ABSTRACT
The 2013 summit of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) “will go down in history as a defining moment in the trajectory of South-South cooperation,” wrote Manish Chand, the editor of influential India Writes, following plans announced at the conclave held in Durban, South Africa in April of that year to establish a BRICS development bank. The grouping represents, said Chand, “an ambitious all-encompassing global agenda to rekindle development in the emerging world and reclaim the weight of the Global South in the international arena” (Chand, 2013: 11). Such claims by observers that the increasingly prominent role of the BRICS in international economic and political affairs constitutes a Southern challenge to global capitalism and the power of the core trilateral nation-states are commonplace these days (see, inter alia, Desai, 2013; Escobar, 2013; Martin, 2013; Subin, 2013; Tabb, 2009; Third World Network, 2013; Mangabeira Unger, 2011). There is no doubt that, seen from the perspective of a world of national economies and international markets and through the lens of the interstate system, the BRICS as a collective constitute an economic and political powerhouse with the potential to reshape global processes. However, the larger issue behind the BRICS debate is, precisely, through what theoretical-analytical lens do we view world political and economic developments?
