmopolíticas: perspectivas antropológicas. Ed. Montserrat Cañedo Rodríguez. Madrid: Editorial Trotta, 2013.
Reprinted in More-Than-Human, edited by Andrés Jaque, Lisa Mazza, Marina Otero, and Lucia Pietroiusti.
* “America’s Egypt: Discourse of the Development Industry.” Middle East Report, 169: 18-36, 1991.
Reprinted in: Politics of the Modern Arab World, vol. 4, edited by Laleh Khalili. London: Routledge, 2008
And in New Critical Writings in Political Sociology, Vol. 3, Globalization and Contemporary Challenges to the Nation-State, edited by Anna Marie Smith, Alan Scott, and Kate Nash. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 2009, 135-53.
Revised and expanded in “The Object of Development: America’s Egypt.” In Power of Development. Edited by Jonathan Crush. London and New York: Routledge, 1995, pp. 129-57.
* “The Market’s Place.” In Directions of Change in Rural Egypt. Edited by Nicholas S. Hopkins and Kirsten Westergaard. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1998, pp. 19-40.
Translated to Farsi in Goft-o-Gu, no. 28, Tehran, 2000.
* “Dreamland: The Neoliberalism of Your Desires.” Middle East Report, vol. 29, no. 1 (Spring), 1999, 28-33.
Republished in The Journey to Tahrir: Revolution, Protest, and Social Change in Egypt 1999-2011, edited by Jeannie Sowers and Chris Toensing. London, Verso, 2012, pp. 224-234.
Revised in “No Factories, No Problems: The Logic of Neo-Liberalism in Egypt.” Review of African Political Economy, vol. 26/82, pp. 455-68, 1999.
“The Properties of Markets.” In Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics. Edited by Donald MacKenzie, Fabian Muniesa, and Lucia Siu. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007, pp. 244-75.
“The Work of Economics: How a Discipline Makes its World.” European Journal of Sociology, vol. 47, no. 2, pp. 297-320, 2005.
Translated to Croatian in Diskrepancija, Vol.12/18, 163-188, 2013.
See also: “How Neoliberalism Makes a World.” In The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective. Edited by Philip Mirowski and Dieter Plehwe. Harvard University Press, 2009.
“Economentality: How the Future Entered Government” (.pdf) Critical Inquiry, Vol. 40, no 4, 479-507, 2014.
“Foreword,” in David Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams: Development or Disaster? Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2015. Read Foreword in Google books.
*NOTE: These three essays were revised and expanded as chapters in Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (University of California Press, 2002)
Economics and the Invention of the Economy
“Origins and Limits of the Modern Idea of the Economy.” Advanced Study Center, University of Michigan, Working Papers Series, no. 12, 1995.
“Fixing the Economy.” Cultural Studies, vol. 12, no.1, 1998, 82-101.
“Nationalism, Imperialism, Economism: A Comment on Habermas.” Public Culture, vol. 10, no. 2, 1998, pp. 417-24.
“Society, Economy, and the State Effect.” In State/Culture: State-Formation After the Cultural Turn. Edited by George Steinmetz. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999, pp. 76-97.
Abridged version in The Anthropology of the State. Eds. Aradhana Sharma and Akhil Gupta. Blackwell, 2006
Translated into Spanish as “Sociedad, Economía, y el Efecto del Estado,” in Antropología del estado, by Philip Abrams, Akhil Gupta, and Timothy Mitchell. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2015, pp 145-187.
“Economists and the Economy in the Twentieth Century.” In The Politics of Method in the Human Sciences: Positivism and its Epistemological Others. Edited by George Steinmetz. Duke University Press, 2005, pp. 126-141.
“The Work of Economics: How a Discipline Makes its World.” European Journal of Sociology, vol. 47, no. 2, 2005, pp. 297-320.
Translated to Croatian in Diskrepancija, Vol. 12/18, 163-188, 2013.
Revised version: “How Neoliberalism Makes a World.” In The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective. Edited by Philip Mirowski and Dieter Plehwe. Harvard University Press, 2009.
“The Properties of Markets.” In Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics. Edited by Donald MacKenzie, Fabian Muniesa, and Lucia Siu. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007, pp. 244-75.
Earlier version published as “The Properties of Markets: Informal Housing and Capitalism’s Mystery,” Working Paper No 2, Cultural Political Economy Working Paper Series, Institute for Advanced Studies in Social and Management Sciences, Lancaster University, 2006.
“Rethinking Economy.” Geoforum. Special issue on “Rethinking Economy.” Vol. 39, 2008, 1116–1121.
“The Resources of Economics: Making the 1973 Oil Crisis” (.pdf) Journal of Cultural Economy, Vol. 3, No. 2, July 2010: 189-204.
Reprinted in: The Limits of Performativity: Politics of the Modern Economy. Edited by Franck Cochoy, Martin Giraudeau and Liz McFall. London: Routledge, 2014.
‘Do We Have the Nerve to Know Finance as Class War? An Exchange Between Robert Meister and Timothy Mitchell.’ Edited by Peter Dimock. Rethinking Capitalism Newsletter, No. 3, 2012.
“Economy.” In Keywords for American Cultural Studies, 3rd edition. Edited by Bruce Burgett and Glenn Hendler. New York: New York University Press, 2020.
“Economentality: How the Future Entered Government” (.pdf) Critical Inquiry, Vol. 40, no 4, 2014, 479-507.
“Les savoirs de l’économie” (.pdf), co-authored with Timothy Shenk. Translated into French by Clara Breteau. In Histoire des sciences et des savoirs, vol. 3: Le siècle des technosciences. Edited by Christophe Bonneuil and Dominique Pestre. Paris: Le Seuil, 2015.
“Uber Eats: How Capital Consumes the Future,” in Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, eds, Critical Zones: The Science and Politics of Landing on Earth. MIT Press, 2020. Copublished with ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe.
“Economy Shall (No Longer) Mean Economisation,” Journal of Cultural Economy, published online 9 September 2022, DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2022.2120056
History and Politics of Egypt and the Middle East
* “Can The Mosquito Speak?,” Ch. 1 of Rule of Experts (University of California Press, 2002), pp. 19-53.
Polish Translation in Prace Kulturoznawcze, issue XVIII, 2015.
Spanish Translation in Cosmopolíticas: perspectivas antropológicas. Ed. Montserrat Cañedo Rodríguez. Madrid: Editorial Trotta, 2013.
* “Dreamland: The Neoliberalism of Your Desires.” Middle East Report, vol. 29, no. 1 (Spring), 1999, 28-33.
Republished in The Journey to Tahrir: Revolution, Protest, and Social Change in Egypt 1999-2011, edited by Jeannie Sowers and Chris Toensing. London, Verso, 2012, pp. 224-234.
Revised in “No Factories, No Problems: The Logic of Neo-Liberalism in Egypt.” Review of African Political Economy, vol. 26, no. 82, 1999, pp. 455-68.
* “Making the Nation: The Politics of Heritage in Egypt.” In Consuming Tradition, Manufacturing Heritage: Global Norms and Urban Forms in the Age of Tourism. Edited by Nezar AlSayyad. New York: Spon/Routledge, 2001, 212-239.
Translated to Arabic in Dirasatan haula al-turath wa-‘l-hadatha. Trans. Bashir al-Siba`i. Cairo: Merit Press, 2006.
* “The Market’s Place.” In Directions of Change in Rural Egypt. Edited by Nicholas S. Hopkins and Kirsten Westergaard. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1998, pp. 19-40.
Translated to Farsi in Goft-o-Gu, no. 28, Tehran, 2000.
* “America’s Egypt: Discourse of the Development Industry.” Middle East Report, 169: 18-36, 1991.
Reprinted in: Politics of the Modern Arab World, vol. 4, edited by Laleh Khalili. London: Routledge, 2008
And in New Critical Writings in Political Sociology, Vol. 3, Globalization and Contemporary Challenges to the Nation-State, edited by Anna Marie Smith, Alan Scott, and Kate Nash. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 2009, 135-53.
Revised and expanded in “The Object of Development: America’s Egypt.” In Power of Development. Ed. Jonathan Crush. London and New York: Routledge, 1995, pp. 129-57.
* “The Representation of Violence in Writings on Political Development: The Case of Nasserist Egypt.” In Peasants and Politics in the Modern Middle East. Edited by John Waterbury and Farhad Kazemi. University Presses of Florida, 1991, pp. 222-51.
An extract is available as “The Ear of Authority.” Middle East Report, 1987, 147:32-35.
* “The Invention and Reinvention of the Egyptian Peasant.” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1990, 22: 129-50.
For a follow-up see “A Reply to Richard Critchfield.” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1991, 23:279-80, and Rule of Experts, chapter 4.
“The Struggle over Popular Culture: Introduction.” In Political Islam: Essays from Middle East Report. Edited by Joel Beinin and Joe Stork. University of California Press, 1996.
“Worlds Apart: An Egyptian Village and the International Tourism Industry,” in The Arab Revolts: Dispatches on Militant Democracy in the Middle East, edited by David A. McMurray and Amanda Ufheil-Somers. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013.
First published in Middle East Report 196, 1995, pp. 8-11, 23.
“L’Expérience de l’emprisonnement dans le discours islamiste” (.pdf) In Intellectuels et militants de l’Islam contemporain. Edited by Gilles Kepel and Yann Richard. Paris: Le Seuil, 1990, pp. 193-212.
Translated to Arabic as “Tagribat al-i`tiqâl fi al-khitâb al-islâmawîya,” in Al-muthaqqif wa-l-munâdil fî al-islâm al-mu`âsir. Edited by Gilles Kepel and Yann Richard. London, Dar Al-Saqi, 1994, pp. 175-92.
“American Power and Anti-Americanism in the Middle East.” In Anti-Americanism, edited by Andrew Ross and Kristin Ross. New York University Press, 2004.
Republished in Brendon O’Connor, ed., American Foreign Policy Traditions. Sage Publications, 2010.
Introduction to Social Text, no. 75, 2003. Palestine in a Transnational Context. Co-Authored with Gyan Prakash and Ella Shohat.
“McJihad: Islam in the U.S. Global Order.” Social Text, vol. 20, no 3, 2003, 1-18.
Reprinted in: Politics of the Modern Arab World, vol. 4, edited by Laleh Khalili. London: Routledge, 2008
Translated to Chinese in Selected Readings on September 11, edited by Arena (Asia Regional Exchange for New Alternatives). Beijing: People’s Literature Press.
Translated to Turkish in Birikim no. 169, 2003, 82-92.
‘Egypt.’ Oxford Companion to International Relations. Oxford University Press, 14.
Related versions in Oxford Companion to Comparative Politics, 2012 and Oxford Companion to American Politics, 2012.
“911: A Public Emergency?” Social Text, no. 72, 2002. Co-editor.
Translated to Turkish in Birikim, no. 151 (Nov.), 68-74.
“The Resources of Economics: Making the 1973 Oil Crisis” (.pdf) Journal of Cultural Economy, Vol. 3, No. 2 (July 2010): 189-204.
Reprinted in: The Limits of Performativity: Politics of the Modern Economy. Edited by Franck Cochoy, Martin Giraudeau and Liz McFall. London: Routledge, 2014.
* NOTE: These essays were revised and expanded as chapters in Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (University of California Press, 2002)
State and Political Power
“Everyday Metaphors of Power.”Theory and Society, 19, 1990, pp. 545-77.
Reprinted in Consciousness and Ideology, ed. Patricia Ewick. The International Library of Essays in Law and Society. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006, pp. 33-66.
Translated to Arabic in Al-Kitâb al-ukhrâ, vol. 4, 1993, pp. 22-48.
“The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and Their Critics.” American Political Science Review, 85, 1991, pp. 77-96.
Reprinted in: Politics of the Modern Arab World, vol. 1, ed. Laleh Khalili. London: Routledge, 2008.
See also: “Going Beyond the State? A Response to Critiques.” American Political Science Review, 1992, pp. 86.
“The Effect of the State,” (.pdf), written 1989, unpublished.
See also: “Defining the State in the Middle East.” Reports on three workshops (1990, 1991, 1992). With Roger Owen. Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, vols. 24, 25 & 26.
See also: Colonising Egypt (University of California Press, 1991) and Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (University of California Press, 2002)
Colonialism and Modernity
“Afterword: Are Environmental Imaginaries Culturally Constructed?” (.pdf) in Environmental Imaginaries of the Middle East and North Africa: History, Policy, Power, and Practice, edited by Diana Davis and Edmund Burke, Ohio University Press, 2011.
“The World as Exhibition.”Comparative Studies in Society and History, 31, 1989, pp. 217-36.
Reprinted in The City: Modernity, ed. Alan Latham, SAGE Benchmarks in Culture and Society. Los Angeles, SAGE Publications, 2017
Translated to Spanish in: Querido Público. El espectador ante la participación: jugadores, usuarios, prosumers y fans. Eds. Roger Bernat and Ignasi Duarte (Murcia, Spain: CENDEAC), 2009, pp. 261-291
“Orientalism and The Exhibitionary Order.” In Colonialism and Culture. Edited by Nicholas Dirks. University of Michigan Press, 1992.
Revised version published as: Ch. 1 of Colonising Egypt, 1991
Reprinted in: The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology. Ed. Donald Preziosi. Oxford University Press, 1992 & 2009, pp. 409-23
And in: Universal Experience: Art, Life, and the Tourist’s Eye, ed. Tricia Van Eck. Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 2005
And in: Grasping the World: The Idea of the Museum, edited by Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago. Ashgate Publishing, 2004, pp. 442-460
Abridged version in: The Visual Culture Reader. Edited by Nicholas Mirzoeff. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 293-303
Translated to Russian in: Colta, 2016
Translated to German in: Jenseits des Eurozentrismus. Postkoloniale Perspektiven in den Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften, 2013.
Translated to Hungarian in: Apertúra, 2009, vol. 4, no 3
Translated to Hebrew in: Jama’a, 1999, vol. 5, 73-98
“The Stage of Modernity.” In Questions of Modernity. Edited by Timothy Mitchell. University of Minnesota Press, 2000 pp. 1-34.
Spanish translation, “La puesta en escena de la modernidad,” in Genealogía, crítica y ensayo: Aportes para la historia del presente, ed. Paula Lucía Aguilar, Ana Grondona, and Victoria Haidar, Ediciones del Centro Cultural de la Cooperación, Buenos Aires, 2021.
“Questions of Modernity.” With Lila Abu-Lughod. Items (Social Science Research Council), vol. 47, no. 4 (Dec 1993): 79-83. Republished, Dec. 2016, in Items: Insights from the Social Sciences.
Reprinted in Dirasatan haula al-turath wa-‘l-hadatha [Two Studies in Heritage and Modernity] Trans. Bashir al-Siba`i. Cairo: Merit Press, 2006.
Arabic Grammar and Poetry
“The Phonology of Weak Verbs: A Simple Diagram of Rules.” (.pdf), Al-`Arabiyya: Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Arabic, 1981, 14:11-18.
Translations from the Arabic of poetry by Fadwa Tuqan and Huda al-Na’mani. In Women and Family in the Middle East: New Voices of Change. Edited by E.J. Fernea. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985.
Book Reviews
Review of Lois Aroian, The Nationalization of Arabic and Islamic Education in Egypt. Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, 1986, 20/1.
Review of Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, 1988, 22/2.
Review of Ellis Goldberg, Tinker, Tailor, Textile Worker: Class and Politics in Egypt 1930-1952. American Political Science Review, 1990, 84/2.
Review of Juan Cole, Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East. Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, 1994, 28/2 (Dec): 207-208.
Review of Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 1930-1945. American Political Science Review, 1996.