Seeing Social Change Through the Institutional Lens: Universities in Egypt, 2011–2018

Abstract

This chapter explores the possibilities offered by the ethnographic study of institutions when addressing the question of social change, taking Egyptian universities during the revolution and its aftermath as case study. Discussing how different actors address the issue of change, the chapter cautions against adopting explanatory schemes too easily, particularly when building narratives. Instead, it suggests looking at institutional constraints to see how contradictory and overlapping notions of change are created, enforced, and contested across competing networks of power, both during an uprising and in times of political repression. Furthermore, it shows how changes in an institution can reveal hints of transformation processes in the broader society. This chapter offers an alternative reading of the revolutionary changes that transformed the country in and after 2011. Focusing on two major perspectives on the change in Egypt’s higher education sector the article discusses some of the complexities of accounting for change through an institutional lens. The first, coming from those more actively involved in the 2011 revolution, is one of struggle, emancipatory will, and depression and silence as a consequence of the 2013 backlash. The second perspective stems from state-sponsored programs promoting higher education as a globally competitive object, subject to reform and geared toward innovation and quality. As a consequence of these different perspectives the university has become the site of a major battle between forces competing for power within society, demonstrating how such metanarratives of change shape the temporalities according to which university actors consider their action. By combining participatory observation, interviews, and the study of documents stating internal university regulations and reform programs, the author shows the importance of universities as privileged sites for the implementation of change, uncovering balances of power, beyond slogans and discourses.