ABSTRACT

Over the last two decades the expanding role of Southern countries as development partners has led to tectonic shifts in global development ideas, practices, norms and actors. Researchers are faced with new questions around identity, power and positionality in global development. Researching South-South Development Cooperation examines this rapidly growing and complex phenomenon, asking to what extent existing assumptions, conceptual frameworks and definitions of 'development' need to be reframed in the context of researching this new landscape.

This interdisciplinary book draws on voices from across the Global South and North to explore the epistemological and related methodological challenges and opportunities associated with researching South-South development cooperation, asking what these trends mean for the politics of knowledge production. Chapters are interspersed with shorter vignettes, which aim to share examples from first-hand participation in and observation of South-South development cooperation initiatives.

This book will be of interest to anyone conducting research on development in the Global South, whether they are a practitioner or policy maker, or a student or researcher in politics, international development, area studies, or international relations.

chapter |11 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|15 pages

The (im)possibility of Southern theory

The opportunities and challenges of cultural brokerage in co-producing knowledge about China–Africa relations

chapter |6 pages

Vignette: Where is the South?

Global, postcolonial and intersectional perspectives

chapter 2|17 pages

Devouring international relations

Anthropophagy and the study of South–South cooperation

chapter |7 pages

Vignette: Has research gone South?

Perspectives of a Brazilian researcher in Britain

chapter 3|17 pages

Criticizing your ‘motherland’ to foreigners?

The dilemma of critical scholarship and self-censorship in analysing Korea’s foreign aid as a national(istic) project

chapter |5 pages

Vignette: “We need people like you”

Reflections on identity and expectations in South–South Cooperation research

chapter |3 pages

Vignette: Silent North, loud South

Reflections on transregional research in Afrasian and Afrabian spaces

chapter |7 pages

Vignette: Difference within similarity

How South–South Cooperation research should no longer label ‘difference’ as an obstacle to partnerships

chapter 5|14 pages

Doing research on unstable ground

The ebb and flow of Brazilian South–South cooperation, from Lula to Bolsonaro

chapter 6|10 pages

Interrogating the solidarity narrative

Rediscovering difference through African–Asian Gender Politics

chapter |4 pages

Vignette: The ‘avuncular’ gatekeepers

Interrogating authority, authenticity and autonomy in South–South Cooperation scholarship in India

chapter 7|16 pages

Let’s focus on facilitators

Life-worlds and reciprocity in researching ‘Southern’ development cooperation agencies

chapter |6 pages

Vignette: “When you leave, they will kill me”

Ethnography, ethics and (post)colonial entanglements in SSDC research

chapter |4 pages

Vignette: “I’m talking to you because you are Polish”

Reflections on identities and historical memories in researching North–South relations