Objective Power beyond the state is most prevalent in economic infrastructure hubs with high technology and multiple global actors. Here, investors from emerging powers challenge traditional theory and practice. Chinese and Brazilian companies are now the most important bilateral investors in Africa. They apply existing rules and practices, and introduce new practices of governance and business-society relations that compete with Western norms. But their impact is not properly understood in theories of transnational governance.This project will rethink transnational governance by focusing on the margins of international relations to explain how models and experiences of actors from the Global South redefine the governance of economic hubs. Seemingly in the margins of international political economy, and neglected in International Relations, in Africa new forms of power and governance are invented and tested. Here states are weaker and experiments with multiple non-state actors and modes of governance tolerated. The fringes of theory-building in the discipline, the hubs of transnational economic infrastructure, and everyday practices of cross-border management can be theorized as arenas of the production, contestation and change of transnational governance. INFRAGLOB combines analysing the ideas driving Chinese and Brazilian management of large-scale port and mining projects with multi-sited ethnographic research of exemplary cases in Mozambique and Tanzania, establishing how these concepts are enacted, negotiated and disregarded in practice. It rethinks publics by mapping controversies that connect Africa, Brazil and China, and establishes how interactions and frictions between diverse practitioners and standards change broader transnational governance of business-community relations and security. ‘Infrastructure globalities’ will provide a unique understanding of how the Global South changes practices of governance and business-society relations in a multipolar world. Fields of science social sciencessociologygovernancesocial scienceseconomics and businesseconomicspolitical economy Keywords practice approach transnational companies Global South global political ethnography Programme(s) H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme Topic(s) ERC-2017-STG - ERC Starting Grant Call for proposal ERC-2017-STG See other projects for this call Funding Scheme ERC-STG - Starting Grant Host institution UNIVERSITAT BAYREUTH Net EU contribution € 1 398 909,00 Address UNIVERSITATSSTRASSE 30 95447 Bayreuth Germany See on map Region Bayern Oberfranken Bayreuth, Kreisfreie Stadt Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 1 398 909,00 Beneficiaries (2) Sort alphabetically Sort by Net EU contribution Expand all Collapse all UNIVERSITAT BAYREUTH Germany Net EU contribution € 1 398 909,00 Address UNIVERSITATSSTRASSE 30 95447 Bayreuth See on map Region Bayern Oberfranken Bayreuth, Kreisfreie Stadt Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 1 398 909,00 RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN Participation ended Netherlands Net EU contribution € 97 000,00 Address Broerstraat 5 9712CP Groningen See on map Region Noord-Nederland Groningen Overig Groningen Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 97 000,00