My presentation looks at the concept of Wasta, or connection building as a form of “social infrastructure” (Elyachar 2011) in rural Egypt to address how citizens access state services. Wasta as a social infrastructure serves as a basis through which citizens, especially those in marginalized rural communities develop certain communicative skills and channels of alliance building that are essential to navigating the opaque state bureaucracy and accessing needed services. I analyze the two villages’ differing relationships to representatives of state governance to understand how different speaking genres arise from and give rise to the material infrastructures in the two villages. The presence of a Omda (village chief) in the first village versus a youth-led village council in the second, produces different speaking genres like “sweet talk” versus direct talk. I argue that the two villages’ differing communicative practices, serving as a channel for Wasta initiation, are directly linked to their differing rural histories and connections to land. The first village in the governorate of Al-Daqahliya is a “new village” created as a result of President Gamal Abdel-Nasser’s nationalist-socialist land reform in the 1950’s, and supplementary land reclamation policies. This process provided newly settled small-scale farmers with land ownership opportunities. The second village in Al-Beheira governorate was one of the seats of power of the Ottoman Empire, as well as the subsequent British Protectorate over Egypt. The village was former estate land that became nationalized under President Nasser and then returned to private landowners during the 1990’s under Egypt’s open market policies. The presentation therefore connects the social infrastructures of the materiality of communication to the physical infrastructures of the materiality of place. The connection between both forms of infrastructure looks at how Wasta is perceived and created, what essential function it serves in attaining certain objectives and what that means for those who are excluded from the spaces and subjects of Wasta initiation. Reference: Elyachar, Julia. 2010. Phatic Labor, Infrastructure, and the Question of Empowerment in Cairo. American Ethnologist 37, no. 3 (2010): 452-464.