In this article, I draw on ethnographic research in Cairo to analyze outcomes of Egyptian women's practices of sociality. In Cairo, “phatic labor” creates a social infrastructure of communicative channels that are as essential to economy as roads, bridges, or telephone lines. Projects to empower Egyptian women via finance made these communicative channels visible as an economic infrastructure for projects oriented around the pursuit of profit. A social infrastructure that had functioned as a kind of semiotic commons became visible as a resource that could be privatized or formatted as a public good.

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Based on fieldwork in Cairo, this article shows how analysis of bodily practice and of political economy – two fields that anthropologists have treated as completely separate – intersect in important ways. I provide conceptual tools to solve a common ethnographic dilemma: how can members of a group with no official status, no distinguishing marks of ethnicity, religious difference, race, recognize others who share that identity? I argue that the embodied practice in which the historically constituted identity of sha‘abi people in Cairo is evinced lies in the realm of gesture, while the embodied practice through which status as a pious Muslim is evinced lies in the realm of significant symbol. I further argue that gestural resources of poor people of Cairo can usefully be analysed as a ‘semiotic commons’ and ‘collective good’ in the political economy of Egypt. Résumé Sur la base d’un travail de terrain au Caire, l’auteure met en lumière des recoupements importants entre l’analyse des pratiques corporelles et celle de l’économie politique, deux domaines que les anthropologues ont séparés. Elle fournit des outils conceptuels visant à résoudre un dilemme ethnographique fréquent : comment les membres d’un groupe ne disposant d’aucun statut officiel, d’aucune marque distinctive d’appartenance ethnique, de différence religieuse ou de race, reconnaissent‐ils ceux qui partagent leur identité. L’auteure affirme que la pratique incorporée dans laquelle s’inscrit l’identité, constituée historiquement, des sha’abi cairotes est de l’ordre du geste, tandis que la pratique incorporée marquant le statut de musulman pieux est de l’ordre du symbole signifiant. Elle affirme en outre que les ressources gestuelles des populations pauvres du Caire peuvent être analysées utilement comme des « communs sémiotiques » et comme un « bien collectif » dans l’économie politique égyptienne.

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