James Biles is a faculty member at The City College of New York and the CUNY Graduate Center. As an economic geographer, his research focuses on the confluence of global economic processes, policy and local livelihoods. In light of the deep-seated changes in the role of government and market forces in the context of neoliberalism, his work attempts to incorporate the experiences of those excluded from prevailing models of development while highlighting agency – the place-specific practices and strategies that people adopt for the purposes of improving well-being.