Political ecology in/of Sudan - Gold mining. Appendix 2B Source essay - Extractive governance

In the first quarter of the 21st century, gold emerged, after a long hiatus, as a major export commodity in Sudan. The following chapter traces sources on the extent and nature of this emergence and the inherent tension in treating it as a function of state-building, or as individual or allied participation in global exchange relations. Terminologically, I treat the former – consolidation of different levels of state institutions – as centripetal dynamics and the latter – consolidation of different levels of individual resource accumulation – as centrifugal dynamics. Rather than spatial centres, this concerns different characteristics of accumulation followed by redistribution, one being based on allegiance to institutions, the other on allegiance to persons, in other words, characteristics of decision-making processes and their relation to asymmetric reciprocity as being based on entitlement or generosity, a terminological differentiation I will develop step by step in this source essay.