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Abstract
Grounded in a review of past and present academic South–South cooperation literatures, this article advances ten theses that problematise empirical, theoretical, conceptual and methodological issues essential to discussions of South–South cooperation in the 21st century. This endeavour is motivated by the perceived undermining, especially in the contemporary Anglophone academic South–South cooperation literature, of the emancipatory potential historically associated with South–South cooperation. By drawing on the interventionist South–South cooperation agendas of ‘left’-leaning Latin America-Caribbean governments, the article seeks to establish a dialogue between social science theories and less ‘visible’ analyses from academic (semi)peripheries. The ten theses culminate in an exploration of the potential of South–South cooperation to promote ‘alternative’ development.
Acknowledgements
This article was first presented at the workshop ‘Beyond Global Governance: Furthering South-South Cooperation and the Role of the BRICS’, Council for Social Development/SouthGovNet, Delhi, September 25–26, 2014. I would like to thank the Council for Social Development for their hospitality, and SouthGovNet coordinator Kevin Gray for this invitation. My gratitude extends to two anonymous reviewers for their demonstrated engagement with my arguments and the constructive comments provided. The usual disclaimers apply.
Notes
1. Throughout the article ‘cooperation’ denotes partnerships that involve or are facilitated by so-called ‘(re)emerging’, ‘new’, or ‘non-traditional’ actors not pertaining to the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC).
2. ALBA-TCP, Declaración Final; and MERCOSUR, Declaración Conjunta. For a comprehensive overview from the South of the national Latin America–Caribbean South–South cooperation agendas, see the edited volume by Ayllón and Ojeda, La Cooperación Sur–Sur. For an overview of regionalist Latin America–Caribbean South–South cooperation agendas, see Ayllón et al., Cooperación Sur–Sur. On Cuba–CARICOM, see Byron, “A New Era”; Cotman, “The Havana Consensus”; and Laguardia Martínez, “Las Relaciones Cuba–CARICOM.” On MERCOSUR transformation, see Briceño Ruiz, “New Left Governments.” For a systematic exploration of the convergence of the ALBA-TCP/Petrocaribe, CARICOM and MERCOSUR South–South cooperation agendas, see Muhr, “The ALBA-TCP.” The commitment to South–South cooperation in regionalist projects is stated in many publicly released documents, including ALBA-TCP, Declaración Final; CARICOM, Declaración de La Habana; MERCOSUR, Informe; and UNASUR, South American Union of Nations.
3. I use ‘Anglophone South–South cooperation literature’ to refer to academic literature that is explicitly framed by South–South cooperation and/or development cooperation generally, mostly by reference to development cooperation in the title. This excludes material that takes as its object of analysis particular cases, such as Cuban, Venezuelan or ALBA-TCP cooperation. (Such examples include Domínguez, To Make a World; Hickling-Hudson et al., “The Cuban Revolution”; and Muhr, Counter-globalization and Socialism.
4. Oxford English Reference Dictionary, 1498.
5. UNESCO, World Social Science Report, Table 4.2.
6. Mu and Pereyra-Rojas, “Impact on Society,” 217.
7. On such notions as ‘sociology of absences’, ‘epistemicide’ and hegemonic forms of knowledge production generally (‘theory mills of the North’), see Dale and Robertson, “Interview”; and Appadurai, “Grassroots Globalization.”
8. Cox, “Social Forces.”
9. For example, Bond, “Sub-imperialism”; Campling, “A Critical Political Economy,” 258; Gray and Murphy, “Introduction”; Inoue and Vaz, “Brazil as ‘Southern Donor’”; Jenkins, “Latin America and China”; Kragelund, “The Return of Non-DAC Donors,” 572; Nel and Taylor, “Bugger they Neighbour?”; and Quadir, “Rising Donors,” 335.
10. Oxford English Reference Dictionary, 1235.
11. Ibid.
12. Laclau, On Populist Reason, 12.
13. Laclau, On Populist Reason, 13.
14. Harvey, Justice.
15. For an overview, see Howarth, “Power.”
16. Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, 13.
17. The invention of the acronym BRICS (originally BRIC) is ascribed to an article published by Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill in 2001. See http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/archive/building-better.html.
18. Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, 30–39; and Angosto-Ferrández, “Ordering Discontent.”
19. Laclau, Populist Reason. I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for highlighting this aspect and for pointing to the role of (partially) ‘empty signifiers’ in discursive production.
20. Notable exceptions, however, do exist. For example, both Venezuelan and Saudi Arabian South–South cooperation are quite comprehensively discussed in Mawdsley, From Recipients to Donors and these also receive some attention in such edited volumes as Chaturvedi et al., Development Cooperation; and Dargin, The Rise of the Global South (one contribution of which is dedicated to the Gulf States). The bias appears more pronounced in leading (eg SSCI listed) academic journals.
21. Reality of Aid Management Committee, “South–South Cooperation,” Table 1.
22. ECOSOC, Background Study, Table 2.
23. ECOSOC, Background Study, Table 3.1.
24. ECOSOC, Background Study, 10.
25. de Sá e Silva, “South–South Cooperation.”
26. Jules and de Sá e Silva, “How Different Disciplines,” 58 (emphasis in the original).
27. de Sá e Silva, “South–South Cooperation.”
28. PNUD, Investigación sobre Ciencia.
29. De Vos et al., “Cuba’s International Cooperation”; and Hickling-Hudson et al., “The Cuban Revolution.”
30. Chávez Frías, La Propuesta; Chávez Frías, “Speech”; and República Bolivariana de Venezuela, Líneas Generales.
31. Muhr, “TINA go Home,” Table 1.
32. By reference to, inter alia, Chaturvedi, “Development Cooperation”; Golub, “From the New International Economic Order”; Higginbottom, “The Political Economy”; Lengyel and Malacalza, “What do we Talk?”; Mawdsley, From Recipients to Donors, 48–65; Nyerere, Unity, 4; United Nations, Declaration; and UNDP, Buenos Aires Plan of Action.
33. Giacchi, “La Política exterior,” 49–50.
34. Government of Venezuela/Government of Mali, “Comunicado Conjunto.”
35. Forite, “Entre rupturas”; Giacchi, “La Política exterior”; Inoue and Vaz, “Brazil as ‘Southern Donor’”; and Lucena Molero, “La agenda.”
36. Mawdsley, “The Changing Geographies,” 268.
37. For example, Brazilian Cooperation Agency, “CGPD”; and República Bolivariana de Venezuela, Líneas Generales.
38. Inoue and Vaz, “Brazil as ‘Southern Donor’”; and Mawdsley, “The Changing Geographies,” 263.
39. Domínguez, To Make a World; Erisman, “Between a Rock and a Hard Place.”
40. As discussed in Abdenur, “The Strategic Triad”; Angosto-Ferrández, “Ordering Discontent”; Benzi and Zapata, “Geopolítica”; Giacchi, “La Política exterior”; Inoue and Vaz, “Brazil as ‘Southern Donor’”; Kragelund, “‘Donors go Home’,” 152–153; Santos Pinho, “Cooperación Sur–Sur”; and Sawicka, “An Emerging Voice.”
41. Sawicka, “An Emerging Voice,” 19.
42. Dauvergne and Farias, “The Rise of Brazil”; Domínguez, To Make a World; Erisman, “Between a Rock and a Hard Place”; Forite, “Entre rupturas”; Inoue and Vaz, “Brazil as ‘Southern Donor’”; Lucena Molero, “La agenda”; Ojeda, “La cooperación Sur–Sur”; and Santos Pinho, “Cooperación Sur–Sur.”
43. Kragelund, “‘Donors go Home’.”
44. Broadhead and Morrison, “‘Peace based on Social Justice’,” 14.
45. Nel and Taylor, “Bugger they Neighbour?”
46. Girvan, “Is ALBA a New Model?,” 165.
47. Domínguez, To Make a World; Erisman, “Cuban Development Aid”; and Hickling-Hudson et al., “The Cuban Revolution.”
48. Inoue and Vaz, “Brazil as ‘Southern Donor’,” 531 (emphasis in the original).
49. For example, Quadir, “Rising Donors,” esp. 333. Mawdsley, “The Changing Geographies,” 266 raises this issue without, however, discussing its methodological implications.
50. For example, Jessop, “Nicos Poulantzas”; Jessop, State Power; and Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism.
51. ul Haq, “Beyond the Slogan,” 744.
52. Inoue and Vaz, “Brazil as ‘Southern Donor’,” 528.
53. For studies of such struggles by forces from both the ‘left’ and the ‘right’, see Angosto-Ferrández, Reframing Venezuela; Cannon, “As Clear as MUD”; Duffy, “(Re)conceptualising Democracy”; and Fuentes, “‘Bad Left Government’.”
54. See Woods, “Whose Aid?,” largely informed by Chinese official cooperation. Kragelund, “‘Donors go Home’,” provides similar arguments based on a Zambian case study.
55. Caporaso, “Dependence, Dependency, and Power,” 18.
56. Erisman, “Cuban Development Aid,” 143.
57. Golub, “From the New International Economic Order,” 1005–1006.
58. Massey, “Concepts of Space and Power.”
59. See Campling, “A Critical Political Economy,” 262–263; Golub, “From the New International Economic Order”; Quadir, “Rising Donors”; Sridharan, “G-15 and South–South Cooperation,” 370–171; and Toye, “Assessing the G-77.”
60. Nyerere, Unity, 4.
61. ul Haq, “Beyond the Slogan.”
62. Nyerere, Unity, 9–10; and ul Haq, “Beyond the Slogan.”
63. Aponte-García, El Nuevo Regionalismo; and Muhr, Counter-globalization and Socialism.
64. For instance, de Sá e Silva, “South–South Cooperation,” 39.
65. Muhr, “(Re)constructing Popular Power.” See also Angosto-Ferrández, Reframing Venezuela; and Duffy, “(Re)conceptualising Democracy.”
66. See, for example, the case studies in Muhr, Counter-globalization and Socialism; and Muhr, “South–South Cooperation.” For a chronological mapping of cooperation documents in the 2000s, see Muhr, “Venezuela,” Appendix 12.
67. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, South–South Educational Migration, 14; Muhr, Venezuela and the ALBA, 32–33; and Werner, “Contesting Power/Knowledge.”
68. Chisholm, “Introduction,” 3.
69. Castells, End of Millennium.
70. Angosto-Ferrández, “Ordering Discontent.”
71. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 12, 33; and Harvey, “Space as a Key Word.”
72. Massey, Space, Place, and Gender, 4.
73. Massey, “Concepts of Space and Power,” 19.
74. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 56.
75. Massey, Space, Place, and Gender, 3; and Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 86.
76. Lefebvre, The Production of Space.
77. Cf. Cox, “Social Forces.”
78. Gray and Murphy, “Introduction,” 184.
79. Muhr, Counter-globalization and Socialism.
80. Yaffe, “Venezuela.”
81. Muhr, “Counter-globalization and a Revolutionary Politics.”
82. Yaffe, “Venezuela.”
83. For useful discussions on these issues, see Fuentes, “The Morales Government”; Fuentes, “‘Bad Left Government’”; Lalander, “Rights of Nature”; Lalander, “The Ecuadorian Resource Dilemma”; and McCarthy, “Political Ecology/Economy.”
84. Cf. Quadir, “Rising Donors,” 332.
85. Quadir, “Rising Donors,” 333.
86. MERCOSUR, Declaración Conjunta.
87. Cf. Peet and Hartwick, Theories of Development, 1–4, 236.
88. I follow the Ecuadorean Government’s translation of el buen vivir as ‘the good living’ (Republic of Ecuador, Citation2010), rather than the perhaps more common translation as ‘living well’. In my understanding, the first, as a determiner phrase, connotes an absolute normative-philosophical and spiritual concept (a specific notion of what it means to live ‘the good life’), while the adjective ‘well’ is more relative in that it may suggest a satisfactory way of life, individually defined.
89. El buen vivir/vivir bien adopts a relational ontology in seeking to reconcile the social with the environmental (harmonious complementarity and reciprocity). Bell, Achieving Environmental Justice, 166. See also Surasky, “Presentación” for this philosophy and its centrality in the Ecuadorean government’s South–South cooperation policy.
90. See Muhr, Counter-globalization and Socialism.
91. Cf. Santos, in Dale and Robertson, “Interview.”
92. G77+China, Declaración de Santa Cruz.