The Introduction places the central research terms—middle class, social contract and public discourse —into the Egyptian context and provides working definitions. It sets the 1970s and early 1980s into their broader historical context, that of a semi-independent Egypt (between 1922 and 1952) and within the Nasserite era. I associate the later twentieth-century middle class with the effendiyya of interwar Egypt—a social group of Egyptians with a secular educational background, often state-employed urbanites, who dominated the Egyptian national movement and Egyptian politics. I identify the earning and spending attributes of the middle class in Egypt as being key to this stratum’s interests and identity and explain why a ‘middle class’ is essential to any social analysis. The Introduction also demonstrates how an emerging social contract in the 1930s and 1940s was essentially an effendi social contract, having a long-term impact on the principles of social development and stratification in Egypt and affecting citizens’ expectations from their government. It further elaborates on the public discourse in Egypt: the researched sources, the voices expressed and those not represented. Moreover, it discusses why Egyptian public discourse primarily reflected the middle-class perspective on local change, regardless of the multiple political and cultural/religious variations it contained.