Giles Mohan
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 169144 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Giles Mohan |
| NOMBRES | Giles |
| APELLIDO | Mohan |
| FIRMA | MOHAN G |
| AFILIACIONES | The Open University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0409-4783 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 73 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 1208 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 73 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1994 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 18 |
Mundane Geopolitics, Strategic (De)Coupling, and Chinese Infrastructure Investment in Europe
Geopolitical rivalry between China and the US is profoundly affecting transnational investments. We develop an analytical framework that augments the notion of strategic coupling to capture whether and how transnational investment projects can cohere in a geopolitically charged world. Two cases—Duisburg in Germany and the Royal Albert Dock in London, UK—are used to analyze why local development efforts hinging on Chinese capital failed to materia…
The political economy of infrastructure failure
Infrastructure has become a key driving force in development globally with an assumed efficient and fluid route from initiation to delivery. However, many infrastructure projects will fail; an understudied real-world outcome with enormous implications for our societies and natural environment. This Special Issue (SI) investigates the political economy of infrastructure failure not as an inferior counterpart to ‘success’ but as a daily lived exper…
A tale of two ports
China’s increasing presence in international port ownership and management has excited political anxieties among western commentators based on a geopolitical framing that equates this internationalisation with military ambitions. While not denying the geopolitical potential of this growing port power we argue for a more variegated approach that recognises multiple political and economic actors with competing interests and discursive framings of b…
Conceptualising Chinese transnational infrastructure projects in Europe and beyond
Chinese actors have emerged as major funders and developers of large-scale transnational infrastructure projects in Europe and beyond. Despite this profound shift, geographers have not yet arrived at a clear conceptualisation of such projects. We show how the literature is overly reliant on a functional view of the Chinese state, structural economic factors, single case studies, and bilateral relations, generating monocausal explanations of outco…
De-risking, re-balancing and recentralising
China's Belt and Road Initiative is the most visible manifestation of the country's wider internationalisation efforts in which infrastructure connectivity projects are central. Existing spatialised narratives of these projects have usefully focused on long-standing geopolitical binaries and bilateral state relations, as well as newer spatial ontologies of corridors, zones and networks. Yet they tend to underplay central-local state relations in …
Beyond legislation
The complex relationship between mining and agriculture in Africa is deeply rooted in a complex network of spatial, political, and socio-economic dynamics. In Ghana, for instance, the forest agroecological zone, responsible for 57 % of food crop production, coincides with 61 % of mineral-rich areas. This overlap leads to significant implications, such as competition and conflicts over land, as both livelihood activities rely on a finite natural r…
Below the Belt? Territory and Development in China's International Rise
China's internationalization has been heralded by some as a new era of South-South cooperation. Yet such framings of development are pitched at an abstract space of the 'global South' which conceals more than it reveals. With some theory moving towards ontologies of 'global development', we need to capture both the connectedness and the local specificity of increasingly diffuse processes. This article sets out a more fine-grained understanding of…
Responding to the commodity boom with varieties of resource nationalism
Author response to reviews of Lived Experience
The geopolitics of South–South infrastructure development
Debates around infrastructure tend to focus on the global North, yet in the global South demand for infrastructure is huge and we see new and emergent actors engaged in finance and construction; China being pre-eminent among them. China’s interests in the global South have grown apace over the past decade, especially in terms of accessing resources and securing infrastructure deals. The role of Chinese banks and State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in …
Community and Conviviality? Informal Social Life in Multicultural Places
This article contributes to understandings of the conviviality which has dominated recent sociological approaches to urban multiculture. The article argues for conviviality's conceptual extension by reference to recent rethinking of community as a profound sociality of 'being with' and a culture of urban practice. The article draws from a qualitative dataset examining sustained encounters of cultural difference and the relationships within social…
Large dams, energy justice and the divergence between international, national and local developmental needs and priorities in the global South
This paper investigates from a socio-technical and energy justice perspective the lack of coordination of international, national and local developmental priorities and inclusion of local needs in the decision making process of large dam construction in the global South. The paper argues that the analysis of energy infrastructures as socio-technical systems requires an energy justice approach to capture the true environmental and social nature of…
Lived Experiences of Multiculture
In an increasingly ethnically diverse society, debates about migration, community, cultural difference and social interaction have never been more pressing. Drawing on the findings from a two-year, qualitative Economic and Social Research Council funded study of different locations across England, Lived Experiences of Multiculture uses interdisciplinary perspectives to examine the ways in which complex urban populations experience, negotiate, acc…
Party Politics and the Political Economy of Ghana’s Oil
Ghana’s status as a new oil producer raises questions about the developmental effects of resources, and the role of political institutions in these processes. The conundrum this paper addresses is the rather limited impact of oil exploitation in Ghana despite the country’s strong democratic record and internationally acclaimed oil governance legislation. The reasons for this lie in the nature of elite-based political coalitions and we root our an…
Negotiating the educational spaces of urban multiculture
This paper contributes to research on urban multiculture and debates as to how people routinely live and experience ethnic diversity in their everyday lives. This research takes an ‘unpanicked’ approach to multiculture that sits differently to, although not unaffected by, multiculturalism as policy objective and those debates around multiculturalism that variously celebrate cultural difference or construct it through crisis talk. Critical to this…
You can't move in Hackney without bumping into an anthropologist
In social research some places and populations are disproportionately targeted by researchers. While relatively little work exists on the concept of over-research those accounts that do exist tend to focus on participant-based research relationships and not place-based research relationships. Using interdisciplinary approaches and fieldwork experiences from a recently completed qualitative study of urban multiculture in England we develop the ove…
Multiculture and Public Parks
Situating itself in encounter and public space debates and borrowing from non‐representational theory approaches, this paper uses data from the authors' 2‐year Economic and Social Research Council research project to consider how local urban parks can work as sites of routine encounter, mixity, and place belonging. The paper explores how parks as green public spaces are important as sites of inclusive openness while the materiality of parks is a …
Queuing up for Africa
In analysing Africa's development it is important to consider the complex global-local dynamics at play and the necessity of getting underneath representations of the continent in order to better understand its social change. Taking these concerns into recent work on China's engagement with Africa, I argue that the focus on Chinese power tends to occlude the role of African agency in these relationships. I demonstrate this through the case of a g…
Urban Multiculture and Everyday Encounters in Semi-Public, Franchised Cafe Spaces
This paper engages with an emergent literature on multiculture and concepts such as conviviality and negotiation to explore how increasingly ethnically diverse population routinely share and mix in urban places and social spaces. As part of a wider ESRC funded, two-year qualitative study of changing social life and everyday multiculture in different geographical areas of contemporary England, this paper draws on participant observation data from …
China in Africa
China is the major ‘new’ player in Africa and impacts on development and politics in numerous ways. The chapter sets out an analytical framework which identifies the channels through which China engages with African development and the role the African state plays in mediating these interactions. It applies this framework to three case studies that are emblematic of differing African state types. Analysis shows that China impacts on African devel…
Sino-African Encounters in Ghana and Nigeria
China's renewed engagement with Africa is often framed as a form of imperialism, with the growing number of Chinese migrants on the continent seen as an exploitative presence. Such claims have generally been based on little evidence, and where more detailed empirical studies have emerged, they tend to emphasise the tensions and conflicts that have arisen. Our research on Chinese migrants in Ghana and Nigeria suggests that while there are concerns…
Living Multiculture
Since 2001, as the social and spatial compositions of multiculture and migration have become more complicated and diverse, geography has moved back to the centre of policy, political, and academic arguments about cultural difference and ethnic diversity in England. This spatial turn is most obvious in preoccupations with notions of increasing ethnic segregation, but it is also apparent in discussions of the possibility of everyday multicultural e…
China as a new shaper of international development
The potential of corporate environmental responsibility of Chinese state-owned enterprises in Africa
The Chinese just come and do it’
China is the major ‘new’ player in Africa and impacts on development and planning in numerous ways. This Viewpoint assesses whether, and how, China alters the way in which African states plan, both now and in the future. It argues for disaggregating ‘China’ and ‘Africa’ and the actors which drive and mediate these relationships. While the Chinese have refocused attention on economic growth for development and provide much-needed infrastructure, t…
Participatory development and empowerment
Recent discussions in development have moved away from holistic theorisation towards more localised, empirical and inductive approaches. In development practice there has been a parallel move towards local 'participation' and 'empowerment', which has produced, albeit with very different agendas, a high level of agreement between actors and institutions of the 'new' Left and the 'new' Right. This paper examines the manifestations of this move in f…
Relocating Participation within a Radical Politics of Development
In response to (and in sympathy with) many of the critical points that have been lodged against participatory approaches to development and governance within international development, this article seeks to relocate participation within a radical politics of development. We argue that participation needs to be theoretically and strategically informed by a radical notion of 'citizenship', and be located within the 'critical modernist' approach to …
Placing social capital
This paper reviews the contribution that the concept of social capital might make to geography, and the contribution geography might make to the analysis of social capital. We begin by summarizing the conceptual origins and dimensions of social capital, in the process of which we distinguish it from several other social properties (human and cultural capital; social networks). We then summarize key criticisms of the concept, especially those leve…
Negotiating China
Most analyses of China's renewed engagement with Africa treat China as the driving force, and little recognition is given to the role of African agency, especially beyond the level of state elites. This article investigates the extent of African agency in engagements with China and argues that at various levels African actors have negotiated, shaped, and even driven Chinese engagements in important ways. Suggesting a theoretical framework that ca…
Multiculture and Public Parks
Situating itself in encounter and public space debates and borrowing from non‐representational theory approaches, this paper uses data from the authors' 2‐year Economic and Social Research Council research project to consider how local urban parks can work as sites of routine encounter, mixity, and place belonging. The paper explores how parks as green public spaces are important as sites of inclusive openness while the materiality of parks is a …
Urban Multiculture and Everyday Encounters in Semi-Public, Franchised Cafe Spaces
This paper engages with an emergent literature on multiculture and concepts such as conviviality and negotiation to explore how increasingly ethnically diverse population routinely share and mix in urban places and social spaces. As part of a wider ESRC funded, two-year qualitative study of changing social life and everyday multiculture in different geographical areas of contemporary England, this paper draws on participant observation data from …
New African Choices? The Politics of Chinese Engagement
The role of China in Africa must be understood in the context of competing and intensified global energy politics, in which the US, India and China are among the key players vying for security of supply. Contrary to popular representation, China's role in Africa is much more than this however, opening up new choices for African development for the first time since the neo-liberal turn of the 1980s. As such it is important to start by disaggregati…
The disappointments of civil society
Towards a Critical Geopolitics of China's Engagement with African Development
China, in its quest for a closer strategic partnership with Africa, has increasingly dynamic economic, political and diplomatic activities on the continent. Chinese leaders and strategists believe that China's historical experience and vision of economic development resonates powerfully with African counterparts and that the long-standing history of friendly political linkages and development co-operation offers a durable foundation for future pa…
Making Neoliberal States of Development
For impoverished African states the attraction of inward flows of capital is vital and migrants are one such source of finance. Some governments actively encourage this, which brings out tensions between national affiliation and more particularistic forms of identification. This paper examines this in the context of Ghana. Between the mid-1970s and the late 1990s there was largescale out-migration from Ghana, creating what has been termed a 'neo-…
Community and Conviviality? Informal Social Life in Multicultural Places
This article contributes to understandings of the conviviality which has dominated recent sociological approaches to urban multiculture. The article argues for conviviality's conceptual extension by reference to recent rethinking of community as a profound sociality of 'being with' and a culture of urban practice. The article draws from a qualitative dataset examining sustained encounters of cultural difference and the relationships within social…
Embedded Cosmopolitanism and the Politics of Obligation
The author analyses how identities and obligations operate within the spaces of transnational communities and how this affects development. Within spatially diffuse communities, identities are fluid and overlapping, as are the obligations to multiple others-be that kin, ethnic group, or nation-in different localities. The author is concerned with the institutions through which these identities are formed and obligations are fulfilled. These inclu…
Large dams, energy justice and the divergence between international, national and local developmental needs and priorities in the global South
This paper investigates from a socio-technical and energy justice perspective the lack of coordination of international, national and local developmental priorities and inclusion of local needs in the decision making process of large dam construction in the global South. The paper argues that the analysis of energy infrastructures as socio-technical systems requires an energy justice approach to capture the true environmental and social nature of…
Chinese Migrants in Africa as New Agents of Development? An Analytical Framework
Redefining 'Aid' in the China-Africa Context
Discussions on the politics of Chinese engagement with African development have been marked by increasing concern over Chinese use of aid in exchange for preferential energy deals. Normative liberal discourse criticizes the Chinese for disbursing 'rogue aid' and undermining good governance in the African continent. These criticisms not only ignore the longer-term motivations and modalities of Chinese aid and the historical diversity of Chinese re…
Towards a critical political geography of African development
Party Politics and the Political Economy of Ghana’s Oil
Ghana’s status as a new oil producer raises questions about the developmental effects of resources, and the role of political institutions in these processes. The conundrum this paper addresses is the rather limited impact of oil exploitation in Ghana despite the country’s strong democratic record and internationally acclaimed oil governance legislation. The reasons for this lie in the nature of elite-based political coalitions and we root our an…
The geopolitics of South–South infrastructure development
Debates around infrastructure tend to focus on the global North, yet in the global South demand for infrastructure is huge and we see new and emergent actors engaged in finance and construction; China being pre-eminent among them. China’s interests in the global South have grown apace over the past decade, especially in terms of accessing resources and securing infrastructure deals. The role of Chinese banks and State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in …
You can't move in Hackney without bumping into an anthropologist
In social research some places and populations are disproportionately targeted by researchers. While relatively little work exists on the concept of over-research those accounts that do exist tend to focus on participant-based research relationships and not place-based research relationships. Using interdisciplinary approaches and fieldwork experiences from a recently completed qualitative study of urban multiculture in England we develop the ove…
Globalisation from below
In the past both African Studies and Development Studies have ignored questions of the African Diaspora. This point was made by Zack‐Williams back in 1995 but since then there has not been much work attempting to rectify this matter. In this article we put forward a framework for examining the role of diaspora in development. This centres on recognising that the formation of the African Diaspora has been intimately linked to the evolution of a gl…
Beyond the Enclave
This article provides a political economy framework for analysing China's engagements with Africa. It situates the rise of China in the context of the changing balance of power in the world system and particularly China's re-entry into spheres of influence in Africa that have been the purview of the former European colonial powers for two centuries or more. It begins by arguing that current approaches to China, Africa and international relations …
Networks as transnational agents of development
The term network has become a hallmark of the development industry. In principle networks have the potential to provide a more flexible and non‐hierarchical means of exchange and interaction that is also more innovative, responsive and dynamic, while overcoming spatial separation and providing scale economies. Although the label ‘networks’ currently pervades discourses about the relationships between organisations in development, there has been s…
Participatory Development
The past decade has witnessed the ubiquity of participation in governance across the globe, involving efforts to bring more marginalised people into the decision-making processes that affect them. At one level, there is an apparent consensus around the need to reconnect citizens with the policy process, which has seen experiments in different forms of direct democracy. Common to these experiments is changing epistemologies in terms of knowing wha…
The antagonistic relevance of development studies
This paper discusses relevance in development studies. We argue that current debates around relevance assume a hegemonic view of development, which is bolstered by the high levels of research funding from key policy-making institutions. We feel relevance can be pluralized and radicalized, but that this requires us to be ideologically transparent and to examine other ways of undertaking and validating knowledge production. This involves first, ack…
Human rights & development in Africa
Throughout the 1990s the debates about human rights and development have increasingly converged. The article asks whether the emerging human rights‐based approach to development, honed in the period of revisionist neo‐liberalism, can deliver meaningful improvements to the African crisis. It begins by outlining the evolution of the rights‐based development agenda in order to understand how the present agenda is defined. The next section examines t…
Manufacturing consensus
This article examines the inter‐relations between power and knowledge in the contemporary world order. It begins by examining recent contributions to development theory especially post‐modern formulations. These are seen to foster an apolitical stand on development which relativises values and hence negates the possibility of emancipatory politics. However, the technique of deconstruction is useful in revealing the geo‐political basis of power st…
Imperialism in the post‐cold war era
The inaugural editorial of this journal committed its editors to address 'those issues concerned with the actions needed if Africa is to develop its potential'. This engagement demands an analysis of the structural obstacles to autonomous development, and the realisation of Africa's full potential. If there is a common thread linking the various articles in this journal, it is identifying the central role which imperialism continues to play in st…
Adjustment and decentralization in Ghana
Globalisation, liberal theory and the spatiality of governance in Sub‐Saharan Africa
The debate over development and democracy is a highly charged one, because the two concepts are open to such divergent interpretation. In recent years, while academics were discovering globalisation, the major international financial institutions have been championing a particular version of the democracy‐development debate centred upon the notion of governance. They contend that democratisation and institutional reforms must occur before or alon…
Development policy and public action
Development studies
Developing differences
Difference can mean many things - inequality, the non-same or change. This article explores all these interpretations in the context of recent debates around development theory and praxis. In particular I focus on the ways in which post-structuralist ideas have challenged those of various marxisms and how political activism may change as a result. I have taken ten books published in the last two years and drawn out themes which run through them. …
Radicalism, relevance & the future of Roape
ROAPE was established at a time when critical scholarship on Africa was rare. Most Africanist journals bore the marks of their colonial origins in that they were generalist and highly empirical. In contrast, ROAPE was set up to provide a radical forum for politically engaged scholars who explicitly challenged neo-colonialism in its various guises, especially the pervasive (and continuing) tendency to privilege the voices of European scholars over…
Radicalism, relevance & the future of Roape
ROAPEwas established at a time when critical scholarship on Africa was rare. Most Africanist journals bore the marks of their colonial origins in that they were generalist and highly empirical. In contrast, ROAPE was set up to provide a radical forum for politically engaged scholars who explicitly challenged neo-colonialism in its various guises, especially the pervasive (and continuing) tendency to privilege the voices of European scholars over …
Not so Distant, Not so Strange
This paper examines the political and ethical problems which arise in the course of undertaking participatory research in developing countries. It argues that, rather than supplanting relationships of power within the knowledge creating process, most participatory research actually strengthens them. Instead a more complete form of dialogic research is required, which will involve struggles within our academies as well as in those other organisati…
Not so distant, not so strange
This paper examines the political and ethical problems which arise in the course of undertaking participatory research in developing countries. It argues that, rather than supplanting relationships of power within the knowledge creating process, most participatory research actually strengthens them. Instead a more complete form of dialogic research is required, which will involve struggles within our academies as well as in those other organisati…
Born again
Africa to get that realisation more and more that we have to depend upon our selves, both at national level and at the collective level. Each of our countries will have to rely upon its own human resources and natural material resources for its development. But that is not enough. The next area to look at is our collectivity, our working together. We all enhance our capacity to develop if we work together
Participatory development and empowerment
Recent discussions in development have moved away from holistic theorisation towards more localised, empirical and inductive approaches. In development practice there has been a parallel move towards local 'participation' and 'empowerment', which has produced, albeit with very different agendas, a high level of agreement between actors and institutions of the 'new' Left and the 'new' Right. This paper examines the manifestations of this move in f…
Human rights & development in Africa
Throughout the 1990s the debates about human rights and development have increasingly converged. The article asks whether the emerging human rights‐based approach to development, honed in the period of revisionist neo‐liberalism, can deliver meaningful improvements to the African crisis. It begins by outlining the evolution of the rights‐based development agenda in order to understand how the present agenda is defined. The next section examines t…
Africa's future
This issue of The Review revisits issues of governance, civil society and human rights in Africa. It does so just as the issue reappears on the agenda of international agencies and western governments. Indeed, this year's fashionable new ideological robes (as far as development and the South are concerned) is the idea that economic growth will be driven by greater political participation. This lies at the heart of the propositions being advanced …
The Convergence around Local Civil Society and the Dangers of Localism
Development studies and practice have recently undergone a transition that has yielded an unprecedented emphasis on local civil society (Mohan & Stokke, 2000). There is now a high level of agreement regarding the importance of popular participation for social change and empowerment. Behind the apparent consensus on the importance of local civil society in development, there are quite divergent views on the characteristics and functions of civil s…
Placing social capital
This paper reviews the contribution that the concept of social capital might make to geography, and the contribution geography might make to the analysis of social capital. We begin by summarizing the conceptual origins and dimensions of social capital, in the process of which we distinguish it from several other social properties (human and cultural capital; social networks). We then summarize key criticisms of the concept, especially those leve…
Globalisation from below
In the past both African Studies and Development Studies have ignored questions of the African Diaspora. This point was made by Zack‐Williams back in 1995 but since then there has not been much work attempting to rectify this matter. In this article we put forward a framework for examining the role of diaspora in development. This centres on recognising that the formation of the African Diaspora has been intimately linked to the evolution of a gl…
A window on Africa
The Africa Centre has long been a focus for political and cultural activities coming out of the continent. Originally established by the diplomatic missions of newly independent African states, its remit was to provide a forum for Africans in London, particularly students, as well as giving a voice to various political positions that were not being widely aired. Since then the fortunes of the Africa Centre have waxed and waned as the economic and…
The disappointments of civil society
Structural Adjustment
About the book: Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) are an important feature of contemporary development, yet they are often evaluated in the terms set out by lenders themselves, ignoring the wider implications of SAPs. Structural Adjustment attempts to situate SAPs in a wider development context featuring case material from the UK, USA, Ghana, Mexico, India, Jamaica, Turkey, Eastern Europe, Mali, Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone, the book addresses…
New perspectives on the politics of development in Africa
Towards a critical political geography of African development
Networks as transnational agents of development
The term network has become a hallmark of the development industry. In principle networks have the potential to provide a more flexible and non‐hierarchical means of exchange and interaction that is also more innovative, responsive and dynamic, while overcoming spatial separation and providing scale economies. Although the label ‘networks’ currently pervades discourses about the relationships between organisations in development, there has been s…
The antagonistic relevance of development studies
This paper discusses relevance in development studies. We argue that current debates around relevance assume a hegemonic view of development, which is bolstered by the high levels of research funding from key policy-making institutions. We feel relevance can be pluralized and radicalized, but that this requires us to be ideologically transparent and to examine other ways of undertaking and validating knowledge production. This involves first, ack…
Political science (62 obras) · Sociology (48 obras) · Law (47 obras) · Politics (44 obras) · Economics (37 obras) · International Development and Aid (35 obras) · Law (30 obras) · Political economy (29 obras) · China (17 obras) · Development economics (16 obras)