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Omer Shah is Chau Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Pomona College.
The kingdom of Saudi Arabia is in the midst of an ambitious plan to reengi-neer its social and economic life. This national transformation plan, known as Vision 2030, seeks to prepare the kingdom for a post-oil future. Coverage of Vision 2030 associates its "vision" with Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, and more cynically, with global consulting firms like McKinsey and Company. It pronounces a move from the "natural resource" of oil to "human resources." It demands the Saudization of various industries and sectors. In the new campaign, Saudi Arabian citizens are to become the vanguard of a knowledge economy, acquiring new skills and using smart technologies. Saudization and other plans to diversify the economy are much older than Vision 2030. Moreover, similar vision campaigns are underway in other parts of the Arabian Peninsula and Global South. However habitual and globally ubiquitous, the "vision" of Vision 2030 animates, inspires, and coordinates everyday life in Saudi Arabia in ways that are unprecedented. Commentators' discussions of Vision 2030 tend to focus on dramatic public relations moves like the citizen-robot Sophia, the techno-futurism of urban development projects such as Neom and The Line, and breathless descriptions of the crown prince running the country "like a start-up." But what these discussions often ignore is a more regional transformation happening around the holy city of Mecca and its attendant pilgrimage systems, hajj and 'umra. By 2030, Saudi Arabia is planning to increase the number of annual overseas pilgrims from eight million to thirty million.1 Vision 2030 treats the burgeoning crowds in Mecca as another human resource. This new hajj and 'umra industry presents us with an alternative grammar and temporality: while oil may be nearing its limits, hajj and 'umra are nominally forever. Under this new scheme, Mecca's formerly seasonal crowds will become a permanent feature. The exuberant claim that pilgrims will be flocking to the city "forever" belies a total transformation of ideas of labor, knowledge, and hospitality that will be necessary to turn them into a national economic resource. According to this logic, the city must be remade by new digital and smart technologies and a new kind of technopolitical expertise, as well as...