Decolonising Southern knowledge(s) in Aidland

ABSTRACT

South–South Co-operation (SSC) has become increasingly important in international development policy and practice as both alternative and complementary to North–South Co-operation. Crafted through the acceptance, appropriation, and instrumentalisation of a colonialist idea of an underdeveloped world, SSC has been historically defined as an expression of Southern solidarity, through which developing countries collaborate to achieve progress, modernity, and development. It is often claimed to involve mutually beneficial, horizontal exchange of resources between developing countries – particularly knowledge – and to foster decolonising practices. In this paper, I argue that while one of the starting points for SSC was opposition to North–South knowledge hierarchies, its legitimisation has been constructed through postcolonial power inequalities and new forms of authoritative knowledge that reiterate old hierarchies. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic research conducted as part of my doctoral studies, I show how the building and international legitimatisation of Brazilian ‘best practices’ – in the gender equality field – has produced a political economy of opportunities and mobility for these professionals; their professional pathways to Mozambique are indicative of the processes of production of Southern expertise and new knowledge hierarchies. I also discuss Brazilian development workers’ discourses about the relevance of Brazilian experiences to Mozambique. Theoretically, the paper is inspired by critical development theory with a feminist and postcolonial approach. It uses postcolonial literature, usually applied to relations between colonisers and former colonies, to look at how colonial discourses and discourses about Africa, the ‘Third World’, and the West historically intervened in the encounters between people from former colonies and continue to be activated. Specifically, I analyse imaginaries of ‘Southern’ and ‘developing country’ identity embedded in expertise claims.

La Coopération Sud-Sud (CSS) a acquis une importance croissante dans les politiques et les pratiques du développement international comme élément alternatif ainsi que complémentaire à la Coopération Nord-Sud. Élaborée sur la base de l'acceptation, de l'appropriation et de l'instrumentalisation d'une idée colonialiste d'un monde sous-développé, la CSS a traditionnellement été définie comme une expression de la solidarité dans l'hémisphère Sud, dans le cadre de laquelle les pays en développement collaborent en vue de parvenir aux progrès, à la modernité et au développement. On prétend souvent qu'elle englobe un échange de ressources - en particulier de connaissances - horizontal et mutuellement avantageux entre pays en développement, et qu'elle favorise des pratiques décolonisantes. Dans le présent document, je soutiens que, si l'un des points de départ de la CSS était l'opposition aux hiérarchies de connaissances Nord-Sud, sa légitimation a toutefois été construite à travers les inégalités de pouvoir postcoloniales et de nouvelles formes de connaissances faisant autorité qui réitèrent les anciennes hiérarchies. Je m'appuie sur des recherches ethnographiques approfondies menées dans le cadre de mes études doctorales pour montrer comment la légitimation internationale des « meilleures pratiques » brésiliennes - dans le domaine de l'égalité des genres - a donné lieu à une économie politique d'opportunités et de mobilité pour ces professionnels. Les parcours professionnels qui les ont menés jusqu'au Mozambique illustrent les processus de production de savoir-faire « du Sud » et de création de nouvelles hiérarchies de connaissances. Je me penche par ailleurs sur les discours des travailleurs de développement brésiliens sur la pertinence des expériences brésiliennes pour le Mozambique. Sur le plan de la théorie, ce document s'inspire de la théorie critique du développement avec une approche féministe et postcoloniale. Il a recours à la littérature postcoloniale, généralement appliquée aux relations entre les colons et les anciennes colonies, pour se pencher sur la manière dont les discours coloniaux et les discours portant sur l'Afrique, le « Tiers-Monde » et l'Occident sont, au cours de l'histoire, intervenus dans les rencontres entre populations des anciennes colonies et continuent d'être activés. Plus précisément, j'analyse des imaginaires de l'identité « du Sud » et « des pays en développement » ancrés dans des revendications de savoir-faire.

La cooperación Sur-Sur (SSC) ha cobrado cada vez más importancia en la política y la práctica del desarrollo internacional como alternativa y complemento a la cooperación Norte-Sur. Conformada a partir de la aceptación, la apropiación e instrumentalización de la idea colonialista de la existencia de un mundo subdesarrollado, la SSC se ha definido históricamente como una expresión de la solidaridad del Sur, a través de la cual los países en desarrollo colaboran para alcanzar el progreso, la modernidad y el desarrollo. A menudo se afirma que implica un intercambio horizontal y mutuamente beneficioso de recursos -especialmente de conocimientos- entre los países en desarrollo, además de fomentar prácticas descolonizadoras. En este artículo sostengo que, si bien uno de los puntos de partida de la SSC fue la oposición a las jerarquías de conocimiento Norte-Sur, su legitimación se ha construido con base en desigualdades de poder poscoloniales y nuevas formas de conocimiento autoritario que reactualizan viejas jerarquías. Partiendo de una profunda investigación etnográfica realizada en el marco de mis estudios de doctorado, muestro cómo la construcción y la legitimación internacional de las “mejores prácticas” brasileñas -en el ámbito de la igualdad de género- ha producido una economía política de oportunidades y movilidad para estos profesionales; sus trayectorias profesionales hacia Mozambique son indicativas de procesos de producción de conocimientos especializados desde el Sur, así como de nuevas jerarquías de conocimientos. Aunado a ello, analizo los discursos de los cooperantes brasileños en torno a la relevancia que las experiencias de este país tienen para Mozambique. Desde el punto de vista teórico, este documento se inspira en la teoría crítica del desarrollo con un enfoque feminista y poscolonial. Utiliza la literatura poscolonial, normalmente aplicada a las relaciones entre colonizadores y antiguas colonias, para examinar la forma en que los discursos coloniales y los discursos sobre África, el “Tercer Mundo” y Occidente no sólo intervinieron históricamente en los encuentros entre personas de antiguas colonias, sino que, además, éstos siguen activándose. En concreto, analizo los imaginarios relativos a la identidad de los “países del Sur” y los “países en desarrollo” incrustados en las reivindicaciones de la experiencia.

KEYWORDS:

• South–South relations
• development workers
• identity
• knowledge hierarchies
• authoritative knowledge

Third World solidarity¹ and South–South Co-operation

The idea of overcoming underdevelopment is one of the proclaimed cornerstones of both North–South Co-operation (NSC) and South–South Co-operation (SSC). According to Escobar (1995, 3), the reference to the continents of Africa, Asia, and South America as underdeveloped made in Truman’s inaugural speech in 1949 led to the design of initiatives to promote development in those regions and to countries in those regions to start seeing themselves as underdeveloped. This points to ‘how Northern ideas of development have shaped imaginations of possible futures for the South’ (Williams, Meth, and Willis 2014) and to the processes through which development ‘achieved a status of a certainty in the social imaginary’ (Escobar 1995, xvii) and became a ‘global faith’ (Rist 2008). Patil (2008, 167) notes that this entailed an ‘acceptance of colonialist definitions of progress, modernity and development’ by developing countries’ leaders as well as of the ‘designation of their peoples/states as somehow “behind” on economic, scientific and technical, social and other fronts’.

Another key element of SSC discourses is the distinction made in relation to NSC, while at the same time underlining the critical role played by Northern countries in technical co-operation, through bilateral as well as triangular and trilateral co-operation (McEwan and Mawdsley 2012; Rhee 2011). While praising SSC, developing countries and the United Nations (UN) have stressed that it ‘is not a substitute for, but rather a complement to, North–South cooperation’ (United Nations General Assembly 2010, 3).

Crafted through the acceptance, appropriation, and instrumentalisation of a colonialist idea of an underdeveloped world, SSC² has been historically defined as an expression of Southern solidarity, through which developing countries collaborate to achieve progress, modernity, and development (Patil 2008). Some developing countries have strategically adopted the idea of an underdeveloped world to generate a ‘common’ identity, build unity, and mobilise solidarity (Amanor 2013). Solidarity emerges as a strategy both to overcome underdevelopment as well as to oppose Western hegemony and decolonise development co-operation. The idea of ‘Third World Solidarity’ has become a broad framework for institutional collaboration. Lorenzana maintains that solidarity is ‘the moral framework of South–South relations’ (2015, 1). The notion of ‘Third World Solidarity’ has been diffused to state and non-state actors, including women’s groups, who have imagined the Third World as a political space for solidarity (Prashad 2007).

Calls for solidarity between ‘Third World’ countries and their attempts to present a united front in global governance spaces often downplayed differences by focusing on commonalities between developing countries. Yet, unequal levels of development constitute the backdrop for technical co-operation between differently positioned developing countries. Relatedly, technical co-operation is framed as a unidirectional expression of solidarity from better off to the poorest developing countries. For example, the review of the implementation of the Buenos Aires Plan of Action for Promoting and Implementing Technical Co-operation Among Developing Countries (BAPA)³ in 2009 identified 25 countries in every region considered critical in technical co-operation among developing countries, all of which are considered middle-income or close to achieving this status.

Brazil is amongst the leading pivotal countries, including China and Cuba. According to a report to the UN Secretary General, ‘Promotion of South–South Cooperation for Development: A Thirty Year Perspective’, ‘the leading pivotal countries exemplify how years of indigenous effort to build technical competence develop capacity to provide assistance, technology transfer, policy exchanges and funding’ (United Nations General Assembly 2009, 9). The notion of crucial countries captures how unequal power and difference played out as differentiation between developing countries and deepened and reinforced knowledge hierarchies among them. In fact, the geopolitics of legitimisation of South–South knowledge carries within itself the constitution of new knowledge hierarchies.

SSC emerged as both complementary and alternative to NSC. Technical co-operation is a central element of SSC – often funded by Northern countries, through bilateral, triangular, and trilateral co-operation (McEwan and Mawdsley 2012; Rhee 2011). It purports to embrace Southern knowledges and is based on the principle that instead of making their own mistakes, countries should ‘learn from the experience of others in a similar situation (South Commission 1990, v). This has entailed building ‘Southern’ expertise to deliver technical co-operation – including ‘overcoming attitudinal barriers’ and ‘increasing developing countries’ confidence in each other’s technical capacities (UN 1978, 7).

In this paper, I draw on critiques of the reproduction of systems of expertise (Crewe and Harrison 1998) to argue that while one of the starting points for SSC was opposition to North–South knowledge hierarchies, its legitimisation has been constructed through new forms of authoritative knowledge that reiterate old hierarchies. I do so by taking relations between Brazil and Mozambique, two former Portuguese colonies and both Portuguese-speaking countries, as a case in point; the analysis moves between the international, national, institutional, and individual levels. Through the professional pathways of Brazilian development workers, I show how the building and international legitimatisation of Brazilian experiences in the gender equality field as ‘best practices’ has produced a political economy of opportunities and mobility for the professionals involved in this area. This was associated with shifts in Brazilian foreign policy towards Portuguese-speaking African countries, and the demand for Brazilian experiences in addressing gender-based violence and promotion of sexual and reproductive health and rights, from national and international organisations in Mozambique.

Brazilian development workers’ professional pathways to Mozambique are a central element of this paper’s argument as they are indicative of the processes of production of South–South expertise and new knowledge hierarchies that I am critiquing. I conclude with an analysis of Brazilian research participants’ positioning vis-à-vis knowledge hierarchies by discussing their views on the relevance of Brazilian experiences to Mozambique, the country’s need for foreign technical co-operation, and gender training practices. I argue that Brazilian development workers are complicit with and benefit from the knowledge hierarchies and related opportunities created by the SSC regime and beyond, since this regime is an integral part of the aid industry and often interactions between Mozambican and Brazilian development workers and activists happen through North–South aid projects.

Analytical framework

Analytically, the paper uses postcolonial literature, usually applied to relations between colonisers and former colonies, to look at how colonial discourses about Africa, the ‘Third World’/global South, and the West historically intervened in the encounters between people from former colonies and continue to be activated. I argue that postcolonialism’s focus on criticising ‘the material and discursive legacies of colonialism that are still apparent in the world today and still shape geopolitical and economic relations between the global north and south’ (Radcliffe 1999, 84) has blinded it to South–South relations; when discussed there seems to be an assumption that South–South relations can foster decolonising practices (Crossley 2000; Hickling-Hudson 2004) and a tendency to neglect the different political, cultural, and economic realities of those countries and the fact that postcolonialism has ‘unevenly developed globally’ (McClintock 1992, 87). Thus, the ‘postcolonial condition’ will inevitably vary from country to country (McEwan 2009), and these variations matter for South–South relations in ‘Aidland’ (Apthorpe 2005).

I use the term Aidland to refer to the representations, relations, and knowledges promoted within the world of aid and the identities and subjectivities of development professionals and experts. The call for decolonising Southern knowledges in ‘Aidland’ seeks to shed light on the complex involvement, motivations, and positioning of Southern actors in what I consider one of the several aidlands within Aidland. As Apthorpe (2005, 204) puts it, Aidland ‘is a composite of somewhat different Aidlands that, at times, can differ considerably from one another, sometimes according to the sector and type of aid they ply, sometimes because of their different resources and histories’. Thus, I locate Southern development actors, including myself, as inhabitants of Aidland.

It was through my personal and professional interactions as a Mozambican development worker in the fields of HIV/AIDS and gender equality in Mozambique (between 2004 and 2010) that I came to perceive the influence of Brazilian experiences in Mozambique. Several people I worked with had travelled to Brazil as part of ‘exchange visits’ or their organisations had hired Brazilian ‘experts’ on short-term and long-term assignments. I have been directly involved in some of these exchanges. I too am implicated in what I call Southern interactions as a colleague and friend of some of the research participants. Also relevant was my own situatedness as a Mozambican, researching Brazilians in Mozambique, from a British university, with English and German supervisors. This social location marks me simultaneously as both ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ researcher to the ‘hierarchies of Global Northern academies and socio-economic spaces’ and to the research process. I am aware of the associated epistemological, moral, and ethical challenges (Mosse 2011; Sultana 2007).

Knowledge hierarchies, authoritative knowledge, and expertise

There is extensive literature critiquing the (re)production of systems of expertise and forms of authority within the development industry (Crewe and Harrison 1998; Kothari 2005). This literature sheds light on the links between the production, legitimisation, and circulation of development knowledges and power, in that it calls for a reading of development as a discourse of knowledge and power and for more attention to the ways in which development operates as a knowledge industry. Through the analytical lens of authoritative knowledge and expertise, I identify three interrelated yet distinct sources of claims of authoritative knowledge within the SSC regime, namely a ‘Southern identity’, ‘first-hand experience’ of poverty and underdevelopment, and ‘best practice’.

Authoritative knowledge and expertise

Jordan’s (1997) analysis of the processes through which particular knowledges gain legitimacy points to the social nature of knowledge legitimation processes and the influence of power and authority in the definition of legitimate knowledges. According to Jordan (1997, 56), some knowledge systems are legitimated ‘either because they explain the state of the world better for the purpose at hand (efficacy) or because they are associated with a stronger power base (structural superiority), and usually both’. However, this in no way refers to the ‘correctness of that knowledge’ as ‘the power of authoritative knowledge is not that it is correct but that it counts’ (Jordan 1997, 58, italics in the original). Different knowledges are accorded different degrees of authority, as shown in Nieusma’s (2007, 32) definition of knowledge hierarchies as ‘a hierarchically ordered authority structure of diverse knowledge domains’; central to this conceptualisation of knowledge hierarchies is the idea of expertise as specialised knowledge and a social activity that combines authority and knowledge.

Authoritative knowledge and expertise often draw on people’s origin and less on their knowledge itself. Crewe and Harrison (1998, 92) assert that what counts is often ‘based on ideas about people rather than on objective differences in knowledge and expertise’ reflected in the ‘prior definition of certain forms of knowledge as “expertise” according to who has the knowledge, rather than because of the nature of what is known’. They also note that the value of technical knowledge is predetermined by the identity of the ‘bearer’ as well as of those who assess the value of a certain development technology (Crewe and Harrison 1998).

Kothari (2005) discusses the relation between the reproduction of systems of expertise and authority and the production of the development expert. According to her, the professional development expert is identified as such ‘not solely because of the extent and form of their knowledge but often because of who they are and where they come from’ (Kothari 2005, 426). Through this process certain interventions are legitimised and authorised, particular technical skills are valued, and classifications of difference are reinforced.

‘Southern identity’ and first-hand experience of underdevelopment

Discourses about South–South relations assert a purported ‘Southern identity’ related to the existence of poverty and inequality in Southern countries. The ‘Southern identity’ can be defined as exposure to ‘real’ poverty and/or first-hand experience of underdevelopment which supposedly generates experiential knowledge, equips Southern development workers to better understand the realities of people living in poverty, and facilitates interactions. This experiential knowledge does not necessarily come from living in poverty, but from ‘seeing people dealing with poverty’, yet positions Southern countries to better understand the problems faced by poor people than Northern countries. Development workers from the North are usually perceived as coming from contexts in which they are surrounded by wealth and not poverty (as is the case with the middle-class Brazilian development workers). These narratives underline differences between people living in poverty in the south of Europe and those from countries at the Southern end of global development rankings and were reproduced by the participants in this research.

Peters’ point that the ‘type of international knowledge and experience circulated in development organisations is overwhelmingly of developing, not developed, contexts’ (2011, 33, italics in the original) is relevant as the SSC regime distinguishes mobility and circulation in ‘subaltern portions of the world’ (2011, 20) from ‘being’ from a developing context, regardless of the class, race, and gender privileges one may enjoy. Thus, it brings a somewhat different knowledge regime, even though it is still based on development workers’ country of origin and nationality.

The SSC knowledge industry makes claims of authoritative knowledge in which ‘first-hand experience’ of poverty and underdevelopment have more centrality than mobility, even though the circulation of experiences framed as best practices is also important for its legitimisation. The view, among my research participants, that ‘it is not the same to be a poor person in the North and to be a poor person in the South’ suggests that not every ‘first-hand experience’ of poverty counts. This assertion is significant in the legitimation of SSC and reflects imaginaries of what the South is, which may clash with academic definitions of the ‘global South’ that point out the existence of pockets of poverty around the world (Trefzer et al. 2014). Moreover, identity continues to matter, yet here it is about a purported ‘Southern’ or ‘developing country’ identity, that adds to the ‘first-hand experience of poverty’, the experience of colonialism, and ‘Western domination’.

Best practice reasoning

Another source of authoritative knowledge in SSC is found in ‘best practice’ reasoning. Having experiences that have been classified as best practices ascribes expertise and confers authoritative knowledge to the individuals, institutions, and countries that were involved in those processes, allowing them to gain ascendancy and legitimacy over other developing countries. An analysis of best practice reasoning shows how the demand for technical co-operation is created. Further, the transfer of best practices reflects the links between knowledge, power, and expertise. Morais (2005) illustrates how the best practice image of a Brazilian literacy programme (AlfaSol) was built – from the process of selection to its promotion – and the important role played by individual actors and policy networks in building the image of success.

Best practice reasoning takes place at local and global levels and includes the creation of thematic technical co-operation agencies in particular countries. Besides the lobbying of the Brazilian government in global governance spaces, the activities of sector-specific bureaucrats and of the cooperantes themselves, international development organisations in Brazil (including but not exclusively the UN) as well as Northern and Southern development workers who have worked in Brazil have also played a critical role. Best practice reasoning is intimately linked to the ‘political economy of the commercialisation of knowledge’ (Weiler 2006, 68), and some of its effects include the commoditisation of professionals’ histories and experiences (Peters 2013) and the transformation of international solidarity into a professionalised commodity for export (Zeuske in Hatzky 2015). As Morais put it:

the existence of national experiences qualified as best practices provides the ‘raw material’ for the establishment of co-operation projects with other countries of the South. On the other hand, SSC initiatives can serve as a ‘testing field’ for the design of new or ‘better’ best practices. (Morais 2005, 8)

The legitimation of best practices depends on the existence of external demand, which often needs to be generated, to reinforce the claim that SSC is demand-driven. Cesarino asserts the centrality of demonstration ‘as display of technological achievements’ in the practices of Brazilian SSC frontliners in agriculture:

For these relations [SSC] to multiply and produce concrete effects on the African landscape  …  Brazilians came to regard African partners themselves less as recipients of cooperation than as vital and necessary mediators for its initiation and reproduction. Much of the former’s efforts during the trainings were towards enticing the latter’s interest in the Brazilian experience, and their participation in the comparative effort being proposed. (Cesarino 2013, 95)

Demonstration, I would argue, has an instrumental marketing purpose, i.e. ensuring the buy-in of African counterparts and the continuation of SSC with Brazil. Demonstration often assumes the form of study visits and is often framed as ‘exchange of experiences’ by its organisers, with little space for actual mutual learning. Crewe and Harrison (1998, 92) point out that ‘processes [of definition of certain forms of knowledge as expertise] are by no means mechanical imposition from the outside. They involve negotiation of meanings’. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss whether these knowledge hierarchies were accepted, contested, or re-fashioned by Mozambicans, it is noteworthy that they have sought Brazilian expertise, actively contributing to their prominence in the Mozambican aid landscape.

In the next section, I turn to the production of Southern expertise in Aidland by examining links between Brazilian ‘best practices’ in the field of gender equality, the professional trajectories and motivations of selected individuals, and the circulation of feminist methodologies, such as feminist popular education from Brazil to Mozambique.

‘Brazilian’ gender expertise

Brazil was the first country in South America to establish gender institutional mechanisms, well before the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action of 1995,⁴ resulting from the successful lobbying and advocacy by sectors of the women’s movement. These mechanisms include women’s police stations, councils on the status of women within local government structures, a national council on women’s rights within the Ministry of Justice, and a National Secretariat for Policies for Women (Alvarez 1999). Brazil has also introduced essential legal and policy changes, such as the approval of Law Maria da Penha in 2006, which allowed an aggressor to be arrested preventively and provided for gender-based crimes against women to be judged in special courts, and the basic social protection to domestic workers in 2013 (Gonçalves 2008).

There is little literature on the transfer of gender policies from Brazil to other developing countries; a reflection of the level of attention paid to the extent to which the design and delivery of Brazilian SSC address gender equality and women’s rights. The degree of integration of gender equality concerns in technical co-operation initiatives depends more on how gender sensitive the domestic policies of the sectors involved are than on the Agência Brasileira de Cooperação (ABC),⁵ Brazilian Cooperation Agency’s initiative – despite its co-ordinating role (Taela 2011).

Yet, Brazilian legal innovations and social technologies, such as work with boys and men to promote gender equality and health, experiences in the area of family farming, economic empowerment and the use of feminist popular education, have attracted substantial international attention⁶ and have been the focus of diverse forms of SSC with Mozambican institutions (Taela 2011). An example is a two-year, triangular co-operation project entitled ‘Brazil & Africa: fighting Poverty and Empowering Women via South–South Cooperation’, financed by the then UK Department for International Development (DFID) and led by the UN in partnership with the Brazilian government. The project focused, amongst other things, on improving the ability of the Mozambican government to promote women’s empowerment inspired by relevant Brazilian experiences. It included a strong component of documentation and evaluation of Brazilian legislation, policies, programmes, and institutions from the past 20 years to be disseminated as best practices for adaptation through SSC. UN agencies identified the experiences to be evaluated, in partnership with the Brazilian Secretariat for Policies for Women, in light of the Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa (CPLP), Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries’ Action Plan for Promotion of Gender Equality and Equity 2012–2016. This project’s emphasis on taking stock of Brazilian experiences constitutes part of the process of building best practices; the project document places great emphasis on building Brazilian expertise on the provision of technical co-operation in this area and strengthening the UN’s role as an intermediary.

Professional trajectories

The promotion of SSC to disseminate Brazilian social technologies in the area of gender equality and women’s rights has paved the way for the international expansion of Brazilian gender expertise and training and mobility of the actors involved. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Brazilian gender professionals working for the UN, national and international NGOs, and transnational feminist movements, in this article I reflect on the professional trajectories of two of these professionals, Susana and Teresa.⁷ Neither has ever lived in Mozambique; one had a permanent engagement with the country and the other visited sporadically. The two women were invited and hired by Mulher & Feminista,⁸ a Mozambican feminist NGO and network, but in Brazil, Susana moved more in NGO spaces and Teresa in social movement spaces. Their professional trajectories offer a picture of feminist knowledge circulation from Brazil to Mozambique through non-state actors and of Mozambicans’ role in legitimising their expertise.

Susana

Susana is a mixed-race woman in her early fifties with a background in social communication, social work, and popular education. In 1996, she joined a well-known Brazilian feminist NGO that was actively involved in pursuing and disseminating the ‘UN agenda’ on gender equality and women’s rights in Brazil and stayed there for 11 years. Her work focused on women’s health, HIV, and education, and she was actively involved in shaping the Brazilian National AIDS response. In the 1990s, Susana participated in a training of trainers in a gender and development course in the Netherlands, for women from Portuguese-speaking countries, where she first met Mozambican women. In 2008 she started travelling regularly to South Africa for personal reasons, and in 2011, she established residence there. Susana’s first trip to Mozambique was in mid-2008 to accompany her partner. During the trip, she visited Natália (a Brazilian friend who had already been doing HIV and gender work there for a few years) and explored work opportunities. Some of Susana’s friends in Brazil did AIDS work in Mozambique, and she wanted to do the same. She met a few Brazilian AIDS professionals and looked for a Mozambican woman who worked for Mulher & Feminista, whom she had met in the Netherlands during a gender and development training a few years earlier, but could not find her. Meanwhile, her partner met other Mozambican feminists in the meeting she was attending and gave Susana the business card of one of them, who happened to be very well-connected within the Mozambican feminist scene. She managed to have a meeting with this woman and to distribute her CV to various organisations. The first professional opportunity in Mozambique arose a year later when Natália (her Brazilian friend) was contacted by Mulher & Feminista’s executive director to facilitate a popular education process and develop the network’s strategic plan. Natália recommended Susana because Natália was unable to do the work due to other commitments. Susana’s name was accepted because two other people already knew that ‘she was a feminist and there was the possibility of doing something different’, inspired by the experience of the NGO she worked for in Brazil. The assignment with Mulher & Feminista opened other doors in national and international (non-)governmental organisations. Susana combines academic research in Brazil, Mozambique, and South Africa with consultancies in Mozambique; 90 per cent of her consulting work was in Mozambique because of the language similarity and focused on feminist popular education.

Teresa

Teresa is a mixed-race woman in her early fifties. She is an agronomist with postgraduate studies on Latin American Integration. She has lived in São Paulo since she was a teenager. She worked for an NGO and for the municipality of São Paulo. Teresa has done voluntary work with the Brazilian Landless Rural Workers’ Movement and has been actively involved in activism around agrarian reform in Brazil. She is also a member of the Workers’ Party and has links with Central Única dos Trabalhadores (Workers Unified Central). In 1993, Teresa joined Todas Feministas,⁹ a Brazilian NGO, as a programme co-ordinator where she was involved in popular education, feminist economics, agroecology, and solidarity economy, and has published several articles on these themes. She has been involved with Sororidade,¹⁰ a transnational feminist movement since 1998, and was actively involved in the construction of the movement in Brazil. In 2000, Teresa became a member of Sororidade’s international committee, and from 2006 to 2013, she co-ordinated Sororidade’s International Secretariat, since it moved from North America to Brazil. In this role, she has travelled extensively, working with women’s movements from around the world. Teresa’s first trip to Mozambique was in mid-2010 to participate in a meeting co-organised by three transnational movements with activities in Mozambique and Brazil. The second was in 2012, when Sororidade’s international committee met in Maputo. The last trip was in early 2013, to deliver the feminist training organised by Sororidade’s Mozambican members. Teresa co-ordinated rural extension and technical assistance activities at Todas Feministas and provided independent consulting services to the Latin American regional office of a UN agency.

These two women were situated within different camps of the Brazilian feminist movement, vis-à-vis their engagements with the UN. Susana has been socialised within UN processes, actively involved in HIV and gender equality policy advocacy, and associated with different transnational feminist networks. In contrast, Teresa has been involved in grassroots mobilisation and contentious politics that have distanced themselves from UN global governance spaces, in spite of Teresa herself consulting for the regional office of a UN agency. Alvarez calls the camp where Susana was situated in Brazil as the ‘orphans of the UN’ and the one where Teresa was located as the ‘stepdaughters of neo-liberalism’. However, Alvarez warns against dichotomising these groups as they ‘sometimes represent two facets of the same activist, organisation or network, two sides of the same feminist coin’ (Alvarez 2009, 180).

In terms of similarities besides having collaborated with Mulher & Feminista, they were both mixed race and alluded to Brazil and Mozambique’s shared colonial history and the transatlantic slave trade from Mozambique to Brazil. This is relevant because the transatlantic slave trade has served as a symbolic geographical and historical bridge in encounters between Brazilians and Mozambicans often deployed to assert their ‘Southern identity’. They also have lived and worked in Brazil for most of their careers, been active within civil society, are feminist popular educators, have been involved in the provision of technical assistance to organisations in Brazil, and both have authored several articles. Susana and Teresa’s paths have crossed on various occasions; one of the first courses Susana took on feminist popular education was organised by Todas Feministas. Moreover, the NGO Susana worked for and Todas Feministas are both members of a Brazilian network formed in 2001 to monitor and influence Brazil’s foreign policies.

Motivations

In this section, I discuss what motivated Susana and Teresa to work in Mozambique and with Mozambican organisations. Their motivations provide glimpses of their politics and positionality and are relevant because South–South relations are often framed as motivated by political reasons and international solidarity and devoid of self-interest.

Susana makes at least six trips a year to Mozambique. Mozambique seemed the obvious professional option for her because she could hardly speak English when she first arrived in South Africa, and she had more information about Brazilian colleagues working in Mozambique than in South Africa. Susana underlined that although she went to Mozambique ‘looking for employment and not for a revolution’, she looked for work opportunities among organisations she identified with, at least in principle, specifically feminist NGOs. ‘I did not go to the private sector or to work for the government. I wanted to work with NGOs because I have worked with them for more than 25 years in Brazil and feel comfortable working in this sector, despite its contradictions’. Moreover, Susana’s statement that she went to Mozambique ‘looking for employment, not a revolution’ shows self-interest; specifically, the need to earn a living was her main concern, and Mozambique was the easiest option available. Susana became involved in South–South relations through her individual efforts and explored the opportunities opened by Brazil’s prominent role in SSC, by being involved in comparative research between Mozambican, South African, and Brazilian universities.

Teresa’s interactions with Mozambique took place through what some authors define as ‘activist co-operation’, i.e. development co-operation practices framed by solidarity which are not necessarily linked to the state and seek to strengthen an actor with whom there is some sort of cultural and political affinity and geographic proximity, through reciprocity and political solidarity (Bringel and Cairo 2010; Bringel, Landaluce, and Barrera 2008). Teresa’s first two trips to Mozambique were part of her role within Sororidade’s international secretariat, which moved from Brazil to Mozambique. The trip was to provide a two-week ‘feminist political training’, and Teresa played a key role in making the third trip happen because she was interested in supporting Mozambique in its role within Sororidade. Arguably, she saw in this trip and the training as an opportunity to expand their provision of feminist popular education beyond Brazil and Latin America. While Teresa was critical of the focus on gender mainstreaming in the development industry, this trend has enabled them to sell their gender expertise through the provision of gender training.

Although Teresa was interested in continuing collaboration with Mozambican feminists, she did not want to be associated with forms of official Brazilian SSC because, according to her, development co-operation has been a vehicle for the promotion of capitalist values and of the controversial interventions of the Brazilian government in Mozambique.¹¹ Teresa had been involved in contestation of initiatives promoted by the Brazilian government and corporations in Mozambique. This prevented her and Todas Feministas from seeking funding from ABC to strengthen their international articulation. I continue this discussion about Brazilian development workers’ positioning concerning development co-operation (including SSC) in the next section, by shifting the focus to knowledge practices and the relevance of Brazilian experiences, in order to shed light on knowledge hierarchies.

Brazilian development workers and knowledge hierarchies

I think of myself here, South–South and all of us with our South–North knowledges. This article made me think about decolonising gender methods in Mozambique. Are we simply importing [Western methods/knowledges], or are we also doing something different? Something tells me that there is something different in what we are trying to do, when we adapt and create through listening to the [local] reality. Surely [name of women’s empowerment programme funded by a European bilateral agency] is a colonising practice. I’m sorry! In that sense, I am embarrassed to be on that boat, but that is valid for 100 per cent of [development] co-operation. Yet, I also think that [name of North American international NGO] made a difference and that [name of Mozambican female staff of the North American international NGO] also managed to find an interesting experimental space. A lot to think about! (Personal conversation with Susana, 10 July 2016)

Knowledge production and circulation are central elements of Aidland (Mosse 2013). The quote above is from a personal conversation with Susana inspired by an article¹² on whether global academic collaboration represents a new form of colonisation of African universities. This quote speaks to the focus of this section, i.e. the reflections of Brazilian development workers about their knowledge practices, specifically whether they problematise, instrumentalise, or resist knowledge hierarchies within the development industry.

While reading the article, Susan identified convergences between higher education collaboration and development co-operation, which made her reflect on her own professional practices. Susana’s message touches upon the issue of travelling gender methodologies and models within Aidland. She was concerned with our knowledge production practices, the types of knowledge we promote, and the extent to which they are infused with ‘Northern’ knowledges. This is important, because the literature on South–South relations does not question the origin of the knowledges that are promoted and legitimated through SSC. Susana makes reference to the work we have done together, questioning to what extent the gender methods used are (de)colonising and acknowledges her and my own complicity in what she calls a ‘colonising collaboration’ which, in her view, applies to all development co-operation (NSC and SSC), suggesting the need for national and international gender consultants reflecting on their professional practices. She also talks about ‘experimental spaces’ that allow for the decolonisation of gender methods. Susana portrayed herself as a facilitator of dialogue and identification of needs, who constantly adapted her work based on knowledge of the local reality and did not take sides or impose her views. This last point relates directly to the role of postcolonial analysis in ‘the identification of different resistances and tensions in the practice of gender training and gender expertise’ (Prügl 2016, 38).

The issue of whether different practices and ways of working can be and are being fostered through official or unofficial SSC concerned other Brazilian research participants working in the gender equality field as they sought to identify what Susana called ‘experimental spaces’ for decolonial knowledge production. Many were self-critical and when talking about Mozambique’s need for foreign technical co-operation, highlighted that it is good to learn from other countries’ experiences as long as interactions between Mozambicans and foreign technical advisers do not take place within a ‘colonial and capitalist mind frame’, as suggested by Susana’s text message. Susana talked about the ‘politics of feminist knowledge transfer’ (Bustelo, Ferguson, and Forest 2016) and sought to identify experimental spaces where new decolonial methodologies could emerge, i.e. methodologies that engaged meaningfully with the knowledges, experiences, and languages of the women they worked with without imposing worldviews. Susana and Teresa believed that respecting Mozambique’s own agendas and listening to the local reality (also evident in the introductory quote from Susana) indicated a less imperialist attitude. Yet, structural global knowledge hierarchies positioned them as experts vis-à-vis their local counterparts, leading to the adoption of a paternalist attitude, as evidenced in Teresa’s narrative about the need for training Mozambican feminists on how to run Sororidade’s international secretariat, having as a reference Brazilian experiences and best practices.

Although in Brazil they belonged to different camps, Teresa circulating in more activist spaces and Susana doing more conventional NGO work, in Mozambique they worked with the same organisations and actors, such as Mulher & Feminista, a Mozambican feminist network, comprised mainly of formal and registered civil society organisations, and adopted feminist popular education as the main knowledge transfer tool.¹³ Both women highlighted the need for building things together with their Mozambican companheiras (companions, comrades). They were aware of the contradictory subject positions that Aidland South–South relations discourses provided them. In their discourses, Teresa and Susana emerged as committed activist technical advisors, often based on a pre-existing idea of themselves, as they underlined their activist identities and the politicised nature of their work in Brazil – Teresa engaged in a combination of contestation and action, while Susana sought to contribute to building feminist consciousness. They denounced the seductive power and promises of development discourses, exposing their limitations. They were also critical of how feminist ideas have been de-politicised and of the distance between gender professionals and women’s movements.

Conclusion

This paper discussed the production of new knowledge hierarchies in the development industry through South–South relations and the knowledge practices of Southern development workers and activists, also ‘inhabitants of Aidland’ (Fechter and Hindman 2011) but often forgotten in the literature about the aid industry. The analysis of the profiles, life paths, and identities of Brazilian development workers and activists complicates conceptualisations of privilege and expertise in Aidland centred on the ‘West versus the rest’ dichotomy. It invites postcolonial theorising to broaden its critique of international development by investigating the relationships between former colonies.

This paper sought to shed light on the institutions and systems that support the creation of knowledge hierarchies between developing countries by connecting the professional trajectories of individual Brazilian development workers with broader historical and geopolitical dynamics. While the SSC regime originated from dissatisfaction with current development co-operation models, it embraced the idea of development and adopted global development rankings, which served as a basis for the creation of new claims of authoritative knowledge and expertise and the production of a political economy of opportunities and mobility of Brazilian professionals and activists from different fields.

Brazilians working on gender equality and women’s rights benefited from the new knowledge hierarchies generated by the SSC regime. While their motivations to work in/with Mozambique were marked by contradictions, many were self-critical about their privileged position and association with what they view as colonial and patriarchal practices that hamper gender transformation and, more broadly, social change. Their knowledge production practices suggest that decolonising Southern knowledges in Aidland requires vigilance about the pedagogical and political dimensions of knowledge production practices to avoid the presumption of appropriateness and imposition of worldviews, as well as reflexivity about sameness and difference on the part of those directly involved in or promoting SSC. As Fechter and Hindman (2011, 16) rightly point out, hiring members of a different demographic group does not ‘bring about the end of hierarchy within development’. Southern development workers can also adopt a paternalist and colonial attitude, as evidenced in the need for training Mozambican feminists on how to run Sororidade’s international secretariat, having as a reference Brazilian experiences and best practices and in Susana’s reflection. The involvement of Southern actors in the aid industry beyond the position of aid recipients requires thinking laterally and multi-dimensionally about other kinds of difference, associated othering practices, and the effects of structural inequalities in the quest for social transformation.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Anne-Marie Fechter and Alex Shankland for their reliable and engaged support during my doctoral studies. I am grateful to Julia Schöneberg and Anandita Ghosh for their valuable comments on this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a doctoral scholarship from the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission.

Notes on contributors

Katia Taela

Katia Taela is a Mozambican feminist anthropologist with over 18 years of experience working as an independent researcher and consultant on themes related to gender equality and women’s rights, social inclusion, governance and accountability, and South–South relations. She holds a Masters in Gender and Development and a PhD in Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, UK. She is an Honorary Associate with the Institute of Development Studies and an Associate with Gender@Work, an international feminist knowledge network. Postal address: Avenida Vladimir Lenine, 2404, PH5, 2.4, Maputo-Mozambique. Email: [email protected]

Notes

1 It is not the purpose of this paper to discuss the controversies around concepts and terms of ‘Third World’, ‘developing countries’, or ‘global South’ in depth. There is extensive postcolonial literature problematising the first two terms because of their Eurocentrism, i.e. being based on a notion of development rooted in socioeconomic changes that happened in Western countries. My focus is rather on how these terms have been used in SSC institutional discourses and on the meanings attributed to them by research participants. For example, ‘Third World’ is a debatable term, initially used to characterise countries who purportedly did not align with either side of the Cold War, i.e. the US and the former Soviet Union, but was rapidly associated with poorer nations of the world. This term has been instrumentalised by poorer nations of the world to forge solidarity and is essential in shaping thinking around SSC (Grovogui 2011; Levander and Mignolo 2011). As Prashad (2007, 1) notes, ‘the Third World was not a place; it was a project’ associated with a political position against colonialism and imperialism. The term ‘global South’ has also been appropriated and resignified. According to Levander and Mignolo (2011, 10), ‘the global south is taking the place of the Third World and the implied global north the place of the first world’. Caison and Vorman (2014, 68) underline the space-based and temporal dimension of the North–South divide, evidenced in the linking of the ‘global South with theories of underdevelopment in economic and/or social terms and the time-lag of modernity in humanistic inquiry’. This divide also reflects a homogenising understanding of reality that obscures differences between ‘developing countries’ as well as similarities between ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ countries, as has been pointed out by various scholars and activists (Mohanty 2003). By doing so, it both dramatises distance between developing and developed countries and proximity between developing countries. It is not the purpose of this paper to discuss what the ‘global South’ is. My focus is on how ‘global South’ and other associated terms have been used in SSC’s institutional discourses and on the meanings attributed to them by research participants, including the ways in which the incorporation of the ‘South within the North’ in conceptualisations of ‘global South’ is perceived. Yet, I also seek to follow Caison and Vorman’s (2014, 68) note of caution and ‘resist apply totalizing mechanisms of analysis to vastly different groups of people that each experience the effects of globalisation in unique ways and face different emancipatory conditions of possibility’; this is done by looking at these terms as social constructions that serve particular purposes and by critically analysing the claims embedded in their use.

2 The United Nations Office for South–South Cooperation (UNOSSC) defines SSC as a ‘broad framework for collaboration among countries of the South in the political, economic, social, cultural, environmental and technical domains. Involving two or more developing countries, it can take place on a bilateral, regional, subregional, or interregional basis. Developing countries share knowledge, skills, expertise and resources to meet their development goals through concerted efforts’. A central assumption of this definition is that ‘countries of the South’ are ‘developing countries’, as illustrated by the interchangeable use of the two terms. In this paper, I go beyond the term SSC and integrate other relations that do not necessarily take place under a specific framework of collaboration and or are not necessarily defined by its participants as SSC, such as those between Brazilian and Mozambican feminists.

3 BAPA contained recommendations to foster SSC to fight poverty and underdevelopment and establish a new international economic order; it reinforced the idea of technical co-operation, framed as horizontal exchanges between equal parties as opposed to vertical assistance from Northern institutions, as the foundation for strengthening South–South links. BAPA’s implementation encompassed the set-up of in-country SSC mechanisms as well as the institutionalisation of SSC in regional co-operation bodies between the early 1980s and late 1990s.

4 A landmark and blueprint on women’s rights and gender equality adopted by the UN during the Fourth World Conference on Women, held on September 1995, in Beijing, China.

5 Created in 1987 as part of Alexandre de Gusmão Foundation, an organ of the Ministry of Foreign Relations. In the 1980s and most of the 1990s, ABC’s work was mainly focused on foreign assistance received by Brazil. In the early 2000s, it increased delivery of aid, under the frame of SSC (Cabral and Weinstock 2010; Costa Vaz and Inoue 2007).

6 In 2012, for example, the Secretariat for Women’s Policies of the State of Pernambuco were recognised with a UN Prize for excellence in gender-sensitive public service delivery, specifically for the Chapéu de Palha Mulher, an economic empowerment programme targeting rural women workers.

7 These are pseudonyms.

8 Organisational name was changed.

9 Organisational name was changed.

10 Organisational name was changed.

11 A particular focus of contestation has been the triangular co-operation Programa de Cooperação Tripartida para o Desenvolvimento Agrícola da Savana Tropical (ProSAVANA, Programme for Agricultural Development of the Tropical Savannah), as civil society actors from Brazil and Mozambique joined to opposed Brazilian agribusiness interests, particularly a component of the programme focused on significant private-sector investment in commercial agriculture and agro-processing (see Shankland, Gonçalves, and Favareto 2016). An example of controversial interventions of Brazilian corporations are the mining activities of Vale do Rio Doce in Tete Province, in Central Mozambique, and conflict with local populations due to unfulfilled promises made during resettlement processes.

12 SeeHanne (2016).

13 Although ‘feminist popular education’ and ‘popular education’ share the basic methodological principles of valuing and building upon the experiential knowledge of learners, feminist popular education has a clear focus on ‘de-constructing and constructing gender’ (Walters and Manicom 1996, 3) and on transformation of gendered power relationships (Manicom and Walters 2012).