Researching South-South Development Cooperation: The Politics of Knowledge Production 9781138310681, 9781138310957, 9780429459146

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RESEARCHING SOUTH–SOUTH DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION

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 firsthand 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. Emma Mawdsley is a Reader in Human Geography, at the University of Cambridge, UK. Elsje Fourie is an Assistant Professor of Globalisation and Development, at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. Wiebe Nauta is a Sociologist of Development, at Maastricht University, the Netherlands.

RETHINKING DEVELOPMENT Rethinking Development offers accessible and thought-provoking overviews of contemporary topics in international development and aid. Providing original empirical and analytical insights, the books in this series push thinking in new directions by challenging current conceptualizations and developing new ones. This is a dynamic and inspiring series for all those engaged with today’s debates surrounding development issues, whether they be students, scholars, policy makers and practitioners internationally. These interdisciplinary books provide an invaluable resource for discussion in advanced undergraduate and postgraduate courses in development studies as well as in anthropology, economics, politics, geography, media studies and sociology.

Numeracy as Social Practice Global and Local Perspectives Edited by Keiko Yasukawa, Alan Rogers, Kara Jackson and Brian V. Street Communication in International Development Doing Good or Looking Good? Edited by Florencia Enghel and Jessica Noske-Turner Epistemic Freedom in Africa Deprovincialization and Decolonization Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni Foreign Aid in the Age of Populism Political Economy Analysis from Washington to Beijing Viktor Jakupec and Max Kelly Researching South-South Development Cooperation The Politics of Knowledge Production Emma Mawdsley, Elsje Fourie and Wiebe Nauta Aid Power and Politics Edited by Iliana Olivié and Aitor Pérez Participatory Arts in International Development Edited by Paul Cooke and Inés Soria-Donlan

RESEARCHING SOUTH–SOUTH DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION The Politics of Knowledge Production

Edited by Emma Mawdsley, Elsje Fourie and Wiebe Nauta

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 selection and editorial matter, Emma Mawdsley, Elsje Fourie and Wiebe Nauta; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Emma Mawdsley, Elsje Fourie and Wiebe Nauta to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-138-31068-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-31095-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-45914-6 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Taylor & Francis Books

CONTENTS

List of illustrations List of contributors Acknowledgements Foreword by Neera Chandhoke Introduction Elsje Fourie, Wiebe Nauta and Emma Mawdsley 1 The (im)possibility of Southern theory: The opportunities and challenges of cultural brokerage in co-producing knowledge about China–Africa relations Giles Mohan, Ben Lampert, May Tan-Mullins and Richmond Atta-Ankomah Vignette: Where is the South? Global, postcolonial and intersectional perspectives Ruben Gonzalez-Vicente

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2 Devouring international relations: Anthropophagy and the study of South–South cooperation Adriana Erthal Abdenur

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Vignette: Has research gone South? Perspectives of a Brazilian researcher in Britain Rubens de S. Duarte

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3 Criticizing your ‘motherland’ to foreigners? The dilemma of critical scholarship and self-censorship in analysing Korea’s foreign aid as a national(istic) project Sung-Mi Kim

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Vignette: “We need people like you”: Reflections on identity and expectations in South–South Cooperation research Cynthia M. Kamwengo

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Vignette: Silent North, loud South: Reflections on transregional research in Afrasian and Afrabian spaces John Njenga Karugia

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4 A plea for kaleidoscopic knowledge production Mayke Kaag and Miriam Ocadiz Vignette: The politics of knowledge production and post/de/anti-colonial positionality Han Cheng Vignette: Difference within similarity: How South–South Cooperation research should no longer label ‘difference’ as an obstacle to partnerships Natalia Herbst Vignette: The Africa–China Reporting Project in Johannesburg as South–South journalism nexus Barry van Wyk

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5 Doing research on unstable ground: The ebb and flow of Brazilian South–South cooperation, from Lula to Bolsonaro Letícia Maria Cesarino

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Vignette: Interrogating the binary in Brazil’s agricultural cooperation for development Lídia Cabral

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Vignette: Writing about South–South Development Cooperation as a Mexican diplomat Gerardo Bracho

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6 Interrogating the solidarity narrative: Rediscovering difference through African–Asian Gender Politics Rirhandu Mageza-Barthel and Uta Ruppert

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Vignette: The ‘avuncular’ gatekeepers: Interrogating authority, authenticity and autonomy in South–South Cooperation scholarship in India Supriya Roychoudhury Vignette: Experiencing gender and positionality as a female professional in the Korean official development assistance (ODA) sector Jinhee Kim 7 Let’s focus on facilitators: Life-worlds and reciprocity in researching ‘Southern’ development cooperation agencies Sebastian Haug Vignette: “When you leave, they will kill me”: Ethnography, ethics and (post)colonial entanglements in SSDC research Katharine Howell Vignette: “I’m talking to you because you are Polish”: Reflections on identities and historical memories in researching North–South relations. Katarzyna Baran Conclusion: Aiming for meaningful connections in knowledge production on South–South Development Cooperation: Navigating and overcoming inequalities Wiebe Nauta, Emma Mawdsley and Elsje Fourie Index

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ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures

4.1 The old Africa-China Reporting Project logo (left) and new one adopted in November 2016 7.1 Together with descendants of Polish legionnaires during my visit to Casale in 2014

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3.1 Typical effects in conversational interaction with expert interviewees

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CONTRIBUTORS

Elsje Fourie is a sociologist of development at Maastricht University in the research group Globalisation, Transnationalism and Development. Her work focuses on transnational flows of development imaginaries and modernities between East Asia and Africa. Her current projects examine the transfer of Japanese management practices to Ethiopia, as well as the wellbeing of female workers in Ethiopian flower factories and apparel factories funded by foreign direct investment (FDI). Emma Mawdsley is a Reader in Human Geography at the University of Cambridge, and the Director of the Margaret Anstee Centre for Global Studies at Newnham College. She has worked extensively on the geographies of global development, with a particular but not exclusive interest in India and the UK. Wiebe Nauta (PhD) is a sociologist of development at Maastricht University in the research group Globalisation, Transnationalism and Development. His research focuses on the role of aid actors – government, civil society and the private sector – from emerging countries such as South Korea and Brazil on the African continent. Giles Mohan is Professor of International Development at the Open University. He is interested in ‘new’ actors in African development and the threats and opportunities they offer for the continent. His recent projects have looked at China’s aid to Africa, Chinese business migrants in Africa, the impacts of China’s oil investments in Africa, and migration’s potential contributions to inclusive growth. Ben Lampert is a Lecturer in International Development at the Open University. He has a background in human geography and his work focuses on the development role of migrants and diaspora groups, particularly in African contexts.

x List of contributors

May Tan-Mullins is the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning at Nottingham Ningbo University. She is also a Professor in International Relations, the Director of the Institute of Asia and Pacific Studies and the series editor of the Palgrave Series in Asia and Pacific Studies. She is a human geographer with interests in political ecology and international relations. Richmond Atta-Ankomah is an economist with research interests in international trade, investment and innovation, as well as in poverty and development issues in general. He holds a PhD from the Open University and is currently a Research Fellow at the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research at the University of Ghana. Ruben Gonzalez-Vicente is a lecturer at Leiden University, where he studies South–South relations, China’s global footprint (with a specific interest in China’s engagement in Latin America and the Caribbean), the role of natural resources in processes of development, and the transformation of politics under late capitalism. His work has been published in journals such as Review of International Political Economy, Political Geography, Globalizations, The China Quarterly and Latin American Politics and Society. Adriana Erthal Abdenur (PhD Princeton, BA Harvard) is Coordinator of the International Peace & Security Division at Instituto Igarapé, a think tank based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Abdenur has published widely on rising powers, South–South cooperation, international security, and global governance. Rubens de S. Duarte is an Associate Professor and researcher at the Brazilian Army Command and General Staff College. He holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham, an MPhil from the Institute of Social and Political Studies, a BA from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and a BA from the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro. Sung-Mi Kim conducts open-source intelligence (OSINT) research on nuclear proliferation at Ridgeway Information Ltd. (London). With a PhD from the University of Cambridge and having worked as a Visiting Fellow at Chatham House, she teaches and writes on international development, security and global governance issues involving Korea and East Asia. Cynthia M. Kamwengo is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography at Durham University and an Associate Research Fellow at the Southern African Institute of Policy and Research (SAIPAR). Her main research interests include South–South cooperation, the politics of development and policymaking in global governance institutions. John Njenga Karugia (PhD) is a political scientist involved in researching and teaching global memory politics. He is a member of the Frankfurt Memory Studies

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Platform (FMSP) and the AFRASO (Africa’s Asian Options) project at Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany. Mayke Kaag is a social anthropologist and a senior researcher/associate professor at the African Studies Centre Leiden, Leiden University. Miriam Ocadiz Arriaga holds an MA in African Studies from Leiden University and is currently a PhD candidate at the Sociology department of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Han Cheng is currently a PhD candidate in Geography at the University of Cambridge, researching the growing epistemic and policy communities in China’s changing international development landscape. Previously, he worked three years between Washington and Beijing on international cooperation policy for sustainable development, focusing on the role of rising powers. Natalia Herbst holds a BA in International Studies (from the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella) and an MA in Development Studies (from IDS-University of Sussex). She serves as Director for Community Organizations at the National Youth Institute in Argentina, and has experience working on social accountability, South–South cooperation, and youth policies. Barry van Wyk is the Project Coordinator of the Africa-China Reporting Project at the Journalism department of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He has a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics (Global History, 2005) and another from the University of Pretoria (History, 2006). Van Wyk spent eight years in China learning Chinese, working for the consulting firm The Beijing Axis and for the media research firm Danwei. He has a keen research interest in Chinese-language media and is currently also working on a book on South African media in the 1950s. Letícia Cesarino holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley, and is currently an Associate Professor in the Anthropology department at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. Lídia Cabral is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex. Her work focuses on the politics of aid, South–South relations and agricultural development, especially in Africa and Latin America. Gerardo Bracho is a Mexican diplomat and Associate Senior Expert Fellow at the Centre for Global Cooperation Research at the University of DuisburgEssen with many years of experience in the development cooperation agenda in various roles: as an official for the Mexican government, a senior advisor at the OECD and an academic fellow. Mr Bracho has published a number of

xii List of contributors

monographs and articles on development cooperation and the role of the Southern providers. Rirhandu Mageza-Barthel is a Visiting Professor in Gender Politics at the University of Kassel. Among other publications, she is the author of the monograph Mobilizing Transnational Gender Politics in Post-Genocide Rwanda (2015) and co-editor of the volumes Negotiating Normativity: Postcolonial Appropriations, Contestations and Transformations (2016) and Afrasian Transformations: Transregional Perspectives on Development Cooperation, Social Mobility and Cultural Change (forthcoming). Uta Ruppert is a Professor in Political Science and Sociology with a denomination in South–South, Development and Gender Studies at the Goethe University Frankfurt. From 2011 to 2019, she was one of the initiators and leading investigators of AFRASO, the transdisciplinary research programme on ‘Africa’s Asian Options’ at Goethe University Frankfurt (see the forthcoming volume together with Ross Anthony, titled Reconfiguring Trans-Regionalism in the Global South–African Asian Encounters). Supriya Roychoudhury is currently a graduate student in the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge. Her area of research interest lies broadly in the intersection of geopolitics, culture and identity. Jinhee Kim has been a research director on the United Nations’ SDGs education agenda and international education development cooperation. Her current research interests focus on development theory, race, migration and learning theory. Sebastian Haug is a PhD candidate and Graduate Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge, where his research focuses on the roles and positions of Mexico and Turkey in international development politics. Sebastian worked with the UN Development Programme in Beijing and Mexico City and has held visiting positions at the Istanbul Policy Centre, the German Institute for International and Security Affairs and New York University. Katharine Howell has recently completed a PhD at Lancaster University, looking at interactions between development interventions and rural communities in northern Mozambique. Her research interests include food provisioning, gender dynamics and research ethics. Katarzyna Baran is a PhD candidate at the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge. She is interested in international development cooperation, and especially in South–South cooperation and recipients’ perceptions.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This volume is the result of the slow generation of ideas, lively shared conversations, and more formal meetings and conferences over many years. In that sense, we all owe thanks to our respondents and research partners, our colleagues and friends, and the wider community of academics, practitioners and policymakers with whom we work. More specifically, we would like to thank the Globalisation, Transnationalism and Development (GTD) Research Programme and Department of Philosophy at Maastricht University’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASoS), the Limburg University Fund (SWOL), the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge, and Newnham College, Cambridge. Each provided funding that made possible seminars, meetings, and a workshop in Maastricht, and a conference from 3–4 April 2017 in Newnham College and at CRASSH, which developed into this collection of chapters and vignettes. Many thanks to Oliver Wright, the Conference and Events Manager at CRASSH, who is a master of friendly expertise and practical guidance. Maastricht University’s Valentina Mazzucato provided a crucial early impetus to get this project off the ground. Our thanks go to three anonymous peer reviewers of the book proposal for seeing the potential value of such a volume, and for providing important suggestions towards its realization; we are also grateful for the professionalism of our editorial team at Routledge. The editors would also like to thank all of the contributors, who made the task of putting the volume together (relatively!) easy. We thank them for sharing their wisdom, including in some cases difficult and even painful experiences, as well as more warm and positive reflections. Particular thanks to Adriana Abdenur for her truly original, witty and insightful keynote address to the conference; and thanks to Neera Chandhoke for honouring us by writing the foreword.

FOREWORD Neera Chandhoke

I read the introduction and the contributions to this volume with immense interest and pleasure. These excellent essays make a major contribution to the debate on epistemologies of the South, focusing as they do on the identity and location of authors, and inequalities of power between scholars of the West and of the South. Let me add to the complexities of the issue. We know that any academic investigation has to begin with a research question. There is, however, a prior question that stalks processes of knowledge formation. What are the historical, political and academic influences and contexts that shape the question itself? Questions are located within particular intellectual traditions. A new question manages to disrupt the tradition. But how do we ask new questions? By posing indigenous knowledge systems against Western epistemologies? Is that the way forward? I want to illustrate the dilemma by reference to a talk delivered in 1928 by Professor Krishna Chandra Bhattacharya (1875–1949). KCB was a distinguished philosopher who held the King George V Chair at Calcutta University (now the BN Seal Chair). He spoke to a gathering of students at Hoogly College on ‘Svaraj in Ideas’ (freedom in ideas). We, he said, speak of domination of man by man, but there is a subtler and imperceptible domination in the sphere of culture and ideas. If we are conscious of domination, we are bound to struggle against it. Not to perceive domination as an evil, and to allow it to sink into the deep recesses of the soul, leads to slavery of the spirit. But when a person can shake himself free from it, he feels as though the scales fell from his eyes. “He experiences a rebirth, and that is what I call Svaraj [freedom] in ideas” (Bhattacharya 2011, 103).1 The problem is that colonialism had paralysed the Indian mind. Indian scholars have, he said, failed to deploy Indian knowledge systems or methodologies to contribute to literature, aesthetics, drama or poetry, let alone philosophy. And yet it is in philosophy that we can attempt a meaningful contact between the East and the West. Genius can

Foreword xv

unveil the soul of India in art, but it is through philosophy that we can methodologically attempt to discover it. How do we then proceed? Professor Bhattacharya suggested that instead of trying to discover authentic/ indigenous systems of knowledge, a project that was certainly doomed, we should try to come to terms with dominant ideas. If we dismiss Western ideas as foreign and uphold our own, we will be guilty of racial conceit. In any case, some of these ideas may be irrelevant, and can be easily dismissed. Others might bear a faint resemblance to our philosophical traditions. These we should tap into. The rational philosopher displays reverence for her philosophical tradition, yet draws on outside traditions as a fund of metaphors to assist interpretation. KCB’s argument reveals a move to cosmopolitanism, a desire to engage with others, and an attitude of openness towards other traditions. Svaraj is the ability to think autonomously by shrugging off inhibiting intellectual legacies. KCB, in effect, argues that it is wrong to reject an ideal which articulates our own beliefs just because it originated elsewhere. The task is to translate Western philosophies into our own idiom rather than the other way around. What is called universalism is nothing more than the discovery of commonalities between two traditions through the conceptual lens provided by our own culture. Several doubts remain. Firstly, what is distinctively our tradition or culture? In Indian philosophy, materialist philosophies, for instance Carvak,2 challenge an austere, metaphysical and Sanskritic ‘high’ Hinduism or the Vedantic tradition. Every intellectual tradition is plural and contested: which strand do we draw upon to confront an equally plural and diverse Western legacy? Secondly, it is possible that we can understand our own tradition through the lens provided by Western philosophies, rather than the other way around. Why should we study Kant through Gandhi and not Gandhi through Kant? Considering that leaders of the Indian freedom struggle were the product of a university system dominated by Kantians and Hegelians, we might see the latter approach as more fruitful. Thirdly, why should we approach our own tradition with reverence as KCB suggests, and not with a sense of irony or the conviction that the surface holds more or less than is apparent at first glance? Fourthly, we should be ready to accept philosophies from even remote shores if they help us to comprehend, even if they do not help to resolve the human predicament. Conflict-ridden societies might find the Indian epic Mahabharata 3 as relevant as the mythologies of Ancient Greece. The stark lesson of all the epics is that violence is counterproductive; no one wins in the end, everyone loses. Perhaps we can only be autonomous when we throw off the shackles of the Western intellectual tradition as well as the constraints imposed by our own tradition. Perhaps the way to newness lies in seeing all knowledge systems as providing but partial insights into the truth. It is then that we will be able to transcend the stated dichotomy between Western-centric theory and indigenous and authentic philosophies. In a similar vein, the contributions to this volume speak of a strong desire to be free of all inherited legacies, even as scholars approach other traditions with a sense of openness and respect. This is truly Svaraj in ideas.

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Notes 1 This text (Bhattacharya, 2011) was originally published after his death in the Visva Bharati Journal XX (1954). 2 Carvak philosophy rejects foundational texts, rebirth and the idea that we have to pay for whatever we do if not in this life then the next. It embodies a critical attitude towards all certainties. 3 The Mahabharata is a Sanskrit poem collated between 400 BCE and 200 BCE. It narrates multiple tales of heroism and deceit, revenge and solidarity, all of which ends in a destructive Great War between two families related by blood.

References Bhattacharya, K. C. (2011) Svaraj in ideas. In Bhushan, N. and Garfield, J. L. eds., Indian Philosophy in English: From Renaissance to Independence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 103–120.

INTRODUCTION Elsje Fourie, Wiebe Nauta and Emma Mawdsley

The ‘rise of the South’ over the last 10 to 15 years has led to fundamental shifts in global development ideas, practices, norms and actors. This has notably included the reinvigoration of South–South Development Cooperation (SSDC), which can be defined as the transfer or exchange of resources, technologies and forms of knowledge between countries of the former ‘Third World’. Although differences in emphasis and approach exist between regional and institutional groupings, actors which describe themselves as contributing to SSDC often draw on claims of shared colonial and postcolonial experiences, and frequently anchor their activities within a wider framework of promoting the collective strength of the South vis-à-vis the North. These activities have lately spurred an entire sub-field of development studies in which their uniqueness, desirability and emancipatory potential have been fervently debated (see, for example: Modi 2011; Vieira and Alden 2011; Chaturvedi et al. 2012; Mawdsley 2012; Quadir 2013; Abdenur and Da Fonseca 2013). The thematic focus of this volume crystallized during a workshop and subsequent conference that took place at the Maastricht University and the University of Cambridge in October 2015 and April 2017, respectively. After initial editorial discussions in Maastricht, the Cambridge conference was premised on our observations that while research had been accelerating around many aspects of the rapidly growing and complex phenomenon that is SSDC, there had been limited space for critical reflection on the changing politics of knowledge and knowledge production that these trends represent. Research on SSDC1 has grown exponentially, and has broadened and deepened its scope over the past two decades. However, reflections on the research process have not kept pace. In addition, the wider critical literature on researching international development cooperation has almost invariably been less attentive to South–South (and other so-called non-traditional) geographies.

2 Elsje Fourie, Wiebe Nauta and Emma Mawdsley

Conference participants therefore agreed that it was time for critical social science reflections on research epistemologies and ontologies (and their shortcomings) to be more self-consciously applied to one of the most striking empirical phenomena in contemporary global development. The experiences of differently positioned researchers in different sites reveal new and emerging questions of identity, power and positionality for these researchers, their research partners and their respondents. At the same time, existing conceptual frameworks and definitions of ‘development’ are tested and sometimes found wanting in their ability to capture the contemporary processes, landscapes and the actors who populate them. This book, therefore, seeks to be explicit about the tensions and contradictions of SSDC research (including those arising within the volume itself) within a highly uneven global academy and its associated actors, structures, funding environments and research foci. We also address the contests over terms, definitions and concepts, and the inherently political nature of projecting particular ideas and approaches as normative or transformative. Readers will find few certainties or points of consensus here, and much to question. Yet despite our differences, the editors and contributors of this volume all in our own way wish to contribute to increased critical reflection on SSDC and our own roles in shaping how the world understands this complex phenomenon.

Two notes for the reader Before providing a more in-depth overview of the individual contributions to this book and the themes that emerge from them, there is an elephant in the room that this introduction must address. In the same spirit of the reflexivity that we wish to encourage in the wider study of SSDC, the three editors of this volume are acutely aware of our own positionalities. Here we cannot sidestep the fact that we are three white, middle-class academics based at Northern institutions, with all the privileges and blind spots that this entails. This can mainly be traced to the fact that this volume grew from a collaboration between our (Dutch and British) universities. There is also the larger issue that goes beyond institutional affiliation to the very heart of our identities, as defined both by ourselves and by others. We are, respectively, a South African woman who has spent more time outside her country of origin than in it; a Dutch man whose childhood included several years in Zambia; and a British woman who has spent a considerable amount of time in India. These brief biographies alone promise at least some questions about what it means to be Northern. On the one hand, the spirited discussions that emerged between us during the editing of this book illustrate the fallacy of thinking that there is one such ‘Northern perspective’; our own positions and identities as researchers are all different, intersectional and dependent both on how we think about ourselves and how others define and react to us. We hope therefore to have introduced some very limited measure of diversity into our discussions on this topic. On the other hand, we are not ‘Southern’ researchers, whether this term is used to refer to a geographic location or to a more symbolic position of marginality

Introduction 3

vis-à-vis global centres of power and wealth. We have agonized about the irony of our positionality in the context of editing this particular volume, with only the most imperfect of responses in very actively having sought to solicit and encourage contributions from researchers from the South in particular, and notably younger researchers. Several pieces are authored by multiple people from various backgrounds, further (we hope) adding voices and increasing representation. Ultimately, we recognize that this volume is merely a starting point to a much larger conversation, and we therefore particularly welcome future publications that build on the agenda presented here in an even more diverse and pluralistic way. Readers of this volume may notice the unusual length and format of many of our contributions. In order to encourage scholars to reflect on their personal experiences as researchers in the sites of SSDC, we asked scholars to either contribute chapter-length treatments combining theory and empirical data, or alternatively to provide shorter ‘vignettes’ that would function as more personal and professional snapshots of the issues on which this book focuses. When ordering the contributions, we have sought to loosely pair each chapter with one to three shorter vignettes that in some way speak to its themes and concerns. This approach was intended in part to facilitate contributions from more early career scholars, which are found here side by side with their more established counterparts. Theory, data and personal experience play a variety of roles in this book’s 20 contributions, leading to an unusual format that we hope will further stimulate creative approaches to our field of study. In this way, we hope to heed the call put forward in the contribution (found in this volume) by Mayke Kaag and Miriam Ocadiz: that researchers approach knowledge creation as ‘kaleidoscopic’ in nature. The unique style of their chapter, presented as a conversation between two differently positioned academic voices, is a practical illustration of the larger notion that knowledge on SSDC is necessarily fragmented and messy – but no less beautiful and meaningful for it.

The themes and contributions of this book In seeking to understand the potential contribution of a critical and political hermeneutics of SSDC, conference participants and book contributors have coalesced around certain key questions (in bold). One concerns the very definition of the ‘South’, 2 a concept that already comes laden with problematic connotations but for which a suitable alternative has still not been identified in many academic quarters.3 Perhaps the term was once useful in describing a shared historical experience of coloniality and marginality – but now falls short both when faced with ‘Southern’ actors as diverse as Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Brazil, and when countries such as Mexico, South Korea and Russia uneasily straddle the divide between ‘North’ and ‘South’ in this particular realm of international identities, politics and relations. Certainly, the ‘South’ as a concept has also been used and abused as a propaganda tool, obscuring and smoothing over the power disparities inherent in SSDC from the Bandung Conference until the present. And the

4 Elsje Fourie, Wiebe Nauta and Emma Mawdsley

‘South’ is increasingly being used as a euphemism for sub-Saharan Africa in many of the policy and academic debates in the field of development studies. Does the categorization of most Latin American and Asian countries as ‘middle-income’ implicitly make Africa the last bastion of the South, and (if so) what do we still gain from this term? At the same time, the continued popularity of the term also perhaps speaks to its continued utility. There may still be a need for an identifier that captures the ways in which the shared colonial legacy of many states continues to shape their place in the global political and economic arena. It may be that the term remains useful even if we embrace its discursive and constructed nature – as a (safe?) space within which such questions can be debated, deconstructed and reconstructed, as an enduring expression of solidarity, or even as part of a productive dialectic: the ‘South’ as ‘Not North’. Despite disagreement over the continued utility of this term, conference participants generally agreed that the time was ripe for the ‘South’ to move beyond its status as the subject of critique (in its role as recipient of ‘traditional’ aid), towards a dual status that also includes being the object of critique. Several contributions in this book explicitly wrestle with the concept of SSDC itself. Lídia Cabral demonstrates how complex domestic societal debates and imaginaries are flattened and distorted when, for example, Brazilian agricultural policies (and civil society counter-discourses) are exported to the Mozambican context. “The very notion of South-South cooperation”, she writes, “is in effect the denial of difference in political struggles across the South”. Cynthia Kamwengo points out that the term is not used equally in all quarters, and that even those participating in what others have labelled SSDC may use very different conceptual and definitional lenses. In Zambia, for instance, she shows that practitioners and academics tend to refer to specific donors, policy areas and modalities rather than working with larger theoretical categories such as ‘the South’. Ruben Gonzalez does not so much take issue with the concept under discussion here, as with its implicit connotations and definitions. Research into SSDC often suffers from the problem of methodological nationalism. While it can indeed be argued that SSDC policies, practices and discourses themselves bolster and reify the role of the state, researchers must take care not to unwittingly reproduce these dynamics. It is in this spirit that Ruben Gonzalez argues for a definition of SSDC that is global, postcolonial (therefore necessarily postnational) and intersectional. A postnational approach here can focus on the variety of new and significant interactions taking place at the micro-level, but does not by definition need to: we have, for example, elsewhere used units of analysis such as societies (Fourie 2017) and transnational activist networks (Nauta 2011). Moving from the ontological to the epistemological, this book also shows widespread agreement that both the theories and methods used to analyse SSDC need to be broadened and deepened. Since the early 2000s, SSDC has often been regarded as the preserve of development studies; the more policy-oriented branches of the discipline in particular have drawn from the lively discussions on SSDC occurring within the UN, World Bank and other global institutions. But the study

Introduction 5

of SSDC, we argue here, would benefit from the use of a wider range of theories. International relations (IR) theory and critical security studies are beginning to make implicit geopolitical motivations and ‘hard power’ differentials explicit (see for example Bry 2015 and Amar 2012), while colonial and postcolonial theory bring to the fore many of the under-examined historical roots of present-day development projects between Southern partners (for examples, see Mawdsley 2012; Six 2009). A range of other critical theories – such as those found within the anthropology of aid tradition (e.g. Eriksson Baaz 2005; Mosse 2005; Lewis and Mosse 2006) – can similarly add nuance and critical rigour to a field that is often viewed in very dichotomous terms. In this volume, Han Cheng proposes replacing the postcolonial approach with a decolonial approach, rethinking the world from the South and no longer solely in relation to the North. He moreover proposes a decoloniality drawn in part from China, a country that has not, to date, been prominent in these debates. For some, the goal should not only be to deconstruct SSDC, but also to reconstruct it, and thereby to be able to compare the motivations, mechanisms and outcomes of development ‘partners’ inside and outside its scope. To this end, classic social theory, from Polanyi (1944) to Beck (1997/2018) and beyond, has been surprisingly underutilized in addressing what is, after all, for many in these countries both a new and particular experience of modernity, involving a redefinition of their place within the world. As Fourie (2017) has argued elsewhere, the operationalization of modernities as varieties of societal self-understandings (Wagner 2012) can be fruitfully applied to SSDC, allowing for an understanding of how Southern modernities intersect and entangle. Indeed, a promising avenue of enquiry comprises theoretical innovations around how societies learn from and about one another. Given the emphasis in the discourse and practice of SSDC on ‘South–South learning’, theories of policy learning (Hall 1993), emulation (Meseguer 2005), policy transfer (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000), policy mobilities (McCann and Ward 2012), mimicry (Sharman 2008) and policy translation (Stone 2012) become important. In this light we should also acknowledge the warning by Comaroff and Comaroff (2012, 7) who argue that “…modernity in the south is not adequately understood as a…copy or a counterfeit, of the Euro-American ‘original’. To the contrary: it demands to be apprehended and addressed in its own right”. In fact, these scholars contend that the South, or Africa in this case, may actually provide us with a lens through precarities, informalities and innovations that highlights and even predicts what the North may face in the (near) future. Three chapters in this volume make substantial theoretical contributions of their own: Adriana Abdenur suggests that we apply the metaphor of cannibalism – or anthropophagy – to the study of international relations and SSDC in order to capture the myriad ways in which communities in the South have reinterpreted, reclaimed and subverted ideas foisted on them by the powerful. Sebastian Haug discusses the roles of ‘facilitators’, people whose help towards the researcher in the field takes various forms. Haug develops this deceptively simple concept into a deeper theory and ethics of facilitation, arguing that ‘mutual facilitation’ based on

6 Elsje Fourie, Wiebe Nauta and Emma Mawdsley

the diverse life-worlds and unequal positionalities of foreign researchers and specifically placed locals constitute one necessarily imperfect but important step towards the kind of reciprocity that research on SSDC (should) aim to foster. And Natalia Herbst argues for a rethinking of the concepts of ‘similarity’ and ‘difference’, often used simplistically to either endorse or dismiss cooperation between Southern partners. Her vignette, in calling for attention to shades and nested levels of similarity and difference, provides an example of the possible contributions of a non-state-centric and constructivist IR approach. Just as the theoretical landscape of SSDC needs a broader and more interdisciplinary approach, the methods we use to analyse this phenomenon can be expanded and innovated. Ethnography will continue to be important in adding detail, complexity and critical reflexivity to the quantitative methods often employed by policymakers. But this is only one of many techniques, with historical analysis, storytelling, social network analysis, institutional analysis, discourse analysis and even satire also suggested by participants at the conference. Again, Cheng’s observation in this volume that research on SSDC often involves ‘studying up’ and observing elites raises important challenges for established ethnographic methods. SSDC remains a policy ‘buzzword’, and as such its study prompts academic researchers to engage more widely with a range of non-academic institutions such as think tanks, government bureaucracies and civil society organizations. Themes that emerged strongly in the workshop and conference included the challenges of working with development ‘brokers’ while ourselves – as researchers from diverse origins, embedded in particular institutions in specific ways – also acting then as brokers of a kind. This is not unique to studying development cooperation between Southern partners, yet the claims of egalitarianism, diversity and mutual benefit embedded in SSDC might bring it out more forcefully. Conference participants spoke about the challenges of avoiding tokenism and ‘performing diversity’ when funders such as the UK’s Economic Research Council (ERC) and the Netherlands’ own national funding body increasingly call for academics to assemble consortia with members from multiple countries and societal spheres. The highly bureaucratic and politicized environment in which SSDC operates also makes it difficult but all the more essential that researchers find ways to insert the informal and the personal into their forays into the field. Finally, the enduring concentration of resources in the global North also poses a challenge for researchers: how to insert equality, mutuality and solidarity when researchers themselves are so embedded in and dependent on institutions in which Northern power and money are still dominant (at least for the moment)? A substantial number of contributions to this volume reflect on the opportunities and challenges of knowledge co-creation beyond academia. Giles Mohan, Ben Lampert, May Tan-Mullins and Richmond Atta-Ankomah offer a fascinating and candid account of what can go wrong – and right – in such processes. Their research on Chinese investment in and migration to Africa involved learning to negotiate the different institutional and cultural contexts in which researchers on and from three continents were embedded. This made the existence of effective

Introduction 7

intermediaries such as ‘Rosemary’ more important than ever, and makes it imperative that their contribution to research outcomes be recognized as both indispensable and highly skilful. Mexican diplomat Gerardo Bracho is another intermediary, as his vignette here demonstrates. Bracho’s own dual role as government representative and researcher runs in parallel to Mexico’s dual role as both ‘Northern’ and ‘Southern’. And as Bracho points out, while previously high ‘walls’ are coming down, they are not disappearing entirely and must therefore continually be scaled. One innovative institution scaling these boundaries is the China-Africa Reporting Project, which is based at a Southern university (South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand) and takes an interventionist yet micro-level approach to SSDC. Here, its director Barry van Wyk explains why a university might engage in facilitating the training of African journalists in China (and vice versa), and provides a practitioner’s perspective. Not all walls are crumbling in the arena of knowledge (co-)production. As Supriya Roychoudhury details in this volume, in India and several other ‘new’ partner countries, research platforms devoted to SSDC remain allied to the state machinery and are largely cut off from activist and advocacy civil society input and voices. This state bias occludes the perspectives of women and other societally marginalized groups who are nonetheless deeply affected by the activities of SSDC. In this vein, it would be helpful for academics to continually reflect on their own selection criteria when engaging research partners. Mayke Kaag and Miriam Ocadez point out that it is easy and very tempting for Northern academics to work only with the same small group of established institutions in a few countries that are seen as both reliably Southern yet research-friendly. This was brought home forcefully when one of us in the team of editors was recently involved in establishing a consortium that required a ‘developing-country’ partner institution; in this case, a small, lesser-known research institute proved to be both more scientifically rigorous and professional than the more obvious, ‘big-name’ (government-aligned) institute. This brings us to the final critical conversation we wish to open with this volume. SSDC provides both an opportunity and a duty to reconsider researcher positionality, identity and power vis-à-vis other actors affected by growing South–South ties. The usual observations that these components are intersectional, dependent on context and make for highly unequal situations is as true as ever, but these observations have only begun to be applied in any concerted way to SSDC. Both internal and external critiques are needed of organizations and research communities still marked by a lack of transparency and by funding inequalities, our own included. Again, because SSDC by its very nature acts as an implicit or explicit critique of power hierarchies, there is a missed opportunity here to seriously bring in conversations from feminism, queer theory and critical race theory. Such topics may in fact be more sensitive and difficult to address in a field of development that has only recently had to ask itself the questions that have dogged North–South development since the 1970s. We feel, however, that many of the contributions in this volume make an important start in this regard.

8 Elsje Fourie, Wiebe Nauta and Emma Mawdsley

A common observation on researcher positionality that arises in this volume concerns the tensions that can arise between national loyalty and critical distance. These were felt by several contributors whose countries of origin are struggling to redefine their place in the international development community. Thus, Sung-Mi Kim details the complex allegiances and considerations she had to take into account as a relatively young female researcher of South Korean development cooperation. She reminds the reader that the ability and inclination to be critical often varies according to one’s audience and to how one’s research is likely to be used (and misused). Cynthia Kamwengo, similarly, asks what duty researchers from global South countries have to their communities ‘back home’. To what extent do researchers represent their communities, especially if these communities feel particularly marginalized and in need of positive representation or ‘practical’ findings? Here, Letícia Cesarino’s chapter on the recent history of Brazilian cooperation powerfully reminds us that researchers are not mute observers of their countries’ development cooperation machineries, but active, co-constructing participants. In the face of anti-globalist pressures to dismantle the development cooperation efforts of Brazil (but also much further afield), she argues, development researchers should re-examine their own ethical responsibilities towards the field. It can also be the case that researchers who identify as Southern themselves feel marginalized through their participation in unequal global or local networks of knowledge production. Thus, Rubens Duarte details the difficulties he has faced as a Brazilian researcher when presenting his research on SSDC in Northern spaces, using a ‘Northern’ language and seeking access to Northern institutions. Jinhee Kim’s critique is aimed closer to home, exploring as it does the challenges faced by a young female development consultant working within a deeply patriarchal South Korean aid machinery. Many contributors to this volume began their research into SSDC with a particular view of their identity, only to find their respondents responding to them in incongruous and even surprising ways. Katarzyna Baran’s vignette acts as a timely reminder that SSDC is not taking place in a history-free vacuum, but can echo historical entanglements. The fact that Polish legionnaires were unwilling (and sometimes rebellious) conscripts in the colonial French domination of Haiti gave Baran – who is Polish – a ‘special’ status more than two centuries later and elicited cooperation from her Haitian respondents. Likewise, in researching the diverse Asian, African and Arabian communities historically bound together by their proximity to the Indian Ocean, John Njenga Karugia was himself reminded of that historical memory’s colouring of his own position as researcher. Karugia’s dual identity as German and Kenyan was not fully reflected in the actions of Indian ethnic minority respondents who treated him as a fellow ‘Southerner’; this conferred on him greater access but also a feeling of greater responsibility. And Katharine Howell’s vignette details the harm that befell her local host during a stint researching Brazil’s controversial ProSAVANA project in rural Mozambique. It is easy for critical researchers to slip into what might be called a critical comfort zone, and for reflections on positionality to become rote. Howell’s bracingly honest

Introduction 9

account instead takes the reader to places of discomfort and uncertainty by calling into question the ability of white Northern ethnographers to escape their association with wealth and privilege – a situation that can lead to such severe consequences that their very right to be ‘in the field’ remains in doubt. If the positionalities and identities of these individual researchers is not complicated enough, consider the complexities involved in putting together a team of feminist researchers from Africa, Europe and Asia to study African civil society participation in Chinese–African gender politics. Rirhandu Mageza-Barthel and Uta Ruppert’s chapter details the dynamics in one such research project and explains how different understandings of feminism have made the construction of a common theoretical and conceptual language an ongoing project.

A closing coda Several of the issues and questions touched on in this overview will not be unfamiliar to critical social scientists, many of whom have long been engaged in problematizing the role of Northern researchers and development agents in the global South, as well as the very notions of North and South. How unique, then, are the challenges of knowledge production around SSDC? On the one hand, one of the key messages that emerges in this volume is the benefit of normalizing SSDC – it is not exceptionally immune from criticism due to its Third Worldist claims, nor exceptionally suspect due to its possible areas of divergence from Northern practices and discourses. Research into SSDC, too, therefore confronts researchers with the ethical, methodological and epistemological challenges that have marked social science since the poststructuralist turn. On the other hand, bringing SSDC into the critical mainstream (for such a thing does exist) will itself undoubtedly change the field itself. The contributions contained in this book hint at the directions this might take. The meeting of critical theory and SSDC can lead to new theoretical insights as rich and influential as Escobar’s (1995) deconstruction of Truman’s Point Four agenda, or Ferguson’s (1990) diagnosis of the World Bank’s failings in Lesotho. Positionality is likely to be analysed in a more fine-grained and nuanced way as researcher biographies become ever less reducible to nationality alone. Knowledge co-creation with teams of differently positioned researchers will become indispensable but throw up unprecedented questions around the ownership, interpretation and use of research findings. SSDC, by its very nature, blurs boundaries, seeks hybrids and questions orthodoxies. It is, at heart, a process of identity redefinition for states, institutions, activists and development practitioners; thus it may also be such a process for researchers themselves.

Notes 1 Sometimes termed simply South South Cooperation (SSC).

10 Elsje Fourie, Wiebe Nauta and Emma Mawdsley

2 Obviously the definition of the ‘North’ is laden with other, albeit no less problematic, connotations. 3 One of the contributors, Sebastian Haug, co-led a conference at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) on ‘Revisiting the “Global South” in world politics’ in June 2018, which examined the terminological and cartographic politics of this and other terms.

References Abdenur, A. E. and Da Fonseca, J. M. E. M. (2013) The North’s growing role in South–South cooperation: Keeping the foothold. Third World Quarterly, 34(8), 1475–1491. Beck, U. (1997/2018) The Reinvention of Politics: Rethinking Modernity in the Global Social Order. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Bry, S. (2015) The production of soft power: Practising solidarity in Brazilian South–South development projects. Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue canadienne d’études du développement, 36(4), 442–458. Chaturvedi, S., Fues, T. and Sidiropoulos, E. (2012) Development Cooperation and Emerging Powers: New Partners or Old zpatterns? London: Zed Books. Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J. L. (2012). Theory from the South: Or How Euro-America is Evolving Toward Africa. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Press. Dolowitz, D. P. and Marsh, D. (2000) Learning from abroad: The role of policy transfer in contemporary policy-making. Governance, 13(1), 5–23. Eriksson Baaz, M. (2005). The Paternalism of Partnership: A Postcolonial Reading of Identity in Development Aid. London: Zed Books. Escobar, A. (1995) Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ferguson, J. (1990) The Anti-Politics Machine: ‘Development’, Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fourie, E. (2017) The intersection of East Asian and African modernities: Towards a new research agenda. Social Imaginaries, 3(1), 119–146. Hall, P. A. (1993) Policy paradigms, social learning, and the state: The case of economic policymaking in Britain. Comparative Politics, 25(3), 275–296. Lewis, D. and Mosse, D. eds. (2006) Development Brokers and Translators: The Ethnography of Aid and Agencies. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press. Mawdsley, E. (2012) From Recipients to Donors: Emerging Powers and the Changing Development Landscape. London: Zed Books. McCann, E. and Ward, K. (2012) Policy assemblages, mobilities and mutations: Toward a multidisciplinary conversation. Political Studies Review, 10(3), 325–332. Meseguer, C. (2005) Policy learning, policy diffusion, and the making of a new order. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 598(1), 67–82. Modi, R. ed. (2011) South-South Cooperation. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Mosse, D. (2005) Cultivating Development: An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice. London: Pluto Press. Nauta, W. (2011). Mobilising Brazil as ‘significant other’ in the fight for HIV/AIDS treatment in South Africa: The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and its global allies. In Dietz, T. et al., African Engagements: Africa Engaging an Emerging Multipolar World. Amsterdam: Brill, pp. 133–162. Polanyi, K. (1944) The Great Transformation: Economic and Political Origins of Our Time. New York: Rinehart.

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Quadir, F. (2013) Rising donors and the new narrative of ‘South–South’ cooperation: What prospects for changing the landscape of development assistance programmes? Third World Quarterly, 34(2), 321–338. Sharman, J. C. (2008) Power and discourse in policy diffusion: Anti‐money laundering in developing states. International Studies Quarterly, 52(3), 635–656. Six, C. (2009) The rise of postcolonial states as donors: A challenge to the development paradigm? Third World Quarterly, 30(6), 1103–1121. Stone, D. (2012) Transfer and translation of policy. Policy Studies, 33(6), 483–499. Vieira, M. A. and Alden, C. (2011) India, Brazil, and South Africa (IBSA): South-South cooperation and the paradox of regional leadership. Global Governance, 17(4), 507–528. Wagner, P. (2012) Modernity. Cambridge: Polity.

1 THE (IM)POSSIBILITY OF SOUTHERN THEORY The opportunities and challenges of cultural brokerage in co-producing knowledge about China–Africa relations Giles Mohan, Ben Lampert, May Tan-Mullins and Richmond Atta-Ankomah Introduction The last decade has seen the expansion of an academic field and arena of oftenheated policy debate concerning China–Africa relations (Alden and Large 2019). In the wider context of China’s intensified international engagements, this field of inquiry responds to the significantly increased involvement of a range of Chinese actors, including government agencies, state-owned enterprises, private companies and migrant entrepreneurs, in countries across Africa since the turn of the millennium. China’s expanded engagements with African countries are rooted in a complex of factors including Chinese interests in natural resources and new markets for low-cost manufactured goods as well as African desires for alternative sources of development finance and an escape from ‘Western’ conditionalities (Alden 2007; Cheru and Obi 2010; Brautigam 2011; Power et al. 2012; Mohan et al. 2014). Consequently, China–Africa relations, especially in terms of diplomacy, aid, trade, investment and, more recently, migration, have come to been seen as a prime arena for exploring the nature and potentials of ‘South–South’ cooperation (Mohan 2016) in what is heralded as an increasingly multipolar world. The rise of China and the expanded set of international relations this has brought into being has not only enabled the examination of alternative modes of international cooperation, but also presents new methodological opportunities and challenges. While China and many of the countries it increasingly engages with, especially in Africa, tend to be framed as ‘Southern’, much of the theorization of the relations between them has come from the global North, reinforcing longstanding North–South asymmetries in the production of what tends to be internationally most recognized as critical scholarship. This chapter reflects on some of our experiences of conducting research on China–Africa relations while based in

The (im)possibility of Southern theory 13

the UK and yet seeking to move beyond the entrenched international asymmetries of intellectual endeavour. As a tripartite set of British, Ghanaian and Singaporean academic colleagues who have worked together to different degrees and in various configurations over a series of China–Africa research projects, we discuss some of the challenges we have faced in putting together North–South research teams in which the production of theory about China–Africa relations is a truly shared endeavour. We trace these challenges in part to what we tentatively suggest are the competing imperatives of the different institutional contexts in which we and our ‘Southern’ partners operate. Drawing on work on ‘Southern theory’, we highlight possibilities for negotiating these challenges, highlighting ideas of intercultural connection and mixing. This brings us to a discussion of ‘cultural brokerage’ as a potential means of creating connection in order to move closer to the meaningful co-production of theory with ‘Southern’ partners. Here we draw on our experience from one of our projects in which we worked with a ‘Southern’ partner who was able to operate as a cultural broker between British, African and Chinese contexts. Through this process, this cultural broker was able to decisively shape the theoretical claims we went on to make, although not necessarily in a way that overcame the established international asymmetries of academic knowledge production.

Researching China–Africa relations It’s early 2007 and Giles is in a pub in Leicester with two academic colleagues, both of whom work on Lusophone Africa and one of whom has just given a seminar. There’s lots of Chinese in Accra at the moment, what’s it like in Maputo? Giles asks. Same, they answer. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative US think tank, is writing about China grabbing African oil (Heritage Foundation 2007) and the Left sees the US’s newly formed AFRICOM as a vehicle to oppose Chinese encroachment into Africa (Volman 2007). Debates about China–Africa relations are clearly polarized and data is lacking. Fancy doing a project on ‘China in Africa’? One of the colleagues agrees and some weeks later the draft is coming along well, but Giles has hit a block. While we both had experience of working in different parts of Africa, China was new to us. How do we do research on Chinese state institutions and firms? We don’t speak Chinese and aren’t Sinologists. Giles’ colleague responds: There’s a really good colleague where I work, who is Singaporean and speaks Chinese. She’s called May and is keen to be involved. Great. We get the grant from the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Fieldwork in China begins against a backdrop of US hawkishness and what The New York Times labels the ‘Genocide Olympics’ (Kristof 2008) campaign around Darfur. Here, the Sudanese government are accused of ethnic cleansing at the same time as receiving major Chinese investments in the run-up to China hosting the 2008 Olympic Games. Interviews with Chinese state institutions begin with 20 minutes of testing our motives and whether as UK government-funded research we are out to criticize China. It’s social science, we

14 Mohan, Lampert, Tan-Mullins and Atta-Ankomah

say, we want to evaluate what’s going on objectively. Mmmmh, OK, the Chinese officials respond, unconvinced. The ESRC encourages networks to be built between the UK and ‘rising power’ scholars. It’s 2010 and Giles and May are now working with a different UK-based colleague on a series of workshops to scope new research topics. The first workshop is being planned and we’re partnering with a leading Chinese university. The contracts have been signed and all is good. The Dean of the faculty in China is really busy and he wants to hand the partnership to his junior colleague who did his PhD in the UK and speaks good English. Should be fine and makes sense, we say. Our first three-way Skype call goes well and the date for the first workshop in Beijing is set. But ‘China in Africa’ is not really my area of interest, the more junior Chinese colleague says, and I’ve never been to Africa. No problem, we’re learning too, we say. The workshop planning rumbles on, mostly through email. Our Chinese colleague is unresponsive. Time is ticking. We send and re-send requests, which get increasingly desperate and somewhat pushy. Stop being imperialist, he yells in an email. We back off and resolve the issue. The workshop goes smoothly and attracts UK and Chinese academics, and representatives from some Chinese think tanks and international NGOs based in China. Another network member was from an international NGO that campaigns on, among other things, Chinese dams. They have a database and we draft a bid with them involving four country case studies of large hydropower projects. Giles is responsible for the case studies in Ghana and Nigeria. We need an academic partner so he writes to a friend and colleague in a West African university about possible involvement. I’d like to, he says, but I don’t know anything about China–Africa relations, beyond what I pick up in the press, or much about hydropower. Giles gets back to his UK colleague who is leading the bid. He’s not a China–Africa expert but is great at project managing research and can assemble a team. We go with it as the bid deadline is fast approaching. We get the project and need to draft a legal agreement. The drafts circulate between the UK-based researchers, our university’s legal services sub-contractor and our colleagues in Africa. The contract states “All Arising Intellectual Property…in the Materials generated in the performance of the Services shall belong to the Open University”. Giles objects: It’s a collaboration, we produce stuff together. They reply, it’s easier to do it this way and then grant them a licence to use the knowledge generated. The wording stays but we find ways to work around it. In 2014, after a series of projects including one on Chinese business migrants in Ghana and Nigeria, a senior colleague who Giles has collaborated with has announced his retirement and they meet to chat about taking this work forward. Their discussion revolves around those first concerns – Africa’s oil. Soon afterwards, they both get invited to a Department for International Development (DFID)–ESRC consultation on a programme on China–Africa Growth. In the sumptuous rooms of the British Academy in London, the ESRC suggests some themes. It’s frustrating. They are the same ones we variously suggested almost a decade ago. Clearly, we didn’t communicate our findings well enough and the point that talking about ‘China’ as a single actor isn’t helpful. You also need to

The (im)possibility of Southern theory 15

consider the value of ‘the China model’ for ‘Africa’, they say. But there’s no one model. And how easily can you transfer one model to entirely different and diverse contexts, we protested. That’s your problem, but you have to show the value of the ‘Chinese model’. And it’s imperative you have Chinese partners to access this funding. A UK-based Chinese scholar echoed my experience of the Dean delegating to someone else. You won’t necessarily get good social science simply by having a Chinese partner, they argue. Point taken, but you have to have a Chinese partner, the funders insist. With help from colleagues at another UK university, Giles identifies two strong Chinese partners and an Accra-based think tank working on African energy policy. The team succeeds in getting a DFID–ESRC project on the activities of Chinese oil companies in Ghana, Nigeria and Sudan. At the inception meeting, the team reviews the scope and methodology. Giles stresses that the value of this project is the new data the team generates together on Chinese outward investment and the detailed processes through which Chinese oil firms enter African economies and work (or not) with local partners. The fieldwork in Ghana, Nigeria and Sudan is therefore key. Richmond, a recent PhD graduate from the Development Studies department at the Open University, is recruited as the research fellow on the project and brings extensive experience of conducting economic and developmentrelated research not only in his home country of Ghana but also in other African countries. The fieldwork with indigenous oil sector actors in the case study countries is therefore in capable hands, allowing the Chinese partners to concentrate on engaging with the Chinese oil companies operating in these countries. But one Chinese professor announces that they won’t be going to Africa. No problem, but would be great to have a colleague who can go out, we urge. We’ll see, the Chinese professor responds. Some months later, we want to organize interviews in China with oil firms and ministries and assume our well-placed Chinese academic partners can help set these up as we agreed in the contract. But for the last two years Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive has been in full flow and our Chinese partners are wary about working with ‘foreigners’. My institution won’t host the workshop we had planned, they say, but you could do it at a hotel. Very well, we concede. But this partner eventually withdraws and we have to find a new one. Our new partner is willing to come to the African case study countries but emails to say not only has he got to declare his travel plans for the coming year but is worried about ‘safety’ and he ends up making only a fleeting visit to Lagos. During that brief trip, Richmond is also in Lagos, ostensibly to facilitate our Chinese colleague’s meetings. But the Chinese partner’s meeting with Chinese research participants is done alone, largely due to his uneasiness about the Chinese respondents’ negative reactions towards a non-Chinese academic being part of the research team.

Doing theory These experiences of over a decade of working on China–Africa engagements has resulted in much of the ‘critical’ scholarship coming from the ‘West’, which reinforces the very intellectual structures that many of us seek to move beyond. Much

16 Mohan, Lampert, Tan-Mullins and Atta-Ankomah

of the theorization that has been done from the projects described above – around geopolitics, African agency and enclaves – has been done by the UK-based researchers and academics. So, what we have found frustrating are the difficulties in co-producing critical theory around the political economy of China–Africa relations. This opens up a series of reflexive questions about what is meant by critical theory, and whether our respective locations in particular socio-cultural, political and institutional settings shape our approaches to knowledge production. In this section of the chapter we explore the tensions in producing theory that reflects Southern concerns. Our resolution is to see knowledge as produced from ‘connection’ in the sense that Gurminder Bhambra invokes (2014). This connectedness that involves an increasingly globalized China, and, arguably, greater scope for African agency, disrupts some of the spatial categories and power relations implicit in much postcolonial theory. It also forces us to consider the political economy of research across different national settings that shape how scholars relate (Collyer 2018), which we reflect on below. Methodologically it speaks to the possibilities of forms of ‘cultural brokerage’ that attempt to straddle and connect peoples, places and epistemologies, albeit without ever escaping the established power hierarchies of knowledge production. We discuss this in the following section and end by discussing one example of such cultural brokerage in our own research.

What is Southern theory? Our worries about how knowledge on China–Africa relations is produced echoes wider concerns around the essentially extractive nature of research on the global South by Northern researchers (Pieterse and Parekh 1995; Connell 2007; Comaroff and Comaroff 2012; Bhambra and Santos 2017). Such structures are rooted in longstanding colonial processes, which Santos (2014) has termed ‘epistemicide’. By this he refers to the following: “Unequal exchanges among cultures have always implied the death of the knowledge of the subordinated culture, hence the death of the social groups that possessed it” (p.92). Tilley (2017) likens it to ‘piracy’, which involves “practices of ‘raw’ data extraction for processing into refined intellectual property” (p.27). The parallels with natural resources is not accidental since the data is processed or, to use a term from the literature on resource value chains, ‘beneficiated’ to produce theory. This clearly reasserts the inequalities between Northern researchers and both the subjects of their research and their erstwhile collaborators in Southern universities and research institutions. An implicit assumption is that theory is the ultimate goal of scholarship rather than other forms of analysis; something we return to below. Connell’s (2007) use of the term ‘Southern theory’ is used to focus attention on these centre–periphery relations but also to emphasize that the global South does produce theory and that all theory production sits in places (Roy 2016). So, while the notion of Southern theory remains a critique and normative ideal it does open debates about more ‘democratic’ or ‘inclusive’ forms of knowledge

The (im)possibility of Southern theory 17

production (Le Grange 2016). To produce new forms of knowledge is not simply about inversion or reversal (Pieterse and Parekh 1995), whereby a purely Southern episteme replaces a supposedly Western one, or where centuries of knowledge production are effectively erased in some spurious attempt to reach back to an older and more authentic folk knowledge. Rather, we need to focus on social processes as already and always constituted from connectedness. Bhambra and Santos (2017, 6) focus on historical connections “generated by processes of colonialism, enslavement, dispossession and appropriation”. This echoes Comaroff and Comaroff when discussing African modernity that “people across the continent have long made their lives; this partly in dialectical relationship with the Global North and its expansive imperium, partly with others of the same hemisphere, partly in localized enclaves” (2012, 117). As such, these multiple connections and conjunctures are both temporal and spatial. Part of this is about taking seriously the lived realities of those in the global South; what Savransky (2017, 16) terms “existential justice” or as Tilley (2017, 38) quoting Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999, 230) argues, “How can research ever address our needs as indigenous peoples if our questions are never taken seriously?” which is in Tilley’s terms a ‘field-informed’ approach that is based on ethnography (Roy 2016). This opens up questions about the elevation of ‘theory’ to the pinnacle of intellectual endeavour. As we will see, many of our Southern collaborators seem more interested in particular types of data and modes of analysis, which are underpinned by (usually) implicit theoretical assumptions, rather than in creating ‘new’ theory. We all have multiple realities that shape our approaches, and the key is to understand and respect them.

Beyond postcolonial categories As the recollection above of the chat in a Leicester pub suggested, an emerging reality was the economic and political rise of China. While much of the critique and deconstruction highlighted in the previous section is rooted in various forms of postcolonial critique, we have struggled to use it directly to discuss China–Africa engagements and our privileged intellectual role in analysing it as UK-based researchers, which all the authors of this chapter were during most of the time they were involved in these projects. Raghuram et al. (2014) capture this tension well: The altered global presence of Asia presents challenges to the spatial matrices underlying current thinking in postcolonial geography…the vectors of power that are analysed in postcolonial geography have often drawn unequally from development geographies and hence, have prioritized the global South/North distinction, albeit in quite complex ways…. The dynamism and diversity of the global South, especially its manifestation in what has come to be known as Rising Asia, ruffles commonly accepted spatialities underlying postcolonial geographies. (p.120)

18 Mohan, Lampert, Tan-Mullins and Atta-Ankomah

This presence of Asia complicates the accepted binaries – the ‘abyssal line’ in Santos’ (2014) terms – and power relations of knowledge production where the critique has focused on the colonizer as Western imperialist. The rise of China clearly ‘ruffles’ the spatialities and epistemologies that we have been addressing and speaks to many of the practical problems we outlined earlier. China is simultaneously ‘Southern’, ‘Northern’ and neither. Comaroff and Comaroff (2012, 127) point out that “there is much South in the North, much North in the South, and more of both to come in the future”; the first point refers to their argument that the precarity experienced in the global South is increasingly being experienced in the global North such that the modernity of the South is ‘ahead’ of that in the North though clearly not something to celebrate. This mixing across the ‘abyssal line’ speaks to the multiple connections of Bhambra’s sociology and unsettles a straightforward postcolonial critique which sees Western researchers as simply extracting knowledge from a less powerful South. China plays up its history of being colonized in certain instances, often as part of a wider discourse of ‘South–South’ Development Cooperation. At the same time China projects its growing power in ways that position Africa as a supplier of raw materials in much the same manner as Western powers have done for centuries. Yet we collaborate with Chinese scholars in wealthy Chinese universities with all the access to technology but may be accused of being ‘imperialist’ when we push too hard. This connection and mixing also unsettles nationally centred categories which infuse our work, since the intersections of multiple social differences and situated histories play into any process, event or situation we choose to examine. Such connections produce less racially or nationally defined categories – ‘Chinese’ capitalism or ‘African’ agency or ‘Western’ values – while also retaining the power of racial and national boundary-making and their effects. Such a situation is captured by Ong (2008, 120) where she notes that “We need to view space as multiple and contingent, always shifting in response to flows and processes of situated articulation and disarticulation. New spaces overlap but do not always match up with given administrative units”. This idea is messier than the spatial ontologies of much postcolonial theory but is more useful in seeking to understand the situated processes of multiple connections between China, Africa and the West.

The political economy of knowledge production in Chinese, UK and African contexts Tilley’s (2017) metaphor of piracy is developed through a focus on bioprospecting where genetic material from the global South is commodified for circulation and use by Western corporations. As such, she urges us to focus not simply on questions of epistemology and culture but to “consider the political economy of knowledge, and thus of extractive academic tendencies” (p.28). Many of the practical issues we raised earlier derive from the different political economies in which different actors are embedded – as Connell (2007) pointed out, theory is made somewhere and we are dealing with the triangular relationship of the UK,

The (im)possibility of Southern theory 19

particular African countries and China. Collyer (2018) usefully argues that knowledge production is not absolutely rooted in national contexts but operates through ‘multiple circuits’ that are structured around different traditions, epistemologies and shaped by power relations. So how does the political economy of higher education and research in our constitutive territories play into the circuits of knowledge production about China–Africa? Our response to this is personal and perceptual, and so necessarily tentative. Our sense is that there are distinct institutional and cultural contexts of being a Chinese academic. The tenure and promotion track seems to encourage certain forms of knowledge creation such as expert reports to state bodies rather than English-language, peer-reviewed journal papers. As broadly qualitative scholars we have also struggled to get our Chinese and some African colleagues to see such data as ‘proper’ data and they therefore tend to be more inclined to collaborate when they can contribute to quantitative analysis. This speaks to a wider issue of ‘evidence’ and policy influence that is more global in nature. Legitimate evidence to influence policymakers is often seen to be ‘hard data’ rather than qualitative and perceptual, which necessarily funnels researchers who aspire to shape policy into such forms of data analysis. Yet the finer-grained quantitative data needed to model things like local impacts on development is simply lacking in many African countries. And this is compounded by an unwillingness of some of our Chinese colleagues to come to Africa to undertake detailed ethnographic work, or even semistructured interviewing with Chinese businesses. Latterly, the further centralization of state authority under Xi Jinping has made Chinese scholars based in China warier of collaborating with non-Chinese colleagues. While Chinese scholars based outside China clearly have more scope to be critical, the pressure to have Chinabased Chinese colleagues, which organizations like the ESRC push, means that more independently critical scholarship is difficult. In both Ghana and Nigeria, two of the African countries in which we have been most engaged in our China–Africa research, the university sector was hammered by the Structural Adjustment Programmes of the 1980s which saw huge outflows of intellectuals. Many of the best social scientists either emigrated or set up think tanks to capture donor money. As such, there is often more of a consultancy culture to research where collaboration in international research projects is one way to augment still meagre salaries as well as opening the possibility of international publication, though what and where it is published seems to be less important. The ruffling of accepted categories that a connected sociology demands was also at play in our West African research, and questions categories like ‘Africa’. In the African context, where interpersonal trust appears weak and the independence of academics and think tanks is contested, the role of the local research partner as a cultural broker can be complex. During Richmond’s data collection in Nigeria and Ghana for the research on Chinese oil investments, the research participants in Nigeria were more receptive to him and readier to cooperate than their counterparts in his home country, Ghana. In Nigeria, he managed to arrange interview appointments at short notice and with relatively high success rates compared to

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what happened in Ghana. Here, being a fellow Ghanaian was a disadvantage in that Ghanaian respondents were wary of Richmond’s own networks and influence while Nigerian respondents assumed he was not part of the Nigerian oil scene and therefore was a ‘neutral’ observer. In the UK, we speak English which has become the de facto ‘universal’ academic language (Hultgren 2014; Collyer 2018); this means that our need to speak ‘other’ languages is less pressured. This stems back to colonial connections and while we disavow extractive forms of knowledge production, we are embedded in these unequal relations as UK-based researchers for most of the time the research under discussion was conducted. The Research Excellence Framework, introduced in 2014 to succeed the Research Assessment Exercise first introduced in 1986, grades and ranks the work of UK-based academics. It pushes for research to be ‘original’ and cutting edge, which means finding novel theoretical takes on global issues and valorizing researchers’ contribution to knowledge. And the geopolitical anxiety about the ‘rise’ of China (and other Southern powers) has seen UK research councils pushing collaborations with emerging power academics as a form of soft power diplomacy. It also means the UK research councils have been active in funding projects from which we have been lucky enough to benefit. But this does mean that UK-based academics have been the principal investigators and so control the funds and initiate contractual relationships with erstwhile ‘Southern’ collaborators, which functions to cement a power differential and who ‘owns’ the resulting intellectual property.

Knowledge production through cultural brokerage So far, we have argued that knowledge creation can be extractive and is rooted in the political economy and epistemological sites from which we work. But things are not so bleak and our projects have, in different ways, fomented collaborations between Western, African and Chinese researchers which are part and parcel of the diverse and variegated relationships emerging in the space of China–Africa studies. Our own analysis tends to focus on the aid projects, trade and investment relations and migration flows without reflecting on our own practices as connectors and brokers. But the ‘field-informed’ research that Tilley (2017, 38) recommends is based on being “relational, co-creational and grounded”. Despite the many frustrations we have encountered, the tripartite teams of African, Chinese and British researchers we have been involved in have had some breakthroughs but these have generally required ‘cultural brokerage’ of one sort or another. While the literature on ‘cultural brokers’ has tended to emphasize that brokers themselves may be manipulative rather than facilitative of connection, we explore the enabling role we believe they have played in our research. The cultural brokerage literature can also be accused of reifying culture (Hinderaker 2002; de Jong 2018) but we argue that recognizing more fluid and relational notions of culture makes it possible to see cultural brokerage as a creative process in which both the broker and the actors with whom they facilitate interaction play creative

The (im)possibility of Southern theory 21

roles. Cultural brokerage therefore offers opportunities in seeking to negotiate the challenges of conducting research on China–Africa relations in ways that involve meaningful co-production of knowledge with ‘Southern’ partners. However, we also need to recognize that there remain real limitations to the extent to which cultural brokerage can enable research to transcend the power relations entrenched in circuits of academic knowledge production. We explore these potentials and limitations through our experiences of one of the China–Africa research projects mentioned above: that focusing on the nature and outcomes of contemporary Chinese migration to Ghana and Nigeria. As we discuss below, this project was fraught with the kinds of challenges outlined above related to a British academic seeking to research across African and Chinese contexts. These challenges were only overcome, at least in the sense of being able to generate meaningful data to complete the project, by working with someone who could effectively mediate between British, Chinese and particular African cultural identities, and therefore be considered a cultural broker. The sociologist Mario Diani (2013, n.p.) claims: “In its most basic terms, brokerage refers to the mechanism whereby an actor acts as an intermediary between two other actors that are not directly linked, thus creating a new line of communication and exchange”. Significantly, the anthropologist Johan Lindquist (2015, 870) develops this understanding by highlighting that cultural brokerage is not in any way a ‘neutral’ process, arguing that “the broker is a specific type of middleman, mediator, or intermediary. Most generally, the broker is a human actor who gains something from the mediation of valued resources that he or she does not directly control, which shall be distinguished from a patron who controls valued resources, and a go-between or a messenger, who does not affect the transaction”. Below, we explore how such gains took shape in our tripartite research project and how the broker involved influenced the ‘transaction’ and its outcomes in fundamental ways. Most of the work on cultural brokerage comes from ethno-historical studies of colonial societies, focusing on the relations between colonizers and the colonized (de Jong 2018). In such work, cultural brokers are identified in both settler and indigenous communities, but with time, intermediaries between colonizers and the colonized were seen to emerge from mixed heritages, religious conversion and the colonial education and administrative systems. As de Jong argues, their contacts with, positions of trust in, and linguistic and cultural knowledge of both settler and indigenous communities put cultural brokers in a privileged position. The American historian Eric Hinderaker (2002, 358) argues that “the most effective brokers … were exposed to hybrid cultural influences for long periods of time, and gained through their experiences a unique ability to perform a variety of cross-cultural tasks”. As Johan Lindquist (2015, 870) points out, cultural brokers were “often multilingual and comfortable in multiple settings”. But a key point is that the broker’s role exceeded linguistic translation and extended to what Hinderaker (2002, 358) calls “more complex forms of intermediation” such as facilitating relationships and interpreting concepts. It is these qualities that underpin the creative potential of cultural brokerage as well as the recent interest in its role in

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contemporary contexts such as international migrants and diasporas acting as intermediaries for international development projects in their countries of origin (de Jong 2018). As the sociologists Katherine Stovel and Lynette Shaw (2012, 140) explain, “brokerage has the capacity to ease social interaction’ and brokers can ‘make sense of the world for us”. It was in the search for someone who could make at least some sense of the worlds experienced by Chinese migrants in Ghana and Nigeria that Giles came to recruit Ben to the research fellow position on this project. Ideally, Giles needed someone who had worked in Ghana and/or Nigeria and spoke Chinese. He recruited Ben who had worked in Nigeria for extended periods since 2000, but he could not speak Chinese and there was little prospect of him learning to by the time the fieldwork needed to commence. Nonetheless, Ben set off on an initial fieldtrip to Lagos and made some progress with finding contacts on the Nigerian side of the Nigeria–China relationship as well as among some members of the long-established Hong Kong Chinese community in the city who spoke perfect English and often felt a cultural connection to the UK. But for the project to fulfil its objectives, it was necessary to find a more direct way to engage with the generally more recent and larger-scale mainland Chinese migration to Nigeria and Ghana. It was in the course of making contacts on the Nigerian side of Nigeria–China relations that Ben met Rosemary (a pseudonym), a middle-aged Nigerian woman who had recently left a major Chinese multinational to establish her own consultancy company. In terms of the brokerage capabilities outlined above and with the needs of our research project in mind, Rosemary can be seen as a formidable cultural broker. Having received her school education in the Nigerian system, which as a colonial legacy was still very much modelled on the British system, and with close relatives and regular visits to the UK, she found it very easy to relate to Ben, what a British academic was trying to achieve, and how he wanted to go about doing so. But while her father was working in China in the mid-1980s, she had also completed her degree in Chinese language and literature at a top Chinese university. Furthermore, since returning to Nigeria from China soon after graduation, she had worked with or for Chinese companies operating in Nigeria and Ghana and visited China regularly. So, Rosemary is not only fluent in Chinese with a keen understanding of Chinese cultural heritage and work cultures but also has an incredible set of Chinese connections in Nigeria. She also happens to have a very friendly, open and engaging personality able to put new contacts at ease. Enthusiastically taking on the role of a consultant on our project, Rosemary simply transformed the research – the quantity, range and depth of data we collected far exceeded anything we could have achieved without her involvement. But critically, she also helped Ben understand much more about the data than he ever could have hoped, always contextualizing it in terms of her understanding of Chinese social and cultural trends and enabling Ben to connect with our Chinese research participants and appreciate their experiences in a way he simply wouldn’t have been able to achieve on his own. She helped Ben develop a real sense of

The (im)possibility of Southern theory 23

empathy and connection with our Chinese respondents, enabling us to explore shared experiences, such as our position as foreigners in Ghana and Nigeria, our educational histories and aspirations, and the pressures of making a secure life in our increasingly competitive home societies. Rosemary also has an extensive range of contacts with Ghanaians and Nigerians who are somehow connected to or affected by the Chinese presence and she was able to connect Ben to a far greater range of their voices than he would have been able to access on his own. This helped us to get a much more rounded and nuanced sense of the often-heated local debates about ‘China in Africa’, highlighting not only the tensions and conflicts that have attracted so much media attention, particularly in the ‘West’, but also the emergence of more cooperative, convivial and mutually beneficial relations (Lampert and Mohan 2014). It was also through these voices, especially via Rosemary’s contacts with fellow Nigerians, as well as Ghanaians, who had, like her, reached out and forged their own links with Chinese actors and shaped Chinese activities in their home countries, that African agency in China–Africa relations came through much more strongly than it might otherwise have done, becoming another of the key themes emerging from our research (Mohan and Lampert 2013). It is clear, then, that Rosemary enabled Ben, as a British researcher with no Chinese-language skills and very little specialized knowledge of Chinese social and cultural norms, to have a much broader and deeper engagement with Chinese migrants in Ghana and Nigeria, and locals connected to or affected by their presence, than he would have been able to achieve without her support. This can therefore be seen as a classic case of cultural brokerage, with Rosemary’s role exemplifying the creative opportunities presented by cultural brokers. However, the literature expresses a strong and longstanding ambivalence towards brokers. As Stovel and Shaw (2012) note, one of the central themes going back to the sociology of Georg Simmel is that brokerage not only has wider benefits such as easing social interaction but also frequently provides personal gains for the brokers themselves, enabling them to further their own social mobility and power. Exemplifying this, the anthropologist Jeremy Boissevain (1974, 148, quoted in Lindquist 2015, 871) describes the broker as “a professional manipulator of people and information who brings about communication for a profit”. From such perspectives, brokers are seen to have ‘mixed loyalties’ (de Jong 2018); in Eric Wolf’s (1956, 1076, quoted in ibid.) terms, they are “Janus-like, they face in two directions at once”. Rosemary certainly gained personally from her involvement in our research. She was paid more than our university’s standard rate for research consultants and when we met, she had just left a big Chinese company and had plans to set up a Nigeria– China consultancy; her work with us enabled this to happen. She ended up with further work through our project because some of the Chinese and Nigerian contacts she reconnected with needed assistance with their Nigeria–China businesses. And as noted above, she was also able to shape the stories we told about the Chinese presence in Ghana and Nigeria. These were stories she was passionately

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committed to being told, and ones that highlighted the local embeddedness and benefits of the Chinese communities more than most coverage, even if she was also happy to pursue the more contested dimensions of the Chinese presence. Rosemary did discourage a few interesting lines of research, such as towards one of the major, longstanding Hong Kong Chinese industrial groups in Nigeria due to her family connections to it and the influence of the owner, who she felt, quite reasonably, could undermine our progress if he found out about our research and was suspicious of it. But she was very open and explicit about this and shared lots of background information in these cases, even if it was not to be directly quoted. Ultimately, although Rosemary was very happy with the stories we told through the research, she did not want to take the risk of being explicitly linked to them for fear of damaging her relationships with her contacts and she had no interest in academic publication. While we could understand her position, it was nonetheless rather uncomfortable as the erasure of her absolutely central role in the research smacked of the entrenched, extractive mode of North–South knowledge generation we wanted to transcend.

Conclusion Our use of cultural brokerage to enable our research in a situation in which we were, at best, only very partially equipped to operate has undeniably reproduced some of the most problematic patterns of Northern research practice in Southern contexts. We would argue, however, that cultural brokerage did in this instance facilitate a greater level of North–South co-production than would otherwise have been the case. An important criticism that can be made of the cultural brokerage literature is that it often works with very fixed, ‘containerized’ notions of culture, in which cultures are presented as distinct ‘units’ with clear boundaries between them (Hinderaker 2002; de Jong 2018;). But it has been argued that if we recognize more fluid and relational notions of culture in which contact is constitutive of cultural identities, brokerage can be seen as a creative process in which, to quote Eric Hinderaker (2002, 369), “brokers help to constitute their cultures through the process of mediation”. We think that this is, in many ways, exactly what Rosemary did, and the ‘cultures’ that she helped to articulate were profoundly mixed. Our Chinese respondents often called her by the Chinese name she was given during her time at university in China, and explicitly framed her as a fellow Chinese. Among other things, Rosemary’s ascribed Chinese-ness meant that a number of Chinese respondents expressed that they could say things to and in front of her that they would not feel comfortable saying in the presence of other Nigerians. But it also pointed to a sense of much more developed and embedded Chinese–Ghanaian/Nigerian social and cultural mixes created by Chinese and West Africans alike, which stood in stark contrast to the generally confrontational ‘China–Africa’ binary presented in much commentary. It was this sense that came to characterize the ‘findings’ of our research and so, in this regard at least, Rosemary certainly co-produced the stories we

The (im)possibility of Southern theory 25

told and enabled our Chinese and West African respondents to play a much bigger part in their production than would have been possible otherwise. The stories highlight the cultural connection and mixing that can underpin apparently binary ‘South–South’ relations and suggest that embracing this helps us to better understand these relations.

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Mohan, G. and Lampert, B. (2013) Negotiating China: Reinserting African agency into China-Africa relations. African Affairs, 112(446), 92–110. Mohan, G, Lampert, B, Tan-Mullins, M. and Chang, D. (2014) Chinese Migrants and Africa’s Development: New Imperialists or Agents of Change?London: Zed Books. Ong, A. (2008) Scales of exception: Experiments with knowledge and sheer life in tropical Southeast Asia. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 29, 117–129. Raghuram, P., Noxolo, P. and Madge, C. (2014) Rising Asia and postcolonial geography. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 35, 119–135. Roy, A. (2016) Who’s afraid of postcolonial theory? International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 40(1), 200–209. Pieterse, J. and Parekh, B. eds. (1995) The Decolonization of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge and Power. London: Zed Books. Power, M., Mohan, G. and Tan-Mullins, M. (2012) Powering Development: China’s Energy Diplomacy and Africa’s Future. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Santos, B. (2014) Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers. Savransky, M. (2017) A decolonial imagination: Sociology, anthropology and the politics of reality. Sociology, 51(1), 11–26. Stovel, K. and Shaw, L. (2012) Brokerage. Annual Review of Sociology, 38, 150–158. Tilley, L. (2017) Resisting piratic method by doing research otherwise. Sociology, 51(1), 27–42. Volman, D. (2007) US to create new regional military command for Africa: AFRICOM. Review of African Political Economy, 34(114), 737–744. Wolf, E. (1956) Aspects of group relations in a complex society: Mexico. American Anthropologist, 58(6), 1065–1078.

VIGNETTE: WHERE IS THE SOUTH? Global, postcolonial and intersectional perspectives Ruben Gonzalez-Vicente

Mainstream understandings of the ‘South’ treat it as a collection of nation-states with relatively low per capita incomes. Such perspectives ignore the struggles that the term South has historically evoked, and eschews key dimensions of power, inequality and oppression. Thinking of the South nationally is particularly unsatisfying when one stands below Dubai’s towering skyscrapers, hears the roaring of the sport cars that the sons of Party elites race through the streets of Beijing, or observes from a safe distance the machinations of the Russian oligarchic elite. In my own work, these same tensions are quite apparent. How should I think of the South and South–South relations, for example, when exploring the conflicts between peasant populations in Latin America and Fortune Global 500 firms from China? Can I speak of a rising South as I study how the competitiveness of the Chinese economy – built upon state repression that facilitates exploitation – becomes the cornerstone for the proliferation of new business deals with profound social implications? How much power and privilege must one accrue to complete the voyage from South to North? And it is of course not only China, as a monolithic terrifying other, which should be feared and questioned, as more often than not all that Chinese actors do in their engagement in the developing world is to exploit already existing relations of inequality. Indeed, in some cases, Chinese policy banks and corporations help to moderate the perils of excessive dependency on a limited set of ideologically monotonous Western ‘partners’. Also, while the severity of global inequalities may appear more visible in newly ‘emerging markets’ that expound extremely uneven patterns of development, it is also painfully present in the depressed neighbourhoods of Detroit, in the homes of the almost 100 families evicted each day in post-bank bailout Spain, or in the boards of directors of leading Japanese firms, conspicuously absent of women. So where do we start to map out the ‘South’ within an age of globalization? Following centuries of colonialism and exploitation at the hands of European

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metropoles, the concepts of ‘South’ and ‘North’ emerged in the 1960s as powerful geographical metaphors to articulate struggles against colonial and neocolonial patterns of exploitation. Emancipation had been from the 19th century eminently a national undertaking, although with time it would become apparent that many of the inequalities of the colonial period persisted within the newly independent postcolonial societies. This is something that some Marxist scholars had anticipated – preoccupied as they were by the rise of ‘bourgeois nationalism’ – and others working within the postcolonial tradition would also later point out. Still, for a certain period of time until the 1970s/80s, political arrangements in the developing world (and elsewhere) responded to the national balances of power between different class formations, with governments often able to intervene in industrial and economic matters in profound ways, and reflecting or reacting to popular demands for nationally inclusive forms of development (Gonzalez-Vicente and Carroll 2017). Beyond the domestic sphere, international inequalities were the basis of an unbalanced international division of labour, and underdevelopment remained a national burden for many postcolonial societies, as dependentistas and World Systems theorists contended. But when the arrival of neoliberalism released vast amounts of capital from their national constraints (in path-dependent, uneven and ‘variegated’ ways), the proposition that the business champions of the developing world could represent the aspirations of the vulnerable and the oppressed became more preposterous than it had ever been. Today, a South–South analysis based on an exclusively nationalist ontology is anachronistic and flawed by design. It is true that some of the national hierarchies that first prompted the North– South conceptual divide are very much alive today, as proved by the distribution of voting power in key international institutions, aggregate per capita wealth disparities between developed and developing economies, and military strength and legitimacy for intervention, to name just a few important issues. Yet some of the gaps are being bridged (see for example China’s growing relevance in most of the aspects listed above). Above all, national imbalances remain a simplistic and limited way of understanding social relations in our contemporary world and, indeed, national ‘South–South’ relations. In what remains of this vignette, I suggest three perspectives that I consider valuable in expanding the understanding of the South while avoiding the shortcomings of methodological nationalism: a global perspective, a postcolonial perspective and an intersectional perspective. A combination of these three approaches may serve as a useful departure point to probe into the new geographies of inequality that contextualize the ‘rise of the South’ and ‘South– South relations’ in the 21st century. My aim is to make clear that it makes little sense, returning to one of my examples above, to associate a Fortune Global 500 corporation backed by the repressive forces of a powerful authoritarian state with the ‘South’, whether one is using the term in a scholarly fashion or as the basis for different forms of activism. First, the global approach entails a recognition that the transnationalization of production after the 1970s/80s and up until today, as sketched above, has resulted in completely new relations between capital, state and society. The new normal

Where is the South? 29

involves global value chains that dominate relations of production, the rise of a transnational capitalist class that despite nationalistic tendencies in certain contexts holds important similarities across jurisdictions in terms of interests and behaviours, and offshore financial centres and complex financial engineering that further delink capital from the national boundaries that once constrained it. Here it is important to highlight the competitive pressures that business and states face under world market capitalism, with corporations needing to keep their edge and adapt to demands for productivity and profit within an internationally priced market system, and governments increasingly compelled to cater to the predilections of mobile capital. In this context, the leverage of labour, indigenous peoples or peasant populations vis-à-vis capital has been significantly transformed, and often weakened. Indeed, important advances have been made in some identity-based struggles, such as the recognition of some indigenous or gender rights. However, it has become increasingly difficult to break the business–state nexus in the realm of production. Here, the interests of capital have gradually recrafted policy agendas in both North and South in the name of competitiveness, with important implications for intra-state inequality and social reproduction (Gonzalez-Vicente 2017; Carroll et al., 2019). What a global perspective into South–South relations allows us to do is to understand the South and North not just as national categories, but also as class-based formations that, quite importantly, operate in transnational scales and could instigate internationalist forms of activism and resistance. Secondly, postcolonial perspectives (broadly defined) help to make sense of enduring legacies of oppression and the silencing of ‘subaltern’ populations (e.g. indigenous peoples, women, peasant populations) in many of the developmental agendas emerging from the statist ‘South’, and even in some of the social movements that contest both state and capital in these same settings. Often, when development is articulated as a national endeavour – regardless of whether this is done beyond the reach of the ‘West’/‘North’ – it tends to draw upon limited understandings of national interest and the public good, and may reanimate forms of postcolonial exclusion; see for example Radcliffe (2012) on the limits to decolonization in Ecuador. In China, Xi Jinping’s call to “unify the thinking and will of the people of all China’s ethnic groups” is a chilling reminder of how agendas for national rejuvenation, closely aligned with the discourse of a rising ‘South’, can strengthen domestic hierarchies and silence dissent and non-mainstream understandings of wellbeing and development (Xi 2014). Postcolonial societies carry with them heavy domestic legacies of economic, geographic, gender and racial inequalities that do not just fade away within the context of ‘South–South’ relations. Examples of what this may exactly entail in practice include the vesting of power in central governments and subsequent eschewing or co-opting of participatory and bottom-up approaches, the displacement of vulnerable populations for projects of national significance, or the unequal distribution of the fruits of South–South partnerships. A postcolonial perspective allows us to further problematize the internal hierarchies within developing countries that engage in ‘South–South’ economic exchanges, and inspires struggles against inequality beyond discourses of ‘emerging economies’ or national modernization.

30 Ruben Gonzalez-Vicente

Finally, an intersectional perspective reveals the overlapping and mutually reinforcing forms of oppression that the global South faces in its daily struggles. The notion of intersectionality is taken from feminist scholarship that studies how ‘vectors of race, gender, class and sexuality’ combine to produce complex subjectivities and forms of subjugation (Nash 2008). As such, it may be also put to fruitful use in mapping out the complex geography of the South. In this way, the South can be understood as a space where global economic inequalities and postcolonial exclusions combine to create mutually reinforcing dimensions of underdevelopment and social and epistemic exclusion. The idea of intersectionality – with its focus on lived experiences of oppression – can also be brought into conversation with that of ‘transversality’ as discussed by Laclau and Mouffe (1985) – with an emphasis on political strategy. In a way, actual ‘South–South’ spaces are those open for transversal collaboration between movements against diverse forms of oppression in the post-national South. We may think here about transnational indigenous organizations, or international labour, peasant or feminist movements and campaigns, while one may still apply a critical lens to these, as economic and knowledge hierarchies are also evident within progressive initiatives. Thinking of the South intersectionally and transversally opens a door for critical and progressive engagement with and response to the state and business-led ‘South–South’ relations that many of us study. To conclude, I would like to acknowledge my own difficulties when dealing with the study of the ‘South’. There is first of all a certain discomfort regarding my positionality as a white male from a rich European country who feels entitled to have strong opinions about processes of development in the South. My tendency to side with the vulnerable is certainly not a negation of the fact that we in the North enjoy our privileged position precisely because many have been sacrificed, in both past and present, to the cause of our development. Our judgements on the aspirations of the emerging middle classes elsewhere, of their embracement of aggressive capitalist rationales, is in this way deeply problematic. In an also problematic way, I try to come to terms with this situation by telling myself that despite my personal shortcomings in giving up many of the comforts of capitalist modernity – gained at the expense of others as they are – I can still make a small contribution through my writing and teaching by bringing all questions of privilege and oppression into the debate, including those that pertain to ourselves. A second unresolved challenge is that of using the term ‘South’ in a conceptually consistent and critical manner, while often entering the subject matter from a nationalist perspective on the ‘South’. In this sense, I do still describe myself as a student of ‘South–South’ relations even if by this I mean Chinese investments in Latin America and the Caribbean, often with a focus on state–business interactions. It is difficult to let go of a catchy framing phrase, or to problematize the word ‘South’ in all of its single occurrences within a text or talk. It is also easy to abuse cautionary quotation marks, as I have probably done throughout these pages. Yet I believe that most of us involved in this volume would agree that there is an uncomfortable conceptual murkiness in the phrase ‘South–South relations’, which

Where is the South? 31

can bear completely different meanings depending on whether one approaches it from a mainstream national perspective or a critical one. And this murkiness has made it all too easy for neoliberal organizations such as the OECD or authoritarian nationalist governments such as the Chinese, Russian or Ethiopian ones to capitalize on the evocative qualities of the term. It is in response to these attempts to coopt an idea that still holds much currency among critical scholars and activists that I have suggested the need to stop thinking of the South nationally. The term ‘South’ needs hence to be continuously questioned and reflected upon. In this task, global, postcolonial and intersectional perspectives offer a way forward to probe into the various forms of inequality that characterize the relations between ‘emerging economies’ in a consolidating world market.

References Carroll, T., Gonzalez-Vicente, R. and Jarvis, D. S. L. (2019) Capital, conflict and convergence: The politics of neoliberalism under capitalist transformation. Globalizations, doi:10.1080/ 14747731.2018.1560183. Gonzalez-Vicente, R. (2017) South–South relations under world market capitalism: The state and the elusive promise of national development in the China–Ecuador resourcedevelopment nexus. Review of International Political Economy, 24(5), 881–903. Gonzalez-Vicente, R. and Carroll, T. (2017) Politics after national development: Explaining the populist rise under late capitalism. Globalizations, 14(6), 991–1013. Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. (1985) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso. Nash, J. (2008) Re-thinking intersectionality. Feminist Review, 89, 1–15. Radcliffe, S. A. (2012) Development for a postneoliberal era? Sumak Kawsay, living well and the limits to decolonization in Ecuador. Geoforum, 43(2), 240–249. Xi, J. (2014) The Governance of China. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press.

2 DEVOURING INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Anthropophagy and the study of South–South cooperation Adriana Erthal Abdenur

Naked, ferocious and savage In 1557, a book by German mercenary Hans Staden, who had spent two periods in Brazil, came out in Marburg. According to his account, Staden had spent part of this period in captivity after being taken by the Tupinambá indigenous people. The tome was an instant sensation and helped to set the tone for how Brazil would come to be understood in European cultures. Its preface read: “True description of a country of naked, ferocious and savage cannibals” (Staden 1929, 13).1. European artists, captivated by Staden’s description of cannibalism, fed the obsession by producing their own visual takes on this scandalous practice. The 1592 engraving ‘Cannibalism in Brazil’, by the Belgian engraver Theodore de Bry, depicted Staden horrified as he watches a group of naked natives gleefully dismembering a corpse, roasting body parts over an open fire, and feasting on human flesh. Although de Bry never visited the Americas, instead producing his art based on the accounts of explorers, the engraving became one of the most often-reproduced artworks related to Brazilian history, and an emblematic visualization of how Europeans thought about Amerindian (and later, Brazilian) culture. Western understandings of what came to be called Brazil were, from the start, anchored in the image of the barbaric cannibal; as a result, the idea of anthropophagy has remained a central concern in the historiography of Brazil. Eventually, critics seized on this obsession to question its basic assumptions, including the dichotomy between civilized and barbarian that had been so essential to the European colonial enterprise. In another type of response, starting in the early 20th century, Brazilian cultural elites undertook an ironic appropriation of anthropophagy as part of the search for an original direction for their cultural production. Cannibalism, they argued, is a central metaphor through which Brazilian culture may be understood. This chapter analyses the development of Brazilian

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antropophagy – briefly put, the process whereby Brazilian cultural elites digested European modernism while affirming indigenous cultural sources – and examines its relevance to the field of international relations, including the study of South–South cooperation. Drawing on metaphors such as anthropophagy can be enriching because, over the past decade, scholars have increasingly questioned the Western-centric foundations of international relations and the implications of its theoretical biases. These critical perspectives have been accompanied by repeated calls for greater pluralism in the discipline – both in terms of its makeup and with respect to its worldviews. The drive to make the field of international relations ‘more global’ has included a series of efforts by scholars in developing world countries to draw on regional, national or local experiences and thought so as to propose alternative perspectives. Brazilian anthropophagy can enhance this toolkit of theoretical perspectives by providing a distinctive take on cultural, social, economic and political encounters that is at once epistemologically unique and, on the other hand, aligned with other postcolonial enterprises in international relations theorizing. The metaphor of anthropophagy is exciting in part because it relies on humour, and specifically irony, to critique North–South epistemologies and worldviews, while acknowledging their seminal influence in Brazilian culture and hybridizing them with indigenous roots. By turning one of the greatest taboos in Western culture on its head, the metaphor of anthropophagy transforms a taboo into a totem, attributing a new meaning to cannibalism and creating a new type of tension around this idea. Although anthropophagy has multiple interpretations in Brazilian cultural history (see Nunes 1990; Schwartz 1995), here it is understood as the critical devouring and creative assimilation of cultural products or ideas. It represents at once a rejection of imitation and a dismissal of the idea that external influences can be eliminated outright in favour of an ‘authentic homegrown culture’. More broadly, Brazilian anthropophagy may be understood as part of the postcolonial quest for a cultural compass – although, in contrast to subaltern studies and the different strands of Orientalism that have been incorporated into the study of international relations, anthropophagy has not been closely associated with a nationalist discourse of institutional statehood. For international relations, the metaphor of anthropophagy opens up methodological possibilities along two fronts. First, anthropophagy can contribute towards the relational take on international affairs, helping to clarify the hybrid forms that arise out of encounters, whether through ad hoc encounters or structured cooperation. Second, the metaphor is relevant to addressing issues of researcher positionality, including the power dynamics involved in transnational exchanges such as those entailed by South–South cooperation (and the study thereof). Along both lines, anthropophagy offers rich new possibilities for countering Western-centric mainstream theories, including modernization theory and certain strands of the policy transfer literature, by questioning and subtly subverting the assumption of unidirectionality (the idea that countries and societies do or should emulate models originating in the North).

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The first part of this chapter offers an overview of Brazilian anthropophagy, from its roots in the colonial encounter and the descriptions of the ‘barbarian’ natives that the European explorers encountered, to the development of the ironic metaphor. This creation occurred in two key waves: the artistic movement of the 1920s and 30s, which rebelled against European modernism, and later the Tropicália wave during the military regime in Brazil (especially in the 1960s). The second part of the chapter considers the relevance but also the limitations of this metaphor for the study of international relations, and in particular for epistemological and methodological issues. The final part notes some possible directions for further research.

Global South ways of knowing The academic discipline of international relations emerged out of – and therefore was heavily shaped by – Western experiences and institutions, primarily those of the United States and Western Europe. Especially in its first half-century, the field’s focus on states as depersonalized entities has tended to obfuscate the role of other actors in shaping international affairs. Both realism and liberalism (and their many variants) have been criticized for overlooking the cultural and societal dimension of international politics in favour of broad structural and economic factors, and even constructivism, which sometimes claims to allow for social and cultural considerations, has been criticized for being “Western centric, beholden to the power and purpose of the West”. (Acharya 2013, 1). There are several reasons behind the cognitive and analytical biases of these paradigmatic theoretical perspectives. First, the historical dominance of Western means of knowledge production and publication has heavily favoured those who adhere to mainstream theories and perspectives. In order to advance professionally, scholars in the global South typically are expected to publish in English-language publications, most of which are based in the US and Europe and reproduce mainstream ways of knowing. Secondly, from its inception international relations has also been viewed as a source of inputs for policymakers, primarily in the global powers. As with any discipline, as Cox (1986, 208) has noted, “Theory is always for someone and for purpose”. Most international relations theories are premised on, and thus tend to reinforce, hierarchies by promoting Western values and by depicting the ‘Other’ as subordinate, inferior or even uncivilized (Hobson 2012). This trend is exacerbated by the fact that, as part of the ‘return to geopolitics’, the highly prescriptive subfield known as strategic studies (which focuses on patterns of war and peace) tends to reinforce the presumption of a state-based balance of power. And thirdly, the field has been heavily influenced by a positivistic quest to formulate generalizable theories that are nonetheless primarily relevant to the global North. Waltz’s assertion that “a general theory of international politics must necessarily be based on the great powers” (2012, 72) captures not only the area’s analytical bias, but also its highly selective prescriptive dimension.

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This scenario is problematic on a number of counts. Even as the international relations field has become more interdisciplinary, it has also stuck to a centre-andperiphery view of the world that privileges analysis from the perspectives of global powers. One of the main resulting flaws is that its main explanatory approaches do not adequately address the experiences and perspectives of other parts of the world, especially postcolonial and colonial contexts (Bilgin 2016). This is not to say that these theoretical traditions and the epistemological approaches that underpin them are without value. As Chakrabarty (2000) has argued, Western analytical and theoretical categories remain indispensable yet inadequate for understanding international affairs. This critique applies not only to analyses produced by Northern institutions, but also to much of the scholarship produced in the developing world that accepts uncritically the applicability of Western-centred theories. Some critics believe this inadequacy applies not only to the problem-solving stream traditions (realism, liberalism and constructivism) but also to the emancipatory and critical streams of international relations that rely on Eurocentric epistemologies (Marxism, feminisms, post-modernisms) (see, for instance, Tansel 2014). Second, the field’s analytically parochial character sits ill at ease with the increasingly international makeup of international relations students, faculty and researchers. Indeed, the expansion of the field has been due in large part to the opening of new international relations departments, programmes and centres outside the West, and in particular in large developing countries such as Brazil China, India, Turkey and Indonesia. Nevertheless, even as the community becomes more heterogenous, the explanatory power of mainstream international relations remains constrained by the narrowness of the worldviews that it promotes. A third problem is the fact that this Western-centric trajectory has led to the development of an established professional language that “privileges the initiated, reproduces adherents through highly specialized training practices, and ignores or rebuffs intellectual ‘outsiders’”.2 Although every discipline develops a common internal language, that of international relations has remained stubbornly hermetic, centred on core concepts such as state, cooperation, institutions, leaderships and organization. Professional languages that are excessively redundant have the effect of limiting the intellectual creativity and curiosity of its adherents, insofar as it encourages sticking to well-accepted concepts and perspectives (Cohn 1987). The area’s mainstream language also tends to sanitize academic writing in ways that are highly exclusionary of researchers employing non-mainstream styles, concepts, language and perspectives, even when the discipline is in sore need of oxygenation and new vocabularies. Finally, the positivist bent – and, in particular, the search for replicable truths – has made most scholars of international relations deeply uncomfortable with ambiguity and ambivalence. As a result, the discipline has also neglected historical and cultural factors, including identity, as fundamental objects of analysis (Anand 2007). It is thus more important than ever to broaden the field of view within international relations theory so as to incorporate a more just and representative understanding of international relations (Benabdallah et al. 2017). This must

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include ‘global South ways of knowing’ – the varied ways in which peoples and communities around the developing world experience and understand international affairs (see Tickner and Waever 2009). The quest for original and relevant perspectives on international relations is no novelty in Latin America, where – despite the predominance of the so-called ‘[North] American school’ (Tickner et al. 2012) – a number of scholars have sought to promote the elaboration of Latin American concepts (Cervo 2008). They note that this is far from a mere academic exercise; producing knowledge based on more localized contexts also matters for providing relevant input to decisionmakers, especially given the region’s long history of policymakers who have aspired to greater policy autonomy within the international system. Some researchers from the region have proposed new concepts based on Latin American experiences yet without necessarily attaching these to a broader framework.3 Latin American political economy experts, in particular, have long sought to break free from the confines imposed by mainstream development theories. These scholars have been especially critical of modernization theory and its assumption that, in order to ‘progress’ from a backwards state to an advanced one, developing countries should emulate as best as they can the policies and trajectories of the advanced economies. In the 1960s and 1970s, the streams of thought emerging from Latin America – among them, structuralism, internal colonialism, marginality and dependency – offered different interpretations of power relations between and within states, focusing on the asymmetry of power relations. This rebellion, however, was not entirely revolutionary; those analyses relied on many of the fundamental concepts, models and vocabulary taken from mainstream development theories. Rather than question the basic epistemological assumptions of mainstream international relations theories, they instead added new concepts to the existing canon. The frontier of the discipline still requires tapping into Latin American experiences and ways of knowing and questioning, in order to produce perspectives that are based upon, and speak to, the region’s dynamics.

From taboo to totem: Brazilian anthropophagy Cannibalism is a social and historical practice across many cultures, but strong taboos have emerged around it, especially in Western modernity. According to Lévi-Strauss (2017), the shock with which cannibalism is encountered reveals just as much about one’s own culture as the culture being examined and reflects the impulse to demarcate the self and the other, as well as to establish a hierarchy between them. Colonial explorers were almost obsessed with the instances of cannibalism they either observed or inferred, often noting the performative dimension of some cannibalistic rituals. As Jáuregui notes: Cannibalism, as a trope that sustains the very distinction between savagery and civilization, is a cornerstone of colonialism. However… the metaphor of cannibalism has been not just a paradigm for the incorporation of otherness but

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also a trope of self-recognition, a model for the incorporation of difference, and a central concept in the definition of Latin American identities. (Jáuregui 2012, 22) The taboo dimension of cannibalism helps to explain why the idea also invites dark humour as much as shock. In Western literature and film, satirical products centred on cannibalism abound, from Swift’s 1949 essay A Modest Proposal, which creates satire around the idea of eating children, to the 1991 French film Delicatessen, in which a butcher lures new tenants to his apartment, killing them and serving them as meat to the other residents. Across this broad gamut, the preoccupation with cannibalism questions and tests the boundaries of what is considered ‘civilized’ and, consequently, what is viewed as ‘primitive’. The idea of cannibalism is thus a valuable humorous device for caricaturing and exposing Eurocentric notions of the ‘enlightened’ self. The Western fixation with cannibalism arose in the encounter between Europe and other regions of the world, especially the Americas, Africa and the Pacific (Lindenbaum 2004). With respect to the former, Christopher Columbus’ journal (1942) and Pero Vaz de Caminha’s Letter of Discovery (1500) include several descriptions of the indigenous inhabitants those explorers refer to as ‘savages’. In fact, the word cannibal is deeply Latin American, being derived from Carib, an ethnic group from the West Indies. In addition to the mid-16th century accounts by Staden, French explorers André Thévet and Jean de Lery also underscored the cannibalism motif. De Lery’s Histoire d’un voyage fait en la terre du Brésil (“History of a voyage undertaken in Brazil”), published in 1578, focuses heavily on what the author perceived or claimed to be a widespread practice of cannibalism. Thus proceeded the construction of the Amerindian cannibal as barbaric ‘Other’ in opposition to a European civilized ‘self’. Some historians believe that, as part of their totemic belief system, some Tupi cultures people (of which the Tupinambá are a subgroup, and who at the time of European colonization lived primarily on the Atlantic coast of Southeast Brazil) practised cannibalism. More specifically, the Tupi were believed to eat enemies captured in battle, assimilating part of the ingested individual’s identity. In consuming the body of another human being, the eater was believed by the Tupi to incorporate that other person’s characteristics (Young 1998). In the process of eating the other, the devourer also acquired a new name. Others note the strong performative dimension of this practice, arguing that indigenous peoples may have engaged in cannibalism self-consciously in order to mediate their relations with colonizing or dominant powers (Obeyesekere 1992). Sanborn (1998), for instance, views Tupi cannibalistic rituals as dramaturgical performances meant to induce terror in foreign audiences, thus constructing a displayed identity that only functioned in the presence of the colonizer. Others have disputed Western-based understandings of the extent to which cannibalism was practised at the time of the encounter with the Americas by questioning the accuracy of accounts by Columbus, Staden and other colonial

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explorers (see Arens 1979). Those critics argue that such testimonies were too dubious, and they question whether these practices in fact existed as described by Westerners. Regardless of the veracity of colonial accounts, the perception that cannibalism was a rampant practice among indigenous people became central to European attitudes about this ‘new’ world. Over time, the idea of cannibalism also became a key element of Brazilian self-understandings, albeit in a highly ironic manner and transformed into a cultural metaphor. This change came about because of the inherent tension in the idea of cannibalism: namely, that it entails identifying with, and even desiring, a dangerous Other. The main temporal landmark in this appropriation of the idea of cannibalism came about in the 1920s, amid Brazil’s early process of industrialization and the socioeconomic contradictions that it generated. At that time, Brazil was a relatively newly independent country (it had become independent from Portugal in 1822), but it had long been accustomed to mimicry of the West, usually promoted by Brazilian elites. As a wave of early industrialization took hold and large waves of immigrants arrived from Europe, the Middle East and Japan, Brazilian elites sought to forge a new identity for this young country even as they also grappled with the upheavals in Europe and the emergence of the modernist movement. More than a direct political project, however, this quest took the shape of a search for a unique Brazilian aesthetic, and it was led not by nationalist politicians but rather by avant-garde artists and cultural entrepreneurs in São Paulo. Islam (2012) notes that, in a perfect embodiment of the concept, the Brazilian writer Oswald de Andrade decided to adopt the metaphor of anthropophagy not while reviewing the colonial primary sources but rather upon reading Michel de Montaigne’s essay “Of Cannibals”, in which the author describes Tupinambá cannibalism as rituals of honour and compares it to the ‘barbarianism’ of 16th-century Europe. Andrade then worked with a group of fellow artists – among them, the painter Anita Malfatti (then Andrade’s wife); Mário de Andrade; and Menotti Del Picchia – to organize the Semana de Arte Moderna (Modern Art Week), a weeklong cultural festival that ran from 10–17 February 1922. The event took place within the broader context of the centennial of Brazil’s independence from Portugal, but it detracted from the traditionalist, openly nationalist tone of the other celebrations. In addition to an exhibition of Brazilian avant-garde visual artists, held at the stately Municipal Theatre of São Paulo, the event featured saraus (artistic soirées), readings, performances and conferences – many of them ribald in tone. The festival was, by and large, pilloried by critics, who favoured a return to the classical ideals of Parnassism, and it was deemed scandalous by the ultraconservative Brazilian elites. Despite its unpopular reception among these groups, the Semana is widely considered to have launched Brazilian modernism, as well as debates around the movement. In effect, the nascent anthropophagist movement presented the idea of devouring the other as a joyful and courageous antidote to the dull quest to perfect imitation of European aesthetics. Andrade went on to publish two declarations of Brazilian aesthetics. In essence, the 1924 Brazil Wood Manifesto (Manifesto Pau Brasil) and the 1924 Anthropophagist

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Manifesto (Manifesto Antropófago) constituted declarations of Brazilianness through cultural cannibalism. In most interpretations, the Anthropophagist Manifesto, which is far more politically direct than the first manifesto, suggests that – rather than render Brazilian culture submissive to its European counterparts – the Brazilian tradition of “cannibalizing” other cultures in fact constitutes a considerable asset due to its creative potential. In both manifestos, Andrade called for the use of a “literary language” that was “free from catechisms”. Both the form and the content of the manifesto are rebellious, humorous and utopian. Through this literary-political declaration, Andrade proposed that Brazilians used cultural cannibalism to assert themselves vis-à-vis European postcolonial cultural domination – not by repulsing it altogether, but rather by devouring it and mixing it with native elements. The manifesto’s most iconic line – “Tupi or not Tupi: that is the question” – neatly encapsulates this act of devouring, digesting and recreating. In a single sentence, Andrade celebrates the Tupi indigenous culture while devouring Shakespeare’s arguably most famous line. In doing so, Andrade “transforms Hamlet’s classic formulation of identity struggle into a postcolonial struggle to make sense of one’s historical identity” (Islam 2012, 166). The Manifesto Antropófago served as the cornerstone for the Revista de Antropofagia (Anthropophagy Journal), which Andrade launched with fellow artists Raul Bopp and Antônio de Alcântara Machado. From 1928 to 1929, the journal published pieces on literature, art and poetry. Although the founders claimed that the journal had no ideological bent – “only stomach” – over time the publication acquired a strongly anti-modernist tone. The journal’s covers included reprints of the European engravings of Tupi cannibals, in yet another ironic appropriation of what had once been used to denigrate the Brazilian ‘Other’. Although only 25 editions of the journal were ever issued – the publication was discontinued amidst the throes of the 1929 Great Crash – the editors, and especially Andrade, adopted an increasingly sharp tone that caused rifts with some of the most important proponents of Brazilian modernism, including some of his previous collaborators. By mid-1929, Andrade’s acid attacks targeted not only Brazil’s traditionalist art, but also its culture and history. He wrote under the pseudonym ‘Freuderico’ (a wordplay on Freud and the name Frederico): “We don’t carry out literary criticism – intrigue, yes!” This early wave of Brazilian anthropophagy included a key visual representation. In 1928, Andrade’s then-wife, painter Tarsila do Amaral – who, like her husband, had studied in Europe before returning to Brazil – produced the oil on canvas painting Abaporu (from the Tupi language “abapo’ru, abá (man) + poro (people) + ‘u (to eat)”, thus “the man that eats people”), reportedly as a gift to her then husband. The bright, colourful painting depicts a solitary figure with oversized feet and small head, of uncertain age and gender, sitting hunched on a green field next to a cactus. Although the painting’s style is reminiscent of the French modernists, especially Fernand Léger – who had taught Tarsila in Paris in 1924 – the figure also recalls indigenous Brazilian aesthetics. The painting has been called the most widely known artwork in Brazilian modern art and may be interpreted as the founding visual iconography of the Brazilian anthropophagist movement of the early 20th

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century, embodying the ironic ambiguity and hybridity of the metaphor. In fact, the Manifesto Antropófago was illustrated with a sketch of Abaporu. Long after the Semana de Arte Moderna, Andrade continued to call upon other Brazilian cultural elites to build on the concept of anthropophagy as a key element of theorizing in Brazil. In the last decade of his life (he died on 22 October 1954), Andrade devoted considerable effort to providing philosophical grounding to the anthropophagist movement, especially in the 1950 book A Crise da Filosofia Messiânica (The Crisis of Messianic Philosophy). In true anthropophagic form, he linked the concept not only to Brazilian authors, but also to the work of European thinkers like Nietsche and Engels. Partly as a result of these efforts, the idea of anthropophagy has recurred in Brazilian culture and history, through the cannibalistic appropriation of external influences and their commingling with indigenous elements towards a unique Brazilian aesthetic.4 The ironic and defensively subversive aspect of Brazilian anthropophagy was also a good fit for musicians and other artists grappling with issues of identity and freedom when Brazil reverted to authoritarian rule following the 1964 coup d’état. As the country found itself yet again under a repressive regime, artists in the political opposition to the regime revived and resignified anthropophagy. The popular music festivals of this period became an important vehicle for the development of this second wave of Brazilian anthropophagy. Indeed, its central means of expression was music, along with film (Nelson Pereira), literature (Augusto de Campos) and visual arts (Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Clark). Musicians such as Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Tom Zé and the band Os Mutantes used ambiguity, rebellion and irony in what became known as Tropicália or Tropicalismo (Dunn 2001). According to Veloso, this generation of musicians saw its work as providing continuity to the anthropophagic movement launched by Andrade, Amaral and colleagues, which had lost prominence in Brazilian art debates. Veloso and his peers revived and resignified the movement after he watched Andrade’s play O rei da vela (The King of the Candle), which caricatures both the submissive rural aristocracy and the national bourgeoisie, which Andrade viewed as subservient to foreign capital. Veloso later cited Andrade in arguing that “the idea of anthropophagy fit us like a glove: we were eating the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix” (Veloso 1997, 247). The best-known product of this period was the recording Tropicália: Ou Panis e Circenses (misspelled Latin for Bread and Circus), but the dark comedy “How Era Gostoso o Meu Francês” (“How Tasty was my Frenchman”) also returned to the theme of anthropophagy through a humorous reinterpretation of the French explorer’s narrative of Tupinambá cannibalism. As in the previous wave of anthropophagy, these artists were concerned with constructing an ‘authentically Brazilian’ aesthetic within the context of vanguard art. In contrast to Andrade’s group, however, the pioneers in this movement were from the state of Bahia, the epicentre of Afro-Brazilian culture. In addition, the tropicalistas adopted a more explicit political overtone, as their aesthetic quest dovetailed with the nascent efforts to resist the military regime. The political landscape was rapidly changing. A series of decrees by the military dictatorship, and

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in particular the Institutional Act Number Five (known as AI-5), issued under President Artur da Costa e Silva, resulted in the forfeiture of mandates, interventions in municipalities and states, the suspension of constitutional guarantees, and the institutionalization of state-sanctioned torture. In this context of tightening censorship, musicians sought to respond to the consolidation of authoritarianism through a juxtaposition of contradictory elements, by borrowing from multiple musical genres (ranging from pop and samba to Bossa Nova and baião), adopting irregular metrics and incorporating everyday noises into the music. Like the anthropophagists of the 1920s, the tropicalistas rebelled by refusing to conform to hard boundaries, even as they devoured and regurgitated multiple musical genres, absorbing the external characteristics into a Brazilian tropical aesthetic. Even though Brazil gradually returned to democratic government during the 1980s, the metaphor of anthropophagy has continued to reverberate throughout Brazilian culture. More recent appearances, however, are largely tributes and celebrations of anthropophagy’s past manifestations rather than efforts to ‘update’ the metaphor. The 1998 São Paulo Biennial Expo was designed around the theme of anthropophagy, and during Carnaval several samba schools have celebrated anthropophagy, whether by focusing on specific moments in Brazilian art or individual artists such as Tarsila do Amaral. In 2017, a Rio de Janeiro samba school chose Tropicália as its theme, designing its parade at the Sambódromo around a mix of anthropophagic influences that ranged from Oswald de Andrade to Caetano Veloso in what the school called ‘chaosnarval’. Poet and musician Beatriz Azevedo published the book Anthropophagy Wild Palimpsest, an in-depth analysis of the Manifesto Antropófago (Azevedo 2016). These tributes and the accompanying reflections on the significance of anthropophagy for Brazilian culture and identity reflect the continuing interest on the part of Brazilians (and, more broadly, Latin Americans) in the assertion of autonomy and originality through the ironic, paradoxical and ultimately subversive swallowing of external influences.

The uses of cannibalism Anthropophagy is widely considered to be a central movement in the quest for a Brazilian aesthetic. Poet Augusto de Campos has called anthropophagy “the only original Brazilian philosophy”, and anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro termed it the most original meta-cultural theory produced in Latin America. The metaphor’s theoretical significance has also been acknowledged by a handful of non-Latin American social scientists. Dunn (2010, cited in Islam 2012, 159), for example, has called anthropophagy “the most potent and durable metaphor in modern Brazilian culture”. How, and to what extent, can Brazilian anthropophagy be applied to the study of international relations, including the analysis of South–South cooperation? The metaphor of anthropophagy has been used widely in Latin American theoretical discussions, primarily in cultural studies and with a special focus on critiques of music, literature and the visual arts. In literary and critical studies, scholars have

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analysed the cannibalistic appropriation of cultural forms and products in Brazilian culture – the ways in which Brazilian artists have negotiated cultural contradictions and forged a unique aesthetic. However, there have also been some efforts to extend the metaphor into other areas of research. Wood and Caldas (2002), for instance, use anthropophagy to analyse international business. Islam (2012), likewise, draws on anthropophagy to understand the hybridization of organizational forms in Brazil within the context of globalization. Yet, until now, the metaphor has received little attention outside of Latin America. In its relevance to questions of identity, the metaphor of anthropophagy is very much aligned with a number of anthropological concepts, including postcolonial notion of hybridity (Bhabha 1994), as well as the hybrid co-production of ideas through intercultural encounters (see, for instance, Ozkazanc-Pan 2008). Although anthropophagy has developed primarily in relation to aesthetic debates within cultural production circles, and specifically among Brazilian artistic vanguards, the movement has also dealt with issues of individual and collective identity that are highly relevant and potentially enriching for epistemological and methodological debates. Before delving into the potential uses of anthropophagy in international relations, however, it is necessary to acknowledge that the metaphor has its idiosyncrasies and even limitations. Firstly, anthropophagists’ ‘claims’ over indigenous roots must be understood as a highly selective, distanced and even ironic appropriation. Its key proponents, especially Andrade’s circle, were white, European-educated elites eager to make their mark as artistic innovators. Brazilian anthropophagy, in fact, has little to do with the lived experiences and perspectives of Tupi peoples themselves, or, for that matter, of any indigenous people in the Americas. Ironically, anthropophagy caricatures the Tupi even as it proudly claims indigenous roots. Secondly, those Brazilian elites drew on Brazil’s cultural heritage very selectively. Brazilian anthropophagy overlooks, in its development as a concept and metaphor, the hybrid nature of Brazilian culture identity. Andrade and others involved in the movement of the 1920s focused on perceptions of the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Americas with little to no acknowledgement of Brazil’s diverse cultural roots, which were also shaped by European, African, Middle Eastern and Asian migratory flows. This selective appropriation was ‘corrected’, to a degree, by the Tropicalists, who (unlike the anthropophagist pioneers of the 1920s), openly identified with their African heritage even as they sampled and incorporated a variety of other influences. A sharp critique of the movement’s elitist (and predominantly white) pioneers was offered by Sérgio Vaz in the 2007 Manifesto of Anthropophagy of the Periphery (Manifesto da Antropofagia Periférica), written on the occasion of the Semana de Arte Moderna da Periferia (Modern Art Week of the Periphery). Although not widely circulated (the manifest appeared on the author’s blog), the text offers a succinct critique of the elitism of the 1920s anthropophagist movement and the Semana de Arte Moderna, laying a claim on anthropophagy from the perspective of the favelas and low-income communities, which had been

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all but ignored by Andrade and his peers (Ribeiro and Domingos 2013). Vaz pulls no punches: “The Art that liberates cannot come from the hand that enslaves” (Vaz 2007). The third limitation may also represent an opportunity: in its embrace of ambiguity as an essential component of a distinctly Brazilian epistemology, the anthropophagist movement and the metaphor around which it emerged do not offer a clear-cut methodological roadmap. Anthropophagy hints at a worldview rather than directly describing and prescribing a set ‘way of knowing’. Anthropophagy requires the acceptance and even the exploration of uncertainty in social relations. However, its promotion of non-traditional language (certainly very far from the professionalized discourses of mainstream international relations) and unconventional forms (its genesis lay in experimental poetry, painting, music and film) invites a welcome detour from the sanitized, conventional language of the discipline. Seldom in international relations are eating and other highly sensory metaphors – chewing, swallowing, digesting, cannibalizing, regurgitating – used in an analytical sense (however, see Bigo 2017), even though the field is rife with other concepts with roots in biology (evolution, functionalism, hybridity). Can anthropophagy do for the study of international cooperation what Islam (2012, 160) has claimed it does for the study of organizations – that is, to “illuminate… a unique theoretical direction”? It should be noted that anthropophagy resonates with a number of non-mainstream international relations perspectives. Despite its origin in the Brazilian context, in its contestatory nature anthropophagy resonates with elements of subaltern studies (see Spivak 1993) and Orientalism (Said 1978), specifically the attempt to provide explanatory approaches based on the experiences of the colonized and the oppressed. The metaphor of anthropophagy also has in common with those perspectives a potentially emancipatory dimension that is almost entirely absent from mainstream theories of international relations. However, in contrast to those lenses, anthropophagy has been more directly concerned with the construction of an aesthetic rather than a national identity in the sense of the nation-state project. In this sense, the metaphor may dialogue with the ‘aesthetic turn’ in international relations that considers tastes and preferences to be fundamental issues driving global politics. Anthropophagy can be useful in two main ways: in thinking about the positionality of the researcher and her subjects, and the study of international relations (and especially international cooperation) as a subject. With respect to the former, the idea of cannibalizing the ‘Other’ and incorporating elements of that interaction (and specifically of the resented/admired/coveted interlocutor) may be helpful in shedding light on how the act of carrying out research changes not only the subject, but also the researcher. The metaphor may be especially useful for global South researchers who are frequently at a disadvantage in relation to their Northern peers (for the historical and institutional reasons already analysed in this chapter) and who remain, far too often, in a position of being ‘catechized’ by mainstream international relations theories. By devouring and regurgitating the paradigmatic theories into a distinctive way of understanding international politics, global South

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researchers of international cooperation may continue the quest for more applicable, relevant perspectives without renouncing a large body of theory and scholarship. Expanded into a relational approach to international relations, anthropophagy may also invite reflection on how interlocutors (rather than simply the self) also cannibalize and digest external influence. Anthropophagy may also offer a liberating acceptance of ambiguity that, while sitting ill at ease with the discipline’s positivist core, seems better aligned with the possibilities of understanding processes rather than finite results and outcomes. In addition, the acceptance of ambiguity suggests that, far from being applicable only to the Brazilian context in which it has emerged, anthropophagy may serve as a source of inspiration and epistemological adventure for scholars and researchers who recognize the subjective and thus variable nature of knowledge and knowing. For instance, whereas a positivist and Western policy-oriented take on international cooperation may focus on causality and the assessment of impact, an anthropophagist approach could concentrate on understanding the experiences of cooperation and how these relations are constituted through internal processing and reprocessing of individual interactions, be they individual, collective or institutional. In this perspective, rather than ‘adopt’ or even ‘adapt’ a particular model, norm or practice of cooperation, an actor (individual or institutional) devours, digests and regurgitates that exchange into something distinctive, and potentially subversive. Given the lasting influence of modernization theory on development studies, including its resurgence through the Chinese-led focus on progress through infrastructure-led development, anthropophagy may also help to elucidate the faulty assumptions behind cooperation models based on the ‘export’ or ‘import’ of elements. In opposition to the belief in progress through emulation, the act of cannibalizing external influences suggests that modernization perspectives, which are uni-directional, are ill-equipped to capture the creative experiences and knowledge processes of global South actors. In addition, because anthropophagy rejects the uncritical acceptance of external influences (without rejecting those elements altogether), an anthropophagist take on development entails a focus on how elements of such exchanges are selectively, and often ironically, appropriated and hybridized into something new. With respect to the study of South–South cooperation, for instance, anthropophagy offers a variety of critiques to the idea of policy transfer and the dissemination of institutional forms and practices, including the highly influential idea of institutional isomorphism (DiMaggio and Powell 1983). While those ideas are premised on ‘transfers’ of knowledge – in the language of anthropophagy, a form of catechism of Southern institutions – the cannibalistic understanding of such exchanges calls attention to the hybridization of such forms, and even to the subversion of such ‘transfers’ through ironic and selective incorporation of the external characteristics of institutions, groups and individuals. These critiques may apply not only to North–South transfers but also to South–South exchanges, which inevitably involve a degree of power asymmetry that also calls for ironic devouring of

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the ‘Other’ rather than blind acceptance and mimicry of ‘borrowed’ or imposed forms. In eating her interlocutor, the anthropophagist exercises agency (of action and of reflection) even in the most asymmetric of circumstances. Finally, the metaphor of anthropophagy offers a way to rethink South–South cooperation outside the bureaucratic logics and languages that have become so closely associated with the topic. Whether due to the technocratic cooperation discourses of the United Nations system or to the occasionally contestatory (but largely conformist) language of non-UN South–South cooperation – whether by individual states, organizations, or multilateral arrangements such as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) – the mainstream language of cooperation research is redundant and unimaginative. By inviting reflection on the lived experiences and even the aesthetics of South–South cooperation, the metaphor of anthropophagy may serve to inject much-needed creativity and even humour into debates about such exchanges and encounters.

Conclusion Who gets to eat whom? Metaphorically, in traditional views of global politics, the West consumes the Rest. Yet Brazilian anthropophagists have gleefully inverted the taboo around cannibalism – perhaps the central and most tense preoccupation of Europeans as they “encountered” the Americas – to claim this supposedly barbaric practice as a source of pride. The global South, too, can devour the West. The critical, subversive and paradoxical approach of anthropophagy to external influences has been thought through primarily within the context of cultural analysis, especially in the twin quests to forge a distinctive cultural identity and to resist a tradition of authoritarianism. The applicability of anthropophagy to other areas of knowledge production, including the social sciences, hints at rich possibilities for analysis and reflection, especially by global South analysts of international cooperation. From the initial movement pioneered by European-educated elites in São Paulo in the eve of the Great Depression to the Tropicália wave of the 1960s, Brazilian anthropophagy has allowed its proponents to ponder, assimilate, oppose and play with external influences through a variety of forms, from literature and the visual arts to film and music. The selective and ironic incorporation of external characteristics contrasts with the outright rejection of the Other (the latter probably an impossible enterprise in the age of globalization) in favour of something at once more playful and more disconcerting. Over time, the metaphor has broadened from a purely aesthetic quest for uniqueness into a series of political critiques against authoritarian repression that reject the model of condescending ‘catechisms’ imposed on the global South. This means that, in addition to offering possibilities for reflection on issues of methodology, including researcher positionality, anthropophagy may shed light on the nuances of power dynamics inherent in international cooperation, including the variable asymmetries that characterize South–South cooperation.

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Moving forward – or better yet, in the anthropophagic parlance, dancing sideways – three areas are ripe for the picking in exploring the potential of this metaphor. From an epistemological perspective, deepening reflections on what it means to ingest, digest and regurgitate the Other may enrich discussions of what it means to carry out research on international relations, and for whom. From a methodological perspective, further explorations of how linguistic and relational analyses may be carried out from an anthropophagist point of view may prove useful in unpacking the power dynamics between and within entities that participate in international cooperation. And finally, the development of anthropophagy as a metaphor constitutes in and of itself a subject for international relations analysis, given that the concept emerged out of transnational exchanges pioneered by individuals but anchored in local and national institutions. Tracing the genealogy of anthropophagy, like other Latin American concepts, will help to ground its application to the field of international relations. Further reflection along these lines will contribute towards a ‘more global international relations’ by promoting a humorous and subversive take on international cooperation from a distinctive global South perspective. Bon appétit.

Notes 1 Author’s translation: “Descripção verdadeira de um paix de selvagens nus, ferozes e cannibaes.” 2 The Disorder of Things (2013) “Critical methodological and narrative developments in IR: A forum”, March 12. https://thedisorderofthings.com/2013/03/12/critical-methodological-and-narrative-de velopments-in-ir-a-forum/. 3 Among these concepts are: autonomy; the ‘founding insubordination’; the ‘multilateralism of reciprocity’; regional power; the ‘logistical state’; the ‘diplomacy of the peoples’; globalizacion/mundialozacion. 4 This devouring aligns with the process whereby, as Martins (2013) has noted, Brazilian artists updated modernism in ways that were radically at odds with European and North American art historical narratives.

References Acharya, A. (2013) Constructivism and the study of global IR. Notes for a presentation to the Workshop on the Future of Constructivist Research, Centre for International Studies, Oxford University, 30 April. Acharya, A. (2017) Towards a global international relations? Available at: www.e-ir.info/ 2017/12/10/towards-a-global-international-relations/ (accessed 15 January 2019). Anand, D. (2007) Geopolitical Exotica: Tibet in Western Imagination. London: University of Minnesota Press. Andrade, O. (1928) Manifesto Antropófago. Revista de Antropofagia, 1, 3–7. Arens, W. (1979) The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology & Anthropophagy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Azevedo, B. (2016) Antropofagia: Palimpsesto Selvagem. São Paulo: SESI-SP.

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Benabdallah, L., Murillo-Zamora, C. and Adetula, V. (2017) Global South perspectives on international relations theory. In McGlinchey, S., Walters, R. and Scheinplug, C. eds., International Relations Theory. Bristol: E-International Relations Publishing, pp. 125–130. Bernal Meza, R. (2017) Latin American thinking in international relations: Concepts apart from theory. Available at: http://oxfordre.com/politics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190 228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-604 (accessed January 20 2019). Bigo, D. (2017) Michel Foucault and international relations: Cannibal relations. In Bonditti, P., Bigo D. and Gros, F. eds., Foucault and the Modern International. London: Springer, pp. 33–55. Bilgin, P. (2016) How to remedy Eurocentrism in IR? A complement and a challenge for the global transformation. International Theory, 8(3), 492–501. Bhabha, H. (1994) The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge. Cervo, A. (2008) Conceitos em relações internacionais. Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional, 51(2), 8–25. Chakrabarty, D. (2000) Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Cohn, C. (1987) Sex and death in the rational world of defense intellectuals. Signs, 12(4), 687–718. Cox, R. W. (1986) Social forces, states and world orders: Beyond international relations theory. In Keohane, R. O. ed., Neorealism and Its Critics. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 204–255. DiMaggio, P. J. and Powell, W. (1983) The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review, 48, 147–160. Dunn, C. (2001) Brutality Garden: Tropicália and the Emergence of a Brazilian Counterculture. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. Islam, G. (2012) Can the subaltern eat? Anthropophagic culture as a Brazilian post-colonial theory. Organization, 19(2), 159–180. Kay, C. (2011) Latin American Theories of Development and Underdevelopment. New York: Routledge. Hobson, J. (2012) The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics: Western International Theory, 1760–2010. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jáuregui, C. (2012) Anthropophagy. In IrwinR. M. and SzurmukM. eds., Dictionary of Latin American Cultural Studies. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, pp. 22–28. Lévi-Strauss, C. (2017) We Are All Cannibals and Other Essays. New York: Columbia University Press. Lindenbaum, S. (2004) Thinking about cannibalism. Annual Review of Anthropology, 33, 475–498. Martins, S. (2013) Constructing an Avant-Garde: Art in Brazil, 1949–1979. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Nunes, B. (1990) Antropofagia ao Alcance de Todos. In Andrade, O. ed., A Utopia Antropofágica. São Paulo: Editora Globo, pp. 5–39. Obeyesekere, G. (1992) The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Özkazanç-Pan, B. (2008) International management research meets ‘the rest of the world’. Academic of Management Review, 33(4), 964–974. Ribeiro, G. and Domingos, R. (2013) A attitude antropofágica: Devorar é a melhor maneira de significar. IPOTESI, 17(1), 69–80. Said, E. (1978) Orientalism. New York: Vintage. Sanborn, G. (1998) The Sign of the Cannibal. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Schwartz, J. (1995). Vanguardas Latino-Americanas: Polêmicas, manifestos e textos críticos. São Paulo: EDUSP, Iluminuras, FAPESP.

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Spivak, G. C. (1993) Can the subaltern speak? In Williams, P. and Chrisman, L. eds., Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, pp. 66–111. Staden, H. (1929) Hans Staden: The True History of His Captivity, 1557. Trans. Malcolm Letts. New York: Robert M. McBridge and Company. Tansel, C. B. (2014) Deafening silence? Marxism, international historical sociology and the spectre of Eurocentrism. European Journal of International Relations, 21(1), 76–100. Tickner, A., Cepeda, C. and Bernal, J. (2012) Enseñanza, Investigación y Política Internacional en América Latina. DDCP, 19. Bogotá: Documentos del Departamento de Ciencia Política, Universidad de los Andes. Tickner, A. and Waever, O. eds. (2009) International Relations Scholarship Around the World. New York: Routledge. Vaz, S. (2007) Manifesto da Antropofagia Periférica. Vermelho. Available at: www.vermelho. org.br/noticia.php?id_noticia=23734. (accessed 6 January 2019). Veloso, C. (1997) Verdade Tropical. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Wood, T. and Caldas, M. (2002) Adopting imported managerial expertise in developing countries: The Brazilian experience. Academy of Management Executive, 38(2), 19–32. Young, T. R. (1998) Anthropophagy, tropicalismo, and como era gostoso meu francês. Paper presented at the 1998 meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, Chicago, Illinois. Available at: http://biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/ar/libros/lasa98/Young.pdf (accessed 3 January 2019).

VIGNETTE: HAS RESEARCH GONE SOUTH? Perspectives of a Brazilian researcher in Britain Rubens de S. Duarte

At the dawn of the 21st century, a number of actors from the South emerged on the international development scene, triggering a wave of studies regarding new practices, ideas, values, challenges and opportunities that follow on from such changing world. The growing interest around South–South cooperation (SSC) became a reality for academics both from the North and the South.1 Considering the potential of this field and its many unexplored questions, my doctoral research looked at the role of the United Kingdom (UK) and Brazil in creating and diffusing norms related to aid/cooperation. The project benefitted from my position as a Brazilian PhD candidate at the University of Birmingham (UK). It allowed me to have further contact with topics and dialogues related to North–South cooperation (NSC), including Northern perspectives about SSC. Additionally, I was able to offer a Southern view on Northern aid practices, given my Brazilian background. This vignette seeks to share personal experiences regarding challenges and opportunities related to the research of foreign aid and cooperation for international development. Therefore, this piece of work relies upon perspectives and interpretations that follow on from my participation and observation in academia. At least since the advent of critical theory, scholars and knowledge-production institutions have became simultaneously the subjects and objects of research. Therefore, my subjective experiences simultaneously represent critical reflections about how the politics of knowledge production can have an impact on SSC studies.

Not a perfect fit: Methodological and conceptual challenges Arguably, the first challenge in the study of SSC is developing a research method that meets the objective of the research. There is a growing number of academic works that have created alternative analytical frameworks specific to the study of

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Southern countries and their peculiarities (social, cultural, economic, ideational and political). Notwithstanding, most of the existing analytical models in academia (and particularly those considered the most prestigious) were created in Northernbased institutions and aim to explore the North–South aid paradigm. These often focus on donors and their consequences for recipient countries, or view SSC policies through the lenses of Northern values, historical experiences and domestic politics. Because Northern actors are still more capable of setting international agendas and influencing the behaviour of other actors, they receive a stronger emphasis in studies of international relations (IR). Most of the classical work in IR theory (from realism to liberalism and post-positivist traditions) focuses on more powerful countries, as can be seen in the vast literature on the diffusion of ‘best practices’. A portion of the literature (relatively small but growing in importance) brings actors from less powerful countries to the centre of the analysis, giving more emphasis to their agency.2 Notwithstanding, although Southern countries do not fit Northern templates in many ways, academics tend to build their analysis upon existing analytical frameworks and adapt these tools for the sake of making their research methodologically possible. Arguably, such a methodological barrier leads to two main issues regarding SSC research. The first consequence is that Southern countries are often analysed as deviant cases, when Northern particularities (political institutions, normative behaviour, values and understanding of key concepts such as development, poverty reduction, social justice and equality) are considered ‘regular’ or ‘normal’. Researching SSC through Northern-created lenses pushes towards a concealed (but, to a certain degree, unintentionally automatic) contrast between actors, practices and norms from the North and from the South. Terms and classifications that are often employed in studies on SSC define Southern countries by creating an opposition regarding many aspects (e.g. non-DAC, non-liberal, non-Western, new actors versus traditional actors). It should be acknowledged that Southern governments’ official narratives on SSC also contribute to this issue, since they aim to establish a symbolic counterpoint to Northern donors and practices, rather than presenting a comprehensive, coherent and well-structured proposal for international development. Such a classification is based on what Southern countries are not, rather than focusing on their own commonalities (such as a non-conditional or even a more socially oriented cooperation), even though the South is heterogeneous and the creation of this symbolic regime opposes a blurry, generalizing interpretation of the North. Consequently, there is much space for omission, imprecision and contamination from existing symbols and geopolitical imaginaries, not to mention the ethnocentrism that follows on from considering a group of powerful countries as a model that other actors, societies and cultures should reproduce. Adapting analytical frameworks originally created to investigate Northern countries may run the risk of imprecision and undermine the existing knowledge of the Southern model. SSC politics is different from North–South aid in terms of actors, worldviews, institutions, norms, contradictions and the interplay of domestic and international constraints. Therefore, traditional frameworks may overlook,

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downplay or overvalue important variables and lead to incomplete conclusions. For instance, the Brazilian decentralized model for international cooperation is very often described as disorganized or not efficient, in contrast to the DFID-centred British model for international aid (Leite et al. 2013). Monitoring and evaluating Brazilian cooperation is more complicated, because the Brazilian case does not fit any existing analytical model, leading to negative comments from academics. Some Northern-based analytical frameworks may misunderstand aspects and consequences of a decentralized cooperation structure that is not founded upon liberal values, such as preserving plurality and preventing the creation of a ‘cooperation industry’ (Duarte 2017; Milani 2017). For instance, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Brazilian Cooperation Agency very rarely funds academic research. Since there are few financial and political strings attached, scholars arguably have more liberty to act as critical monitors of cooperation projects. There is significant space for Southern academics to thicken analytical frameworks that fit SSC. Due to international knowledge-production structures and other reasons related to specificities of domestic academic environments that merit further study, concerted movements to create Southern-based methodologies remain undervalued. These methodological, theoretical and conceptual challenges were especially problematic for my research design, since it analysed a Northern donor and a Southern cooperation provider as two independent case studies. Based on other models, I had to develop an analytical framework that aimed for a more balanced and fair investigation of both countries, without directly comparing them.

The relentless asymmetrical constraints in academia This section is structured around two main constraints regarding research praxis. As previously stated, there is a lack of analytical frameworks created specifically to study SSC (as opposed to ad hoc adaptations from other frameworks); there is also the tendency to compare it to NSC. As a consequence, under the rationale of comparing actors from the South and the North, it is not rare for researchers to be encouraged to adopt a very critical stance on SSC practices. These suggestions are easily identified in comments and feedback from international conferences, colloquia, workshops and dialogues within the department. For instance, the encouragement to develop research based on the hypothesis that SSC is reproducing (even if in a smaller scale) imperialist practices, providing ‘rogue aid’ or even a new civilizing mission has come up in every peer review and event in which I have participated in Northern countries.3 Not to mention an existing concern about SSC diffusing non-liberal values to other countries, assuming that liberally oriented practices should be universally desirable.4 This inducement is reproduced and enhanced by other factors related to the politics of knowledge production, related to prestige and funding opportunities. To a certain degree, the lack of analytical frameworks specific to the study of SSC contributes to this context. Arguably, funding research projects based on traditional aid has some facilities, such as a well-known core literature and the existence of

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established research networks (which encompass academia, policymakers, civil society movements and research institutions). For instance, DFID’s official narrative claims to focus on new understandings of development. However, McGrath (2002, 356) argues that “in some programmes, there appears to be an excessive focus on how potential research projects should align with existing priorities”. Moreover, the distribution of DFID grants is concentrated geographically and in terms of ontological and epistemological affiliation. ‘Non-mainstream’ research risks being considered ideological.5 This is part of an ‘aid industry’ that has been largely explored by academia (de Haan 2009; Duffield 2012). The availability of research grants is also linked to North–South macroeconomic asymmetries. While institutions from Southern countries and international organizations do provide research opportunities and funding for more innovative projects,6 there is a gap between such sources’ funding capacities and those from the North. Wealth and prestige are part of a complex dynamic behind knowledge production that feeds itself and leads researchers into a given direction. One can say that this is more of a trade-off or dilemma than a constraint, which is a pertinent argument. It is possible to refuse these advantages and challenge the mainstream. However, it should be considered that the asymmetry in terms of funding, research opportunities, networking and job offers has an impact on academics’ agency, especially in the case of young researchers. Since the incentives to adopt a given academic stance are ruthless, it gives the impression that it would be easier to publish, pass exams and obtain a professional position if the research is committed to particular arguments, values and principles. In other words, the structure of knowledge production induces the reproduction of the status quo, rather than encouraging and valorizing alternative academic thinking. In the long term, this may perpetuate a hierarchy of power in knowledge production and compromise research findings. In addition to this first constraint, it was previously argued that knowledge production is influenced by researchers’ backgrounds among other factors. The same reflection is pertinent to analysing how academics receive, incorporate and allow the diffusion of research findings produced outside the US–UK axis. Language can be an obstacle in many cases. However, English-written literature produced by Southern researchers – both based in Northern institutions and in the South – is growing rapidly and represents a relevant source. Besides the language barrier, from the perspective of a Brazilian academic researching in the UK, Northern academics are keen to criticize policies of their own countries, but there is a higher resistance to accept arguments that challenge the liberal approaches of the mainstream if they come from the South. Arguably, there are two main causes for this behaviour. First, the commitment to deeply rooted ideas and values that are expressed in the North-produced mainstream; and second, the historically built perception that knowledge is produced in the North and exported to the world rather than the other way around. There is a growing attempt to produce critical literature that considers Southern contributions. However, the asymmetry in terms of funding and diffusion and access to journals feeds a perception that the

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mainstream is not significantly challenged because even the critical approaches are dominated by Northern academia or Southern academics that have worked or studied in Northern institutions – myself included. I have experienced this resistance every time that I have presented my doctoral research in conferences and workshops (to an audience that was mainly composed of British academics). The room was always full of smiles and heads nodding ‘yes’ when I was criticizing Brazilian SSC practices. There were exceptions, but overall the audience was not equally receptive when I used the same theory and methodology to analyse the UK. Besides discreet gestures of disapproval during the talk, angry questions were frequent afterwards, mainly based on a blurry idea of ‘rogue aid’ or scepticism regarding SSC relevance in world politics. It is symbolic that the first question posed to me at a particular conference in the UK was “Why is Brazil relevant for international development studies?” Among other elements, I answered that Brazilian and British GNP were at the same level (it was late 2013), Brazil was becoming more active in SSC, it was a regional power and it had developed innovative socialoriented public policies. The person who posed the question – a PhD candidate and former DFID member – was satisfied with the answer. However, I kept going, arguing that since he questioned Brazil, it was important to ‘denaturalize’ the study of the UK as the obvious case study. My comments regarding why I have chosen the UK despite British credibility after six controversial decades of aid were not well received. The reasons for this ethnocentric behaviour may merit further research, but I had the impression that the commitment to some symbols and ideas is too high to be challenged without resistance, especially when the criticism comes from someone that does not belong to the same social and cultural group. Moreover, the study of Northern donors, such as the UK, is still more frequent than the study of SSC participants (also because North– South cooperation is more institutionalized and commands greater financial resources). The reasons raised to explain the relevance of analysing traditional aid have been internalized in academia over years of research. Research findings are also treated differently according to their places of origin. In the early stage of my research, I largely based my claims on prominent Brazilian and Mozambican authors. However, I was constantly criticized for not engaging sufficiently with the ‘established literature’. It took a couple of months for me to realize that I was expected to quote articles from specific journals, even if the foreign works of scholarship were far more recent and insightful, as well as ‘established’ in their countries of origin. Academics encourage peers to read and quote works that are familiar and important references to them. I was no exception when I referred others to Brazilian authors. However, this behaviour also creates a cluster of ‘classical’ references that feeds itself. Besides, papers published in respected journals are believed to have passed through a rigorous scientific review and, therefore, this prestige is transformed into a perception of quality. Not only are Southern journals not treated with the same prestige, but academics that adopt non-established theories or methods also struggle to publish in Northern journals.

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The requirement to engage with a larger literature than I had initially done was fair and pertinent. However, it does not work both ways at the same level. On the contrary, the perspectives of Southern works are often considered ‘ideological’ by Northern researchers, as argued previously. It is not about which approach is more accurate or less ideological. In fact, Southern academics also face local knowledgeproduction constraints. The point is that academia should always pursue plurality and be self-critical. Considering that editorial boards’ decisions are also influenced by ideas, values, principles and identities, research should not restrain from incorporating authors from other backgrounds. On the contrary, engaging with a wider variety of arguments would only add value to the research. The dialogue with Southern literature is welcomed, but it is far from being treated as a requirement and equally valorized compared to Northern-produced literature, even though Southern academia also produces knowledge of a high standard. Such an unequal treatment potentially renders exclusivist characteristics to the politics of knowledge production.

‘Finding true South’: Opportunities for future research There have been recent advances regarding the study of SSC – for instance the consolidation of postcolonial literature, the development of transnational academic networks and a growing awareness of the relevance of the South. This book itself has the merit of giving space for dialogue about the politics of knowledge production in SSC, incorporating a plurality of perspectives. This represents an important step towards a necessary movement to further break with ethnocentric perspectives and ‘go South’. However, considering the academic community as a whole, there is still much space for improvement. Research opportunities in the field of cooperation for international development arise from the challenges created by the politics of knowledge production. For instance, the need for the development and valorization of Southern methodologies, theories and concepts capable of dealing with cultural, social, political and economic peculiarities is well known. Empirical research is also key to challenging existing theories and preventing bias. This is an opportunity for Northern academics to further engage with Southern literature and networks, going beyond field research and area studies departments. In turn, Southern researchers should seize on this growing interest in SSC to voice their opinions and challenge some ideas that have become crystallized in the mainstream. Is it time to further develop a Southern critical view of the Northern-produced critical view?

Notes 1 For the purpose of this vignette, North and South are considered geopolitical concepts. Even though both groups are heterogeneous, there are important similarities regarding their position in the international hierarchy of power and their political behaviour in international politics. They often create international institutions, groups or alliances to coordinate their actions. The North consists of established powers, most of them former imperialist countries that advocate towards the universalization of liberally oriented norms. On the other hand, Southern countries are emerging post-colonial powers (in

Has research gone South? 55

2 3 4 5

6

some cases, re-emerging) that face similar social and regional challenges and hold a shared perception of being marginalized from the international decision-making processes. Examples include the work of Albert Memmi (2002), Ilan Kapoor (2008) and Arturo Escobar (1995). During the course of my PhD, I attended a couple of events in the United Kingdom, one in the United States and one in Singapore. Among others, Rahul Rao (2010). Besides the Frankfurt School, other critical studies and scholars – such as Colin Wight (2006) – argue that political ontologies that challenge fundamental elements of mainstream approaches risk being considered ‘ideological’ or biased. On the other hand, mainstream ontologies tend to claim to be ‘neutral’ or ‘scientific’. Such as detailed in Milani et al. (2017); Acharya (2013) and Carpes (2014).

Acknowledgements This vignette was developed during post-doctoral research at the Institute of Social and Political Studies (IESP-UERJ) sponsored by the CNPq via the Institute of Science and Technology in Public Policies, Strategies and Development – INCT/ PPED. I would like to gratefully acknowledge the constructive comments of the editors, which added value to this work.

References Acharya, A. (2013) Rethinking Power, Institutions and Ideas in World Politics: Whose IR? Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge. Carpes, M. M. (2014) From Breadcrumbs to Threads of Wool: Building a Neoclassical Realist Approach for the Study of Regional Powers Nuclear Choices. Hamburg: University of Hamburg. De Haan, A. (2009) How the Aid Industry Works: An Introduction to International Development. Quicksilver Drive, Sterling: Kumarian Press. Duarte, R. de S. (2017) The Use of Norms at the Aid/Cooperation Regime: The Role of Britain and Brazil. PhD thesis, University of Birmingham. Duffield, M. (2012) Challenging environments: Danger, resilience and the aid industry. Security Dialogue, 43(5), 475–492. Escobar, A. (1995) Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kapoor, I. (2008) The Postcolonial Politics of Development. London and New York: Routledge. Leite, I., Suyama, B. and Waisbich, L. T. (2013) Para além do tecnicismo: A cooperação Brasileira para o desenvolvimento internacional e caminhos para sua efetividade e democratização. Policy Brief. São Paulo: CEBRAP. McGrath, S. (2002) The British Department for International Development and knowledgebased aid. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 32(3), 349–363. Memmi, A. (2002) Portrait du Colonisé, Précédé de: Portrait du Colonisateur. Paris: Gallimard. Milani, C. R. S. (2017) ABC 30 anos: História e Desafios Futuros. Brasília: ABC. Milani, C. R. S., Pinheiro, L. and Lima, M. R. S. de (2017) Brazil’s foreign policy and the ‘graduation dilemma’. International Affairs, 93(3), 585–605. Rao, R. (2010) Third World Protest: Between Home and the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wight, C. (2006). Agents, Structures and International Relations: Politics as Ontology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

3 CRITICIZING YOUR ‘MOTHERLAND’ TO FOREIGNERS? The dilemma of critical scholarship and self-censorship in analysing Korea’s foreign aid as a national(istic) project Sung-Mi Kim Introduction: The field and my research agenda In the Korean1 port city of Busan, more than 3,000 delegates from governments, international organizations, private sector companies, philanthropies, academia and civil society organizations (CSOs) met for the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF-4, or commonly referred to as the ‘Busan Conference’) from 29 November to 1 December 2011. During the opening ceremony, speeches were delivered by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Secretary-General Angel Gurría, Korean President Lee Myung-bak, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, Queen Rania of Jordan, United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other international dignitaries. In that high-profile event, “aid was to bite the dust” (Mawdsley et al. 2014, 30). It portended a major normative shift in development assistance policy from a regime of ‘aid effectiveness’ to ‘development effectiveness’. Behind this ‘tectonic’ upheaval was the (re-)emergence of ‘Southern’ economies, which were becoming increasingly influential in global aid politics. Even though overt criticism about Western aid ‘failures’ was avoided, the conference seemed to signal a fracturing of the OECD-Development Assistance Committee (DAC)-dominated aid cartel. Private philanthropies, NGOs and other non-state actors were also present as legitimate and active stakeholders in the aid talks. As a first-year PhD student participant at the Busan Conference, I became interested in critically observing normative contestations and institutional competition surrounding different development actors, discourses, ethical framings and commercial strategies. Interestingly, in contrast to the divisive realities in conference rooms and closeddoor negotiations, Korean media coverage of the event was largely celebratory. It was declared that Korea was willing to share its development experience, pledging

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to further expand its foreign aid budget as a ‘developed country’ and a ‘responsible international citizen’. Indeed, the choice of Busan as a host city was highly symbolic because the world’s fifth-largest port city was once where international relief shipments arrived for distribution to the poverty-stricken nation in the aftermath of the 1950–1953 Korean War. At the Busan Conference, Korean President Lee Myung-Bak delivered an emotionally charged speech: When I was a child, Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world. Our per capita GDP stood at less than 100 US dollars, and the country was full of people without jobs. However, within half a century, Korea rebuilt itself, emerging from the ashes of a devastating war and extreme poverty to a vibrant economy and democracy. Korea joined the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of OECD, which is the first time a nation that became independent after World War II has joined, transforming itself from a leastdeveloped country to a developed country. The history of Korea’s economic development and democratisation is one of the sweat and tears of ordinary people who worked hard to escape poverty and dreamed of having decent lives… Korea would like to become a true development partner by sharing with developing countries our experience of successes as well as failures, and by working together toward global prosperity… The city of Busan, where we have gathered together, is a place that stands as the very proof that our vision and dream for development can become a reality. Let us make another Busan. Let us realise this dream by working together.2 The closing ceremony of the three-day forum included Korean traditional dance and vibrant drum performances live on stage. On the screen of the spacious conference hall, sophisticated multimedia materials portrayed the nation’s rich cultural heritage, enormous economic potential and the story of rapid industrialization, known as the ‘Miracle on the Han River’. The story of Korea’s impressive development from poverty to affluence elicited applause, and a sense of national pride was palpable throughout the conference. Towards domestic and international audiences, the display and construction of the nation from the historical narratives of struggle, perseverance and present glory were very strong, through claims within the field of international development. This dynamism, fluidity and political sensitivities that I observed at the Busan Conference inspired my research. As for subsequent fieldwork after Busan, a large part of my data came from participant observation and more than 80 interviews with diplomats and experts at the Paris-based OECD and in the Korean cities of Seoul and Sejong between 2012 and 2013.3 Data suggested how various international stakeholders differently perceived Korea’s diplomatic and normative roles in global aid politics. These perceptions revealed their own disparate interests and strategic thinking about changing global power dynamics between global North and South (Kim 2017). I was also interested in analysing how foreign aid worked domestically to promote selective historical remembering (and forgetting) of Korea’s development trajectory

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(Kim 2015a). As a result, a specific version of national identity was being constructed through aid policy narratives, often to the benefit of powerful political elites (Mawdsley et al. 2017). In short, the findings of my research were to bring to the fore different motivations, tensions and contradictions in the contemporary politics of international development, shaped by intricate linkages of power, money, knowledge and identity claims, and by sea changes in global economy and polity. It is against this backdrop that this chapter reflects on the political, moral and positionality challenges I experienced during my fieldwork as a Korean, female, junior researcher. In the second section, I present my data collection methods, which triangulated in-depth interviews and participant observation. The third section reviews my conversational interactions with Korean and non-Korean interviewees, respectively. In most cases, my nationality and gender influenced interview dynamics to the advantage of the fieldwork. The fourth section looks into my researcher positionality and explores a range of factors that seemed to limit my critical scholarship. I discuss how my political and social identity, self-interest and other considerations affected the processes of data collection, data interpretation and publication strategy. Finally, the fifth section summarizes and concludes the chapter.

Fieldwork methods: Participant observation and in-depth interviews As I started to develop more concrete ideas about my research agenda, the preparation of the fieldwork required a number of strategic decisions.4 As core data collection methods, I selected in-depth interviewing and participant observation, complemented by extensive document analysis. I adopted these qualitative methods since my research project focused on the constructed and intersubjective realms of development diplomacy and domestic policy-making. Hence, the feasibility of my research hinged upon identifying and establishing rapport with target groups and individuals. Informants and contact organizations were selected on the grounds that cultural norms and ideas, political institutions, interest groups and government organizations combine to influence a government’s aid policy (Lancaster 2007). I tried to enter into contact with diplomats and experts whose names recurred on delegation lists at the OECD-led international aid meetings before and after the Busan Conference. These experts often provided background reports and policy advice to government officials. I also identified some key locations from which members of epistemic communities could gain significant leverage over policy choices (Haas 1997, 31). In this regard, a principal venue of my fieldwork was the Korean Permanent Delegation to the OECD in Paris, where I undertook an internship between July and October 2012. The OECD delegation was an ideal place for me to conduct a major part of field research. The delegation comprised approximately 20 government officials from 12 ministries. Among these officials at the delegation, six people were engaged in aid policies, coming from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA, which supervises grants), the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA,

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the implementation and administrative body assisting the MOFA), the Ministry of Strategy and Finance (MOSF, which supervises concessional loans) and the Ex-Im Bank (the provider of concessional loans under the MOSF governance). The short-term work experience allowed me as a partial insider to observe internal dynamics of decision-making, policy implementation and collaboration between and within the ministries and aid agencies, and between the Korean government and the OECD. A participant observation method was helpful for me to achieve a better empathic knowledge of the state of mind of policy actors as I could engage with them in more informal and personal contexts (Evans 1988, 199). Compared to document analysis and interviewing, participant observation reveals to the researcher the difference between “the ‘front stage’ and ‘backstage’ – between formal, idealized accounts of a culture and the messy divergences of actual practice” (Gusterson 2008, 100). To obtain more Korean data, I stayed in Seoul between November 2012 and February 2013, interviewing domestic stakeholders and attending conferences, policy seminars and other informal gatherings. Through my Paris fieldwork, I met with a large number of foreign diplomats and experts, closely engaged in DAC-led aid negotiations. The Korean OECD delegation allowed its interns to selectively attend conferences and meetings at the OECD headquarters, and this broad access provided me with the opportunity to observe how delegates from different DAC and non-DAC countries were engaging in negotiations on the heels of the Busan Conference. I remember heated debates on aid data transparency and new definitions for official development assistance (ODA) and other financial flows, for instance.5 During coffee breaks and at the staff cafeteria, I personally engaged in dialogues with DAC and non-DAC diplomats as well as OECD-Development Cooperation Directorate (DCD) officials. Many of these informal interactions led to more formal interviews. Chance meetings and the use of my own social contacts often proved to be as important as careful planning (Ostrander 1995, 149). Overall, the total number of informants comprised more than 50 Koreans and 30 non-Koreans. Koreans were individuals in the government and affiliated aid bodies, development NGOs, academia, think tanks, labour unions, businesses and media companies among others. Non-Korean informants were diplomats and aid experts from DAC and non-DAC countries, OECD-DCD officials, international NGO representatives and a small number of recipient government officials. Because of the relatively small size of aid policy circles in Korea and at the OECD, and requests by many interviewees, I anonymized the identity of interlocutors as much as possible in my publications.

Interview dynamics reflecting the contested field Korean interviews: Researcher judged as potential supporter or critic From a few initial interviews with officials and experts, it was already quite obvious that the domestic policy space of Korean aid was highly politicized. Much of the

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tension in the aid community at that time seemed to derive from the strained, competitive relations between the grant-managing MOFA and the loans-managing MOSF. The two ministries were keen to promote the development effectiveness of their own aid instrument (i.e. grants or loans). There were also some subtle differences in their policy rhetoric. Roughly speaking, as a key policy objective, the MOSF/Ex-Im Bank officials seemed to stress Korea’s ‘intellectual leadership’ as a provider of ‘alternative’ Asian/Korean development knowledge, often employing the language of ‘national interest’ – commercial and otherwise. In comparison, MOFA/KOICA officials were prone to take a more conformist approach to the (Western) DAC-led aid standards, envisioning the country’s ‘ethical leadership’ based on strong collaboration with other donors to fight global poverty. Along this government administrative division, bifurcated networks of power, money and policy rationales existed. Korea’s burgeoning aid community – including development NGOs, researchers, businesses and other support groups – appeared heavily reliant on government funds and policy narratives (more in Kim 2015a). In spite of the contested domestic policy environment, most conversations I had with Korean interviewees were candid and friendly in a relaxed ambience. Being a Korean pursuing an advanced graduate degree in the UK, I was generally regarded as a harmless outsider observer with appreciable scholarly credentials. I think my work experience as a business reporter in Seoul also helped me to identify appropriate access points in a range of institutions with some knowledge of bureaucratic and diplomatic protocols. Interviewees demonstrated interest in my educational background, work experience, research interests and career plans. They were very helpful and willing to introduce other useful contacts for my research before I even enquired about this. Some asked me about my hometown too in a way that helped set up the interview context on friendlier terms. During interviews, however, I sometimes felt that Korean interviewees were trying to judge ‘which side’ I belonged to in the divided policy space. For instance, I was asked whether I had ever participated in certain government-funded research projects or was planning or would like to attend seminars or meetings with certain ministry officials.6 In short, they seemed curious about whether I would be a potential supporter or critic of what their institutions represented (in terms of advocating development effectiveness of grants or concessional loans) and what they put forward as ODA policy priorities (for instance, national interest or global poverty reduction discourses). Whenever asked directly or indirectly about my opinion on specific policy criticisms or beliefs, I tried to make it clear that my intention was not to criticize or vindicate certain policy interests but to acquire a well-grounded knowledge of different competing claims as an independent researcher. I also let them know that I was meeting with people on ‘both sides’ of a polarized policy community. During my Seoul fieldwork, I declined a senior official’s invitation to undertake a short-term work assignment in the government, mainly not to be regarded as a supporter of certain ministerial policy directions and to ensure continued access to ‘both sides’.

Criticizing your ‘motherland’ to foreigners? 61

Non-Korean interviews: Endorsement and solidarity for different reasons Different international stakeholders generally perceived Korean actors as a welcome presence at the OECD-DAC and Busan, and my Korean nationality seemed to work as a positive factor in acquiring consent to my interview requests in Paris. Data suggested how different perceptions of Korean aid diplomacy reflected disparate policy actors’ need to safeguard their own strategic interests. For instance, Korea’s ‘feted’ accession to the DAC could be interpreted as an exchange of validations between the emerging Asian development partner and the increasingly beleaguered traditional donor community, confronted with ‘Southern’ challenges. It seemed that the DAC provides the official ‘donor prestige’ to the status-seeking Korea, while the new Asian member reciprocates the besieged (Western) donor regime with an alternative policy narrative option, plus an image of success, inclusiveness and dynamism (more in Kim 2017). Most DAC diplomats and OECD-DCD officials who had been closely engaged in the ‘development effectiveness’ negotiations tended to make complimentary remarks about Korea’s diplomatic and logistical contributions and generally enlarged role at the OECD-DAC as a new member possessing a different donor profile. In particular, senior diplomats whose governments had been major donors to Korea in the past were proud that their aid actually worked in the Korean case, in a way to legitimize the aid practices of the OECD-DAC despite prevailing criticisms. In particular, Japan – the only Asian member before Korea joined the donor club in 2010 – seemed to welcome Korea’s membership with enthusiasm in order to create an opportunity to mainstream Asian-style aid philosophy and development rationales. In other words, Korea as a DAC peer could help ‘normalize’ Japan as a member of the donor community (details in Kim 2017). Although sizeable DAC donors seemed to perceive Korea as an important new donor and a ‘development model’, some diplomats from Nordic countries and other smaller traditional donors in Europe showed different assessments. These smaller but ‘altruistic’ donors primarily or solely provided grants, and they were opposed to the increasingly common use of commercial financial instruments (e.g. export credits or guarantee schemes) as part of the aid package. Often committed to principles of donor altruism and generosity, they tended to express caution and scepticism about Korea as a force harnessing ‘development effectiveness’ norms, which they thought were tainted with commercial and geopolitical ambitions of ‘the unruly South’. In fact, such perceptual differences about Korea among the DAC members appeared to imply an increasing normative heterogeneity within the enlarging DAC community.7 A European delegate put it that the DAC community was split into two categories of members (Interview, 2012): those willing to re-orient their focus towards middle-income countries and private sector engagement and to embrace broader financial flows beyond conventional ODA; and the others preferring to maintain their priorities for poverty reduction in least-developed countries through provision of grants. Nordic donors tended to belong to the latter category of DAC donors at that time (Kim 2015b), although this may now be changing.

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With regard to my meetings with non-DAC diplomats (e.g. BRICS, non-DAC OECD member countries, new EU members), I think I also benefitted from my national and Asian identity. Most non-DAC interviewees positively acknowledged Korea’s role at the OECD-DAC as a respectable dialogue partner, which “did not talk about moral imperatives but thought in terms of pragmatic imperatives” (Latin American delegate, interview, 2012). A non-DAC Asian diplomat put it that: Korea is neutral, I think. Koreans are not with them [Europeans], and they are not against us [non-DAC countries]. When Europe wanted to change the Global Partnership in their own way, Korea said ‘no’. Korea is a trusted broker … Their [Korean] approach and their quality is different. (Interview, 2012) Interviewed non-DAC diplomats tended to distinguish Korea from traditional Western DAC members, recalling Korea’s modern history of civil war and abject poverty. A Latin American diplomat said that Korea could achieve rapid economic transformation because it implemented a range of development policies that are different from the conventional neoliberal recipes ‘imposed’ by the West. Conversing with a Korean researcher, some non-DAC delegates seemed to assume that I would share a sense of solidarity for global justice (against Western dominance) and common scepticism about DAC leadership in international development. They made sympathetic comments about colonial experience and economic hardships common in our national histories. Some senior officials also described their personal experience of material scarcity, proudly contrasting it with recent advancements in their home economies. They were often reluctant and cautious – if not also dismissive – about post-Busan initiatives on aid data transparency, describing them as a DAC attempt to “co-opt them into Western interference and paternalism”. They were equally suspicious about DAC’s outreach programmes to cement collaboration with South–South development partners. For instance, when I sat down for an interview with one senior BRICS diplomat, I became a bit bewildered because (s)he was unusually inquisitive and suspicious about my academic affiliations and research funding sources. I clarified that my study was funded by Newnham College of the University of Cambridge, independent of any government or policy institutions. Basically, (s)he later told me that (s)he believed that once (s)he had an interview with a ‘student’ who had in fact been hired by the OECD-DCD to ‘spy on’ her/him. Only after I passed his/her ‘security check’ did our interview take off with great candour.

The gender effect I was also intrigued to observe how my identity as a female researcher affected qualitative fieldwork since more than two-thirds of my informants were male. Compared to security and economy policies, however, there were more women in foreign aid holding influential positions in the government, research community

Criticizing your ‘motherland’ to foreigners? 63

and NGOs in Korea. It may be that female elites cannot easily penetrate into maledominated traditional policy mainstreams, whereas foreign aid is a new niche policy field, relatively open to female leadership. Methodology literature suggests that sometimes a female researcher ‘acting dumb’ when interviewing a male elite interviewee can help to elicit more detailed accounts. A young woman interviewing relatively powerful male respondents, senior managers for example, can live up to their expectations by ‘acting dumb’ which can encourage them to disclose more information than they would to an older male interviewer. (Valentine 1997, 121) Although I did not act dumb as such, I did sometimes emphasize a certain junior, learning and affirming role, all of which could have been gendered at varying degrees. Nonetheless, my interviews, irrespective of the gender of the informant, were mutually respectful and dynamic two-way dialogues rather than my assuming passivity and naivety in the hope of informational gains. In a related vein, Abels and Behrens (2009) categorize five interaction effects created between expert interviewees and researchers (see Table 3.1). They argue that these effects can generate different advantages and disadvantages in particular interview settings. For instance, certain gender-specific biases can work to the benefit of a female researcher interviewing male elite interviewees because “Defence mechanisms (iceberg-effect) are encountered seldom; other effects such as the paternalism or profile-effect can be derived to informational gain” (Abels and Behrens 2009, 150). In fact, I very seldom experienced the ‘iceberg effect’: since almost all in-depth interviews were pre-arranged via email or through face-to-face requests, these access modalities helped guarantee informants’ willingness to speak to the researcher for an agreed timeframe. Instead, I tended to experience ‘paternalism effect’ and ‘profile effect’ to varying degrees in some interviews with male respondents. TABLE 3.1 Typical effects in conversational interaction with expert interviewees

Effect

Basic features

Paternalism effect Catharsis effect

Manifest goodwill by the interviewee toward interviewer Interviewee uses interview as compensation for professional dissatisfaction Interviewee’s disinterest and inert willingness to give out information Interviewee tries to reverse the question-answer-context Interviewee seeks to ‘show off’ in front of the interviewer

Iceberg effect Feedback effect Profile effect

(Source: Abels and Behrens 2009, 144).

64 Sung-Mi Kim

To summarize, a combination of my researcher identity elements have helped to create generous data access in Paris and Korea: I was a Korean, female PhD student studying at a renowned university and also partially affiliated with the Korean delegation to the OECD in Paris. These factors helped enhance my credentials when acquiring consent to participate in my research from a diverse group of respondents. Within a planned timeframe of several months, I was able to generate a sufficiently large amount of data. Triangulation of in-depth interviewing and participant observation helped enhance the quality of data. Effective “polymorphous engagement” with research participants (Gusterson 1997, 116) was made possible through repeated interactions with and observations of research subjects. Data were collected eclectically from a wide array of field sites and sources, including formal settings (e.g. conferences, public speeches, formal interviews) as well as more personal and informal contexts (e.g. meetings at cafeterias, restaurants, random chats during coffee breaks).

Researcher self-reflexivity: The problem of self-censorship In this section, I discuss my researcher positionality and critical scholarship, focusing on my national and social identity; my self-interest as a junior researcher (interviewing elites who could be potential funders and future employers); and my fears about failures to protect research participants and myself in potential conflict situations. These positionality considerations tended to put constraints on my critical scholarship.8 I was often drawn to the ideas of self-censorship in order to avoid criticism, dissension and problems. I struggled with conflicting desires to actively publish my work for my future career, while also fearing dissemination of certain parts of my research findings. When one journal editor who read my paper draft pointed out that the conclusion was a bit ‘wishy washy’, I knew it was largely due to this complex of anxieties in operation.

The dilemma of criticizing the ‘motherland’ Even though a researcher is obliged not to act as a patriotic defender of national policies, such pressures exist. I found the political sensitivity of my research was heightened by the fact that foreign aid in Korea (as in many other countries) is closely related to the country’s nationalistic, status-seeking aspirations and national ‘branding’ efforts vis-à-vis external audiences. As I took a critical analytical approach to the policy narratives and contested perceptions involving Korean aid, I often became worried about the potential impact of my research, especially when published in English to be accessible to foreigners. It was challenging to fully engage in policy criticisms when I felt insecure and uncomfortable about ‘publically denouncing’ my homeland in one way or another. It seems that when the nation’s ‘face’ or international reputation is an important policy objective, internal criticisms and contestations are expected to be more or less contained domestically and muted towards the outside, limiting the space of

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critical scholarship. A strand of constructivist literature investigates similar ontological tensions prevalent in some ‘Southern’ foreign policies. Researchers argue that the past experience of political and economic humiliation potentially make (re-) emerging powers hyper-sensitive to the issues of international recognition and respect, and this ontological need strongly factors in their contemporary foreign policy choices, creating particular ambivalences and biases in their behaviour (e.g. Suzuki 2009; Larson and Shevchenko 2010; Nel 2010; Zarakol 2011). In my view, Korea appeared to stand in a critical historical juncture to realize its ‘emergence’ regionally and globally after decades – if not centuries – of economic and political struggles and diplomatic isolation. Foreign aid could be used as a strategic policy instrument for the country to make it possible. I was afraid that my critical analyses of Korean aid policy might be ‘humiliating’ to my country and the people who serve and represent the country. When I attended international research events and was the only Korean participant, I tended to experience some self-generated pressure that I was representing my country there and I sought to take a more ‘nuanced’ or ‘diluted’ position in my policy critiques. Generally I felt strongly about my country’s enhancing international profile and its future potential. As a Korean national, I grew up feeling indebted to my country because I benefitted from its educational system and its social, economic and political development. My conservative family background may have also influenced the formation of my ‘patriotic self’ as well, nurturing a strong sense of attachment, gratitude and allegiance towards Korean people, society and the state. Furthermore, to me international development did not appear to be a completely level playing field for emerging players from the global South. Anglo-American and European money and expertise seemed to continue to dominate the ‘tilted’ policy field despite ‘Southern challenges’ and ‘after Busan’. Personally as a researcher I tended to experience that ‘tilt’ in international research workshops and conferences. I remember a research seminar in Oxford in 2012, after which I sat down in a pub with other researchers from China and India. We were dismayed about how some Western experts and academics assumed a subtle condescending tone and attitude when expressing their concerns about ‘unregulated’ practices of China and other Southern development partners, and how they still seemed to dwell in the past decade without realizing that times had changed. We also lamented that we lacked new, independent policy languages to explain new realities of South–South development partnerships. Being an ‘emerging scholar’ from an ‘emerging donor country’ meant that it was necessary to learn specialist terms and concepts, all produced by Western researchers and policymakers. Just to make an entry to the research community in Europe, you also need to work hard to properly speak and write in English. In some ways I could personally associate with the struggles that non-traditional donor governments face as former ‘underdogs’ who have to work hard to sell their case, catch up with the advanced ‘West’ and confidently engage in the international society of states. All these factors combined, the complex sentiments of belonging to the ‘motherland’ at times generated a protective instinct in me that could not be simply dismissed as irrationality or parochialism.9

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My self-interest as a junior researcher As my fieldwork involved interactions with elite respondents, it presented a particular context of power relations between the researcher and the researched individuals. A majority of my informants in Paris, Seoul, Busan and Sejong were government officials, academics, policy experts and leading NGO activists. In other words, they were highly likely to be the people with whom I would resume contact in the future to ask for help: to get further data or enquire about job and funding opportunities or research collaborations, for example. My informants often had advanced degrees from renowned educational institutions and had long successful careers in their respective governments, international organizations, academia, think tanks or influential NGOs. They could be regarded as being capable of making high-level decisions and possessing knowledge otherwise not accessible to researchers (i.e. experts) and, more broadly, holding a privileged position in society (i.e. the elite).10 Of course, for my research, interviewing these experts had distinct benefits. Especially in the exploratory phase of a project, an interviewer is able to generate data in a more efficient and representative manner through expert interviews than through participant observation or quantitative surveys. Experts can be treated as “surrogates for a wider circle of players” and the support of an expert in a key position could provide easier access for the researcher to an extended circle of experts (Bogner et al. 2009, 2). Nonetheless, the ‘studying-up’ aspect of research necessitates researcher identity and positionality to be clearly defined and reflected upon. This is because the researcher cannot ignore the power of elites and their influence in the state, corporate, civil society and educational establishment when attempting to acquire knowledge from and about elites and to distribute it more broadly (Hunter 1995, 151). From the start, I knew that I did not want to be a cheerleader of certain policy groups just to invest in possible opportunities for jobs and funds. At the same time, I did not intend to make enemies by unnecessarily upsetting people through my research either. In the small policy community of Korean aid, everyone seemed to know everyone, and reputation mattered for my future career. I was aware that “educational institutions are meta-fields that shape knowledge in other fields not only by producing categories but also by sanctioning careers” (Leander 2008, 25). Since my research would discuss contested realities and criticize taken-for-granted knowledges embedded in aid policy, I was at times faced with fears of ostracism from certain power/knowledge networks. I feared that problems would aggravate if my research is deemed an “unfair or bad evaluation” to certain audiences, falling short of producing “an acceptable story that mediates interpretative differences” (Mosse 2011, 55).11 In the case of ‘studying up’ the elites, it is also important to protect the researcher and the research from elite interventions (Hertz and Imber 1995). Elite respondents and experts as subjects of study are often capable of exerting influence in data interpretation and insisting on making editorial changes. Ostrander (1995, 135) argues that the challenges of protecting the research and the researcher have been

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rarely discussed, while the difficulties of gaining access and establishing rapport with elites could have been exaggerated. In fact, some Korean elite informants wanted to ‘review’ my interview transcript (to ensure accuracy, they explained). A few of them wanted to delete parts of the transcript (for instance, certain remarks about recipient countries that can be accused of containing racist prejudices), saying they were venting out emotions without full awareness of the formal context of interview. As requested, I did not use that information or those quotations in my research. Those experiences also led me to ponder over the boundaries of my responsibility to respect the demands of research participants and my need to ensure research integrity (see below for further details).

Researcher responsibility and fear of harm Because of what I perceived as a politically sensitive policy environment, together with the small size of policy communities at the OECD-DAC and inside Korea, I was particularly anxious about the risk of identification of informants. Based on my former career in the newsroom, I knew about the importance of informant protection as well as some grave consequences of failure thereof. My worries were primarily about potential harm inflicted to the reputation or status of research participants (for instance due to disclosure of previously unknown information) or damage to their affiliated institutions and projects. How far does the researcher responsibility extend if anonymization efforts fail to protect the identity of participants? Do I have a moral obligation to produce an account that is appealing, or at least acceptable, to those whose behaviour and beliefs I describe? I was also concerned about a possibility of myself becoming a scapegoat in cases of conflict between and within organizations and individuals. Such worries led me to nights of insomnia as I struggled with the feeling that “both exaggerates the dangers and at the same time makes unreasonable demands for the elimination of all risk” (Hammersley and Traianou 2012, 59). To address these concerns, I had to bear in mind that it is almost impossible to remove all potential for harm from qualitative research, and I would need to make a reasonable and contextualized judgement of the likelihood and severity of potential harm (Birch et al. 2012; Haggerty 2004). One of the practical measures I took to prevent harm to participants was to maintain contact with them and notify them of my availability and openness towards their feedback and concerns, if any. Instead of providing gifts for their participation in research, I sent postcards or thank-you emails as an expression of my gratitude and my availability for future contact. When I judged that I had to use direct quotations that implicated particular political sensitivity and a reasonable chance of identification of informants, I resumed contact with interviewees to ask for explicit consent for the use of the data. I made conscientious efforts to prevent any incidents of potential harm to the best of my knowledge. In cases where I developed enough mutual trust with informants (often through repeated conversational interactions), I discussed in quite a candid manner my concerns

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about possible risks involving their participation. These discussions helped me to better understand their potential apprehensions, while also helping me to come to terms with my own fears and insecurities.

The dilemma of criticizing ‘friends’ and people’s ‘good will’ Critical scholarship of this study was also influenced by friendships developed during fieldwork and maintained after fieldwork. I did not want to risk “a rupture of professional and personal relations” (Mosse 2011, 51–52) because of my research work. Most of my informants displayed immense generosity in allowing access, spending time on interviews and expressing their thoughts. My interviews did not involve any use of material compensation to interviewees but relied solely on their willingness to participate in the research. When accepting my interview requests, I guess they wanted to help me, and could have also been a bit curious about what my research was about and how other participants were responding to my questions in my previous interviews. Moreover, it was not uncommon for them to receive interview requests from researchers and journalists, given their expertise and experience. Nonetheless I was very grateful for their participation in my research in spite of their usually packed schedule. In fact, some ethical dilemmas of my fieldwork were more likely to derive from the abundance of data and access rather than from their paucity. For instance, even though the purpose of the research and the researcher identity were fully disclosed to organizational insiders at the outset of participant observation fieldwork in Paris, several weeks of the peaceful presence of the researcher tended to reduce people’s awareness of and caution towards me, the external researcher. I sometimes chose to quietly retire from certain confidential/private conversations among government officials since I was certain that they would not have willingly shared the information if they were fully conscious of my presence. Knowingly and unknowingly, the feeling of gratitude and the urge for reciprocation could have led to self-censorship in my interpretation of data. Additionally, the aspect of ‘benevolence’ embedded in foreign aid policy also complicated my dilemma. It is not easy to criticize people’s ‘good will’. I was afraid that some of my research findings might be “not just unacceptable but professionally disempowering” to my informants (Mosse 2011, 54). I had a high regard for their professionalism and dedicated service to the country and their moral convictions to make a ‘better world’, irrespective of differences in their policy standpoints. I did not want to be (seen as) self-righteous and morally judgemental towards organizations and individuals engaged in international development. When I was undergoing moments of moral panic, Christian teachings on humility were not helpful either.12 Self-inquisitions continued about the pragmatic value of my research: How do I make my criticisms ‘constructive’ for the benefit of the policy field? Am I capable of articulating the most effective policy alternatives for the sake of actual aid practice?13 Making public criticisms – even in an academic context – was not always a comfortable task for me.

Criticizing your ‘motherland’ to foreigners? 69

Conclusion In this chapter, I have conducted an introspection of the process of my knowledge production as a Korean PhD student researcher studying Korea as a development partner. Reviewing data collection methods and investigating positionality challenges and ethical concerns, I acknowledge that my critical scholarship has been influenced by my researcher identity, self-interest and fears in various related aspects, in spite of conscious efforts to handle them in a conscientious manner. Some researcher dilemmas were amplified for better or worse by the fact that Korea sits somewhere in-between the blurry and confusingly imagined territories of the global ‘North’ and ‘South’, holding a donor profile and development trajectory starkly different from its older DAC peers. I also think my positionality issues were aggravated by and derived from the fact that Korea’s ‘self-redemptive’ desire to ‘reinvent the nation by helping others’ seemed to me a particularly manifest aspect in the country’s development diplomacy (Kim 2015b). Of course, the field of international development has always been fraught with competing commercial and political interests, beliefs, values, histories and identities that impact the policies and politics at home and abroad. Certainly, such contestations and political tensions are neither a uniquely Korean phenomenon nor confined to international development policy. Through my PhD study, I became acutely aware of how policy research is always bound up in the networks of power and is, therefore, inherently political. In retrospect, my anxious concerns about ‘ethical research’ – for instance, about such issues as confidentiality and anonymization, potential harm to research participants, and researcher responsibility – were not because I was a particularly ethical researcher: they could have much more to do with some sort of self-defence mechanisms to prevent unfortunate consequences at my end. Perhaps I did not have to go through so many ‘panic moments’ or ‘fearful nights’ after all. I have not received any angry email protesting the unfairness of my research (yet). Three years after completion of my doctoral study, I do appreciate the passage of time that allows me to reflect on my researcher self in a different light. The fact that I live outside Korea and plan to do so for the foreseeable future also gives me some degree of critical distance and autonomy. If it were a few years ago, I would not have been able to write for publication about my positionality ‘problems’ at this length. With a bit more research experience and a more objective perspective about the (generally limited) impact of academic publications, I now know that most researchers are working hard and strategically to create an impact rather than secretly hoping nobody reads their work. My post-doctoral research interests have evolved to include regional security issues, which are arguably more prone to ideologically polarizing debates than foreign aid policy. I expect critical research will continue to be a challenge and an ongoing process of learning and self-revelation for my career as a researcher.

Notes 1 ‘Korea’ in this chapter refers to the Republic of Korea (South Korea).

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2 Excerpts of the presidential keynote speech from the compilation of the main documents of the HLF-4 are available at www.oecd.org/dac/effectiveness/HLF4%20p roceedings%20entire%20doc%20for%20web.pdf (accessed 28 March 2019). 3 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is headquartered in Seoul, the capital. The Ministry of Strategy and Finance is located in the central administrative city of Sejong, about 120 kilometres south of the capital. 4 I would like to express my gratitude to Dr Emma Mawdsley in the Geography department of the University of Cambridge for her indispensable role as a supervisor of my doctoral research. 5 Meetings of the DAC Working Party on Development Financial Statistics were such examples. In addition to personal attendance at selected DAC meetings in autumn 2012, I also closely followed the OECD’s webcasting service (http://video.oecd.org), which provides broadcasts of various DAC meetings and conferences live or on demand. 6 Many Korean interviewees emphasised that more policy communication and coordination were needed between the MOFA and MOSF. In reality, MOFA-sponsored ODA policy forums seemed to be rarely attended by MOSF delegates, and vice versa. Among the aid policy events that I personally attended in Seoul during the fieldwork, one that included the broadest institutional spectrum of actors was a public hearing at the National Assembly in November 2012. Both ministries sent their responsible highranking officials to pitch different ministerial stances to policymakers just before an upcoming presidential election. 7 Korea’s accession to the DAC as the 24th member in 2010 broke a decade-long hiatus in the DAC enlargement, which had stalled after Greece’s membership in 1999. It signaled a major modification to the DAC’s previously selective and exclusive group identity. Since Korea’s accession, six more countries have joined the DAC in a major expansionary phase for the donor group (as of May 2018). 8 Researcher reflexivity is defined as self-critical introspection of the anxieties and ambivalences surrounding researcher positionality. It is an important part of the research process, which helps to evade false claims of neutrality and universality in academic knowledge production (England 1994; Gilbert 1994; Rose 1997). 9 For stimulating debates on how far the bonds of obligation and loyalty for the country can/should stretch, see Nussbaum’s For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism (1996). 10 As defined by Littig (2009, 99–100). 11 Relatedly, David Mosse’s Cultivating Development: An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice (2005) provides an illustrative account of some costly consequences of making criticisms about policies and professionals in the field of international development. The author discusses his personal experience of ostracism from his peer group and critically exhibits ethical challenges involved in ethnographic field research and academic publishing. 12 For instance, see “who are you to judge your neighbour? (James 4:12) or “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:1, 3). 13 Ferguson (1994), Escobar (1995) and Grillo and Stirrat (1997) embark on fully fledged critical inquisitions about the problematic linkages of power, identities and claims for development ‘solutions’ and ‘sciences’. They investigate questions regarding how to define ‘development’, who are told to need it and who implements (or imposes) it.

References Abels, G. and Behrens, M. (2009) Interviewing experts in political science: A reflection on gender and policy effects based on secondary analysis. In Bogner, A., Littig, B. and Menz, W. eds., Interviewing Experts. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 138–156.

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Birch, M., Miller, T., Mauthner, M. and Jessop, J. (2012) Introduction to second edition. In Miller, T., Birch, M., Mauthner, M. and Jessop, J. eds., Ethics in Qualitative Research, 2nd edition. London: Sage Publications, pp. 1–13. Bogner, A., Litting, B. and Menz, W. (2009) An introduction to a new methodological debate. In Bogner, A., Littig, B. and Menz, W. eds., Interviewing Experts. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1–13. England, K. (1994) Getting personal: Reflexivity, positionality and feminist research. The Professional Geographer, 46(1), 80–89. Escobar, A. (1995) Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Evans, M. (1988) Participant observation: The researcher as research tool. In Eyles, J. and David, M. S. eds., Qualitative Methods in Human Geography. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 197–218. Ferguson, J. (1994) Anti-Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press. Gilbert, M. R. (1994) The politics of location: Doing feminist research ‘at home’. The Professional Geographer, 46, 90–96. Grillo, R. D. and Stirrat, R. L. eds. (1997) Discourses of Development: Anthropological Perspectives. London and Oxford: Bloomsbury Publishing. Gusterson, H. (1997) Studying up revisited. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 20(1), 114–119. Gusterson, H. (2008) Ethnographic research. In Klotz, A. and Prakash, D. eds., Qualitative Methods in International Relations: A Pluralist Guide. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 93–113. Haas, P. M. ed. (1997) Knowledge, Power and International Policy Coordination. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina. Haggerty, K. D. (2004) Ethics creep: Governing social science research in the name of ethics. Qualitative Sociology, 27(4), 391–414. Hammersley, M. and Traianou, A. (2012) Ethics in Qualitative Research: Controversies and Contexts. London: Sage Publications. Hertz, R. and Imber, J. B. eds. (1995) Studying Elites Using Qualitative Methods. London: Sage Publications. Hunter, A. (1995) Local knowledge and local power: notes on the ethnography of local community elites. In Hertz, R. and Imber, J. B. eds., Studying Elites Using Qualitative Methods. London: Sage Publications, pp. 151–170. Kim, S.-M. (2015a) The domestic politics of international development in South Korea: Stakeholders and competing policy discourses. The Pacific Review. Available at: www.ta ndfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09512748.2015.1076503#f0001. Kim, S.-M. (2015b) Critical geopolitics and contemporary development: South Korea’s place in the changing landscape of foreign aid. PhD thesis, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge. Kim, S.-M. (2017) International perceptions of South Korea as development partner: Attractions and strategic implications. The European Journal of Development Research, 29(5), 1086–1101. Available at: http://rdcu.be/ore2. Lancaster, C. (2007) Foreign Aid: Diplomacy, Development, Domestic Politics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Larson, D. W. and Shevchenko, A. (2010) Status seekers: Chinese and Russian responses to U.S. primacy. International Security, 34(4), 63–96. Leander, A. (2008) Thinking tools. In Klotz, A. and Prakash, D. eds., Qualitative Methods in International Relations: A Pluralist Guide. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 11–27.

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Littig, B. (2009) Interviewing the elite – Interviewing experts: Is there a difference? In Bogner, A., Littig, B. and Menz. W. eds., Interviewing Experts. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 98–113. Mawdsley, E., Savage, L. and Kim, S.-M. (2014) A ‘post-aid world’? Paradigm shift in foreign aid and development cooperation at the 2011 Busan High Level Forum. The Geographical Journal, 180(1), 27–38. Mawdsley, E., Kim, S.-M. and Marcondes, D. (2017) Political leadership and ‘non-traditional’ development cooperation. Third World Quarterly, 38(10), 2171–2186. Mosse, D. (2005) Cultivating Development: An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice. London: Pluto Press. Mosse, D. (2011) Politics and ethics: Ethnographies of expert knowledge and professional identities. In Shore, C., Wright, S. and Però, D. eds., Policy Worlds: Anthropology and the Analysis of Contemporary Power. EASA series. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 50–67. Nussbaum, M. C. with respondents (1996) For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism, ed. Cohen, J.Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Nel, P. (2010) Redistribution and recognition: What emerging regional powers want. Review of International Studies, 36, 951–974. Ostrander, S. A. (1995) Surely you’re not in this just to be helpful: Access, rapport and interviews in three studies of elites. In Hertz, R. and Imber, J. B. eds., Studying Elites Using Qualitative Methods. London: Sage Publications, pp. 133–150. Rose, G. (1997) Situating knowledges: Positionality, reflexivities and other tactics. Progress in Human Geography, 21, 305–320. Suzuki, S. (2009) Civilization and Europe. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Valentine, G. (1997) Tell me about…: Using interviews as a research methodology. In Flowerdew, R. and Martin, D. eds., Methods in Human Geography: A Guide for Students Doing a Research Project. Harlow: Longman, pp. 110–127. Zarakol, A. (2011) After Defeat: How the East Learned to Live with the West. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

VIGNETTE: “WE NEED PEOPLE LIKE YOU” Reflections on identity and expectations in South–South Cooperation research Cynthia M. Kamwengo

Introduction The term ‘South–South Cooperation’ (SSC) is not widely used within Zambia to describe the country’s relationship with other developing countries, even though SSC has been an important part of Zambia’s history.1 The country’s post-independence socioeconomic development was assisted by various Southern allies, from China’s much-lauded construction of the TAZARA railway line to Cuba’s provision of medical doctors to the local health sector. Zambia also supported liberation movements across the southern African region and cultivated political/economic ties with Non-Aligned nations under the leadership of founding President Kenneth Kaunda (Chan 1992). I was first introduced to the concept of SSC 15 years ago as an undergraduate student in a Marxist-leaning development studies department at the University of Zambia. This was just before the hype around China–Africa relations had begun to take hold and, as such, my introduction to SSC was part of a lesson on dependency theory2 (see Haq 1980). I only developed an interest in researching SSC during my postgraduate years, brought on by a desire to understand the global debates on the increased presence of China, Brazil and India in African economies and the claims that China was ‘colonizing’ Zambia along with the rest of the continent. Over the years, I have read several studies on the resurgence of SSC and have noticed that very few are authored by African scholars, a fact that has both puzzled me but has also driven me to continue exploring this important field. I have received encouragement from researchers and development practitioners both from within my country and from Northern institutions who are keen to ensure that contemporary research is decolonized and better represents the diversity of experiences and opinions. My PhD research examines how the politics of partnership affects Zambian ownership of trilateral development projects operating under the

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framework of SSC. This includes a China–Zambia–UNDP renewable energy technology transfer project and the Japan–Zambia–Malaysia Triangle of Hope project in foreign direct investment promotion.3 This research has the potential to shed more light on African perspectives on SSC and the development effectiveness of trilateral cooperation. One interesting issue that I have encountered, but did not initially expect, is that some actors in Zambia have encouraged me to generate policy-oriented research that can somehow contribute to local policy planning. For instance, after a presentation of my PhD project at a research workshop in Lusaka early in 2016, a few of the workshop participants approached me saying, “We need people like you”. They went on to point out how the country’s ability to get the best out of development partnerships is affected by a shortage of human resources with strategic policy planning skills and that my research should contribute to ameliorating this weakness. The Zambian government does struggle with weak institutional capacity in policy planning/coordination and a shortage of human resources to manage its development cooperation activities (MoFNP 2011). As a result, I was not surprised that during fieldwork in Lusaka between September 2017 and March 2018, some government officials and academics who served as respondents for my research requested that I generate policy findings. These, they hoped, might help them understand what is going on in terms of SSC in the country, and improve their planning and implementation of projects. Respondents’ expectations that the researcher will give them favours in return for participating in interviews are common (Head 2009; Tyldum 2011) but respondents’ expectations for information/feedback is something that should not be overlooked in qualitative research. Nor should the reality that researchers from developing regions occasionally have to manage expectations that their work will more broadly contribute to national development, while conducting fieldwork at home. I am not affiliated with any government agency nor am I obliged in any way to produce research that can be utilized by policymakers and development practitioners, but I do occasionally feel a sense of duty to direct my PhD research along a policy-oriented path rather than a more theoretical one, so that it can easily feed into local knowledge systems. In this chapter, I reflect on how I balance a desire to make sure that my research makes a practical contribution to skills-scarce Zambia with the need to produce research that still fits within the context of what is considered relevant in the United Kingdom.4 I also briefly reflect on my identity as a researcher in the field of South–South cooperation.

Lessons from the field There is an emphasis on applied research in Zambian academia and think tanks. Development research tends to concentrate on analysing and generating practical solutions to the country’s most pressing development needs, with a focus on the macroeconomic, agricultural and social development sectors. In recent years, less attention has been directed towards studies that examine international power

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relations, donor strategies or the motives driving development cooperation – including SSC. The government itself has not invested in the monitoring and reporting of SSC activities nor has it produced extensive policy reports on how to manage these.5 In part, this is due to the aforementioned fact that government departments struggle with capacity weaknesses. However, some policymakers also tend to perceive and engage with contemporary South–South development activities as a continuation of their longstanding relations with partner countries, rather than as a new phenomenon. This may be influenced by the fact that little change has been made to the general principles that guide the negotiation/delivery of development cooperation from Southern partners,6 even though the scale of cooperation from some has significantly increased. This is in contrast with Northern academic and policy literature, which over the last decade has mostly analysed South–South development activities in African countries through the lens of the political and economic changes transforming global power structures. Research studies will, for example, examine the activities in a SSC project, hypothesize on the stakeholder’s motives for participating in the project, their behaviour in future projects, how this connects to broader foreign and domestic policies of individual countries, and the impact on international development. In contrast, not all stakeholders in Zambia seem to be concerned with analysing and hypothesizing the possible implications of SSC activities on local or international development, so that these activities can be managed.7 The government, in particular, seems to be more focused on how it can maximize the technical benefits of SSC. As one civil servant put it to me: We don’t need to take a planned strategic approach to our relations with countries like China. We just ask them for whatever we want such as roads, when we need it, and we know that they will assist us. Northern donors tend to emphasize too much on political and economic conditionalities. But whether you want to call these other countries our cooperating partners or donors, and we are the recipient or beneficiary, or whatever words you use to sugarcoat it, the aid relationship is always affected by the issue of comparative advantage between countries.8 Similar statements on the language of partnerships revealed some of the differences in the ways South–South activities are discussed in international policy documents/ research publications, and how some development practitioners and researchers in Zambia perceive them. I also found that a number of my Zambian respondents had extensive experience managing or evaluating the implementation of donor-funded projects and consequently engaged in SSC/trilateral cooperation initiatives as if each was just another development project with cooperating partners. They generally distanced their project activities from the wider discourse of SSC and emphasized that the focus of the project was on a specific issue (e.g. renewable energy), and that they are working with multiple donors (North and South) on different projects within the sector concerned. These respondents hinted that they expected

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me, as a Zambian national, to understand this viewpoint and ensure that my questions on their project activities reflected this and not the discourse of SSC. As a result, interviews were not a simple process of asking questions and receiving answers while conducting my PhD fieldwork. I had to navigate the differences between how SSC is perceived in Zambia and globally, as well as to adapt my interview questions to ensure that I received answers that captured all sides. The process has given me space to critically reflect on the different ways in which researcher identity is constructed by respondents and their expectations. It has also prompted me to reflect on the question of whose perspective is driving research on contemporary South–South relations and what kind of knowledge is being produced about it. It has highlighted the need for researchers to reconsider whether it makes sense to continue talking about SSC in countries such as Zambia or whether the concept is simply a Cold War construction that has been resurrected by policy elites and academics to describe what otherwise should be seen as ‘normal’ relations between (non-Western) countries. SSC is often labelled as a unique or ‘alternative’ form of development cooperation, but in practice most activities are a standard part of bilateral relations.

North, South or in-between? My experience of training and working in both Northern and Southern research institutions has helped me to understand different academic cultures and the presence of diverse priorities. I have observed that research and policy circles in the UK tend to explore theoretical/conceptual ideas more extensively than do their Zambian counterparts. The reason for this is not clear. However, this diversity is related to the fact that research institutions tend to pursue specific types of knowledge (influenced by local needs/history) and have established traditions on how they articulate their knowledge to target audiences (Imenda 2005). Personally, the desire to produce research on SSC that speaks to both Zambian and Northern audiences – the pull and push between policy-oriented or theoretical research – was a big challenge during the early stages of my doctoral studies. While I am confident that I have learned to better manage this conflict, I also acknowledge that I may not be able to overcome it completely as my research career progresses. Overall, I consider myself a Southern scholar. There is the risk, however, that some people may take my views as being representative of ‘the African point of view’ on SSC, given the desire to include more African voices in global conversations. My views are influenced by my upbringing and education, which took place mostly in Zambia, but have also been influenced by postgraduate training at two very different Northern institutions. My ability to speak accurately for Africa or ‘the South’ is limited – especially for a country such as Zambia where, due to cultural influences, key issues in political and development circles tend to be talked about in private discussions rather than publicly, and thereby are not captured in news media or research publications. African countries are dynamic and are experiencing rapid changes as they further integrate into the global economy.

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What I do represent is one of many unique voices on the changing political and international development landscapes coming from the continent. Hopefully many more voices will start to be heard.

Notes 1 The binary of global North–global South is rarely used. More often, countries are described either as developed or developing. 2 Dependency theorists argue that Africa’s development problems are due to the unequal global trade and power structures that came out of the colonial era, and that tend to favour Western countries. Political and economic cooperation with fellow developing countries is put forward as one method by which the continent can correct these imbalances and achieve meaningful development. 3 Through the financial support of Denmark and technical support of UNDP, renewable energy technologies and know-how have been transferred from China to Zambia (2014– 2018). Similarly, Japan facilitated the adaptation of lessons learned from Malaysia’s experience with economic diversification and foreign direct investment promotion to Zambia through the Triangle of Hope project (2006–2012). 4 It should be noted that research funding councils in the UK are also encouraging research that makes an impact on academic scholarship, the economy or society. This includes research that can influence policymaking. 5 Key documents such as the Zambia Aid Policy and Strategy and Development Cooperation Report 2009 make only a brief mention of SSC. 6 This includes the principles of non-conditionality, mutual benefits and non-interference in the domestic affairs of partner countries. 7 There has been public debate about the debt burden accrued from Chinese infrastructure loans, however. 8 Interview, Ministry of Finance, Lusaka, 28 February 2018.

References Chan, S. (1992) Kaunda and Southern Africa: Image and Reality in Foreign Policy. London: British Academic Press. Haq, K. ed. (1980) Dialogue for a New Order. New York: Pergamon Press. Head, E. (2009) The ethics and implications of paying participants in qualitative research. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 12(4), 335–344. Imenda, S. (2005) The idea of a South African university and implications for knowledge production. South African Journal of Higher Education, Special Issue 1, 1405–1418. MoFNP (2007) Zambia Aid Policy and Strategy. Ministry of Finance and National Planning, Government of the Republic of Zambia. MoFNP (2010) Development Cooperation Report 2009. Ministry of Finance and National Planning, Government of the Republic of Zambia. MoFNP (2011) Country Evaluation of the Implementation of the Paris Declaration in Zambia Phase II. Ministry of Finance and National Planning, Government of the Republic of Zambia. Tyldum, G. (2011) Ethics or access? Balancing informed consent against the application of institutional, economic or emotional pressures in recruiting respondents for research. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 15(3), 199–210.

VIGNETTE: SILENT NORTH, LOUD SOUTH Reflections on transregional research in Afrasian and Afrabian spaces John Njenga Karugia

My research focuses on how imaginaries and memories are produced. In an upcoming book, I examine what they are used for, and whether there are better ways of ‘doing memory’ in order to promote what I call ‘responsible cosmopolitanism’. My research concerns itself with how, in an entangled world, shared memories of particular groups transcend the national scale or operate at a scale below it (see De Cesari and Rigney 2014). I am especially interested in complexities and tensions of scale (local, national, transregional, transareal, transnational and global). My role as a memory studies researcher has been to travel to places across the Afrasian Sea and to visit sites of connected histories in Arabia, Asia and Africa (see Karugia 2018). There I meet scholars and other memory actors in order to interview them and in some cases to conduct field research together with them. I also collect and analyse their publications, striving to bring their fragmented perspectives on Afrasian and Afrabian memories into conversation and comprehension within a connective Afrasian Sea framework. While conducting field research for my two projects – ‘Indian Ocean Imaginaries’ and ‘Indian Ocean as Memory Space’ – in the cities of Ahmedabad and Jamnagar in India in 2016 and in the cities of Muscat and Nizwa in Oman in 2016 and 2018, it dawned on me that my positionality elicited particular responses and expectations among interview partners as well as guilt, insecurity and unintended interventions on my part. In the four cities, interview partners opened up to me and trusted me as a fellow African since my skin colour played into their imaginaries and memories of a romanticized Africa. Similarly, my embodiment of Swahili identity, perceived in my ability to speak Kiswahili, seemed reassuring to my interviewees who themselves speak Kiswahili (Oman) or Gujarati-Kiswahili (Ahmedabad and Jamnagar). My embodiment of the South enabled ‘South–South’ conversations during long in-depth interviews. To the minds of my interviewees, my ‘southernness’ could

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never be mistaken. But there was something else about me that they either ignored or did not appreciate because it was silent: my ‘northernness’. I was conducting this research as a post-doctoral scholar from Goethe University Frankfurt, using funding from Germany that was allocated to the project ‘Africa’s Asian Options’ (AFRASO) by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. I was partly educated in the North for my Masters and Doctorate at the University of Leipzig. My results, partly based on these interviews, would be published in a book in the North by a ‘Northern’ publisher. In fact, my respondents might never see or be able to afford that book. Despite robbing them of their time and interfering in their lives, my research would most probably never benefit them directly. This vignette presents examples and contexts within which these dynamics become clear. In Jamnagar, I interviewed four elders among Siddis (Afro-Indians) who pensively recounted how two Western scholars, one from the US and another from Germany, had conducted research in their community. But “they never came back… we have never seen their books… nothing”. An Indian scholar based in the US had also interviewed Siddis in Ahmedabad and Jamnagar, but “she never keeps contact… now that she does not need us”. A French lady was still doing her research among the Siddis. At that moment, I could not help but wonder what they would tell the next researchers about me, ‘a black or African researcher’. I realized immediately that I needed to ‘give back’ to this community immediately to avoid the risk of never having a chance to come back. I started by explaining that while it was not my intention to lecture them regarding their lives, my suggestion would be for them to establish a community centre where all researchers would always register before conducting research and where they could also send their publications, enabling the Siddis to have access to a copy too. In Ahmedabad, the family of a 67-year-old Siddi woman seemed perplexed when she opened her wardrobe and showed me an archive of various personal and political documents that she had never shown ‘Western’ and Indian researchers who had interviewed her before. Despite the very soulful and heartfelt discussions we had together, my blackness also played a role in her trusting me enough to not only let me look at but to also make copies of documents so dear to her, in the hope that maybe I would dignify and respect her, as well as publish their message. She assumed and expected solidarity from another black African. The foregoing must be put into context. Despite Africans having travelled across Asia and the Middle East as entertainers and preachers of Islam and Christianity from the eighth century, Siddis were mostly shipped to India by Portuguese colonial and slave masters or as freed slaves by British patrol ships after the abolition of slavery (Harris 2003, 157–158; Hyslop 2009, 55). While researching their fascinating background and especially while interviewing them, I tried to keep in mind the kind of subtle violence I could perpetuate towards them, especially within the context of past violence from African, Arabian, Indian and Portuguese slave traders as well as their current struggles in India. A vivid moment was when the 67-year-old Siddi lady apologized about the Kiswahili spoken by Siddis 600 years after leaving East Africa:

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“I am sorry that our Kiswahili is not good”. At that moment, I realized that because I kept on telling her and her family about certain words that had a different meaning than those Siddis attributed to them, I must have caused them unintended discomfort and humiliation. For example, in standard Kiswahili spoken in East Africa, ‘maji moto’ is translated as ‘hot water’ yet the Siddis of Ahmedabad translated ‘maji moto’ to mean ‘hot tea’. In apology, I had to explain that words can travel globally and have various denotations and connotations. In Oman, similarly, my interview partners were formerly Zanzibari citizens before they were expelled during the 1964 ‘Zanzibar Revolution’, which they nowadays prefer to refer to as the ‘Zanzibar genocide’. Today, they are referred to as Zanzibari-Omanis. During interviews in Oman, there was the sense that my interview partners were sending me back to Africa to pass on certain messages. Because I spoke Kiswahili like them and since I was born and raised in Kenya, they assumed that I would carry back various messages. Yet although I spent time with them, that was not my intention. At one point, a Zanzibari-Omani author wanted to present me his book as a gift, after kindly inquiring whether I was paid enough to afford spending money on the book (I answered in the affirmative and proceeded to hand him money for the book). In these ways, my Omani interview partners muted that part of me that is ‘Northern’. The South was loud. The North was silent. Both a blessing and a curse since the responsibility of navigating these dilemmas remains mine.

References De Cesari, C. and Rigney, A. eds. (2014) Introduction, Transnational Memory, Circulation, Articulation, Scales. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 1–25. Harris, J. E. (2003) Expanding the scope of African Diaspora Studies: The Middle East and India, a research agenda. Radical History Review, 87, 157–168. Hyslop, J. (2009) Steamship Empire: Asian, African and British sailors in the Merchant Marine c. 1880–1945. Journal of Asian and African Studies, 44, 49–67. Karugia, J. N. (2018) Connective Afrasian sea memories: Transregional imaginaries, memory politics, and complexities of national “belonging”. Memory Studies, 11(3), 328–341.

4 A PLEA FOR KALEIDOSCOPIC KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION Mayke Kaag and Miriam Ocadiz

Introduction As researchers at an African Studies Centre in Europe we are familiar with the current debates in African Studies concerning the need for a ‘decolonization of the academy’. A seminar organized by one of our research masters students, entitled “Where is the African in African Studies?” (Leiden, 31 May 2016), for instance, led to heated debates on “Who can be considered an African?” “Who is legitimized to speak for Africans and on what basis?” “Why is there an under-representation of African scholars within the field of African Studies?” “What implications does this have for knowledge production?” These questions link to broader questions concerning the need for a “decolonization of the mind” (Wa-Thiongo 1993; see also Amoah 2011; Sarr 2016), which are, for instance, at the basis of the current struggle at South African universities for getting rid of apartheid legacies in higher education. What validity does research produced about Africa by non-Africans have for Africans? What interests does it serve? And, can Africans not speak for themselves? More generally it boils down to the question of who is allowed to speak for whom and for what reason, and about the relationship between power and knowledge (Foucault 1980; Mudimbe 1988; Long and Long 1992). The debates in African Studies resonate with the questions that are at the core of the present volume. Clearly, South–South Development Cooperation (SSDC) is billed as an alternative to, or even the end of, neocolonial development cooperation. Actors involved in SSDC portray it as a more equal development partnership, while Western stakeholders often point to the geopolitical and geoeconomic interests involved.1 (Doty 1996; Dirlik 2007; Carou and Bringel 2010), So, who then is able and/or legitimized to produce knowledge about SSDC? Evidently, much is at stake, not least because knowledge is not just knowledge, but has the power to (de)legitimize practices (Meneses and Santos 2009).

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We observe that the debate on SSDC tends to get polarized, in similar ways to the debate in African Studies where (particularly older male) white European scholars often dismiss as irrelevant the claims/demands for giving African and other Southern colleagues a larger voice, view the debate as too difficult, complex or even “nonsensical” and argue that “we will never reach a consensus/solution here”. African and other Southern students and scholars see this as a sign that they are not taken seriously and are being silenced once again as a result of neocolonial disdain (Escobar 1998). The tone is such that it is difficult to reach common ground or even a shared space for finding solutions together. A main reason for the polarization of the debate is evidently the fact that it becomes very personal when the legitimacy of one’s position is questioned, a feeling experienced by participants from both “sides”. But why then not take this personal aspect as a point of departure, instead of fencing off by taking a defensive or attacking attitude? This turns the question as to who possesses the monopoly on wisdom/knowledge production (on SSDC) into “what can each of us contribute to the larger ‘cloud’ of knowledge (on SSDC)”? In order to explore this, in the following we aim to reflect on our own positionalities vis-à-vis the topic of SSDC – both in terms of our research background and experience, our personal journeys and our institutional setting – and explore what these yield for a better understanding of SSDC. With this we aim to show that, instead of de/legitimizing certain positionalities for being un/able to speak about certain phenomena, the best way forward is to bring different partial perspectives and knowledge together in order to engage in dialogue and complement one another for a better and more complete comprehension, like a kaleidoscope in which different shapes and colours produce a complete (and fascinating) picture. This does not mean that dialogue and complementarities necessarily always end up with agreement or alignment. In the spirit of Tsing (2005), we would like to underline that friction is also productive, in the sense that tensions and disagreements may create new insights and open up new avenues for exploration – as long as there is a shared acknowledgement of the complementary nature of partial perspectives and positionalities.

A Western view on the East: What can research on Arab–African aid interactions teach us about North–South and South–South cooperation? (Mayke) In 2004, I started to do research on Islamic charities from the Gulf countries working in Africa. This period was the heyday of the ‘War on Terror’, and in media and policy reports, Gulf charities were frequently accused of supporting terrorism and funding Al-Qaeda. But when I tried to find data that could underpin these statements, I found out that virtually no academic research existed on these organizations in Africa. I decided that it would be important for someone to find out what they actually do before issuing grave accusations. I therefore began research on these Gulf charities in Chad, and later also in Senegal.

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In the beginning, the (Arab) staff and directors of the charities did not want to speak to me, as they thought that I was possibly a spy for the Americans. It was only when one country director of an Islamic NGO opened up that the others allowed me access to their offices as well. It appeared that they had changed their attitude because they had come to realize that I could possibly provide some positive publicity for them in the West. I think that I was also seen as less threatening or suspect than other Westerners, as I was just a simple woman arriving on foot or on the back of my research assistant’s old moto instead of in a posh four-wheel drive (this earned me the nickname of ‘the iron lady’). While I tried to make the most out of this position, combining a degree of marginality with the promise of connectivity, I progressively realized that in gaining knowledge about the work of these charities in Africa while also having knowledge of Western development cooperation and debates in Western media, I would not only be able to provide important information on these Islamic charities’ approaches and their work in Africa, but also to hold up a critical mirror to Western aid interventions in the continent. Researching the unfamiliar enables us to see the familiar in a fresh light. Thus, it can be observed that in the West, Gulf charities are often merely considered as geopolitical actors serving the geopolitical interests from their home countries, while this perspective is largely lacking in reports on Western development NGOs, which first and foremost are depicted as idealistic organizations offering relief and helping development. In reality, both of course act as geopolitical players while also offering relief. In both cases, the aid comes with ideologies; worldviews are being transmitted; and by their work, they fuel (dis)connections, link to networks and de-link from others (Kaag 2012, 2017). The religious and geopolitical aspects of the Gulf charities enabled me to also make visible the religious/ideological aspects in Western (secular and Christian) development collaboration. The emphasis that aid and development gets in understandings of Western efforts helped me to also bring this aspect to the fore in Gulf charities’ work, but also underlined the importance of analysing how ‘development’ is defined differently by these different types of actors (Kaag 2016). I suggest that this mirror-like analysis of Western and Middle Eastern development interventions may contribute to a better understanding of the different aspects and layers of SSDC, too: geopolitical aspects, ideological and ethical aspects of wanting to help and demonstrating concern for others, and cultural and (inter)personal aspects are all important to take into account.

A view from the South: Perspectives of a Mexican student doing research on Cuban medical aid in Mozambique (Mimi) In the summer of 2016, I arrived in Maputo, hosted by the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, as part of my research masters in African Studies at Leiden University, where I was expected to fulfil six months of fieldwork in order to understand how the notion of solidarity is embodied in the current Cuban medical cooperation in Mozambique. Dividing my time between Mozambique and Cuba,

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I had the possibility to move from the Netherlands to Africa and Latin America as a young researcher eager to undertake qualitative research that included participant observation and semi-informal interviews within and around healthcare facilities. This placed me at the heart of Maputo and Havana, living among Cubans, Mozambicans and other transnational actors, with whom I shared my daily routines and built meaningful experiences that went beyond intellectual frames. My time in the field represents a vibrant event, a colourful and sensorial encounter with the wide diversity of the so-called global South that made my time conducting fieldwork (as well as before and after) a journey that brought me to borders that I did not imagine I could cross. Meanwhile, a deep self-transformation was manifested as a parallel internal journey of self-reflexivity, one that was needed while performing ethnographic research in each location. As I describe myself as a scholar of the global South, doing research with, about and for people from the ‘South’, I could not avoid noticing the particular nature of my position as a Mexican woman conducting research in Mozambique and Cuba; this phenomenon is uncommon, but as such has meant a valuable point of reflection on the power relations embedded in the broad concept of SSDC. The ethnographic nature of my research and its aim to present the life stories of Cubans and Mozambicans as the core of my dissertation demanded a certain degree of sensitivity and openness from my side, as my own life story was also interwoven with the search for an emotional force such as solidarity. Reflecting on this articulation, the first issue in my academic path that comes to mind is the fact that I needed to travel to the Netherlands in order to be able to study contemporary African societies from a multidisciplinary perspective. This already stresses the lack of diversity in Mexican universities – where the African continent remains an underrated and overlooked region. This was a major factor that led to my decision to seek the support of a Northern university in order to have the access and resources needed, although this meant potentially reinforcing Eurocentric perspectives on Africa. As a result, I arrived in Mozambique and Cuba sponsored by Leiden University with enough means to collect data and have a comfortable life, together with the prestige attached to European education in the global South. Such elements added another layer to my identity; I was not only a Mexican, but at the same time a resident of the North going back to the South thanks to European networks and backing. When I presented myself as part of a Dutch university, pursuing an Englishspeaking programme and receiving a scholarship in euros, I triggered a reaction of respect in academic environments and a strong curiosity from local students. Being at the same time ‘just Mexican’ evoked an ambiguous image – especially in Mozambique but also in Cuba – attached to stereotypical images of telenovelas, immigration and drug trafficking exported by American popular culture. In other words, I noticed how prejudice and stereotypes of African societies in my homeland had an equivalent in the over-simplistic perspective of Mexico in neighbouring regions. These stereotypes and prejudices indeed had an impact on my daily activities and formed a crucial point of tension that inspired further thoughts. For

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instance, when I was in Mozambique I was for the first time labelled as white, a mulungu. This was an outrageous situation for me, as I never consider myself as such, nor had I tried to belong to such a group. On the contrary, my life in Mexico and my experience as a migrant in the Netherlands had strengthened a sense of distinction from, and even opposition towards, white, elitist groups in relation to racialized and deeply unequal environments. Acknowledging the instability of my perceived race, and thus of my own identity, has been a quest to also recognize my own privileges – starting from the opportunity to study abroad and conduct research in other continents – to then reflect on rigid conceptions of otherness. My fieldwork, a transatlantic journey to analyse the emotions and solidarities in a case of South–South cooperation, necessitated a critical approach to the multilayered encounter of people from different backgrounds beyond romanticized or simplistic perspectives of SSDC and International Relations. Using an ethnographic approach, the collection of life stories evoked an inquiry into personal elements of identity, nostalgia and connectivity that prompted me to use specific academic literature and fiction that was directly engaged with the experiences of those communities in which I focused my research. My daily life among Africans and Latin Americans placed me closer to academic literature that is not mainstream in Anglophone North-Atlantic academia. For example, thanks to my friendship with fellow Mozambican and Brazilian students, I encountered the ‘Epistemologies of the South’ from Meneses and Santos (2009), an academic and activist initiative to stress the roots of social injustice in epistemic domination. Other literature in Spanish and Portuguese (see Alingué and Andebeng 2005; Borón and Lechini 2006; Zamparoni 2012) also became more visible not only because of my specific language skills, but also through my collaboration with academics and activists from the communities I aimed to understand. In relation to my own background, my daily life in (and between) both regions displayed prominent voices of popular culture that are related to the notion of a ‘South’, such as Eduardo Galeano, Mia Couto and Cesaria Evora. These diverse channels of expression added another sensorial level to the reflexivity needed to approach the embodiment of solidarity. For instance, the song Sodade from Cesaria Evora worked as an entry point to describe the particular use of the term saudade as an emotion of longing in the Portuguese language that captures the essence of nostalgia and hope constantly expressed by the interviewees, and which could not be expressed in the same manner in the English language. Moreover, throughout this project, I could describe my position in Mozambique and Cuba as an experience of liminality. It has been this chameleonic ability to be non-white and non-black, not completely from the South nor from the North, that has allowed me to grasp the diversity of locations often conflated under the label of ‘global South’. Through the careful and respectful emphasis on the voice of those individuals who travel across continents, differences and similarities between and within Mozambique and Cuba could be brought to the fore. My own movement through different locations and circumstances, grounded in my personal

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experiences with marginalized groups in Mexico, meant a particular approach to each person I encountered while conducting research. Furthermore, my critical upbringing in academia stimulated a conscious understanding of my own pitfalls, not so much in terms of devaluing my own position but by motivating a more transgressive approach to the interconnectivity between Latin America, Africa and beyond. My particular position as a Mexican conducting research in the field of African Studies became an opportunity to present an innovative text that may contribute to further initiatives, within and outside academia, that importantly recognize the ongoing fluctuation of people and ideas beyond North–South dichotomies.

A view from the South: A Senegalese perspective on a French president’s joke (Mayke) During an official visit to Burkina Faso in November 2017, France’s President Macron visited one of the universities, where he spoke with President Kabore in front of an audience of university students. When one of the students asked him what he was planning to do to counter the frequent electricity cuts in the country, Macron answered: “You are speaking to me as if I were your colonizer, but I am not responsible for electricity provision at the universities here. That is the task of your president”. When, shortly afterwards, Kabore left the room for a sanitary break, Macron joked that he was leaving to repair the air conditioning. Apparently, the students liked the joke; however, it led to heated reactions on the internet, critics stating that Macron’s remark was ‘belittling’, ‘degrading’ and ‘on the edge of racism’. Macron labelled these reactions as ‘ridiculous’, as if Burkina Faso’s president could not stand a jest. I also thought that the fact that Macron made his joke showed that he treated Kabore as an equal, as such departing from the former colonizer’s position that I felt characterized much of his predecessors’ (and other French) attitudes towards Africa. In fact, I liked the joke, but when I talked to one of my close Senegalese friends, I found out that he took it very differently. He felt really upset by Macron’s remark and humiliated as an African. I started trying to explain to my friend why I thought he saw it wrongly, until I realized that in this case, there was no wrong or right. My friend listened to Macron as a Senegalese, and what he heard was influenced by the felt burden of colonial history and his personal experiences with French people. I could try to explain that Macron by his remark distanced himself from this history, and that thus, it had no relevance, but in fact for my friend, it had – and I realized that both his and my positioned understandings were relevant to evaluate Macron’s statement. For evaluating a joke (and, by extension, an academic argument…) it is not only necessary to look at the intention of the one who brings it, but it is evidently also important to look at how it is received.2 More generally, what this example tells us is that history and experience cannot be separated from social knowledge but that the former are the latter’s building blocks and as such is contained in it. This means that to understand social reality, it is important to pay attention to the various participants,

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their history and experiences. There is no one-sided truth, as truth is made by up of the combined perspectives of (differently located) participants.

A view from the North: What can researchers in a Northern knowledge institute (not) contribute to knowledge production on SSDC? (Mimi and Mayke) So far, we have argued that, as Africanists, we are sensitive to questions related to hierarchies/politics of knowledge production; that researching the unfamiliar has helped to also develop critical perspectives on the familiar; that personal backgrounds and experiences shape one’s academic and life journey and the research results one is able to yield; and that a thorough understanding of social reality requires the multiple perspectives of social actors involved. So, each has professional and personal contributions to make. Let us now turn to the institutional level: as we are based in a Northern university, for us the pressing question to reflect on is the following: what can researchers in a Northern knowledge institution (not) contribute to knowledge production on SSDC? It is clear that institutions in the Northern hemisphere are able to influence (global) research agendas to a large degree, by virtue of the funds available, but also by their position in global development and publication networks and the like. So, in a Northern institute, ideally, we would be able to also push the agenda for knowledge production on SSDC. However, institutions have to survive in a competitive environment, and aim to enhance their position and power by claiming positions, getting projects and gaining leadership of projects in particular. In addition, funding for research on SSDC is often linked to (inter)governmental development cooperation agendas that are deeply concerned with maintaining the Northern hegemonic position in the global development arena (Abdenur and Marques da Fonseca 2013), so being academically successful in this field depends a lot on effectively playing on these concerns. These perverse incentives make it imperative to maintain our ethical checks as individuals within our institutions. This may not be so easy, as individuals are also subject to these perverse incentives. We think that it is good to have explicit debates on these, and we believe that this volume may help in this. What should also be noted is that in a Northern institution, we have easy access to certain academic views that are often considered globally dominant. However, we less easily have access to more subaltern, marginal and local voices, because of spatial and cultural distance, and lack of proficiency in certain languages. A more diverse academic environment in the North would definitively help, as can be confirmed by the both of us, who feel enriched by our mutual collaboration, and by collaborating and exchanging with other students and staff from diverse geographical, cultural and disciplinary backgrounds. The fact remains however, that even in our African Studies Centre, still only a small minority of students and staff come from Africa, which has partly to do with institutional and legal barriers, such as higher tuition fees for non-EU students.

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Better collaboration with institutes in the South is also important. At the African Studies Centre and within Leiden University in general, this is certainly considered a priority. However, here, too, the institutional tendency to rather work with large and ‘successful’ institutes in the global South, in countries that are considered ‘core countries’, such as South Africa, Nigeria and China, plays a corrupting role, as it hinders collaboration with colleagues working in smaller universities and in other countries. The South evidently is not a homogeneous entity, but hierarchically structured in many ways. More generally, we have the experience that collaborating with colleagues in African universities is very rewarding, but also frequently difficult as they are often obliged to take on short-term consultancies in order to complement their salaries. This leaves little room for their own (academic) work. On the other hand, we could also ask ourselves whether our priorities, both in terms of research topics and types of work (partly shaped by our professional contexts) sufficiently fit with their priorities (partly shaped by the contexts in which they work). So the challenges related to the institutional environment both in the North and the South are numerous. On the one hand, we in the North are considered by many to be in the centre of global academia, but on the other hand we are often far away from those voices and perspectives that we deem important to hear to get a better and sometimes different understanding of SSDC intentions, dynamics and results. What we in and from our Northern institutions can do is to contribute a partial perspective and facilitate a platform where others can also have their voices heard and develop their research. We should keep in mind here that facilitating is a humble job that does not go well with personal and institutional quests for power and hegemony. In this respect, we would also like to mention that the quest for this kind of more collaborative and egalitarian knowledge production ideally would not remain restricted to academia, but would offer room to other perspectives outside academia, as well3 (Ocadiz 2017; Kaag 2018). The foregoing has evidently raised the question of how to judge the quality of (academic) knowledge, and this a difficult one to answer. We do not plead for just doing away with quality judgements; we think however that it would not be wise either to just stick to received ways of academic quality evaluation such as publications in A-rated journals, but also should critically scrutinize these and consider for instance the current inclusiveness and representativeness of journal boards and management (Mendonça et al. 2018). Explicitly addressing questions of quality and inclusiveness is challenging and may not lead to consensus, but a joint and respectful discussion will in any case lead to new insights and is as such more promising of yielding results than just evading difficult and loaded issues concerning SSDC knowledge production. By way of a conclusion, we have tried to argue and illustrate that, instead of de/ legitimizing certain positionalities for being un/able to speak about certain phenomena – including the consequences for the valorization of this knowledge – the best way forward is to bring different partial perspectives and knowledge together in order to dialogue and complement one another for a better and more complete

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comprehension, like a kaleidoscope in which different shapes and colours produce a fascinating picture. The metaphor of the kaleidoscope further highlights how the everlasting diversity/plurality of perspectives enriches, instead of limits, academia. Finally, it nicely illustrates how continuous dialogue among different perspectives does not necessarily lead to fixed agreements and answers set in stone, but that instead, friction may be seen as an opportunity to move forward – with the promise to find new and refreshing perspectives. For such a kaleidoscopic perspective to evolve, however, specific attitudes and skills from researchers are required:    



A modest and humble attitude, acknowledging that everyone can only contribute a partial perspective, partial knowledge, and that no one has the monopoly; A critical attitude towards one’s own positionality (the ability to reflect on one’s own positionality and its opportunities, challenges and limitations); Openness to others, meaning a genuine interest in, and the eagerness to learn from, other people, while also being prepared to share one’s own convictions, doubts, questions and experiences for debate; Team spirit: this implies recognizing academia as a platform built through communal/group effort rather than considering it as an individualistic exercise, and a willingness to share academic spaces and endorse the capacities and potential of fellow scholars; And finally, a conceptualization of knowledge that recognizes that it is not something that can be owned by one group/category but something that is to be built together.

We are looking forward to receiving reactions to this chapter, which will add colours, shapes and perspectives.

Notes 1 In the scholarly realm, the division between Northern and Southern perceptions of SSDC seems to be less clear-cut, with Southern scholars like Naím (2007) being critical, and Northern scholars like Nederveen Pieterse (2012) being more positive about SSDC. It appears, however, that even in the academic debate, one’s particular stance on SSDC tends to take on a political meaning. 2 This is not to say that Macron should not have made his joke, but rather that for judging it, both the perspectives of the joker and of the (diverse) recipients are relevant, and that a one-sided analysis means missing important elements needed to complete the picture. 3 Thus, artistic expressions such as literature and music may not only be a source of great inspiration throughout a research process, they also provide an enriching voice to academic arguments. For instance, poetry from Mozambique and Cuba has allowed a reflective understanding of the historical processes in both locations, and beyond describing facts, its emotive nature has encouraged reflective thoughts on the personal processes of those individuals involved in specific social phenomena, such as medical cooperation in the Global South. In addition, authors like the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano have provided both academic and more poetic texts, blurring the division

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between both genres. His work argues for the careful analysis of societal phenomena while enhancing the voices of disadvantaged groups through a sensitive language that enhances critical thinking regarding social justice.

References Abdenur, A. E. and Marques Da Fonseca, J. M. E. (2013) The North’s growing role in South–South cooperation: Keeping the foothold. Third World Quarterly, 34(8), 1475–1491. Alingué, L. and Andebeng, M. (2005) Resistencia y movimientos africanos transatlánticos. OASIS, 10. Amoah, L. (2011) Public policy formation in Africa in the wake of the global financial meltdown: Building blocks for a New Mind in a multipolar world. In Dietz, T., Havnevik, K., Kaag, M. and Ostegaard, T. eds., African Engagements: On Whose Terms? Africa Negotiating an Emerging Multipolar World. Leiden: Brill, pp. 327–347. Borón, A. A. and Lechini, G. (2006) Política y movimientos sociales en un mundo hegemónico: Lecciones desde África, Asia y America Latina. Buenos Aires: Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales. Carou, H. C. and Bringel, B. (2010) Articulaciones del Sur Global: Afinidad cultural, internacionalismo solidario e Iberoamérica en la globalización contrahegemónica. Geopolítica (s). Revista de estudios sobre espacio y poder, 1(1), 41–63. Dirlik, A. (2007) Global South: Predicament and promise. The Global South, 1(1), 12–23. Doty, R. L. (1996) Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Representation in North-South Relations, volume 5. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Escobar, A. (1998) La invención del Tercer Mundo: construcción y deconstrucción del desarrollo. Bogotá, Colombia: Editorial Norma. Foucault, M. (1980) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. Paris: Pantheon. Kaag, M. (2012) Comparing connectivities: Transnational Islamic NGOs in Chad and Senegal. In De Bruijn, M. and Van Dijk, R. eds., The Social Life of Connectivity in Africa. New York: Macmillan, pp. 183–201. Kaag, M. (2016) Islamic charities from the Arab world in Africa: Intercultural encounters of humanitarianism and morality. In Heins, V. M., Koddenbrock, K. and Unrau, C. eds., Humanitarianism and Challenges of Cooperation. London: Routledge, pp. 155–167. Kaag, M. (2017) The role of Islam in forging linkages between Africa and Asia from the 1970s: The case of Islamic relief and development support. In Amakasu Raposo de Medeiros Carvalho, P. M., Arase, D. and Cornelissen, S. eds., Routledge Handbook of Africa-Asia Relations. London: Routledge, pp. 249–258. Kaag, M. (2018) Linking-in through education? Exploring the educational question in Africa from the perspective of flows and (dis) connections. Sustainability, 10(2). doi:10.3390/ su10020496. Long, N. and Long, A. eds. (1992). Battlefields of Knowledge: The Interlocking of Theory and Practice in Social Research and Development. London and New York: Routledge. Mendonça, S., Pereira, J. and Ferreira, M. E. (2018) Gatekeeping African studies: What does “editormetrics” indicate about journal governance? Scientometrics, 1–22. doi:10.1007/ s11192-018-2909-1. Meneses, M. P. and Santos, de Sousa B. (2009) Epistemologias do sul. Coimbra: Almedina. Mudimbe, V. Y. (1988) The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Naím, M. (2007) Rogue aid. Foreign Policy, 159, 95–96.

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Nederveen Pieterse, J. (2012) Twenty-first century globalization: A new development era. Forum for Development Studies, 39, 337–354. Ocadiz, M. (2017) Emotion of Saudade: The Embodiment of Solidarity in the Cuban Medical Cooperation in Mozambique. Unpublished Master’s thesis, Leiden University. Sarr, F. (2016) Afrotopia. Paris: Éditions Philippe Rey. Tsing, A. (2005) Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wa-Thiongo, N. (1993) Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms. London: James Currey. Zamparoni, V. D. (2012) De escravo a cozinheiro: colonialismo & racismo em Moçambique. Salvador, Bahia, Brazil: Edufba.

VIGNETTE: THE POLITICS OF KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION AND POST/DE/ANTI-COLONIAL POSITIONALITY Han Cheng

In this contribution, I ask what the critical reflexivity of researcher positionality means in epistemic, structural and practical terms. I seek to problematize the challenges of post/de-colonial research in the context of China’s South–South Development Cooperation (SSDC), and discuss anti-coloniality as a potential frame to reconceptualize researcher positionality. To bring this concept into perspective, my research project is focused on a group of Chinese academics, exploring how they are increasingly producing Chinese international development knowledges. My specific interest is to examine the intertwining politics of ideological, personal, institutional, cultural and geopolitical considerations in China’s growing knowledge production in international development. The focus on knowledge politics as a research topic makes my project particularly attuned to the politics of my own positionality as a knowledge producer, just like the Chinese development scholars who I aim to study. Among many aspects of the politics of knowledge production, the aim of this short discussion is to explore the post/de-colonial dimensions of researcher positionality. There is a rich body of literature on postcolonial critiques as well as growing counter-critiques from decolonial scholarship. These debates provide various terms of reference for thinking about positionality (although developed largely in a North–South axis), and I will draw on my fieldwork experience to build dialogue with the case of SSDC. Postcolonialism is an epistemology that unpicks various colonial legacies in knowledge production after the formal end of colonial rule (Collard et al. 2015). Of particular interest for the discussion here, Said (1978) and others challenge persisting Eurocentric constructs and power relations of binary self–other representations of non-Western people and societies as ‘lesser’, to say the least (Blunt and McEwan 2003). These imagined, reductive representations are based on cultural, national, ethnic, gender and other identity differences, to justify Western

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superiority over non-Western worlds for geopolitical and economic interests. Chakrabarty (2000) unpicks how Western claims to original, universal truths become embedded in non-Western knowledge frameworks, constructing nonWestern actors as latecomers and unfinished imitations. Building on these postcolonial critiques, some critical development scholars, such as Escobar (1995), argue that similar Eurocentric constructs of the self (‘developed’) versus the other (‘developing’) can be found in Western-led ‘knowledge’ on international development. Building on but also critiquing such postcolonial scholarship, some decolonial scholars have recently proposed to switch the focus of analysis away from an enduring Western influence, and to thereby “delink from… the colonial matrix of power” (Mignolo 2011, xxvii). In doing so, they go beyond postcolonial scholarship, and do not set up the West as the reference point against which the rest of the world is measured. Instead, decolonialism “encourages re-thinking the world from Latin America, from Africa, from Indigenous places and from the marginalized academia in the global South, and so on” (Radcliffe 2017, 329, original emphasis). It sees Southern ‘particulars’ in their own right (not solely in relation to the West), and as constitutive of the universal, together with diverse Western knowledges. Thereby, decolonialism reorients analysis from centre–periphery paradigms towards the “universal rich with all that is particular… the deepening and coexistence of all particulars” (Césaire, in Grosfoguel 2012, 95). In the case of decolonizing knowledge production, Comaroff and Comaroff (2012), for instance, make an important attempt to relocate and invert sources of ‘world theorizing’ from Southern ‘particulars’. The authors position the South not on the receiving end of pre-defined models, but as sources of frontier knowledges that prefigure Euro-American futures, on issues from labour, capital, to citizenship and law. Yet this does not suggest an either/or approach to knowledge production – either Western or Southern. Rather, in this vein, to decolonize knowledge production means to “place diverse knowledges on a horizontal relation, bringing knowledges from different settings into juxtaposition with each other” (Radcliffe 2017, 330). Drawing on these critical reflections, I have sought to orient my research on China’s production of SSDC knowledges towards a decolonial account from China and of the Chinese ‘particulars’. While still referring to the analytical contributions by postcolonialism, the purpose of a decolonial positionality is to not reproduce the unequal power relations between the researcher and the researched in postcolonial knowledge production. Putting this concept into practice has brought forward further reflections with regard to what decolonial research means in specific settings. These reflections are drawn from three months of preliminary fieldwork in Beijing in 2018, involving engagement with around 30 Chinese academics in international development and the wider Chinese development community. The reflections, which I discuss below, fall into three categories: epistemic, structural and practical. The first point concerns the epistemic clash in terms of the constructed nature of development knowledges. This point becomes particularly salient when certain

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Chinese development experts suggest that Chinese international development knowledges are not a product of hierarchical, imagined or technocratic constructs (e.g. Li 2016). This view is not a minority in the Chinese landscape of development knowledges. Essentially, the argument is that Chinese development knowledges are directly transferred to Southern partners through horizontal sharing, without the ‘traditional Western’ knowledge constructs of self–other and global– local. Surely one may unpick this claim and question on what grounds the argument is made. Nevertheless, the argument points to potentially very distinct epistemological assumptions that not all development knowledges are constructed. In that case, decolonial reflexivity means to reconsider post-structuralist ideas (prevalent particularly in the West) that ‘knowledges are constructed’ (broadly defined). The argument above envisions alternative ‘world theorizing’ of the nature of knowledge, and from what I can see, the proposal is not uncritical but instead built upon reflective engagement with critical scholarship. An important question that this example prompts is what ‘Western’ theories remain relevant when scholars decolonize the ‘universal’ and see ‘particulars’ in their own right. In this sense, decolonialism creates a radical site of opportunities to move beyond binary theorizing and yet challenges as to how plural epistemologies can be reconciled. The second point concerns the continuity of postcolonial-like macro structures and yet the micro counter-nuances of researcher positionality in knowledge production. On the one hand, my project is not exempt from unequal knowledge– power structures. The very fact that I, a graduate student at the University of Cambridge, would have the required resources to study senior Chinese experts is itself important. Whatever the reasons for my position, one cannot easily dismiss the institutional advantages such as Cambridge’s prestige, comprehensive supervision and training, funding and so forth. I have not come across a case where a Chinese university student comes to critically examine the knowledge politics in Cambridge (many do come but in a tutelary position). These are powerful macrostructural effects that cannot be denied. On the other hand, there are micro, everyday factors that unsettle the somewhat uni-linear knowledge–power relations. The researcher’s agency matters. For instance, research ethics constitutes a counter force. Wherever possible, I aspire to uphold the highest research integrity to safeguard my informants’ interests, rather than to submit the engagement to some predetermined research agenda. Meanwhile, the researched, both macro and micro, are far from victims of taken-for-granted objectification. On the contrary, China’s macro contexts and micro social dynamics actively shape researchers and their knowledge production. With the recent US–China trade war and wider shifts in global regimes, China is beginning to intensely re-evaluate the mode of interaction with the West and its associates (including researchers like me). The trend of hesitation casts doubt on my identity, access and visibility. I am also socially embroiled. Through connecting closely with the small group of Chinese development intellectuals, I am admitted into the intimate knowledge-producing web in Beijing. My positionality is in flux. The deeper I move to the inner circles, the more I become assessed against Chinese orders of age, gender, home of origin,

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alma mater and eventually inside/outside-ness. My research processes are then marked by whom I am seen with, where I sit, my considered comments on central figures in the circle, my ability (or lack thereof) to cross institutional borders, and so on. To paraphrase Foucault (1976), while observing the macro research landscape and its individual participants, I am being looked at and the multiscale gaze shapes what I can see. The contextual particulars contest the seemingly one-way domination of Western institutions and researchers, and challenge the meta-narratives of binary knowledge–power inequality. Thirdly stands the question of what decolonial research means in practice, especially in the case of ‘studying up’. Much decolonial scholarship in recent years comes out of indigenous and participatory research. A key concept in decolonialism is the idea of ‘co-production’ of knowledge, recognizing and emphasizing the agency of the researched. This concept can be problematic in terms of its assumption that the researcher may be an authoritative subject with the capacity to manage or even initiate different power relations. This issue becomes particularly salient in my case of studying Chinese intellectuals. My informants can be broadly categorized as development experts, ranging from university professors to cabinet advisors. They have considerable intellectual calibre and most possess important social capital, and many indeed are educated in prestigious Western institutions. Not to mention the overall Chinese hierarchical environment, where the idea of ‘co-production’ of knowledge with informants is not automatically clear in this case. Often my interview requests are the lowest of these informants’ priorities. I might sit around a university campus for an entire day just to take advantage of a senior professor’s five-minute smoke break (and that is assuming that he – mostly – would not mind the company). Certainly there are institutional advantages that Cambridge brings. However, when it comes down to everyday personal engagement, my informants well understand that my thesis is dependent on their mood. Indeed, rather than me facilitating our relations, I often found myself clearly in the lower end of power structures. Therefore, the question of what decolonial research might look like in the case of ‘studying up’ may open useful discussions regarding the reflection of positionality and knowledge politics. The decolonial move in recent years has largely centred around the ‘decolonizing curricula’ movement; ‘decolonizing research’ receives less attention – hence the aim of this vignette. While intellectually fascinating, applying decolonialism to knowledge production is not always straightforward in practice. Indeed, there is no singular definition of decolonialism, and the very intention to work out a monolithic meaning can risk being colonial and modernist. In this context, I propose framing my research as anti-colonial (Dei and Asgharzadeh 2001; Lincoln and Cannella 2009). This term emphasizes the incomplete processes of overcoming knowledge inequality, whereas decolonialism sometimes can suggest a finished reorientation. Anti-colonial research is also useful in terms of its recognition of the uncomfortableness in contested researcher positionality and sees the unsettledness as a productive source of knowledges (e.g. Tuck and Yang 2014). Anti-colonial research calls for “an on-going process of becoming, unlearning, and relearning

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regarding who we are as a researcher and educator” (Datta 2017, 3). In this vein, the way to critically reflect the issue of positionality is to acknowledge and emphasize the partial, incomplete ways of knowing, against overarching, hegemonic narratives.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Emma Mawdsley for inspiring preliminary discussions and Elsje Fourie for generous comments on early drafts. I am grateful for the discussion with Sarah Radcliffe, Sibylla Warrington and others at the Decolonial Research Lab session on 27 April 2018 at the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge.

References Blunt A. and McEwan C. eds. (2003) Postcolonial Geographies. London: Continuum. Chakrabarty, D. (2000) Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Collard, R-C., Dempsey, J. and Sundberg, J. (2015) A manifesto for abundant futures. Annals of the AAG, 105, 322–330. Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J. L. (2012) Theory from the South: Or, How Euro-America Is Evolving Toward Africa. London and New York: Routledge. Datta, R. (2017) Decolonizing both researcher and research and its effectiveness in Indigenous research. Research Ethics, 14(2), 1–24. doi:10.1177%2F1747016117733296. Dei, G. J. S. and Asgharzadeh, A. (2001) The power of social theory: The anti-colonial discursive framework. The Journal of Educational Thought (JET)/Revue De La Pensée Éducative, 35(3), 297–323. Escobar, A. (1995) Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Foucault, M. (1976) The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. London: Tavistock Publications. Grosfoguel, R. (2012) Decolonizing Western uni-versalisms: Decolonial pluri-versalism from Aimé Césaire to the zapatistas. Transmodernity, 1, 88–104. Li, X. (2016) Global pattern changes and the rise of new development knowledge. Frontiers, 8, 91–94. Lincoln, Y. S. and Cannella, G. S. (2009) Ethics and the broader rethinking/reconceptualization of research as construct. Cultural Studies? Critical Methodologies, 9(2), 273–285. Mignolo, W. D. (2011) The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Radcliffe, S. A. (2017) Decolonising geographical knowledges. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 42, 329–333. Said, E. (1978) Orientalism. New York: Vintage. Tuck, E. and Yang, K. W. (2014) R-words: Refusing research. In Paris, D. and Winn, M. T. eds., Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry with Youth and Communities. New York: Sage Publications, pp. 223–248.

VIGNETTE: DIFFERENCE WITHIN SIMILARITY How South–South Cooperation research should no longer label ‘difference’ as an obstacle to partnerships Natalia Herbst

In this vignette I discuss one general and one specific issue regarding SSC methods and concepts, in order to show how these shape and frequently limit research in this field. The more general issue arose from the tensions that emerged when – as an aspiring researcher – I tried formulating good research questions and sound methodologies, aiming to combine my training in international relations and development studies. A more specific issue, and a clear example of an epistemological limitation, is related to the use of SSC concepts, particularly the idea of ‘similarity’ between ‘Southern’ partners and how this relates to the practice and analysis of cooperation. While this concept is frequently central to actors arguing for the appropriateness of South–South partnerships over other cooperation alternatives (usually North–South), it has not been extensively analysed in scholarship.1 Yet, its colloquial use has been extended in the field – as well as in political discourses referring to such cooperation partnerships (Herbst 2016, 9, 16) – to refer to shared pasts and presents including colonial and postcolonial experiences, current challenges, developmental stages, roles in the world system leading to, for example, shared identities, institutional designs and geographic characteristics (Ayllon and Surasky 2010; Mawdsley 2012; de Renzio and Seifert 2014; Esteves and Assunção 2014; Shankland and Gonçalves 2016). This may position ‘emerging’ countries, which have been able to resolve particular challenges, to provide technologies and assistance to others in the global South based on their successful development experience in a ‘similar’ trajectory. However, research focused on health cooperation can help exemplify the limitations of this logic, related to the challenges that arise, connected to the idea of similarities. Although countries may share ideas concerning their position in the world system, ideologies and political will by the state to provide universal health, based on a human rights agenda, practical problems and differences between health systems, and the determinants and burdens of disease will often outweigh

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ideological synergies (Herbst 2016, 24). The unpacking of the idea of ‘similarity’ can help problematize ‘horizontality’ on different levels (state, society) and within the state. This may open spaces to include local divergent interests in SSC research and may potentially aid its design and implementation. While this vignette proposes more questions than answers, it aims to open a discussion about issues that make scholars nod at conferences, but which are regularly ignored in SSC literature. My personal experience as a researcher elaborates how I reached and responded to the disciplinary tensions I am referring to. I finished my BA in International Relations at Torcuato Di Tella University in Argentina in 2010, after which I worked as a research assistant until 2015 when I moved to the United Kingdom to pursue my graduate studies at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. SSC research in the Latin American context, with an emphasis on both the role of Brazil and the Haitian case, was an amazing experience. Our work was based on international relations literature and frameworks. This meant that even if we were using terms such as ‘development cooperation’ or ‘human development’, we were thinking in statist terms. Even when using constructivist approaches it is valid and good scholarship to focus on the system: we considered countries, governments, international organizations, international norms, and national and global statistics. Thus, we would look at how SSC principles including horizontality, similarity, demand-driven, solidarity, ownership, mutual benefits, sovereignty and non-conditionality operated in the international system and the consequences for power relations – mostly between states – and the world order. In this regard, similarities (usually in terms of shared challenges, political ideology and/or development trajectories) were recurrently the starting point explaining why a particular partnership would lead to appropriate solutions to particular issues. The first time I reflected on something not completely adding up was when I had the opportunity to go to India and attend a forced migration course for which I conducted desk-based research about the opportunities for inter-regional cooperation on statelessness, focusing on the lack of provision of birth certificates, particularly regarding existing legal mechanisms in Latin America. While I was looking at ways in which countries or regional blocs could cooperate, it became impossible to ignore individual human experiences and their collective needs in the analysis. This confronted me with my lack of tools, skills and concepts to analyse this dimension and frame these issues. As a result, I decided to pursue a degree in development studies, considering it as the discipline that would best complement my training in international relations. It gave me the opportunity to address more comprehensively the issues that I find more interesting, including adding ‘human actors’ into the equation. I expected development studies to enable me to discern solutions and to equip me with new methodological approaches and concepts to achieve a more comprehensive analysis. However, while yielding many positive experiences, it also brought up more contradictions. What I find more often than not is that much of the theoretical literature that provides the frameworks for SSC research (both in international relations and development studies), including its concepts and principles, are very much based on

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international relations theory (Dai et al. 2017). This makes it useful to think about cooperation as a component of the international system and as one of the forms in which actors relate. This also means that in research that positions itself within SSC literature, actual people tend to get lost on the way because it is hard to make them fit in statist analyses. How does non-conditionality benefit people? What is the impact of sovereignty, or horizontality? Which voices determine the demand in demand-driven SSC? Whose vision and experience defines ownership? Such concerns need to be addressed in designing research that links issues at the state level to the different perceptions, identities, interests and experiences of human actors and the way in which development cooperation impacts their lives (Gille and Riain 2002; O’Neill et al. 2004; Scholte and Söderbaum 2017). This is a key disciplinary tension and its problematization should avoid zero-sum approaches. The proposition being made is to expand the scope of analysis so that current statist-centric analyses can be enriched by considering the lived experiences of people and their interests in relation to development cooperation, irrespective of whether the researcher identifies her work with international relations or development studies. Because SSC is mostly based on state-related partnerships, we need to look at what states do and how they operate in the international system. But, at the same time, we need to acknowledge that this is South–South Development Cooperation (SSDC) in which we need to address the kind of development we are concerned with (Haddad et al. 2011; Leach, n.d.; Sumner and Tribe 2008). In my view, there are conceptual and methodological limitations when trying to look beyond horizontality, mutual respect and unconditionality when considering the geopolitical interests of partner countries. This is particularly the case when attempting to pair such considerations with the way in which their cooperation affects the populations whose development challenges the interventions claim to address. Despite the fact that there are scholars (Mawdsley 2014; Peters et al. 2009; Scoones et al. 2013; Shankland and Gonçalves 2016) who work on these types of questions and engage with the complexity of SSC practices and how these may affect the recipient’s divergent domestic interests, and how adaptive learning processes regarding mutual learning unfold, there continues to be a strongly statistdominated discussion, without sufficient acknowledgement of complex and sometimes negative development outcomes. Therefore, more research needs to be undertaken regarding how the state-level and individual human experiences are related in SSDC. Exploring these aspects could provide better understandings about whether SSC has been able to meet the expectations of being more appropriate than North–South aid and – even if it hasn’t – produce valuable information about aspects that have been overlooked in order to refine its practice. While Southern cooperation providers are more explicitly ideological than Northern ones (e.g. strategically framed as better than North–South partnerships), their flexibility and capacity for adaptation may also position them better to learn than Northern providers who claim to be less ideological but nevertheless continue to base their practice on top–down conditionality-based modalities (Abdenur and Da Fonseca 2013; Hirst and Antonini 2009; Mawdsley 2012).

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One of many possible paths to start unpicking these tensions could be to combine institutional ethnography that can enhance our understanding of the way states develop SSC programmes with ethnographic work with citizens whose needs SSC is expected to address. This may reveal whether the priorities of citizens compare to what was prioritized by their governments. The key point being that we need to learn to design research that more often than not is sensitive to overlapping state interests while also examining how these are intersected by the interests and experiences of different segments of society. This would imply not only dealing with divergent interests within state institutions and among multiple state actors, but also having an eye for the diverging interests in civil society. When thinking about how to improve SSC concepts to make them more relevant and useful, a more specific question relates to how the idea of ‘similarities’ between SSC partners impacts the practice and analysis of cooperation. In my research, which focused on health cooperation (Herbst 2016), the expectations built around the idea of similarities in SSC proved to be a key issue. There is an established idea that because of ‘similar’ or ‘shared’ challenges and development trajectories, Southern partners are better suited to help each other overcome their development problems. The assumption of ‘similarities’ between partners as a pillar of SSC is central to discussing the appropriateness of SSC in practice. There is limited scholarship which has unpacked this concept, especially in cases where it tends to be challenged when differences are identified between partners, contradicting the expectations of similarity, understood as being identical. An alternative use of ‘similarity’ could focus on both resemblances and differences without a necessary negative characterization of the latter. Thus, by not considering differences an obstacle per se, it is possible to reflect upon the role of both the ‘resemblances’ and ‘differences’ for a particular policy. This would involve aiming to understand how each component of ‘similarity’ may be relevant for SSC in specific areas. For health cooperation particularly, macro-political resemblances concerning the partners’ situation in the world system may be relevant to establish the cooperation partnership and agree upon the philosophy underpinning it. However, in regard to its implementation and expected development impacts, differences between health systems and the determinants and burdens of disease will outweigh ideological synergies. Cuban medical cooperation with South Africa illustrates this in its effort to train thousands of South African doctors in Cuban medical schools to address shortages of medical professionals. One major challenge encountered revolved around the fact that these doctors failed to be trained in illnesses still prevalent in South Africa but which had been eradicated in Cuba. As a result, coming back to their country they were ill-equipped to treat patients for particular diseases and procedures (including C-sections and knife and gunshot wounds) (Hammett 2007; Blunden 2008; Bateman 2013). After a while, these challenges were addressed by designing complementary modules specific to South African students (Gomez et al. 2012). This case not only sheds light on adaptability and mutual learning, but also on the experience in which considering differences within similarity from the starting point would have made this example of SSDC

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more effective. Thus, unpacking how ‘difference within similarity’ affects policies in concrete working areas – like health, education, culture, institution building, etc. – becomes vital to defining whether the partnership should prioritize similarity or difference while avoiding an intrinsic understanding of difference as a potential source of conflict for partnerships. These reflections shed light on the disembeddedness of SSC principles from political and institutional contexts, as highlighted by Abdenur and Marcondes (2016), including the local actors and processes that shape the institutions involved and their contexts. When SSC is limited to government-to-government relations and the role of social entities like NGOs, social movements, professional associations and citizens is disregarded, this may lead to resistance from particular segments of societal actors in the recipient society. Failing to include divergent local actor interests into the design and implementation of SSC, for example, led to organized resistance to Cuban medical cooperation in both Venezuela and South Africa, adding unexpected costs to decades-long cooperation efforts (Herbst 2016; Shankland and Gonçalves 2016). As the theory has too little to offer on the integration of the voices of the actors responsible for the adaptability of cooperation processes into epistemic work, policy planning or implementation, or about how to deal with people and organizations affected differently by SSC, this reveals a serious gap between current SSC principles and how these could inform the practice of sustainable and adaptable policies. Yet, in my view, the unpacking of the idea of ‘similarities’ can help problematize ‘horizontality’ at different levels (state, society) and within them (political collectivities versus elites; bureaucrats versus politicians; indigenous communities versus landowners; or even the opposing claims of particular groups, including feminist and gender-fluid collectivities versus ‘traditional and conservative’ collectivities). The idea is to challenge ourselves as researchers and practitioners and to think of new approaches that help us to understand and work with ‘differences within similarities’. Instead of labelling differences automatically as obstacles to successful partnerships, we should learn to acknowledge them and explore how they potentially contribute to the formation of ‘productive’ spaces, enabled by certain similarities. Acknowledging the differences between partners engaging in SSDC and adapting accordingly will potentially lead to more appropriate interventions. Thus, a ‘difference within similarity’ approach may yield more flexible and sustainable interventions that include adaptive learning and may allow partners to engage in a more appropriate and sustainable manner. Such mutual adaptability may be key to successfully planning and implementing SSC models that integrate outcomes and practices into broader policy decisions mindful of the diversity of interests of local actors.

Note 1 Examples of work assessing similarities include Hirst (2011); Ayllón Pino (2012); Gomez et al. (2012); Scoones et al. (2013); Amanor and Chichava (2016); Shankland and Gonçalves (2016).

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References Abdenur, A. E., Da Fonseca, J. M. E. M. (2013) The North’s growing role in South–South cooperation: Keeping the foothold. Third World Quarterly, 34, 1475–1491. Abdenur, A. E. and Marcondes, D. (2016) Democratization by association? Brazil’s social policy cooperation in Africa. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 29(4), 1–19. Amanor, K. S. and Chichava, S. (2016) South–South Cooperation, agribusiness, and African agricultural development: Brazil and China in Ghana and Mozambique. World Development, 81, 13–23. Ayllon, B. and Surasky, J. eds. (2010) La cooperación Sur-Sur en Latinoamerica: Utopía y realidad. Madrid: La Catarata. Ayllón Pino, B. (2012) Brazil’s contributions to international development: Emerging coalitions and South-South cooperation. Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionals, 97–98, 189–204. Bateman, C. (2013) Doctor shortages: Unpacking the “Cuban solution”. South African Medical Journal, 103, 603–605. Blunden, M. (2008) South-south development cooperation: Cuba’s health programmes in Africa. International Journal of Cuban Studies, 1, 32–41. Dai, X., Snidal, D. and Sampson, M. (2017) International cooperation theory and international institutions. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies Available online at: http:// oxfordre.com/internationalstudies/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.001.0001/acr efore-9780190846626-e-93. de Renzio, P. and Seifert, J. (2014) South–South cooperation and the future of development assistance: Mapping actors and options. Third World Quarterly, 35, 1860–1875. Esteves, P. and Assunção, M. (2014) South–South cooperation and the international development battlefield: Between the OECD and the UN. Third World Quarterly, 35, 1775–1790. Gille, Z. and Riain, S. Ó. (2002) Global ethnography. Annual Review of Sociology, 28, 271–295. Gomez, F., Munoz, N., Luna, O. C. and Blanco, Y. (2012) Assessment of a complementary curricular strategy for training South African physicians in a Cuban medical university. MEDICC Review, 14, 19–25. Haddad, L., Hossain, N., McGregor, J. A. and Mehta, L. (2011) Time to reimagine development? IDS Bulletin. 1–12. Brighton. Hammett, D. (2007) Cuban intervention in South African health care service provision. Journal of Southern African Studies, 33, 63–81. Herbst, N. (2016) Whose Knowledge Counts for Global Health Development? Lessons Learned from Cuban Medical Cooperation in Venezuela and South Africa. Unpublished Master’s thesis. Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton. Hirst, M. (2011) Las políticas de Estados Unidos, Europa y América Latina en Haití: ¿Convergencias, superposiciones u opciones diferenciadas? Pensamiento Iberoamericano, 8, 223–242. Hirst, M. and Antonini, B. (2009) Past and present of North-South cooperation for development. Working Papers on South-South Cooperation. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Worship, Republic of Argentina. Leach, M., n.d. Reframing Development in a Dynamic Global Era. Development Frames. Brighton: Institute of Development Studies. Mawdsley, E. (2012) From Recipients to Donors: Emerging Powers and the Changing Development Landscape. London and New York: Zed. Mawdsley, E. (2014) Human rights and South-South development cooperation: Reflections on the “rising powers” as international development actors”. Human Rights Quarterly, 36, 630–652.

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O’Neill, K., Balsiger, J. and VanDeveer, S. D. (2004) Actors, norms, and impact: Recent international cooperation theory and the influence of the agent-structure debate. Annual Review of Political Science, 7, 149–175. Peters, D. H., El-Saharty, S., Sidat, B., Janovsky, K. and Vujicic, M. (2009) Improving Health Service Delivery in Developing Countries: From Evidence to Action. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Scholte, J. A. and Söderbaum, F. eds. (2017) A changing global development agenda? Forum for Development Studies, 44(1), doi:1–12. Scoones, I., Cabral, L. and Tugendhat, H. (2013) New development encounters: China and Brazil in African agriculture. IDS Bulletin, 44, 1–19. Shankland, A. and Gonçalves, E. (2016) Imagining agricultural development in South–South cooperation: The contestation and transformation of ProSAVANA. World Development, China and Brazil in African Agriculture, 81, 35–46. Sumner, A. and Tribe, M. (2008) International Development Studies, Theories and Methods in Research and Practice. London: Sage Publications.

VIGNETTE: THE AFRICA–CHINA REPORTING PROJECT IN JOHANNESBURG AS SOUTH–SOUTH JOURNALISM NEXUS Barry van Wyk

The Africa-China Reporting Project (hereafter the Project) was established at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg in 2009 to provide support for African and Chinese journalists reporting on China’s growing presence in and relations with Africa, and the impact on Africa’s peoples. The establishment of the Project was inspired in part by the fact that reporting on China in Africa was often polarizing and devoid of nuance, portraying China as either a win–win benefactor or colonial invader. The Project provides reporting grants for African and Chinese journalists1 to undertake investigations, and organizes workshops and other opportunities to provide journalists with direct experiences, exchanges and skills development. By the end of 2018, the Project had disbursed about 250 reporting grants that resulted in media impact in English, Chinese, French and Arabic-language newspapers, websites and radio stations; organized training workshops in South Africa, mainland China, Hong Kong, Ethiopia and Côte d’Ivoire; and branched out to engage Francophone Africa with training and reporting in French. In 2016 the Project underwent a small but very significant change of emphasis that involved the adoption of its present name (hitherto, it had been known as the China-Africa Reporting Project). The adoption of ‘Africa-China’, far from being a superficial alteration, was emblematic of the Project’s embrace of an overtly African identity, location and orientation. The overall purpose of the Project’s various activities was now formulated as “to investigate complex dynamics and uncover untold stories with an emphasis on on-the-ground impact and perspectives to illustrate how the lives of the people of Africa are changing amid the comprehensive phenomenon of Africa–China interactions”. If it was not so before, the Project was now identified as an African institution supporting Africa–China journalism that puts the interests of Africa and its peoples first. Indicative of this rebranding is the difference between the Project’s new logo and the one hitherto used. The previous logo contained the five stars found on the

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flag of the People’s Republic of China (with the largest star symbolizing the Communist Party of China and the four smaller stars symbolizing social classes) superimposed over a map of the continent of Africa. By contrast, the new logo features the Chinese character 人 (rén), meaning people, person or humanity; the patterning on the rén character is based on the Owo Foro Adobe, an Andinkra symbol from West Africa showing a snake climbing a raffia (palm) tree native to West Africa and Madagascar. Adinkra visual symbols, originally created by the Ashanti people of West Africa in the early 19th century, symbolize concepts or aphorisms but also have a decorative function and encapsulate messages that convey traditional wisdom, aspects of life or the environment. The Owo Foro Adobe signifies steadfastness, prudence, diligence and valour, as it is difficult for the snake to climb the tree and it has to be persistent to succeed.

Telling Africa’s stories The focus of the Project’s work is to provide capacity-building and facilitation for journalists; it is still the responsibility of the journalists to find and pursue investigations at ground level, and while the Project will aim to provide as much support and guidance as possible, the ultimate responsibility for their output rests with the journalists. The Project does, however, at all times encourage the journalists to endeavour to tell both sides of the story, to always seek a Chinese perspective in addition to an African one, and to strive to be fair, balanced and nuanced. Thus eschewing broad political narratives and keeping the focus grounded on the welfare of Africa’s peoples, the journalists the Project worked with over the years have unearthed stories that brought new and nuanced understanding to complex and diverse Africa–China interactions. These journalists for example have reported on the (sometimes life-saving) health facilities that China has built in West Africa, providing medical care to rural people that previously had to travel much further to access health care; or the instrumental role China played in fighting the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone in 2014; or the amazing stories of Chinese doctors and health care personnel doing tours of service in rural areas all over the continent, from Maseru to Luanda to Tunis. These journalists have uncovered how

FIGURE 4.1

The old Africa-China Reporting Project logo (left) and new one adopted in November 2016

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Chinese interests are fuelling the poaching and trafficking of wild animals via elaborate smuggling networks from Africa to Asia for use in traditional Chinese medicine, but also how China’s closure of its domestic ivory market in 2015 contributed to a rise in Africa’s elephant population. Chinese fishing boats’ intrusion into Africa coastal waters has been criticized in Western media, but a journalist the Project worked with in Cameroon illustrated how the issue is much more complex than this, with corrupt authorities in Africa colluding with and facilitating the illegal fishing by Chinese vessels. Africa is a diverse continent, and China’s impact and involvement is different country by country. The experiences of different communities and countries are likewise diverse, and so are the activities of Chinese companies and individuals across the continent. By highlighting on-the-ground perspectives, the Project encourages a community-by-community, country-by-country and company-bycompany approach, seeking not to paint a black-and-white picture but to inform the public how lives are changing and being impacted by China’s presence and actions across Africa. The list of topics that the Project has supported over now almost a decade of working with journalists is long, but just to give an indication the following is a list of investigative journalism grants awarded in 2018:       

Has the government of Lesotho been captured by a Chinese businessman? Swaziland’s secret business deals with China (with which it has no formal diplomatic relations) Is China dumping e-waste in Lagos? How the Ugandan mafia is stealing from Chinese investors Illicit financial outflows and money laundering in Zimbabwe and potential Chinese involvement in the externalization list How corrupt local elites help mining companies illegally exploit gold in Cameroon How illegal mining destroys livelihoods, and fuels conflicts in Cameroon

Chinese media Although the majority of the Project’s grantees are African journalists, the Project has worked with many Chinese journalists who produced investigations that made important impacts in Chinese media and who went on to build on the facilitation and capacity-building provided by the Project. The environmental journalist Huang Hongxiang is a good example of this. In 2013, Hongxiang spent three months on an environmental journalism fellowship in South Africa, a collaboration between the Project and a local environmental investigative reporting NGO. He travelled through southern Africa to explore Chinese connections to wildlife trafficking, and produced several features during this time. In October 2013, he published the feature “Rhino horn trade thrives in Jo’burg” in the Mail & Guardian newspaper in Johannesburg, in which he outlined the role that Chinese nationals

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and interests are playing in the illegal ivory trade in South Africa. Hongxiang’s feature ignited extensive debate on the topic and elicited a direct rejoinder from the Chinese Embassy in Pretoria, likewise published in the Mail & Guardian as “Letter to the editor: M&G rhino article misleading”, in which the Embassy took issue with some of Hongxiang’s portrayals in the article. Nevertheless, after his feature was published Hongxiang was invited to discuss the matter with Chinese Embassy officials to find ways of addressing the wildlife trafficking. In 2014, Hongxiang set up China House, a Nairobi-based NGO that aims to assist Chinese people to better integrate into Africa via corporate social responsibility and community engagement activities. China House has over the years partnered with the Project to conduct several wildlife trafficking awareness campaigns in Chinese communities in Africa. From four years of activities, China House has increased media coverage of its activities and cooperated with Chinese embassies in Africa, and brought out Chinese young people to Africa to participate in environmental protection and awareness campaigns. In Hongxiang’s words, “we work day by day and community by community to foster an appreciation of wildlife conservation among Chinese communities, and our work has just begun. We want to involve more Chinese people in Africa in proactive wildlife conservation, not just to stop buying wildlife products. Our action continues, and we are expecting more Chinese people to join us”. While Hongxiang is one success story of the Project’s facilitation and capacitybuilding, the Project has worked with and provided training for journalists from a range of Chinese media outlets, including 21st Century Business Herald, Caixin, China Daily, Xinhua, FT China, China Business News and South China Morning Post, Southern Weekly, Ta Kung Pao, China Youth Daily, Initium Media, ChinAfrica Magazine, Global Times and Jiemian News. The Project has attempted to include a variety of Chinese media outlets, including state-affiliated media (e.g. Xinhua, China Daily, Global Times) and commercial media (e.g. Caixin, Southern Weekly). In selecting Chinese journalists the Project aims to balance various factors such as ownership (government/Party and commercial), location (urban and rural; northern, central and southern), focus (general, business, investigative), and medium (print, online, broadcast). As with African journalists, the Project aims to work with Chinese journalists that are able to make as wide as possible an impact on the reporting narrative in China. The following is a sample of news features published in Chinese media via Project training, support and reporting grants (titles of articles translated to English):    

Ploughing in Africa: The story of a Chinese sisal farm in Tanzania by Chen Xiaochen (China Business News) Sweltering heat, golden dreams: Chinese galamsey in Ghana by Yang Meng (Southern Weekly) Chinese companies going for gold in Zambia by Hu Jianlong (Southern Weekly) Changing lives: Chinese investment in Uganda’s copper mining gives hope to thousands by Fredrick Mugira (People’s Daily Online)

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Chinese building a steel city in South Africa by Yu Meng (21st Century Business Herald) Real estate gold rush in Kenya by Tan Yifei (21st Century Business Herald) CSR entering South Africa: Well placed to compete in the local market by Wang Lin (China Business News) Chinese investment in South Africa shifts into consumer projects, but challenges remain by Wang Wenwen (Global Times) The story of South Africa’s China malls by Chen Jing (China Youth Daily) The ecological, industrial and drug war behind the abalone on your dinner table by Crystal Chow (Initium Media) Inside the Chinese factory in Ethiopia where Ivanka Trump places her shoe orders by Zhang Zizhu (Initium Media)

Looking ahead Following nearly a decade of its existence, in 2019 the Project is planning to expand its reach and focus to a broader South–South outlook, replicating the bottom-up people-focused approach of Africa–China to explore the ways geopolitical relationships are affecting and informing reporting in and on Africa. Chinese and African officials are increasingly emphasizing the development of people-topeople linkages, because while official relations have grown rapidly, these ties have remained predominantly political and economic in nature, and the promotion of understanding between Africa and China is often folded into the official agenda (e. g. via the establishment of Confucius Institutes, official exchanges and cultural events). The Project, on the other hand, is an example people-to-people linkages at a non-official level, and it also plays a bridge-building role between the official processes and non-official spaces of the relationship. Through all its activities past and future, the Project endeavours to provide a platform for journalists to tell Africa’s stories of a vibrant continent looking to the future and its own destiny. China is playing a significant role in Africa’s current development and forging deep relations with it, and the Project has been able to track the progress of this unique 21st century South–South engagement in the field of journalism. But ultimately the most important story of all that the Project is able to illuminate is that of the peoples of Africa and how their lives and futures are being significantly impacted by ever-expanding relations with China, and how they themselves are shaping their own future.

Note 1 We also work with journalists from elsewhere but the vast majority are from Africa and China.

5 DOING RESEARCH ON UNSTABLE GROUND The ebb and flow of Brazilian South–South cooperation, from Lula to Bolsonaro Letícia Maria Cesarino

Introduction Almost everywhere, anthropology has been a very political, but also very reflexive, disciplinary tradition. Ever since I started on my dissertation project at UC Berkeley on Brazilian South–South cooperation (Cesarino 2013), the conditions under which I was doing my research, and the effects of the kind of knowledge I was producing would have both in academia and in the field, were always a conscious concern. Fieldwork started in 2010, at a time when Brazil was still riding the high wave of South–South cooperation (henceforth, SSC) set in motion during Lula da Silva’s double administration between 2003 and 2010. During the research process, Brazil’s political and fiscal situation changed dramatically during the rule of Lula’s successor Dilma Rousseff, taking a particularly sharp turn in the aftermath of her impeachment in 2016. Today, as Jair Bolsonaro takes office promising even more radical change – this time towards the far right – the country’s South–South cooperation policies and efforts seem to be at a quite uncertain crossroads. This chapter will retrace this winding path from the perspective of an ethnographer who has conducted multi-sited research on projects run by the Brazilian Agriculture and Livestock Research Corporation (EMBRAPA) in West Africa between 2010 and 2012, and since then accompanied Brazilian SSC through reports and publications by scholars, development practitioners and the press. As the field itself changed over time, so did the implications of research and of the kind of knowledge it aimed at producing. In what follows, I will discuss these changes in terms of how my analytical and theoretical choices were inflected by relations established with my field interlocutors, mediated by the broader political landscape. At first, my main concern was to avoid reducing Brazilian cooperation to any of the prevalent analytical keys available in the theoretical toolkit assembled through decades of ethnographies of Northern aid. A multi-scalar analytics allowed

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me to do justice to what I saw in the field, while at the same time avoiding an over-critical stance that would run the risk of foreclosing the multiple potentialities that seemed to inhere in a kind of practice which was, by then, an emergent process. But as the political landscape in Brazil changed dramatically in the aftermath of Rousseff’s impeachment and then the election of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018, so did the researcher’s positionality and the stakes of researching and writing on South–South cooperation. Mirroring a movement also found in the broader political landscape in Brazil, critical research on the country’s cooperation and foreign policy strategies may have to move from a cautious ‘internal’ critique of the shortcomings and ambivalences of the previous administrations’ South–South efforts to an ‘external’ defence of the very legitimacy of such efforts and even of the long-term modus operandi of institutions such as Itamaraty (as Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Relations is best known). I conclude by rejoining recent discussions of Brazil’s recent retreat as a provider of cooperation to suggest that such back and forth movements may be indeed potentialized by the low institutionalization and high vulnerability of Brazilian cooperation policies to changes in domestic politics and to the ups and downs of global and national economic cycles. I also ask whether such instability may turn out to be a characteristic of other emerging donors as well.

The rise of Brazilian SSC during the Lula da Silva administration During the early stages of my PhD research in the late 2000s, a chief epistemological concern revolved around the questions and challenges that the emerging phenomenon of South–South cooperation at large posed for mainstream anthropological approaches to international development and global coloniality relations (Cesarino 2012a, b). Already at that moment, South–South cooperation was a thriving reality worldwide, and yet, as late as in 2013 a major literature review on the anthropology of development and cooperation dedicated no more than half a page to the issue (Mosse 2013). The challenge that stood before researchers interested in the topic was, first of all, to document empirically and compare transnationally the multiple initiatives led by so-called emerging donors across much of the global South (Mawdsley 2012). Along with the other BRICS, Brazil under Lula da Silva was a leading player in such a new global development landscape, turning to many regions in the global South which had hitherto enjoyed little foreign policy attention. Among these were non-Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa, which became my subject of interest. This broader challenge unfolded into more properly epistemological issues, which I approached in greater detail in previous publications (Cesarino 2012a, b, 2017a). As with all new phenomena, Brazilian South–South cooperation tended at first to be seen largely through analytical lenses attuned to previously existing processes – in this case, Northern development aid. Perhaps the two most common analytical framings in this regard were neocolonialism and governmentality (e.g. Escobar 1994, Ferguson 1990). My concern at the time however was how to bring

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these and other theoretical tools derived from ethnographic and historical studies on Northern aid to bear on the analysis of the empirical material I was collecting on Brazilian cooperation in Africa. Even though there were similarities in relation to Northern aid – and from a broader perspective, Brazilian SSC could be indeed regarded as part of the West-centred development apparatus – there were also significant differences both in discourse and practice. Here I will unpack this question further in two analytical directions: the organizational aspect of cooperation and the Foucauldian-functionalist perspectives on it; and the coloniality aspect, more evident in discourse and historical analysis. As I started reviewing the anthropological literature on development while at the same time collecting preliminary data on Brazil’s cooperation policies towards Africa, it became clear that in order to understand international development at large I would have to take into account its organizational aspect. Even though the term ‘development’ resonates strongly with the economic realm, especially in its Brazilian Portuguese rendition (desenvolvimento is usually associated with the national economy), it soon dawned on me that this was not what international development was mostly about – or at least, not in the usual sense of developing economically recipient countries. In other words, the anthropology of organizations seemed to me to be more germane to the topic than economic anthropology. The first task was then to map out Brazilian cooperation’s emerging organizational apparatus, and some of the early reports on the subject were quite helpful in this respect (most notably, Cabral and Weinstock 2010). Here, the organizational aspect of Brazilian cooperation was underscored in order to draw attention to its deficits in relation to the historical norm which was Northern aid: from this point of view, Brazilian rising cooperation was regarded as incomplete, lacking enough institutional autonomy, funding, managerial and technical expertise, and so forth. My effort was, on the other hand, to avoid this kind of deficit-centred perspective and try to look at what was actually going on in the field. From the beginning, then, it became necessary to differentiate between the stakes and assumptions of the academic and the ‘grey’ literature on South–South cooperation. In anthropology, the field had since long been split between the more ‘applied’ work done by insiders (development anthropology) and the more ‘critical’ work done by academic anthropologists who are not personally implicated in the development apparatus (anthropology of development) (Escobar 1991). One of the earliest and most detailed reports on the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (Cabral and Weinstock 2010), for instance, seemed to have a clear, albeit not always explicit, purpose of legitimating and supporting demands for more funding and institutional autonomy for the managerial and policy branch of Brazilian cooperation (the Brazilian Cooperation Agency was, and still is, submitted to the Ministry of Foreign Relations). I did draw significantly on precious data and information raised and systematized by this and other reports, if only because at the time there was virtually no robust academic work on Brazilian cooperation. But I also did my best to assemble an analytical toolkit that was more attuned to academic standards of research and peer review.

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Since at the time academic work even on South–South cooperation at large was minimal, I decided to draw more extensively on ethnographic studies of Northern aid, and then proceed to make my own adaptations and problematizations whenever the Northern and Southern experiences seemed to diverge. One challenge in this respect was not to hypostatize the differences that Brazilians themselves posed in relation to Northern aid, since such differences were a key part of the diplomats’ discursive strategies (Cesarino 2012a, b). To this end, doing as much ethnography as I could, rather than just drawing on reports, documents and formal interviews, was vital. This methodological commitment made a huge analytical difference, eventually drawing me towards the kind of multi-scalar analysis that my dissertation ultimately embraced (Cesarino 2013). At first I was particularly impressed and moved by the kind of Foucauldianfunctionalist perspective that guided key ethnographies of Northern aid such as James Ferguson’s pioneer Anti-Politics Machine (Ferguson 1994), and later developments such as Tania Li’s The Will to Improve (Li 2007), and associated discussions such as that on development brokers (Lewis and Mosse 2006). Even David Mosse’s Cultivating Development (Mosse 2004), which brought an insider’s perspective theoretically inspired by Bruno Latour’s actor–network theory, produced an ethnographic picture quite similar to the one found in the Foucauldian accounts. This picture may be perhaps best described in terms of development aid’s ‘efficacy paradox’: that is, how, after decades implementing projects that mostly failed, the development apparatus has not only been able to maintain itself, but has even grown and expanded globally. The answer to this, from a Foucauldian perspective, required drawing analytical attention to the apparatus’ governmentality effects of depoliticization and bureaucratization (Ferguson 1990; Li 2007). I preferred to look at it from a broader, systems-theoretical perspective, and pay attention to the selfreferential, autopoietic character of the organizations and personal careers involved in the development industry (Cesarino 2017a, b). This analytical displacement helped me make sense of the emerging organizational apparatus of Brazilian cooperation without reducing it to governmentality effects. Even before I started the fieldwork, I realized that Brazilian cooperation did not show the strong autopoietic aspect so evident in the ethnographic accounts of Northern aid agencies. The Brazilian Cooperation Agency itself was, and still is, quite a fragile, dependent institution when compared to its counterparts in Northern aid. At the implementation end, Brazilian state agencies such as EMBRAPA showed more institutional robustness, but they seemed to me to operate quite independently from the designs and logics of diplomacy and even of cooperation policy. In other words, as I approached more closely the work of Brazilian diplomats, project managers and especially technical personnel actually implementing the projects on the ground, the disjunctions between these three ethnographic scales became increasingly sharp. Each of these levels (which, in its general outlines, hold for Brazilian cooperation at large) was institutionally structured around different governmental agencies: the Ministry of Foreign Relations (diplomacy), the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (policy and management), and, at the scale of implementation

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in my case, EMBRAPA’s individual research centres (according to each project’s focus: on cotton or livestock, for instance). A key difference in relation to development aid was not just the poor articulation between these scales, but the relative weight each of them had in relation to the overall apparatus. While, according to the ethnographic literature, in Northern agencies the mid-level of policy and management seemed to be predominant and showed strong autopoietic effects, in Brazilian cooperation this was actually the weakest link in the cooperation chain. I described the overall outcome of this coming together of previously existing institutions under the aegis of Lula’s SSC plans as an emerging assemblage formed by multiple institutional, practical and discursive scales that showed significant discontinuities between each other (Cesarino 2013, 2017a, b). This overall picture resonates with findings from other students of Brazilian South–South cooperation (e.g. Marcondes and Mawdsley 2017). Based on this early research finding, I decided to work with a meta-analytics of multi-scalarity inspired by British anthropologist Marilyn Strathern (1991). This choice was led mostly by epistemological concerns, but it also had a reflexive (personal and political) aspect. On the one hand, the Foucauldian perspective, although inspiring in some respects (Cesarino 2017b), seemed to me to be too totalizing for a process that was, at least by then, quite emergent and open-ended. Most analyses based on the experience of Northern aid assumed a kind of institutional robustness at the policy and management level that did not resonate with the case of Brazil. Working with Strathern’s meta-theoretical perspective allowed me more analytical leverage to recognize the phenomenon’s specific complexities and contradictions, and to work only partially and more freely with the conceptual tools prevalent in the literature on Northern aid. Moreover, it helped me bypass the ethical quandary of presenting to my interlocutors at EMBRAPA and elsewhere a picture of their own work in which they would not recognize themselves. For many of the latter, it was their first experience implementing cooperation projects abroad – for a few of them, it was even the first time working abroad at all. At least initially, many of them seemed to me to be somewhat politically naive about the possibilities of implementing fully horizontal, interest-free, efficient cooperation with African countries, as the diplomats’ (and the president’s) discourse then propounded. I did not see myself as having the right to shatter that expectation. Yet, although those implementing the projects would generally embrace the intentions and aims of Brazilian South–South cooperation put forth discursively by the diplomats, they also seemed well aware that the latter’s practice was guided by a different logic and purpose than their own, more ‘technical’ and ‘hands-on’ work. It was not just that cooperation discourse was removed from practice, but that discourse and practice were differently articulated at different scales. A somewhat paradoxical outcome was that SSC discourse articulated at the diplomatic scale seemed to have limited influence on how particular projects were conducted and assessed at the scale of implementation. The fact that Brazilian SSC was not as institutionally robust at the scale of cooperation policy and management meant that

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cooperantes at the frontline of projects had a fair degree of autonomy for designing and implementing them. At the time, I saw this as something positive, and decided to make an analytical (and ethical) bet on the open-endedness of Brazilian cooperation rather than see it as an embryonic form of Northern aid accompanied by a different kind of discourse. As my field research came to a sudden close with the war in Northern Mali and coup d’état in March 2012, however, I developed a slightly different, somewhat (from my point of view at least) more pessimistic view on Brazilian cooperation. On the one hand, from a more ‘macro’ perspective, by 2012 it was already clear that the whole South–South effort initiated during the Lula administration was beginning to recede, for reasons that will be remarked on below. On the other hand, from a more ‘micro’ point of view, Brazilian SSC seemed indeed to be following the lead of Northern agencies and West-centred multilateral organizations such as UNDP, as it gradually incorporated the managerial protocols and ‘best practices’ prevalent in the global aid apparatus (in the Brazilian Cooperation Agency’s project assessment tools, manuals and training workshops), enhanced its trilateral articulations with Northern partners (most notably in the case of EMBRAPA, the ProSAVANA project with Japan and Mozambique; Cesarino 2016), and, at the scale of project implementation, seemed to be largely, although not fully, falling in line with the kinds of practices and self-referential logics that prevailed locally in beneficiary countries accustomed to decades of dealing with Northern donors (Cesarino 2017b). Besides the question of governmentality and organizational self-reference, another research front where I had to do significant experimentation with global (which usually means, Northern) theory in order to make sense of my empirical case related to discourse analysis and the question of coloniality. Since anthropologists first decided to take development aid as an object of study, the continuities it showed with colonial geopolitics and discourses have been a central issue (for instance, Escobar 1994). To me as an anthropologist, this was a question that was impossible to avoid. On the one hand, in both academic and lay circles Brazilian cooperation was not rarely accused of being neocolonialist, especially when it came to Africa, and especially as ProSAVANA was announced during Lula’s second term in office. On the other hand, although by then the question of discourse was considered somewhat exhausted in the literature on Northern aid, it had not been sufficiently scrutinized in the case of emerging donors. Therefore, also on this analytical front I had to make significant theoretical experimentations and adaptations in order to make sense of Brazil–Africa cooperation. Subsequently, I tried to develop a situated postcolonial outlook more specific to relations between Brazil and the African continent (Cesarino 2012b, 2017a), which required me to go deeper into their common history and look for inspiration in lines somewhat marginal to the mainstream postcolonial literature, most notably Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ reflections on Portuguese postcoloniality (Santos 2002). In the postcolonial literature, Foucault is also a major reference, but rather than governmentality it is the question of discourse that is brought to the fore, often

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inflected by the work of Edward Said (1979). While pioneer analyses along this line such as Escobar’s tried to show how development discourse displayed direct continuities with colonial relations (Escobar 1994), I tried to explore further the particular kind of coloniality involved in Brazil’s relations with Africa. In this respect, Jerry Dávila’s then recently published historical study on Brazilian diplomacy’s contradictory stances towards the decolonization of Lusophone Africa rendered highly problematic the South–South solidarity narrative that was being advanced by President Lula’s diplomacy. His account showed how diplomatic support for African countries’ independence and for the struggle against South African apartheid was often stifled by Brazil’s alignment with European colonial powers and with the United States and its quest to contain the spread of communist regimes in decolonizing Africa (Dávila 2010). Most worthy of note is the fact that such troubled history, which departs from commonsensical views about Brazil– Africa relations, is largely unknown to most Brazilians – and even to myself before I read Dávila’s book. As Mawdsley (2012) and others have pointed out, this kind of ‘invention of tradition’ about particular South–South relations can also be found among other emerging donors operating in Africa, such as China or India. Such narratives not only do not reproduce the ones found among Northern donors, but actively seek to differentiate from them through claims of horizontality, affinity and solidarity. Yet, from a meta-communicational perspective, the discursive patterns of occlusions and selections associated with these narratives resemble the ‘Orientalist’ mechanics also found in development aid discourse (Cesarino 2017a). Another critical analytical step that seemed important was therefore to qualify the origins and implications of these constructed South–South narratives, and in this respect the most relevant scale was that of diplomacy. In the case of Brazil– Africa relations, Brazilian diplomats’ views on Africa seemed in many respects reminiscent of Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre’s culturalist rhetoric of ‘racial democracy’, which found an international counterpart in his ‘Lusotropicality’ claim that Portuguese colonization in the tropics produced a common cultural-natural ground uniting Brazil and former Portuguese colonies in Africa. Lusotropicalism was the basis of António Salazar’s 20th-century colonial ideology, and its assumptions of strong kinship, cultural affinities and spontaneous solidarity between the two sides of the Southern Atlantic clearly pervaded the early versions of contemporary SSC narratives in particular. Elsewhere (Cesarino 2017a) I have argued that the particular stress on ‘culture’ found in the diplomats’ formulations about Brazil–Africa relations was an outwards projection of a domestic historical narrative about former African slaves’ (exclusively) cultural contributions to the Brazilian polity. In other words, Brazilian SSC worked discursively with patterns drawn from the country’s internal coloniality relations, and therefore had little to do with contemporary Africa itself. It configured, I suggested, a kind of bifurcated Orientalism typical of a postcolonial nation that saw itself as still marginal at the world stage, but which had a history of strong internal colonialism in relation to subaltern groups such as African descendants. The fact that all Brazilian cooperantes – diplomats, managers, agronomists – I met

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during fieldwork were light-skinned (a fact also remarked by Dávila, the exceptions being ‘cultural’ agents such as musicians or soccer players) further evidenced the complicated interplay between domestic and international racial politics and coloniality relations underlying Brazil’s South–South efforts towards the African continent, both contemporarily and in the past. Although, as I suggested above, discursive contradictions seemed to have little effect at the scale of project implementation, there was at least one case when an entire project suffered from it to a point of being significantly compromised (Shankland and Gonçalves 2016). This was the ProSAVANA, Brazil’s most ambitious agricultural project in Africa, which claimed to reproduce in Northern Mozambique the partnership with Japan which opened the Brazilian savannahs to large-scale agriculture in the 1970s. This project was officially launched in 2011, accompanied by the kind of (natural and cultural) affinities discourse reminiscent of Brazilian diplomacy’s Lusotropical heritage. It did not take long however for this project to be squarely labelled as a land grab by globally articulated Mozambican peasant movements. This was the first time a Brazilian project in Africa suffered from such level of bad press (Cesarino 2016). This, along with internal conflicts and budget cuts, led to Brazil’s gradual withdrawal from it. ProSAVANA’s predicament can be regarded as a large-scale, highly visible exemplar of smaller, more diffuse reality checks that inevitably took place as the multiple Brazilian projects unfolded on African grounds. These were further compounded by progressive cuts in the country’s overall cooperation budget introduced by Rousseff as she took office in 2011, as well as changes in foreign policy direction away from the strong emphasis on the global South characteristic of the Lula da Silva administration (Marcondes and Mawdsley 2017). This led to a gradual but steady decline in Brazil’s South–South cooperation efforts, which lasts to this day. The project I followed most closely, with West African cotton-producing countries, was one of the few that remained operative at EMBRAPA, because it was able to channel specific funds from a deal struck between Brazil and the U.S. as a result of their cotton trade dispute at the World Trade Organization (Cesarino 2016, 2017b). The period that spanned the Lula administration was therefore marked by great liveliness and promise for Brazil’s South–South cooperation, especially with Africa and Latin America. My positionality then was as a Brazilian researcher who celebrated these efforts but also had a scholarly driven critical stance towards them. The analytical movements I described briefly above underscore some of the contradictions and dilemmas that are specific to particular South–South relations when compared with Northern aid (Cabral 2019). They also reflect the particular historical density that underlay contemporary relations between regions of the global South, as well as the weight of each country’s domestic politics and specific organizational arrangements. Besides such heterogeneity of experiences, South–South cooperation is everywhere an emerging process, and in Brazil the contradictions and instabilities inherent in it became particularly evident throughout the last decade or so. It is not surprising, then, that the radical shift in domestic politics brought about by the election of Jair Bolsonaro in October 2018 is likely to be

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accompanied by equally dramatic changes in Brazil’s foreign policy directions, with significant implications for the country’s already faltering South–South efforts. The next sections will chart some of the new government’s emerging foreign policy movements, outline potential implications for the researcher’s positionality, and raise the question of possible parallels with the case of other emerging donors.

Rousseff, Temer, Bolsonaro and the uncertain future Even before the recent presidential elections, the major transition in Brazil’s cooperation policy that began in the early 2010s produced awkward effects in the research field. At the time when I did most of my field research, right before this transition started, Brazilians involved in SSC were overall quite willing and even excited to share and talk about their efforts. Especially in the aftermath of the ProSAVANA controversy, this initial opening gradually gave way to a more suspicious and hesitant attitude on their part, according to reports from other researchers as well as from my own experience. For some students of Brazilian SSC, the shift was even more dramatic: there was for instance a number of scholars in Brazil, mostly graduate students, developing projects on the ProSAVANA that suddenly saw themselves before an elusive research object (Shankland and Gonçalves 2016). This trend reached a turning point of sorts with the election of Bolsonaro in 2018: it is as if all works on Brazilian cooperation produced thus far, even some very recent ones (for instance, Milhorance 2018), had overnight turned from studies of a contemporary phenomenon to pieces of historical interest. It is probably too early to assert the future of Brazil’s foreign policy and, as a consequence, of what remains of its South–South efforts. Whatever indications we have thus far are limited to public statements which may or may not translate into concrete action by the new president and his chancellor Ernesto Araújo. I will therefore limit my analysis in this section to the discursive level. Coincidently, the recent shift in Brazilian foreign policy connects closely with my current digital anthropology project on the social media apparatus the Bolsonaros assembled for communicating with the Brazilian electorate. I recently crafted the notion of digital populism to describe the modus operandi and radical political effects this apparatus has produced in Brazil’s domestic – and, as seems likely, also international – political landscape (Cesarino in press). One of the hypotheses I have been exploring is how the (meta)discursive patterns identified during Bolsonaro’s campaign, and now in his communication strategy towards the public, have been guided by a series of neopopulist techniques that are also on the rise among other right-wing leaders around the world. Many indications exist that such a strategy is part of a broader global trend, partly stemming from the Bolsonaros’ notorious connections with former Trump campaign strategist Steve Bannon. Even though it is difficult to trace empirically the precise authorship of the discursive patterns ubiquitous in the texts, memes, audios, videos, tweets and other kinds of digital content that circulate every day in this digital media apparatus, a few individuals in the new president’s entourage reproduce them quite consistently

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in their personal public utterances. These include himself and his three politician sons, a handful of their closest advisors and supporters, and, which is germane to our purpose in this chapter, Bolsonaro’s minister of foreign relations Ernesto Araújo and his foreign affairs advisor Filipe Martins. Araújo’s appointment as the new chancellor diverged sharply from a decades-long tradition of choosing senior diplomats for that office – Araújo had just acceded to the ambassador degree in June 2018, and never had a chance to head a Brazilian embassy abroad. This is in line with other ministerial appointments, as the new president aimed for individuals supposedly outside of the ‘establishment’. But what was particularly noteworthy in this case was the diplomatic body’s overall surprise with Araújo’s personal political positions, which came publicly to light only during the 2018 campaign, through a blog he created in order to support the right-wing candidate called Metapolítica 17. Based on his posts to this blog, as well as on the few public statements he has made thus far about his incipient term ahead of Itamaraty (many of them through Twitter), it is possible to envisage quite an uncertain future for the country’s ongoing South–South cooperation initiatives. Overall, these statements follow closely the anti-globalist rhetoric also expounded by President Trump and Bannon himself, and claim that Brazil should favour a sovereignist international policy guided by the ‘people’s will’. In this new geopolitical scenario, only a few potential allies have been named: besides Trump’s United States, Netanyahu’s Israel stands out as the other favoured partner, and, in Araújo’s inauguration speech, compliments have also been made to other far-right leaders in Italy, Hungary and Poland. The new chancellor’s rhetoric is pregnant with theological and what many would consider conspiratorial arguments, decrying Brazil’s past adherence to a kind of “postmodern diplomacy” that would blindly follow “globalism”, which he defines as “economic globalization that came to be piloted by cultural marxism”. Araújo celebrates the rise of Bolsonaro, Trump and other conservative leaders as signs of a world historical revolution that will reconnect “people and politics”, “material and spiritual life”, and will set “God himself” free to circulate “across the human soul”.1 He also shows openly anti-Islamic views, and regards China with deep suspicion: in a private document to which the Brazilian press had access, he proposed to replace the BRICS with “an antiglobalist BRICS without China”, made up of the US, Italy, and perhaps Russia, India, Japan and Visegrad countries.2 Araújo is also a staunch climate change negationist, and declared his intention to remove Brazil from the Paris Agreement and other “globalist” pacts such as that on immigration. It remains to be seen whether and how such apparently extreme rhetoric will be brought to bear on concrete policies and measures, as it may run counter to both Itamaraty’s tradition of pragmatic multilateralism and the economic interests of powerful groups in Brazil. One such group is precisely the agribusiness lobby, which is a key part of Bolsonaro’s parliamentary support base and was involved in influencing the directions of Brazil’s South–South cooperation during the Workers’ Party rule. The first major controversy involving foreign policy thus far indicates some of the new government’s possible directions and tensions in this area.

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Following the lead of Donald Trump, even before taking office Bolsonaro announced the transfer of the Brazilian embassy in Israel from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem, as a reciprocity gesture towards another powerful ally which played a key role in his election, the Evangelical lobby. This decision is however highly controversial, for at least two reasons. Firstly, although Araújo claims to be following a people-centred foreign policy, it is far from clear whether such a ‘spontaneous’ constituency even exists in Brazilian society, beyond particular interest groups such as the agribusiness lobby or certain organized social movements (Pickup 2016; Marcondes and Mawdsley 2017). Indeed, my personal experience shows that before Bolsonaro’s election the embassy issue was a nonexistent one for the 80% of Brazilians who are not Evangelicals, most of whom had no idea where the country’s embassy in Israel was even located. This however does not preclude the possibility that such a constituency may be discursively created by those in power, as seems to be happening through secular arguments such as that Israel will help end the drought problem in the Brazilian Northeast by transferring desalination technologies. Secondly, the embassy transfer has the potential to jeopardize commercial relations with Arab countries, which are major buyers of Brazilian agribusiness products, especially sugar and Halal meat. In early November 2018, the Egyptian government cancelled a visit by Temer’s chancellor in the aftermath of Bolsonaro’s announcement of his intention to go ahead with the transfer. According to the press, some members of the new president’s military entourage have also expressed concern about the measure’s potential for fuelling international tensions against Brazil.3 Besides such specific issues, foreign relations at large is likely to be a sensitive area for the new government: the new president’s inauguration on 1 January 2019 was attended by 46 foreign delegations, less than half of those present at previous inauguration ceremonies. Such a sharp shift in Brazil’s foreign policy direction may confound, if not completely overturn, the analytical paths that were being taken thus far by research on the country’s South–South cooperation policies. Carolina Milhorance’s recent book (Milhorance 2018) for instance reviews extensively the dynamics and consequences of the internal contradictions in Brazil’s agricultural cooperation policies also noted by other scholars, between an agribusiness-centred, ‘extractive’ model and a family-farming, ‘social’ paradigm. This dual paradigm was a reflection, in cooperation policy, of President Lula’s broader strategy of compromising between conflicting interest groups (Cabral and Shankland 2013). From now on, however, it could be that the family-farming paradigm will be downplayed if not altogether abolished, due both to the agribusiness lobby’s major role in the new government, and to Itamaraty’s newfound anti-left, anti-militant bent. That is, if what remains of Brazilian cooperation initiatives with Africa and elsewhere in the global South is maintained at all. During the government transition period, the new chancellor announced that ongoing cooperation initiatives with the global South would be extensively audited, as Bolsonaro declared his suspicion that the Workers’ Party’s South–South policies were ways of covertly funding ideologically aligned governments in Africa and Latin America.4

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Viewed from a broader historical perspective, such retraction in South–South efforts is in line with the overall oscillatory movement of domestic and global economic cycles. Just as the Military Regime’s ‘economic miracle’ in the 1970s was followed by tightening relations with recently independent countries in Africa and elsewhere (Saraiva 1996), the economic boom during the Lula administration allowed for broadening and strengthening the country’s ‘Third Wordlist’ strategy, this time going beyond diplomacy and commercial relations to implement new cooperation policies and experiment with a wide range of projects in multiple countries. As economic growth receded, especially after Rousseff’s reelection in 2014, so did the scope and funding for South–South cooperation, which actually returned to the ‘regular’ levels of pre-Lula years (Marcondes and Mawdsley, 2017). The contemporary context is however even more uncertain, given the Bolsonaro government’s apparent break with Itamaraty’s foreign policy tradition of multilaterality and pragmatism, and its determination to undo the policies the Workers’ Party had set in motion in the past. At this moment it is impossible to assert whether and how such a discursive revolution will be successfully translated into concrete action. As with Brazilian SSC itself, the new government is also a multi-scalar assemblage, still fragmented and emergent, which may face difficulties in having its radical populist rhetoric fully stand the test of reality checks, internal contradictions, and institutional and sociological inertia.

Concluding remarks In conclusion, one could say that if previous research on Brazilian South–South cooperation sought to look critically at some of the contradictions and shortcomings inherent in such an emerging process, now it is the very foundations on which such a process was based that are at stake. While formerly it was the shortcomings of Itamaraty’s ambivalent racial politics and its (by earlier standards) outdated adherence to a racial democracy imaginary that were worth remarking on, now it is the very recognition of the enduring ills of slavery and the nature of Brazil’s claims of solidarity with the African continent that are in question. Similarly, while studies on agricultural SSC explored the dual paradigm and its internal contradictions, this time it is the very persistence of the ‘social’ paradigm that comes to the focus of analytical attention. Finally, rather than bringing to light the disjunctions and fragilities of Brazilian South–South cooperation’s emerging organizational assemblage, today it is Itamaraty’s modus operandi itself, and the very possibility of continuing Brazil’s friendly (even if sometimes contradictory) cooperation relations with a wide range of countries in the global South, that surface as a research question in itself. As the new political scenario unfolds, it also remains to be seen whether Brazilian scholars will continue to fully enjoy the academic freedom and financial support to pursue critical and independent analyses of the new discourses and policies that will implemented, whatever their content and implications. So far, Brazil’s recent predicament seems to be somewhat unique in the broader South–South cooperation landscape. In a recent discussion of changes in Brazilian

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SSC from Lula to Temer, Marcondes and Mawdsley (2017) worked through a number of analytical levels that help explain such progressive retreat: differences in presidential priorities and personal style; internal rivalries between ministries and other governmental agencies; troubled domestic politics; economic downturn both domestically and internationally; failure to properly institutionalize and professionalize the provision of cooperation, and to create a specific civil society constituency for this sector. These may well be issues that also afflict other emerging donors at some point or another, but in Brazil they all seem to have come together in a sort of perfect storm – which, at this point, seems to be escalating into a hurricane of sorts. Although Brazil’s case seems to be off the curve, the world’s overall South–South cooperation landscape may change more significantly if sovereignist, anti-globalist populisms continue to spread worldwide. Such changes would have the potential to challenge the very political and epistemological foundations on which SSC research has been conducted thus far, as well as the possibilities of dialogue and collaboration across this thriving international research community.

Notes 1 www.metapoliticabrasil.com 2 Folha de São Paulo (www1.folha.uol.com.br/mundo/2018/12/futuro-chanceler-prop os-a-bolsonaro-pacto-cristao-com-eua-e-russia.shtml). Accessed 15 January 2019. 3 BBC Brasil (www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-46766311). Accessed 15 January 2019. 4 Jornal O Globo (https://oglobo.globo.com/mundo/cooperacao-sul-sul-esta-na-mira -do-futuro-chanceler-do-brasil-23309063) Accessed 15 January 2019.

References Cabral, L. (2019) South-South relations in African agriculture: Hybrid modalities of cooperation and development perspectives from Brazil and China. In Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. and Daley, P. eds., Routledge Handbook of South-South Relations. New York: Routledge. Cabral, L. and Weinstock, J. (2010) Brazilian Technical Cooperation for Development: Drivers, Mechanics, and Future Prospects. London: Overseas Development Institute. Cabral, L. and Shankland, A. (2013) Narratives of Brazil‐Africa cooperation for agricultural development: new paradigms? China and Brazil in Africa Agriculture (CBAA) Project Working Paper 51. Cesarino, L. (2012a) Anthropology of development and the challenge of South‐South cooperation. Vibrant, 9(1), 509–537. Cesarino, L. (2012b) Brazilian postcoloniality and South‐South cooperation: A view from anthropology. Portuguese Cultural Studies, 4, 85–113. Cesarino, L. (2013) South‐South cooperation across the Atlantic: Emerging interfaces in international development and technology transfer in agriculture. PhD thesis. Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley. Cesarino, L. (2016) Brazil as an emerging donor in Africa’s agricultural sector: Comparing two projects. Agrarian South, 4(3), 371–393. Cesarino, L. (2017a) Anthropology and the South-South encounter: On ‘culture’ in Brazil-Africa relations” American Anthropologist, 119(2), 333–358.

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Cesarino, L. (2017b) Communication in international cooperation: An anthropological systems approach. In Reyes-Galindo, L. and Ribeiro, T. R. eds., Intercultural Communication and Science and Technology Studies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 207–231. Cesarino, L. (in press) On Jair Bolsonaro’s digital populism. Association for Political and Legal Anthropology. Available at: https://politicalandlegalanthro.org/ (accessed 2 April 2019). Dávila, J. (2010) Hotel Tropico: Brazil and the Challenge of African Decolonization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Escobar, A. (1991) Anthropology and the development encounter: The making and marketing of development anthropology. American Ethnologist, 18(4), 658–682. Escobar, A. (1994) Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ferguson, J. (1990) The Anti-Politics Machine. “Development”, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press. Lewis, D. and Mosse, D. eds. (2006) Development Brokers and Translators. Ethnography of Aid and Agencies. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press. Li, T. M. (2007) The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development and the Practice of Politics. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. Marcondes, D. and Mawdsley, M. (2017) South–South in retreat? The transitions from Lula to Rousseff to Temer and Brazilian development cooperation. International Affairs, 93(3), 681–699. Mawdsley, E. (2012) From Recipients to Donors. Emerging Powers and the Changing Development Landscape. London: Zed Books. Milhorance, C. (2018) New Geographies of Global Policy-Making: South-South Networks and Rural Development Strategies. New York: Routledge. Mosse, D. (2004) Cultivating Development. An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice. London and Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press. Mosse, D. (2013) The anthropology of international development. Annual Review of Anthropology, 42, 227–246. Pickup, M. (2016) Foreign policy of the New Left: Explaining Brazil’s Southern partnerships. Contexto Internacional, 38(1), 55–93. Said, E. (1979) Orientalism. New York: Vintage. Santos, B. S. (2002) Between Prospero and Caliban: Colonialism, postcolonialism, and inter-identity. Luso-Brazilian Review, 39(2), 9–43. Saraiva, J. F. S. (1996) O lugar da África: A dimensão Atlântica da política externa brasileira de 1946 a nossos dias.: Brasília: Editora Unb. Shankland, A. and Gonçalves, E. (2016) Imagining agricultural development in the South: The contestation and transformation of ProSAVANA. World Development, 81(1), 35–46. Strathern, M. (1991) Partial Connections. Savage, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

VIGNETTE: INTERROGATING THE BINARY IN BRAZIL’S AGRICULTURAL COOPERATION FOR DEVELOPMENT Lídia Cabral

In this short piece, I engage critically with binary representations in South–South cooperation (SSC). I draw on my own research on Brazil’s agricultural cooperation for development, a field that is strongly politicized and polarized, as aptly represented by the notion of dualism. In Brazilian agriculture, dualism is commonly understood as the coexistence of family farming and agribusiness, two competing agricultural development paradigms. Yet, my research suggests there are other forms of binary opposition in Brazil’s agriculture and agricultural cooperation policy, debates and practice. I highlight analytical and practical challenges posed by the binary in researching SSC and discuss the role of the binary opposition in the political construction of the field of development cooperation in Brazil. I also argue that, when taken abroad, the binary obfuscates difference and other battles at the receiving end of the South–South interaction.

Brazil’s agrarian dualism The family farming/agribusiness dualism is one of the most salient features of Brazil’s agrarian politics and one that was, until recently, represented in the very structure of government, in which a family farming ministry existed alongside an agribusiness ministry. Brazil’s agricultural dualism has been exported to other countries through the channel of SSC (Patriota and Pierri 2013; Pierri 2013; Zanella and Milhorance 2016) – hence the object of this short piece. According to the dualist framing, family farming is equated with small- to medium-scale farming that is predominantly focused on food crops sold in domestic markets, whereas agribusiness stands for large-scale, highly mechanized and export-oriented farms growing high-earning commodities. Another distinction is that family farmers use primarily family labour and often live on the farm, whereas agribusinesses employ outside labour and owners often do not live on the

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farm. Yet, these two categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Some of the attributes associated with each side of the duo often overlap. For example, some family farmers are well-integrated into exports markets and many grow non-food crops and agricultural commodities (such as soybeans) as their main crops. And large farms certainly grow food for domestic consumption. Furthermore, the binary does not do justice to the diversity and complexity of farming systems, agrarian structures and lifestyles in Brazil – just consider the size of the country and its complex social, cultural and ecological fabric. This diversity manifests in the many societal groups with distinct livelihoods and forms of interaction with natural resources, which spread across the vast Brazilian countryside and include quilombolas (Afro-descendants), ribeirinhos (river-based communities), and many more very diverse indigenous groups (Meggers 1984; Shankland et al. 2016). Dualism can be better understood as the battlefront between competing ideological projects for the countryside, interwoven with long-running class-based and geographical disputes that reflect a very unequal agrarian setting (Fernandes et al. 2012). To be sure, the ideas and agendas that are in opposition – land reform vs protecting agrarian privilege; GMOs vs native seeds; biotechnology vs agroecology; local public procurement of food vs market liberalization; subsidies to small vs large farmers – can hardly be condensed into two neatly distinct opposites but are part of distinct, if sometimes overlapping, binaries. Nonetheless, the political organization and governance of the agricultural sector in Brazil reflect and reproduce the dualistic framework. Political bi-polarization is represented, in the National Congress, in the division between the two opposing lobby groups – Bancada Ruralista and Nucleo Agrário. Each of these is linked to one major political party. The Brazilian Democratic Movement’s Party (PMDB) (a catch-all party without programmatic orientation but supported by large land holders and corporations) dominates the former, while the Workers’ Party (PT) drives the latter. Also, until recently, governance structures directly reflected dualism, with the coexistence of two agricultural ministries – the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply (MAPA) supporting agribusiness and the Ministry of Agrarian Development (MDA) supporting family farmers and overseeing land reform.1 This institutional division was consolidated during the presidency of Lula da Silva (2003–10). The PT-led government gradually expanded the budget and strengthened the political muscle of the MDA. A major policy achievement was the establishment of family farmers as a legally defined category of farmers and as beneficiaries of MDA programmes, most notably the National Programme for Strengthening Family Farmers (PRONAF). Yet, President Lula himself, with his conciliatory style, often portrayed the duality as the untroubled cohabitation of complementary models (Lula da Silva 2010, 13, author’s translation). FAO’s Director-General (2011–2019), a supporter of the family farming agenda, has argued that agribusiness is not necessarily separate from or inimical to family farming, as family farms are often integrated in value chains that connect farm

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production with processing and marketing activities (Graziano da Silva 2010). Dualism has remained, however, strongly present in the domestic policy debate (IBGE and MDA 2009; FGV and CNA 2010) and it has been transposed into the field of development cooperation (Cabral 2016).

Multiple binaries Brazil’s agrarian politics is populated with many other binary representations that do not have a linear equivalence with the family farming–agribusiness dualism, such as: food vs cash crops; modern vs indigenous farming practices; science as politically neutral vs science as instrument of social change; and land as productive asset vs land as territory of life. Class- and geography- based divides are also not well represented in the binary: the relatively well-off and market-integrated family farmers from the South of Brazil, who indeed become the template for the family farming concept and the political drive for its institutionalization, stand in stark contrast to the resource-poor peasant farmers from the Northeast or the Amazon (Schneider and Cassol 2014). Hence, although the polarization of the policy debate is considerable, the discursive position of the fault line varies somewhat depending on the issue at stake. For example, if the issue is the distribution of public funding, the divide will often be between family farmers, supported by PRONAF, and larger agribusinesses, supported by MAPA policies. If the issue is GMOs and the use of chemicals, however, the divide then becomes one between modernized farmers (including family farmers) and those pushing for agroecological farming practices. And if the issue is land access, the divide then shifts again to landed and landless people. The binary perspective is also noticeable in Brazil’s development cooperation principles more broadly. The country’s Southern diplomacy, horizontality and emancipatory reciprocity is contrasted with the vertical hierarchies and presumably meddlesome tendencies of Northern aid giving. Guided by the foreign policy principles of non-interference and respect for the sovereignty of partner countries (Almeida 2006), Brazilian cooperation has been officially portrayed as driven by demands from partner countries rather than imposed by the Brazilian government and as detached from commercial interests (Abreu 2013). It has been framed as a ‘cooperation among equals’ (Amorim 2010, 231), or a horizontal relationship between partners based on a solidarity ethic (Abreu 2013) and the presumption of appropriateness of Brazilian solutions and ‘successes’ to address similar challenges faced by other developing countries (Brazilian Cooperation Agency [ABC], 2013). The symbolic claims of SSC are, as suggested by Mawdsley (2012), a direct contrast with those attributed to Western donors. SSC is – it is claimed – about opportunity and reciprocity rather than charity based on a moral obligation to compensate for a colonial history. It is about empathy based on shared identity rather than condescending sympathy for the unfortunate and distant others.

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Challenges for the researcher The pervasiveness of the binary in Brazil’s agricultural cooperation raises some challenges. It poses an analytical challenge because it sets the divide at a certain point in the discursive space, while obscuring differences and similarities within and between the two contending sides. For example, family farmers are also producers of high-value export commodities. Mier y Terán (2016) and Vennet et al. (2016) describe family farmers growing soybeans, in the Cerrado and in Southern Brazil, respectively, offering a contrast with the stereotyped peasant families displaying staple crops on their small plots of land and the stereotyped large-scale soybean farmer of the Cerrado (Wheatley 2010). Also, within each of the categories there are many distinct conditions which challenge the unity of each category. Agribusiness encompasses not just large modern farms that are successfully integrated in international markets, but also oldstyle unproductive latifúndio that are linked to Brazil’s traditional oligarchies (Hagopian 1996). Family farming, on the other hand, comprises both marginalized peasant farmers, excluded from the modernization process, and also modern small producers, seeking to modernize themselves and fit into the capitalistic system (Favareto 2013). Policy actors from across the agricultural sector have deployed these categories for political expediency. Bruno and Sevá (2010) argue that modern large-scale farmers and traditional agrarian elites coalesced around a notion – agribusiness – that enabled them to rise above their differences and strengthen their hegemonic position, namely, by blurring the frontier between rural and urban. The binary opposition between SSC and traditional aid or North–South cooperation can also be spurious. Brazilian and American agronomists, funded by Brazilian and American cooperation programmes, respectively, worked side-by-side at the Umbeluzi research station, as part of a trilateral cooperation project (Programa ProAlimentos) in Mozambique. In contrast, Brazilian scientists described having little in common with their fellow-‘Southern’ Chinese peers working across the road at the Umbeluzi Agricultural Technology Demonstration Centre (Chichava et al. 2013). The binary also poses a practical challenge for the researcher, as access and interaction with actors and key informants, including fellow researchers, may be compromised if your own positionality in relation to the binary is not clearly defined and aligned with their own. I have experienced this first hand in many of my interviews with actors who were positioned on either side of the debate. This inherent pressure to take sides has sometimes pushed research on Brazilian cooperation in the direction of proving a particular cooperation initiative – be it the presumably agribusiness-led ProSAVANA in Mozambique or the family farming-led More Food Programme – right or wrong, without sufficient critical interrogation.

Binary as ‘agonistic pluralism’ Although questioning the epistemological validity of the binary, I do not wish to dismiss its normative strength and worth. I also recognize that any attempt to

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generate an impartial reading of Brazil’s agricultural cooperation would fail to appreciate and fully account for the political struggles that underpin it (or indeed recognize the socially constructed character of research, where impartiality is an illusion). For Brazilian agricultural cooperation has been essentially a space of power, conflict and antagonism between a hegemonic and a counter-hegemonic project. The hegemonic project is tangibly represented by powerful agribusinesses, the Bancada Ruralista and the primacy of modernization and profit-making logics. The counter-hegemonic takes shape in land struggles, competition for resources for small-scale farmers, and advocacy against mono-cropping and industrial farming. And although there are many faces to the struggle (family farming vs agribusiness is a simplified representation of the many disputes at stake), the binary as discursive articulation can be regarded as a form of ‘agonistic pluralism’ (Mouffe 2005), whose virtue is to expose the “confrontation between opposing hegemonic projects that can never be reconciled rationally” (Mouffe n.d., para. 7). From this perspective, the reproduction of the binary in the research and practice of Brazil’s agricultural cooperation can be regarded an exercise of political expression that rejects the possibility of deliberation between adversary projects, being around agrarian reform, biotechnology, or the role of the state and science in supporting social change. Yet, what happens when this essentially Brazilian binary is transposed into a foreign setting through SSC? What does the binary in Brazilian agricultural cooperation mean for those on the other end of the South–South partnership?

Whose binary counts in SSC? Brazilian technologies and policy designs may travel, but what about power struggles which are rooted in Brazil’s history, geography and society? Can the binary be dissected from its political origins and still be meaningful? For Mozambican government officials, whom I interviewed during my research, MDA and MAPA or family farming and agribusiness did not constitute particularly relevant distinctions. For them, the binary was barely noticeable and Brazil appeared as virtually unitary in its agricultural development trajectory (Cabral et al. 2016). The same can be said about the South–North binary. SSC was hardly talked about as a collective in Mozambique, as there was nothing particularly unique that united Brazil with other presumably Southern partners, such as China or India. They were all distinctive partners, just as the United States and Sweden were. The South vs North binary was equally trivial at the receiving end. When transposed into the Mozambican setting, the Brazilian binary – whether about agrarian dualism or about South vs North – remains essentially Brazilian. Hence, when Mozambican social movements criticize agribusiness and embrace the family farming narrative, they are borrowing someone else’s struggle and by so doing undermining their own legitimate causes. Furthermore, because it is decontextualized, when dualism is deployed abroad it inevitably becomes ethnocentric and propagandistic, as in common claims by Brazilian actors (being diplomats,

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bureaucrats, practitioners or activists) about Southern affinities and Brazil’s suitable solutions for other developing countries (Amorim 2010; Abreu 2013; PAA 2013). So although the binary has been central to the political construction of cooperation by Brazilian actors (in agriculture particularly), it has morphed into propaganda when invoked abroad. The very notion of South–South cooperation is in effect the denial of difference in political struggles across the South. The term South–South particularly obliterates any contrast between one South and the other South, and thereby presumes similarities and hides differences and unbalances between the two sides.

Note 1 MDA was dismantled by the government of Michel Temer that succeeded President Dilma Rousseff after she was controversially ousted from power in 2016.

References ABC (2013) Manual de Gestão da Cooperação Técnica Sul-Sul. Brasília: Agência Brasileira de Cooperação. Abreu, F. J. M. (2013) A evolução da Cooperação Técnica Internacional no Brasil / The evolution of international technical cooperation in Brazil. Mural Internacional, 4(2), 3–16. Almeida, P. R. (2006) A diplomacia da era Lula: Balanço e avaliação. Available at: www.pra lmeida.org/ (accessed 23 March 2016). Amorim, C. (2010) Brazilian foreign policy under President Lula (2003–2010): An overview. Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional, 53 (special edition), 214–240. Bruno, R. and Sevá, J. (2010) Representação de interesses patronais em tempo de agronegócio. In Moreira, R. J. and Bruno, R. eds., Dimensões rurais de políticas brasileiras. Rio de Janeiro: Mauad X and Editora da Universidade Rural, pp. 71–103. Cabral, L. et al. (2016) Brazil’s agricultural politics in Africa: More Food International and the disputed meanings of “family farming”. World Development, 81(May), 47–60. Cabral, L. (2016) Priests, Technicians and Traders: Actors, Interests and Discursive Politics in Brazil’s Agricultural Development Cooperation Programmes with Mozambique. Unpublished PhD thesis, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. Chichava, S. et al. (2013) Brazil and China in Mozambican agriculture: Emerging insights from the field. IDS Bulletin, 44(4), 101–115. Favareto, A. (2013) The misconceived notion of a successful Brazilian agriculture and some difficulties to endogenize an external model. Political Economy of Agricultural Policy in Africa, International Conference, 18–20 March, Pretoria. Fernandes, B. M., Welch, C. A. and Gonçalves, E. C. (2012) Políticas fundiárias no Brasil: Uma análise geo-histórica da governança da terra no Brasil. Rome: International Land Coalition. Available at: www2.fct.unesp.br/nera/ltd/politicas_fundiarias_brasil-bmf_caw_ecg. pdf (accessed 18 February 2013). FGV and CNA (2010) Quem produz o quê no campo: Quanto e onde II. Brasília: Fundação Getúlio Vargas and Confederação Nacional de Agricultura. Graziano da Silva, J. (2010) Os desafios das agriculturas brasileiras. In Gasques, J. G., Vieira Filho, J. E. and Navarro, Z. eds., A agricultura Brasileira: Desempenho, desafios, perspectivas. Brasília, DF: Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada and Ministério da Agricultura, Pecuária e Abastecimento, pp. 157–183.

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Hagopian, F. (1996) Traditional Politics and Regime Change in Brazil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics). Available at: http://dx.doi. org/10.1017/CBO9780511584862 (Accessed 15 April 2016). IBGE and MDA (2009) Censo Agropecuário 2006. Agricultural familiar. Primeiros resultados: Brasil, grandes regiões e unidades da federação. Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística and Ministério do Desenvolvimento Agrário. Available at: https://loja.ibge. gov.br/censo-agropecuario-2006-primeiros-resultados-agricultura-familiar-brasil-grandesregioes-e-unidades-da-federac-o.html (accessed 27 February 2013). Lula da Silva, L. I. (2010) Discurso do Presidente da República, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In Diálogo Brasil-África sobre segurança alimentar, combate à fome e desenvolvimento rural. Brasília. Mawdsley, E. (2012) From Recipients to Donors: Emerging Powers and the Changing Development Landscape. London: Zed Books. Meggers, B. J. (1984) The indigenous peoples of Amazonia, their cultures, land use patterns and effects on the landscape and biota. In Sioli, H. ed. The Amazon. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 627–648. Mier y Terán, M. (2016) Soybean agri-food systems dynamics and the diversity of farming styles on the agricultural frontier in Mato Grosso, Brazil. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 43 (2), 419–441. Mouffe, C. (2005) On the Political. New York: Routledge. Mouffe, C. (n.d.) Agonistic democracy and radical politics. Pavilion Journal. Available at: http://pa vilionmagazine.org/chantal-mouffe-agonistic-democracy-and-radical-politics/ (accessed 8 June 2018). PAA (2013) About PAA-Africa, PAA-Africa Purchase from Africans for Africa. Available at: http s://nacoesunidas.org/programas-de-apoio-a-agricultores-africanos-se-inspiram-em-iniciati va-brasileira-de-combate-a-fome/ (accessed 12 March 2014). Patriota, T. C. and Pierri, F. M. (2013) Brazil’s cooperation in African agricultural development and food security. In Cheru, F. and Modi, R. eds., Agricultural Development and Food Security in Africa. London and New York: Zed Books, pp. 125–144. Pierri, F. M. (2013) How Brazil’s agrarian dynamics shape development cooperation in Africa. IDS Bulletin, 44(4), 69–79. Schneider, S. and Cassol, A. (2014) Diversidade e heterogeneidade da agricultura familiar no Brasil e algumas implicações para políticas públicas. Cadernos de Ciência & Tecnologia, 31(2), 227–263. Shankland, A. et al. (2016) ‘Traditional Peoples’ and the Struggle for Inclusive Land Governance in Brazil. Brighton: Institute of Development Studies. Vennet, B. V., Schneider, S. and Dessein, J. (2016) Different farming styles behind the homogenous soy production in southern Brazil. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 43(2), 396–418. Wheatley, J. (2010) Brazilian farms sow seeds of openness. Financial Times, 14 April. Available at: www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5e7d3796-47e2-11df-b998-00144feab49a.html#axzz2KzE J1Imu (accessed 15 February 2013). Zanella, M. A. and Milhorance, C. (2016) Cerrado meets savannah, family farmers meet peasants: The political economy of Brazil’s agricultural cooperation with Mozambique. Food Policy, 58, 70–81. doi:10.1016/j.foodpol.2015.12.006.

VIGNETTE: WRITING ABOUT SOUTH–SOUTH DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION AS A MEXICAN DIPLOMAT Gerardo Bracho1

I am a Mexican diplomat. For more than a decade, I have dealt with development issues as a Mexican (observer) delegate to the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD (DAC), as a Deputy Director General at the Mexican Cooperation Agency (AMEXCID2) and as an official of the OECD. During this period, I have researched and written academic articles about the history and current debates on development cooperation. On the former I have dealt with the origins of the DAC (Bracho 2011). On the latter, I have focused on the agenda of the ‘South–South cooperation providers’ (Bracho 2015, 2017, 2018a, 2018b; Bracho and Grimm 2016) and within it, on the role of Mexico (Bracho 2009, 2016; Bracho and Garcìa López 2009, 2011; Bracho and Perez-Pineda 2015). In what follows, I will reflect on two issues: (1) the advantages and disadvantages of doing research as a diplomat and (2) the challenges of writing about South–South Development Cooperation (SSDC) as a Mexican. It is commonly thought that there is or should be a wall between diplomacy and academia, an extension of the wall between politics and research. Academics who deal with contemporary foreign affairs study what diplomats do. Not only do they have analytical tools and training but they also enjoy a distance and liberty, which allows them to unveil ‘the truth’ from the facts. In contrast, the diplomat is often expected to publicly defend a political position and, as a result, lacks the freedom and objectivity that is vital for research. More so than other politicians and public servants, however, diplomats have often doubled as academics. There is a strong tradition in the US of diplomats who began their careers as academics specializing in international relations: these include prominent figures such as Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski. In Mexico, we have a long tradition of officials with strong academic credentials in international relations (e.g. Rosario Green or Carlos Rico) and of diplomats who excel in literature (e.g. Octavio Paz or Carlos Fuentes). The wall between academics and diplomacy, thus, is often a porous one in practice.

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The position of the diplomat researcher is complex and very different from that of an academic. To start with, we have access to different types of information. The diplomat is privy to confidential documents and engages in private conversations that clarify not only what is happening but also why. The academic who is studying a contemporary event often lacks this insight. When the researcher is dealing with a historically remote topic, however, s/he may have access to information to which the diplomats of that period did not. As time passes, the insider–outsider divide closes when it comes to historical events. Another important difference between academics and diplomats is the structure of their careers. Whereas academics generally study a specific topic or set of topics over a number of decades, diplomats constantly change assignments and postings. It is rare to be able to specialize and to follow a single issue such as SSDC over a long period of time as I have done in my career. As a result, diplomats often approach a topic with less insight into its historical evolution. Entering the topic in medias res they are less aware of the rationale and logic of the agendas in which they intervene. This can have negative consequences for these agendas which sometimes cease to fulfil their initial promise because they are misunderstood by bureaucrats who were not involved in their conceptualization or who have not witnessed their evolution over time. Diplomats and academics also differ in what they can say. Although diplomats have more access to information, they are often not in a position to disclose it. But even when they can do so, they might not be able to analyse it academically, because they often cannot express their views openly. The Mexican law on the Foreign Service, for example, requires diplomats to keep confidential “information to which they have access in their diplomatic work”. Nevertheless, they are also asked to observe the law on “transparency” (i.e. to be transparent) and encouraged to engage in academic work and to publish. To this end, the Ministry has its own journal – the open-access Revista Mexicana de Política Exterior – which is intended not for political propaganda but for serious analysis of diplomatic issues. Diplomats, thus, must engage in a delicate balancing act, offering enlightened discussion of current events for a broader public but respecting state secrets and confidential information. Diplomats and academics, thus, face different challenges. In the age of the internet and social media, however, the gap between them is in some respects closing. Thanks to digitalization, researchers can now consult minutes, transcripts and even videos of meetings almost immediately and the emphasis on ‘transparency’ in public organizations has given them unprecedented access. Many democratic governments, including Mexico’s, are obliged by law to provide on demand detailed information about issues of public interest and SSDC is not precisely an area that involves many ‘state secrets’. Moreover, the growing frequency of leaks (for example, through Wikileaks) has vastly increased the amount and quality of information available. Not only do outsiders have more access to the inside, but with the advent of new technologies and the blurring of the public/private divide, insiders are also

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more willing to speak on the outside. Politicians and public servants keep fewer secrets than in the past and do so for shorter periods of time. To cash in on their fame, they publish their ‘memoirs’ closer and closer to the day on which they leave office, and some do not even wait until the end of their term to divulge their secrets: former French President François Hollande shared intimate reflections on his experience (through an interview with two journalists) in the middle of his mandate, a decision decried by the establishment. In short, as access to the facts widens, the one comparative advantage of the diplomat diminishes. In my own work, I have often been struck by how much information is available to the wider public. Recently, for example, I published a piece on the history of the relations between the South–South Cooperation providers and the Aid Effectiveness Agenda promoted by the OECD DAC (Bracho 2017). I had the advantage of having been involved in this agenda (mainly as a Mexican diplomat) for many years. But although my private notes and recollection of events were helpful in reconstructing its history, in almost all cases I could back up my points by referring to some sort of published document. A diligent academic could have done the same work. In addition to being a diplomat, I am also a Mexican writing about South–South Cooperation. This position is perhaps even more problematic. Until the late 1970s, Mexico was a leader of the ‘Third World’. Since the 1980s and especially after 1994 when it joined the OECD, signed NAFTA and left the G-77, however, Mexico’s status as a Southern nation has been routinely contested. Mexico aligned itself with the North and followed the Washington Consensus neoliberal script, but contrary to expectations, this has not allowed it to ‘leave the South behind’. Although Mexico has a relatively high income per capita, it remains by most standards (informality, wages, inequality, security etc.) much closer to the South than the North. In recent years, Mexico has struggled to deal with the ‘schizophrenia’ of being an OECD partner of the North while facing Southern challenges. Even now, the country lacks a convincing narrative and body of practices to address its position as an ‘emerging power’ situated between North and South: it has not done enough to take on board its global and even its regional responsibilities. This is particularly true in the SSDC agenda. Although Mexico recently introduced a Development Cooperation Law and created a new cooperation agency (AMEXCID), it has fallen short of adopting a substantial SSDC programme. Given its unique position, Mexico should be interested in developing a narrative and practices for the emerging cooperation providers of the South.3 With so many pressing domestic issues, however, the political will to develop a more active and ambitious foreign policy, including in development cooperation, has been lacking. Moreover, it has not been easy to navigate between the North and the South. With Northern countries of the OECD DAC seeking to erase the North–South (donor–recipient) divide, and Southern countries grouped in the G-77 pressuring to keep it untouched, the third-way alternatives that might better reflect the new global geopolitical environment and the needs of countries such as Mexico are

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regularly squeezed out. Thus for example, in the brief experience of the Heiligendamm dialogue process, Mexico was willing to consolidate a G-5 of emerging economies (South Africa, China, India, Mexico and Brazil) to deal with the G-8. But this attempt was shunned by both its emerging peers and by the G8 (Aranda Bezaury and Díaz Ceballos 2010). Something similar happened on the issue of the commitments or responsibilities that the ‘South–South cooperation providers’ were expected to take at the development effectiveness agenda. Mexico (with Brazil and South Korea) championed a ‘third way’ of ‘differential commitments’. That is, a mid-way solution between ‘no responsibilities’ as argued by the South (camouflaged under the concept of ‘Common but Differentiated Responsibilities’ or CBDR), and the ‘full-fledged donor responsibilities’, supported by the North. Though the ‘differential commitments’ concept made it to the Busan outcome document that led to the creation of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, as it had no solid support from neither of the two poles, it soon vanished from the agenda (Bracho 2015 and 2017). In my work as both a diplomat and a researcher, the ambiguous position of Mexico has often been a stumbling block. Practitioners and even academics from the rest of the South tend to view Mexico with suspicion, while those from the North fail to understand what they see as our ‘inconsistencies’. Even Mexico’s inclusion in the recently created Network of Southern Think Tanks (NeST), an academic consortium focused on SSC, has been controversial. Nevertheless, the position of being in between often has advantages. Busan is again a case in point. Mexico did play an important role in bridging the divide between Northern and Southern providers. Though as I said, the middle of the road solution turned out to be too weak to prevail and soon both, the North and the South, were back at their default positions. The researcher (like any other human being) is not ‘neutral’ but has a multidimensional identity which influences his or her academic output. This is especially true in a highly politicized area such as SSDC. As I have suggested, the two identities that I explore here, my profession and my nationality, have both advantages and disadvantages. As a diplomat, I am privy to many discussions and am privileged to be able to intervene in the making of foreign policy. This has its advantages for academic work. When dealing with the history of development cooperation, it is easier to reconstruct the genesis of an organization if you actually work in it (Bracho 2011); or capture the dynamics of decades-old multilateral meetings, if you happen to assist regularly in the present version of them (Bracho 2017). When dealing with contemporary matters, I can draw on my personal notes and experience. But there are limits on what I can say about my experience and my personal views.4 As a Mexican, I must confront the challenge of Mexico’s singular position in the international system. Nevertheless, writing from a position that is neither North nor South also allows me to reflect on the common good from a more inbetween position and to avoid exclusive and polarizing narratives. In an age in which multilateralism is under threat and a new Cold War seems to be raising its head, this more inclusive perspective is more important than ever before.

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Notes 1 Gerardo Bracho is a Mexican diplomat and an Associate Senior Fellow at the Centre for Global Cooperation Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Mr. Bracho expresses here his personal views, which should not be attributed to the Mexican Government. 2 Agencia Mexicana de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo. 3 For an overview of what these practices and narrative might look like, see Bracho 2015 and Bracho 2016. 4 Diplomats are also obliged to start from the premise that development cooperation is positive and meaningful, a claim that is often contested by academics (e.g. Arturo Escobar, Dambisa Moyo).

References Aranda Bezaury, M. and Díaz Ceballos, B. (2010). México y los cambios en la estructura económica internacional. In Torres, B. and Vega, G. ed., Los Grandes Problemas de México: Relaciones Internacionales, Vol. XII. Mexico DF: El Colegio de México, pp. 651–673. Bracho, G. (2009) La identidad de los países de renta media y de México desde la perspectiva de la OCDE. In Martínez, C. A. and Pérez Pineda, J. A. eds., México y los países de renta media en la cooperación para el desarrollo: ¿hacia dónde vamos?México DF: Instituto Mora-Flacso-Cideal, pp. 287–315. Bracho, G. (2011). The origins of the Development Assistance Group (and the OECD): The Western emerging donors and the aid burden sharing agenda. Paper presented at the OECD Symposium to Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Origins of the DAC (15. 12. 2011). Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (Unpublished but widely circulated). Bracho, G. (2015). In Search of a Narrative for Southern providers: The Challenge of the Emerging Economies to the Development Cooperation Agenda (Discussion Paper 1/2015). Bonn: German Development Institute/Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE). Bracho, G., (2016) La crisis de la Agenda de la Cooperación Internacional para el desarrollo: los proveedores del sur y el papel de México. In Ponce Adame, E. et al. eds., Teoría y práctica de la cooperación internacional para el desarrollo. Una perspectiva desde México. México DF: GCID, AMEI, REMECID, pp. 143–157. Bracho, G. (2017). The Troubled Relationship of the Emerging Powers and the Effective Development Cooperation Agenda: History, Challenges and Opportunities. (Discussion Paper 25/2017). Bonn: German Development Institute/Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE). Bracho, G. (2018a). Towards a common definition of South-South cooperation: Bringing together the spirit of Bandung and the spirit of Buenos Aires. Development Cooperation Review, 1(6). Bracho, G. (2018b). El CAD y China: Origen y fin de la ayuda al desarrollo. Revista CIDOB d´Afers Internacionals, 120. Bracho, G. and Garcìa López, A. (2009) La reforma de la cooperación Mexicana en el contexto internacional: Los donantes emergentes y el comité de asistencia al desarrollo de la OCDE. En quince años de México en la OCD. México DF: Instituto Matías RomeroSER, pp. 91–129. Bracho, G. and García López, A. (2011) México y el CAD de la OCDE: Una relación en construcción. Revista Española de Desarrollo y Cooperación, 28, 67–79.

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Bracho, G. and Perez-Pineda, J. (2015) Development agencies in emerging powers: The Mexican case. In Chaturvedi, S. et al., ed., Development Agencies in Emerging Powers. Johannesburg: South African Institute of International Affairs, pp. 168–186. Bracho, G. and Grimm, S. (2016) South-South cooperation and fragmentation: A nonissue?. In Klingebiel, S. et al., ed., The Fragmentation of Aid. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 121–135.

6 INTERROGATING THE SOLIDARITY NARRATIVE Rediscovering difference through African–Asian Gender Politics Rirhandu Mageza-Barthel and Uta Ruppert

Our research interest: African–Asian gender politics in a global context Recent African–Asian relations make avid use of a Bandung-inspired solidarity frame and exemplify increased South–South cooperation. However, when attention is shifted to non-state actors and people-to-people interactions, questions of differences and contradictions in both the conceptions and political implications of African–Asian solidarity arise. In our study, we noted a range of responses to negotiating the changing cooperation and donor landscape on the continent. The most important position we identified with regard to China–Africa relations was what we have called feminist abstention, which represents a position for challenging the solidarity narrative without disrupting it completely. This straightforward synopsis, however, belies the complex and protracted process that led to our findings. We began work on a project exploring the agency of African state and non-state actors towards recent Chinese involvement in the continent in 2013, as part of a research programme on Africa’s Asian Options (AFRASO) sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. We initially started with an interest in how gender relations were discussed and notions concerning these relations of inequality exchanged between Chinese and African women. Already in the early stages of our research project, we noted that organized social relations were hardly visible and could not be understood without the larger political framework they would build on. As a result, we changed our course to centre on the kinds of gender politics that take place in Chinese–African interactions instead and have further sought to elucidate the state–society relations that underpin these (Mageza-Barthel and Ruppert forthcoming). This chapter therefore provides an insight into our experiences as a team researching the nature and dynamics of African and

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Chinese gender politics. We primarily portray how our research design attempted to comprehend the interactions between China and Africa in this field, highlight how including gender politics in South–South relations brings particular challenges, and – against a global academic backdrop – reflect on how this has affected or been affected by our team’s dynamics.

Bringing a feminist lens to African–Asian relations – or, what we intended to do Early in our project, we departed from the assumptions we had sketched out at the beginning: that a political agenda governed by such norms as equality and participation should encourage mobilization and cooperation in the area of gender politics, because both rely on similar foundations. Yet during the course of our empirical analysis, we found that exchanges and initiatives in gender politics were less intense than expected. With hindsight though, we find it hardly surprising that many feminist movements in the global South have consciously positioned themselves in the context of South–South solidarities, while state-led South–South discourses have only casually and sparingly had recourse to feminist perspectives or raised questions of gender equity. We arrived at our original assumptions as scholars who during their respective (academic) biographies have lived in, conducted research and taught on international politics in the global South. Our common interests span such topics as the changing character of the global order, how social movements engage the international arena to contribute to a qualitative shift in socio-political relations, and the implications this has for gender relations in particular contexts (see Rompel and Ruppert 2012; Mageza-Barthel 2015; Ruppert 2015, 2017; Dhawan et al. 2016). With our training in Gender Studies, African Studies and Political Science, our perspectives have been decidedly feminist, and this compels us to adopt a gendered lens in our enquiries, to expand mainstream analyses of socio-political structures and praxes through advancing the gender category as a constitutive aspect of all socio-political relations, as well as to recognize the mutual reinforcement of academic and activist efforts. Despite our custom of employing feminist perspectives to tap into new research fields in international politics, we were still surprised that gender politics (in its narrow sense) was barely a subject in the now well-established and rather broad field of research on Chinese–African relations. At the beginning of our research, only two studies had explicitly focused on gender issues in Chinese–African economic exchange (Manyeruke 2006; Axelsson and Sylvanus 2010). During the course of our project, further studies widened this focus to include transmigration and diplomatic interactions (Huynh 2015; Monson 2016). And, while remaining a niche topic within the research field, the subject of social differences that foreground any notion of gender equity has steadily found its way into discussions of African–Chinese relations. It is precisely this feminist perspective that has allowed us to arrive at a more differentiated and nuanced picture of the current South–South narrative.

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Reflections on a research process – or, what transpired Gender politics, specifically, appeared to us a very promising lens with which to study Chinese–African relations beyond the state. Internationally vested feminist actors and networks – who have taken seriously the tenets of South–South solidarity as a critique of unequal global relations and the asymmetrical exercise of normative authority – should be acknowledged as laying a critical foundation to the current trend of transregionalization. Our aim was to analyse transregionalization – as the increased morphing of otherwise distinct regions whose economic, social and political interactions have given rise to new cross-regional processes and experiences – as distinct from UN-connected processes of transnationalization that had come to define the politics of women’s movements over decades. African feminists have developed their own take on present South–South cooperation, which are tied to Third World and feminist solidarity politics, as we will see below.

Shifting perspectives According to our understanding of transregionalization as distinct from transnationalization, we aimed at shifting perspectives. Based on our previous research backgrounds where we both extensively worked on transnational feminisms and set these in relation to United Nations (UN) frameworks, in the current project, we decided to further explore the changing practice of gender politics in a South– South context, which is not primarily informed by UN rules and discourses. AFRASO’s funding originates in a government programme intended to structurally reorganize area studies in Germany, which sets the context for our work and the evolving issues we have encountered on a theoretical and practical level. As in other parts of the world, area studies has been in need of reform because global events and structures have fundamentally changed since research first began in the field. Together with most of our colleagues whose work is characterized by critical approaches to the social sciences and humanities, we read the Ministry’s Call for Applications as an invitation to bring into view the diversity and erasures that had been prevalent within area studies. In this regard, the topic of China–Africa was of central importance but not the exclusive interest for our research programme. Moreover, employing a perspective in which African agency features in a polycentric world and exploring the nexus between Asia and Africa, i.e. inter-actions and trans-regional relations, was our common objective. In our case though, our project would be decidedly different from other projects in the programme and from previous studies, since our feminist lens would inform it. Pairing the otherwise marginalized field of gender politics with that of China–Africa debates would permit the two of us to pursue our objectives. Since China is such a prominent Asian actor, we decided to focus our attention on its cooperation with at least two major African states. We would seek out Chinese and African women’s organizations’ efforts to organize and to engage with these newer global dynamics, as the processes of capitalist transformation in their

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contexts are simultaneously affecting both groups. What largely distinguishes the Chinese and African women’s group from each other is the level of political pressure that makes women’s self-organization beyond the state a particularly daunting task. This reasoning was exemplified by our first choices, which fell on two politically significant states – Ethiopia and Kenya. Both were countries that were prominent in early discussions of Chinese–African relations, where the voices of African scholars had visibly contributed to debates that nevertheless replicated the gender-blind analyses known from other research areas, despite there being entrenched local histories of gender politics and prominent Gender Studies scholarship in the chosen African countries. To our surprise, Ethiopia’s explanatory value for our research question turned out to be less encouraging than we had imagined: Chinese engagement in gender politics was conducted differently and to a lesser extent to what we had anticipated. Furthermore, civil society in Ethiopia was only able to carve out minute spaces of autonomous movement for itself in relation to the state. Nonetheless, even today, Ethiopia remains a reference against which to discuss further findings (Eckl et al. 2017). Our readings of the transregional, gendered relations in Ethiopia were to be contrasted to those in Kenya. However, in the midst of our research process, developments in Kenya (2013–2014) became increasingly volatile, and short-term sporadic security threats impeded the further planning of data gathering. The contested political atmosphere in the country and the lack of sufficient institutional safeguards available to international scholars such as ourselves raised concerns about the feasibility of conducting research on site. So, to maintain our intended design, we turned to a country that would not only have manifold but also multifaceted relations with China, and continued our research in South Africa. The country has a diverse Chinese community that goes back generations, and is distinguished by intense people-to-people interactions with mainland China as well as the special place the local women’s movement holds in the global women’s movement (see e. g. Huynh et al. 2010; Salo 2010). These reasons, rather than the fact that one of us identifies as South African, informed our decision to continue our research there. Who we are and what differences we perceived during the research process is the subject of the next section. In the form of a critical self-reflection concerning the process of learning and positioning ourselves in the research process of the four-year project, it considers how we came to understand the dominant stance of South Africa’s women’s organizations with regard to the positions we found ourselves in.

Situating ourselves within a project on South–South relations Guided by our notion of empirically based theory production, we are deeply rooted in the ongoing discourse on feminist epistemologies and research methodologies (as political) and perceived our research as a learning process. Critical feminist debates encompassed early conceptualizations of situated knowledge (e.g. Haraway 1988), were influenced by interventions on black feminist thought (e.g. Hill

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Collins 1990) and a wide spectrum of postcolonial interventions (e.g. Mohanty 2003) to now include the more recent material turn (e.g. Frost 2014). If qualitative research of dynamic political constellations in the global South is to be of any relevance, it should be sufficiently reflexive as to allow for the consideration of the researchers’ roles in the course of knowledge production. Postcolonial-feminist scholars have reminded us of two things in particular that have influenced how we assess our study in a fundamental way. First, that ‘what’ we can see is critically informed by ‘how’ we look at our research matter (Madhok 2018). This pertains to interrogating our more general gaze, namely how we link methodological and theoretical considerations. Second, that we should reflect on how we – as a team but also individually – are situated in Western academia and consequently how this plays out in our relations with the global South. The dialogue between Ruth Frankenberg and Lata Mani (1993) demonstrates how a politics of location is necessary to comprehend how we are embedded in such academic and at once global structures. Difference, predominantly racialized and gendered, appears as the hallmark by which we can make sense of our diverging experiences within this project. It was especially brought to bear, because our research was based at a university in the global North, dealt with South–South relations, and took place in a North–South team constellation. This led to a rare position on many counts: there already is valuable critical literature on methods in empirical research in the global South generally (e.g. Sultana 2007; Dannecker and Englert 2014) and on feminist ethnographies (e.g. Nagar 2002; Lachenmann 2012) specifically. Reflexivity features prominently in such kinds of transnational and development-related contributions. And, in most of them, either implicitly or explicitly, the North appears as a point of departure and is raised as a topic in one form or the other. Understandably, material on researching South–South relations from the global North is more than scarce. Three factors served to make our own positions more of a grey area than in our previous experiences. One of the differences that has been accentuated lies in the North–South dimension of our research context, which is heightened by the project’s association with area studies. The strongly international direction taken by the research programme at our university has brought with it exceptional institutional possibilities. We were able to draw on existing university partnerships, such as with the University of Stellenbosch, where we intensified our relations with the Centre for Chinese Studies. We were also able to create new university-wide partnerships; with Addis Ababa University, for instance, we enabled academic and administrative staff and students from both universities to formally embark on further exchange. Ours is a programme that can only exist because it represents an initiative to reform area studies, and our motives had to be placed within this specific North– South context. Past and current forms of North–South domination, which could not be ignored in our project setting, have also expressed themselves in the controversial histories of this specific research area (Chow 2002; Cumings 2002). We therefore had to consider how to position ourselves against this background, at

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critical junctures discussing the theoretical and practical implications with our local colleagues while also entertaining the curiosity of our colleagues in the global South about why our university in the global North would be studying interactions between China and Africa. In these conversations, it quickly became clear that we were attempting something different, and this was reflected in our chosen approaches, the perspectives with which we approached our subject and the interest we showed in local academic publications. Within our team, although we aimed, and continue to aim, to keep them as unobtrusive as possible, in reality workplace hierarchies structured our working relationships. Status distinctions particularly came into play with regard to the various hats we wore (e.g. administrative and representative responsibilities) during the programme’s duration. They also expressed themselves in the periods we spent when conducting our empirical research in the respective contexts, and in the tasks we undertook while doing so. The manner in which we individually relate to the North is inherently different too. Whereas our already elaborated institutional agenda appeared rather uncomplicated, our team constellation and dynamics worked against presumptions of who we were meant to represent. After many years of working together, we reached a point where apparent commonalities outweighed our supposed differences. As feminists focusing on the global South and the relations that govern social change, we are committed to a similar cause and driven by a common research interest. However, important distinctions began to shape our discussions in a manner that they had not in previous years and brought to light our differing perspectives. As a black scholar of South African origin, politically as well as academically informed by developments in the 1980s and 1990s, Rirhandu’s research is fundamentally shaped by the post-apartheid era: it mainly concerns itself with translating the promises of democratic citizenship as a political project by highlighting the mutual normative changes that result from local agenda-setting and international influences. Uta, who as a lesbian feminist is almost 20 years older and on whom the turbulent political scene of the Federal Republic in the 1970s left an indelible impression, focuses on the organizing of feminist movements and non-state actors. She pegs her own political and academic biography to the times of the growing importance of global feminist movements, which peaked during the Beijing World Women’s conference. While our different emphases on civil society and state-building processes has always contributed to a productive tension in our academic collaboration, some of these biographic and scientific dimensions only came to the fore under these ‘distinct conditions of difference’. Simultaneously, we would permanently fall into the existing politics of researching gender in Africa, both individually and as a team. Jane Bennett and Charmaine Pereira (2013) have brought this issue to light in a way that resonated with us: they have illustrated that there is a delicate balance between positively breaking the mould and negatively flouting social norms. We were always straddling these lines, which involved the complex negotiation of ourselves as scholars and social beings. Our practice of actively conducting empirical research ourselves, opening ourselves up to discussions with

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our research partners and interacting with our scholarly communities only served to underscore this. The manner in which we maintained professional and social relations, expanded our network of local experts and invited others to collaborate worked alongside the problematic aspects we had to grapple with above. The primary goal behind these attempts to offset the already skewed field, was to learn from each other and those we worked with. Admittedly, which roles we were able to adopt in this learning process and which were ascribed to us differed according to how we were placed within these gendered, international social hierarchies. Ultimately, this impacted on how we were able to enter into, or retreat from, visibility as part of our observations. Once more to complicate the picture of who we are and who we are meant to be even further, our colour and class backgrounds seemed to create tensions that would not exist in other settings. We both represent major exceptions to the rule and have not been accounted for in the context of German academia that reifies the strong differences of German society. For one of us, coming from a working-class background complicates being a Northern scholar. For the other, the exact opposite holds true: despite her middle-class background that would be usual among her peers, there are only very few other Southern scholars or scholars of colour in our discipline. Thus, as ambivalent as our positions might be, it is a position that requires us to reconcile and balance the Northern and Southern parts of ourselves. The irony being that this juggling of self-perception, ascription and negotiation is the typical fate of the Southern academic. Only now, that in our context, it colours off onto or becomes part of the reflexive process for a Northern scholar too.

Building bridges across areas How we as researchers are perceived and how we interact with those around us brings us back to the more fundamental questions. Why do we do what we do? What or for whom do we participate in knowledge production? If area studies – as a seemingly conservative field that marks North–South difference and legitimizes forms of Othering within academia – appears incompatible with Gender Studies – as a field that prides itself in its emancipatory ideals – then these are questions that should be answered in our academic practice. Feminism has never been a monolithic movement, and as we alluded to above, Gender Studies has grown alongside it to absorb more critical perspectives. Luckily the apparent rift between gender and area studies is not as absolute as it at first appears, because not only have feminists worked within areas, as a given contextual reference and experiential space, but they have also gone beyond this static notion with a decidedly transnational outlook (e.g. Marchand and Sisson Runyan 2000 [2011]; Basu 2003; Rodriguez 2010). We always assumed that we would be building bridges between feminist and other perspectives, and between universities in the North and the South. What we had to learn by doing, was how to bring together that which matters to us as researchers, what is justifiable to our funders and what could be seen as

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acknowledging the intentions of our research partners. We had to develop a shield – to extend the metaphor that Bennett and Pereira articulated – against the growing realization that Southern feminist scholars and practitioners in the countries we were working in had their own institutional pressures, that diverging interests existed and that they had ongoing partnerships elsewhere. Their own research agendas made collaboration complicated and they were not as keen on China–Africa as a topic as we were. This went against the experience we had had with other scholars in the field, who would on numerous occasions, often in hushed voices, confide their feminist leanings to us even though they never visibly mirrored these in their work. We understood too that learning could not be restricted only to our experiences while engaging in empirical research away from our university. Therefore, what we learned from our data collection and the literature we gathered has become part of our teaching portfolio. The response we have met with has been more than positive: students have expressed their relief at being able to read perspectives from African experts, and peers have been envious that we have had the opportunity to incorporate research-based teaching into our curricula.

Rediscovering difference – or, gender politics, North–South dynamics and their implications As ambivalently positioned feminists working on questions of South–South relations, we have had to push against a number of boundaries that have been foreshadowed by the interactions, incursions and interventions of the North with the South. We began the project with figurative baggage that we could neither offload nor hide from. Instead, at every turn, we had to confront these North–South dynamics in development politics and in knowledge production. It is particularly due to the nature of our research, focusing as it does on South–South cooperation rather than being restricted to an analysis of political relations in the global South, that has brought to light the various dynamics and, at times, contradictory effects at play within our work. Because our study was located at the intersection of two fields, we were compelled to understand relations and interactions in both. Accordingly, the questions and the ambiguities that arose multiplied. By adopting a feminist approach, we were bound to deal with these issues openly: to interrogate our own situatedness, to acknowledge how we were positioned and to reflect on these through a perspective-embracing experience. Who we are and where we come from influenced what we intended to do and what we were actually able to see. We take seriously the time-honoured feminist demand to heed our epistemological interest, in particular with our own problematization of the ethics questions we have selected in this contribution. Finally, relying on situated knowledge has led to the discovery of ambivalences, tensions and their articulations. While approaching the field of our enquiry, we have had to discuss and eventually articulate these, as we have perceived them. In their elaboration, we have expanded our own horizons, thereby continuously pushing the envelope of our inquiry further.

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References Axelsson, L. and Sylvanus, N. (2010). Navigating Chinese textile networks: Women traders in Accra and Lomé. In Cheru, F. and Obi, C. I. eds., The Rise of China and Africa in India: Challenges, Opportunities and Critical Interventions. London: Zed Books, pp. 132–142. Basu, A. (2003). Globalizing local women’s movements. In Mirsepassi, A., Basu, A. and Weaver, F. eds., Localizing Knowledge in a Globalizing World. New York: Syracuse University Press, pp. 82–100. Bennett, J. and Pereira, C. eds. (2013). Jacketed Women: Qualitative Research Methodologies on Sexualities and Gender in Africa. Claremont, CA: UCT Press. Chow, R. (2002). Theory, area studies, cultural studies: Issues of pedagogy in multiculturalism. In Harootunian, H. and Miyoshi, M. eds., Learning Places: The Afterlives of Area Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 103–118. Cumings, B. (2002). Boundary displacement: The state, the foundations, and area studies during and after the Cold War. In Harootunian, H. and Miyoshi, M. eds., Learning Places: The Afterlives of Area Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 261–302. Dannecker, P. and Englert, B. eds. (2014). Qualitative Methoden in der Entwicklungsforschung. Wien: Mandelbaum. Dhawan, N., Fink, E., Leinius, J. and Mageza-Barthel, R. eds. (2016). Negotiating Normativity: Postcolonial Appropriations, Contestations, and Transformations. Cham and New York: Springer. Eckl, F., Mageza-Barthel, R. and Thubauville, S. (2017). Ethiopia’s Asian options: A collage of African and Asian entanglements. Insight on Africa. A Journal of Contemporary African Affairs, 9(2), 89–108. Frankenberg, R. and Mani, L. (1993). Crosscurrents, crosstalk: Race, ‘postcoloniality’ and the politics of location. Cultural Studies, 7(2), 292–310. Frost, S. (2014). Re-considering the turn to biology in feminist theory. Feminist Theory, 15, 307–326. Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies, 14, 575–599. Hill Collins, P. (1990). Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. London: Routledge. Huynh, T. Tu (2015). A ‘Wild West’ of trade? African women and men and the gendering of globalisation from below in Guangzhou. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 23(5), 501–518. doi:10.1080/1070289X.2015.1064422. Huynh, T. T., Jung Park, Y. and Ying Chen, A. (2010) Faces of China: New Chinese migrants in South Africa, 1980s to present. African and Asian Studies, 9, 286–306. Lachenmann, G., 2012. “Globale Ethnographie” und die Rechtfertigung entwicklungssoziologischer/sozialanthropologischer Forschung im Alltag. In Hinnenkamp, V. et al. ed., Lebenswelt und Ethnographie: Beiträge der 3. Fuldaer Feldarbeitstage. 2–3 June 2011, Fulda. Essen: Oldib, pp. 101–118. Madhok, S. (2018). On doing feminist theory from the ‘Global South’: The double-edged swords of agency and rights. Paper presented at the Cornelia Goethe Colloquien 2018: Feminisms from the Global South. 2 May 2018, Frankfurt am Main. Mageza-Barthel, R. (2015). Mobilizing Transnational Gender Politics in Post-Genocide Rwanda. London and New York: Routledge. Mageza-Barthel, R. and Ruppert, U. (forthcoming) Bringing transnationalism back in – on gender politics in South Africa’s China interactions. In Ruppert, U. and Anthony, R. eds., Reconfiguring Trans-Regionalism in the Global South – African Asian Encounters. Basingstoke/ New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Manyeruke, C. (2006) The impact of Chinese products on Zimbabwean women. Eastern Africa Social Science Research Review, 22(2), 85–106. Marchand, M. and Sisson Runyan, A. ed. (2000 [2011]). Gender and Global Restructuring: Sightings, Sites and Resistances, 2nd edition. London: Routledge. Mohanty, C. T. (2003). Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Monson, J. (2016). Decolonizing translation: Gender and interpretation in China-Africa historical engagements. Paper presented at the conference Afrasian Transformations: Beyond Grand Narratives? 28–30 September 2016, Frankfurt am Main. Nagar, R. (2002). Footloose researchers, ‘traveling’ theories, and the politics of transnational feminist praxis. Gender Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 9(2), 179–186. doi:10.1080/09663960220139699. Rodriguez, R. M. (2010) Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labor to the World. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Rompel, D. and Ruppert, U. (2012) Geschlechterpolitik im Wandel: Frauen machen Staat in Afrika. In Bierschenk, T. and Spies, E. eds., 50 Jahre Unabhängigkeit in Afrika. Kontinuitäten, Brüche, Perspektiven. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe, pp. 349–370. Ruppert, U. (2015). Menschenrechte als ambivalentes Instrument internationaler Politik: Das Beispiel Frauenrechte. In Cojocaru, M.-D. and Reder, M. eds., Praxis der Menschenrechte. Formen, Potenziale und Widersprüche. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, pp. 105–116. Ruppert, U. (2017). Das Bessere im Transnationalen? Über den Südwind in der Geschlechterpolitik. In Bargetz, B., Kreisky, E. and Ludwig, G. eds., Dauerkämpfe. Feministische Zeitdiagnosen und Strategien. Frankfurt a.M. and New York: Campus, pp. 145–154. Salo, E. (2010). Women’s movements in the global era: The power of local feminisms. In Basu, A. ed., Women’s Movements in the Global Era: The Power of Local Feminisms. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp. 29–55. Sultana, F. (2007). Reflexivity, positionality and participatory ethics: Negotiating fieldwork dilemmas in international research. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 6(3), 374–385. Available at: www.acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/786 (accessed 22 June 2018).

VIGNETTE: THE ‘AVUNCULAR’ GATEKEEPERS Interrogating authority, authenticity and autonomy in South–South Cooperation scholarship in India Supriya Roychoudhury

As South–South Cooperation (SSC) scholarship expands in India, multiple identities and subjectivities jostle for authority in this contested space of knowledge production. I argue that a community of primarily male academics, with strong affiliations to the state, has positioned itself as the authoritative producer of authentic SSC scholarship in India. In doing so, these academics have sought to consolidate their position as the official gatekeepers of SSC scholarship. I also argue that authority and authenticity have been manufactured through iterative acts of ‘othering’ and the delegitimization of alterity. As someone who self-identifies as a feminist, civil society researcher of SSC, I seek to interrogate the centrality assumed by the male academic-gatekeeper. In this essay, I reflect on my personal experiences1 as well as those of other feminist researcher-activists engaged with the SSC knowledge production process in India, to expand on these ideas. SSC continues to be a largely government-driven enterprise in India, despite the clamour around the growing role of non-state actors. The knowledge regime that is constructed around it thus reproduces and privileges statist and conformist perspectives over more critically oriented ones. Parastatal research organizations, under the leadership of primarily male academics, are enrolled to legitimize these agendas through the production of knowledge and narratives. That said, more visibly inclusive knowledge production platforms have begun to emerge. One such multistakeholder platform currently exists in India, the steering committee which comprises feminist academics as well as the representatives of various non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Although this is welcome, the symbolic act of creating such spaces can easily obfuscate the more pressing issue of ensuring the equitable distribution of intellectual leadership and labour among different constituencies, including those that may hold more critical views. To illustrate, when India’s first ever anthology on Indian development cooperation was produced a few years ago, few NGOs, if any, were invited to

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contribute by the think tank tasked to lead this process. At the time, I was managing the foreign policy programme of an Indian NGO that was also a steering committee member of the multi-stakeholder platform. Neither myself nor the organization I represented was invited to engage with this critical process of knowledge production. Somewhat ironically, my participation in this initiative was facilitated by an invitation from one of the contributors to this publication – a female academic from the global North – to collaborate with her on the production of a chapter examining the nature and role of Indian civil society’s engagement with SSC. We co-produced a chapter providing an analytical and non-statist perspective of Indian SSC. In the context of persistent gatekeeping on the part of a few individuals and entities in India, critically minded civil society researchers have often had to partner with allies in the global North to access and influence sites of SSC knowledge production. When they produce critical scholarship that is corroborated or supported by ‘Western’ actors, gatekeepers of SSC scholarship will often attempt to undermine these civil society researchers by challenging the ‘Southern-ness’ of their identity, the authenticity of their claims and their allegiance to the SSC enterprise. Proximity to political power enables these gatekeepers, in turn, to elevate their own status as autonomous, authoritative and authentic producers of SSC scholarship, even as they turn a blind eye to their role as conduits for specific, statist and/or political agendas and narratives. Intellectual authority is also manufactured through the construction of a hierarchical binary between the academy-situated scholar as the ‘theorizer’ of knowledge and the ‘field’-based NGO ‘practitioner’ of development2. The responsibility of NGOs in the knowledge production process is often reduced to the act of consolidating case studies and gathering best practices from ‘the field’, distinct from the academic’s task of ideating, theorizing, analysing, critiquing, codifying and producing knowledge. However, an understanding of and access to the lived realities of potentially affected communities should ideally place Indian NGOs in a naturally strong position to meaningfully contribute to some of the theoretical debates central to the SSC enterprise. While the principles of SSC have thus far been defined by the state and its parastatal research organizations, Indian NGOs could, for instance, potentially generate a new body of knowledge that translates these principles into operationalizable outcomes to advance development effectiveness. The hierarchical binary established between the academic as the theorizer and the civil society actor as the practitioner has also been enshrined, institutionalized and reinforced across various knowledge production platforms, including at the global level. For instance, the Network of Southern Think Tanks (NeST), a network of think tanks and scholars from the Global South, including from India, is currently leading an intellectual initiative to create a monitoring and evaluation framework for SSC. The exclusion of Indian NGOs from this network has effectively prevented them from engaging with this process. NeST is also a member of the “South–South Global Thinkers’ forum”, a global coalition of think-tank

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networks that has been jointly set up by the United Nations Office for South– South Cooperation (UNOSSC) and the UNDP. Here we observe an epistemological conflation of ‘thinkers’ with ‘think tanks’, which assigns the responsibility of conducting research, building knowledge and setting research agendas to a small community of think tanks and academics. NeST’s global secretariat is located within an Indian think tank, which also serves as the institutional host for the national-level, multi-stakeholder platform mentioned earlier. This think tank is thus strategically positioned to act as a bridge or intermediary to facilitate the travel of ideas, discourses and narratives across the global–national axis and the academic–NGO divide. However, it appears not to have created any concrete, institutional channels to enable the multi-stakeholder platform’s NGO members to directly feed into and actively participate in NeST’s ongoing global work around the development of an accountability and transparency framework. The creation of this framework is an important intellectual initiative, and one in which Indian NGOs could, and indeed should, provide thought leadership given their extensive experience – both theoretical and practical – in the area of monitoring and evaluation of development interventions both within India and overseas. Issues around the kinds of criteria that could be developed to assess SSC impacts and development effectiveness, including in relation to socially excluded groups such as women, are critical perspectives that NGOs could bring to the conversation. The apparent absence of a strategy to integrate NGOs and their views into these theoretical discussions is problematic. As an independent, civil society researcher who is no longer institutionally affiliated with any of the multi-stakeholder platform’s member organizations, meaningful engagement with and access to knowledge-based platforms that are involved with the theoretical and analytical aspects of SSC has not been easy. At the very minimum, I would argue that the national-level, multi-stakeholder platform and the ‘South–South Global Thinkers’ forum should expand its current membership to include NGOs and civil society activist-researchers of SSC. Upon querying the institutional think-tank host of the multi-stakeholder platform, I was informed that the expansion of the platform’s membership was under consideration. Plans to create an activist–academic network also appear to be on the table, although the details are scarce and not readily communicated. The development of such a network, although welcome, needs to be done in consultation with the activists, civil society actors and researcher-activists who will likely be involved with this initiative in the future. At present, however, it appears to be yet another example of a concept being developed by a small think-tank community of male academics without consultation and collaboration with a wider network of civil society activists and actors. As a civil society researcher, who also self-identifies as a feminist, the near absence of a gendered approach towards SSC scholarship in India has also been deeply problematic. Although feminist scholars have begun to advocate for a feminist epistemological approach towards SSC knowledge production, women’s voices and experiences are yet to meaningfully influence and inflect SSC

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scholarship. The appointment of a feminist academic as the inaugural Chair of India’s multi-stakeholder platform on SSC, although a notable first step, needs to be accompanied by a systemic shift in the way gatekeepers engage with and understand gender, both as a standalone analytic as well as in relation to SSC discourse and practice. The assumption within the dominant epistemic community that SSC will automatically result in better outcomes for women has resulted in a largely gender-blind approach to SSC policy and practice. Finally, gender-based power hierarchies are frequently reproduced to delegitimize the female voice in the sites and spaces of SSC knowledge creation and dissemination in India. Female and feminist researchers, particularly from a younger age group, are especially susceptible to these dynamics and it is not unusual for this demographic to experience unfettered male chauvinism and sexism at knowledge-convening spaces, as I myself have experienced. To conclude, there are no easy answers or solutions to address the power asymmetries and artificial hierarchies that privilege certain voices, profiles and subjectivities over others in the SSC knowledge production process in India. However, the very act of recognizing this as a fundamentally political act, rather than just a technocratic one, is an important first step towards the realization of a more democratic and equitable ecosystem for knowledge creation. Through this vignette, I have sought to make a contribution in this direction.

Notes 1 My reflections should be read in the context of a continually evolving field in which power relations between the various producers of knowledge are being negotiated and re-negotiated. My impressions draw predominantly on my experiences as a civil society researcher on SSC from 2011–2017. I would like to thank my feminist-researcher colleagues for sharing their reflections and perspectives with me. 2 This distinction can also be reproduced along the North-South axis.

VIGNETTE: EXPERIENCING GENDER AND POSITIONALITY AS A FEMALE PROFESSIONAL IN THE KOREAN OFFICIAL DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE (ODA) SECTOR Jinhee Kim Positionality As a female Korean development expert I have experienced issues and episodes in the last few years that are normally not spoken about. This raises the need for my voice in the field of development cooperation to be heard. In doing so, it is meaningful to write about my experiences in policy engagement as well as field research engagement, reflecting on my own positionality and the disjunctures that I encountered. In 2010, South Korea became the 24th member of OECD-DAC, which confirmed its developmental status and its rise from former aid recipient to its growing role as a significant donor of foreign aid. This transformation vigorously stimulated the South Korean international development sector, which in turn created a serious demand for Korean researchers and professionals to become engaged with a wide range of cooperation projects across the world. My own career reflects this dynamic movement, having travelled and worked in over 60 countries. Being involved in various capacities in the field of International Education Development Cooperation, I participated in shaping theoretical knowledge as well as policy practice. Through a range of research projects, consultancies and policy advisory capacities, I was involved nationally and internationally. As a research director at the Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI) in South Korea, I worked for three years on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the global education agenda. Moreover, I have been invited to participate in various bodies at different levels as a board member of the Selection, Analysing and Reviewing Committee, and also the Evaluation & Consulting Committee for Korean Official Development Assistance since 2010. On almost every occasion, entering such a committee meeting room, I would instantly realize that I was the only woman in the room among 15 male professors

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and experts, apart from the young technical support staff. In Korea, this was the usual scene in the ODA sector, certainly in the Education and Science ODA sector. Gender equity within the committee was never tabled as an issue, since the general perception was that all board members were invited based on their own expertise and competency as well as their professional background. However, when gender issues are not raised explicitly, implicit ideas and assumptions may influence the discussions and outcomes. In this vein, regarding such influential bodies of experts that may fundamentally impact the Korean aid architecture, it is hard to imagine that gender balance is achieved in the Korean ODA field at the government policy level or at the consultancy level. Since the 1960s, Korean society has undergone major economic, political, social and cultural transformations due to processes of democratization and globalization. In particular, since the 1990s South Korea has experienced and influenced processes of globalization. In the foreign policy and education sector, positive discourses and even a certain excitement about engaging on a global level has been witnessed. In the same period, in academia we saw the establishment and growth of international relations courses and development studies under a pervasive positive mood regarding globalization. However, ironically, although many young talented female students are pursuing their graduate degree (MA/PhD), still over 80% of the professors in Korean higher education institutions are male. Maledominant academic culture is a salient feature in Korean society. Kim (2011), for example, showed how difficult it is for female doctorate holders to find faculty jobs in Korea due to the patriarchal academic system and culture. This causes high levels of frustration for young female students and negatively affects their ambition to move forward in professional fields. Despite the significant growth in the number of women at the universities, the percentage of female teaching staff is much smaller than that of male teaching staff. Also, the participation of female graduate students and researchers in the production and generation of knowledge in various fields lags behind when compared to the contribution of male researchers in South Korean academia. This trend aligns with the composition of high-level Development Cooperation committees in the Korean ODA sector. As such, it can be expected that gender prejudices may prevail. This may impact efforts to engage with and understand women’s minority positions and rights, resulting in not enough consideration for gender equality and female empowerment. When discussing this with my female Korean research assistant, she shared her experience at graduate school. Sometimes she was expected to compromise her own point of view and agree with her male supervisor’s sexist interpretation of African women in the process of critical knowledge creation. The supervisor easily and implicitly undervalued and disparaged the capability of women on the African continent, particularly when discussing their social restrictions in terms of early marriage and literacy. As this male professor showed his high level of scepticism regarding the “Better Life for Girls in Africa Project” (UNFPA, 2016), he revealed his entrenched prejudice against women formally and informally.

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Disjuncture, gender identity In my own career, I experienced similar situations when I worked with various male professionals. In 2013, I was invited to serve as a member of a Korean delegation to perform an evaluation of a Korean government educational ODA project in Ethiopia. After my assistant had arranged and finalized the whole travel package for my business trip, unexpectedly, just three days before departure, I was informed by a high-ranking official that this field trip would be ‘too risky’ for a young female researcher. In this context, the word ‘young’ needs to be understood in the Korean ‘tradition’ of putting people in age groupings with the associated hierarchical connotations. As a result, women in their 20s and 30s are generally seen as a young female in professional fields. In their eyes, the schedule was ‘too tough’ for a physically weak female, and in addition, it was suggested that the local stakeholders in Ethiopia may react in a hostile manner to a young female member of the delegation. However, to my knowledge this was a rather silly concern in the context of Ethiopia. In fact, I was convinced that it was not necessary to prove myself as I am strong enough to function in difficult circumstances as I am physically not weak at all. But nevertheless it had its effect as I found myself questioning whether I should endeavour to achieve the ‘recognition’ for robust physical strength or for my intellectual capacity in the field of development cooperation. And why is it that a young female expert should be regarded as a ‘protected object’ in the field? When I discussed this with someone responsible for administrative support, it was said to me – with a smile – that normally on these trips male experts in the delegation can reduce their accommodation costs by sharing the same hotel room in the field so they can save money and increase their budget for entertainment after finishing their daily work. Adding a female expert to the team would interfere with this practice. This complex experience illustrates the disjuncture that women may face in professional settings between their professional skills and background and their gender identity. In my career, this experience has taught me that although I may have the intellectual competency and professional and management skills, which are the most significant talents necessary in the development field, there is another reality out there. Involuntarily, female professionals could encounter uncomfortable situations in the Korean ODA sector that is still dominated by – often older – men. Unfortunately, similar gender concerns were raised on missions as a consultant to Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bolivia as part of Korea’s educational development assistance efforts several years ago. When a high-level meeting between the Korean delegation and the local Minister was set up, both in the Ministry of Education of Bangladesh and also in Pakistan, to determine the scope of the partnership, local high-level officials viewed me as an interpreter or assistant, not as a research director as well as head of delegation. In fact, the Education Ministers of all three countries were male and viewed the ‘young female figure’ as belonging to the support staff and being part of the lower social hierarchy in the Korean ODA

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delegation. When the formal meeting would start with high-level officials of the partner countries, the Ministers would initially turn to my older male colleagues and through a glance permit the dialogue to commence. At the initial stage of formal meeting, these Ministers generally assumed that my male colleague was the head of delegation, certainly not the female. It signifies patriarchal representation. This shows a multi-level intersectionality between Korean gender issues, conventional gender conceptualizations in these developing countries and hierarchical positioning in the professional workplace. As a national delegate and sometimes as a principal investigator, when I would successfully lead the group discussion, the majority of the men tended to compliment me afterwards in an exaggerated manner on my ‘leadership’ – “Wow, it is rare to meet a talented young researcher with a PhD like you in South Korea in this tough field”. This indicates that it is still relatively rare to encounter a female professional in such a capacity. Not many female experts have been invited to hold such crucial positions in monitoring and evaluation, advisory capacities or decision-making in the Korean educational ODA sector.

Overcoming gender injustices in the Korean ODA sector: Move forward These experiences illustrate that there are explicit and implicit gender biases and forms of gender discrimination in the Korean ODA community as well as in the developing country ODA communities. In my view, we need to acknowledge and tackle these prejudices faced by female experts and the concomitant consequences this may have for the position of women in ODA programmes and projects. Both in Korea and in the partner countries there is a danger that such ODA committees perpetuate a certain male domination in the professional field as well as reinforcing more toned-down gender knowledges when they review and decide on ODA policies, programmes and projects. In this regard, there is much work to be done to increase the representation of women in the development field and to put gender issues more firmly on the agenda. This may represent a significant historical step as views of gender in Korean society have a long history. The education of women in Korea has remained seriously disregarded in families, communities and workplaces. During more than 500 years of Joseon dynasty, from 1392 to 1897, education was the realm of noble men who cultivated their Confucian aspiration through rote learning of the theory regarding how to govern and administer a country (Lee and Kim 2018). As a result, nowadays women’s sacrifice and gains in education are still hardly acknowledged in Korea. Yet, various statistics and media reports demonstrate that we are witnessing a ‘sea-change’ in the education of girls. For example, more girls (73.6%) than boys (66.3%) now enter colleges, and self-confident, intelligent, successful and ambitious young women are distinctively moving forward in all sorts of careers and jobs. However, it is interesting to see what then really happens in their early to middle adulthood, which is striking. As of 2016, the employment rate of Korean

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women was 56.2%, which is markedly lower than that of men (75.8%), which ranks at the bottom among the OECD member countries. The gender discrepancies in earning, too, have been shown to be the highest among OECD countries (OECD 2015). Yet, it is clear that Korean society is expected to undergo fundamental changes in the near future with the growing prominence of female professionals in high-powered professions such as medicine, law and diplomacy. This will hopefully contribute to the de-construction of taken-for-granted ideas and roles in a social, economic and cultural system formerly dominated by patriarchal ideas. Writing this vignette enabled me to reflect on my identity as a female professional, on the hidden power issue embedded within the workplace and on my positionality in the field of official development assistance. In my various roles and capacities I will strive to raise the consciousness on gender issues in these professional communities, as well as to promote diversity in Korean ODA committees, delegations and consultancies. Although sometimes it is hard to address these issues, where complicated social barriers and silences constrain the discussions, it helps when we begin to acknowledge and discern the power dynamics in our everyday life-world and professional community. Only then can we initiate social action and mobilize necessary resources to empower women and achieve more gender equity. As South Korea is ‘exporting’ its development miracle to other parts of the world, in contexts frequently described as South–South Development Cooperation, we should be aware of our own limitations. Without being conscious of the gender injustices and the positionalities of women in the ODA sector who are struggling against subordination, we are hard-pressed to achieve the necessary advances in developing countries. A feminist interpretation and engagement in matters of Korean ODA policies, programmes and projects is absolutely vital to ameliorate the position of girls and women in both Korea and its ODA partner countries. In the Korean aid architecture, a positive step in the right direction might be the appointment in November 2017 of Lee Mi-kyung as female president of the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) who has stated that ODA should “…deliver peace, democracy, human rights and gender equality” (Korea Times 2017).

References Kim, J. (2011) Aspiration for global cultural capital in the stratified realm of global higher education: Why do Korean students go to US graduate schools? British Journal of Sociology of Education, 32(1), 109–126. Korea Times (2017) New KOICA chief vows to redesign int'l aid. Available at: http://www. koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/12/120_241055.html (accessed 20 December 2018). Lee, R. and Kim, J. (2018) Women and/or immigrants: A feminist reading on the marginalised adult learners in Korean lifelong learning. Australian Journal of Adult Learning, 58(2), 184–208. OECD (2015) OECD Skills Strategy Diagnostic Report. Paris: OECD. UNFPA (2016) Korea invests US$ 5 million for adolescent girls programme in Uganda. Available at: https://uganda.unfpa.org/en/news/korea-invests-us-5-million-adolescent-gir ls-programme-uganda (accessed 29 March 2019).

7 LET’S FOCUS ON FACILITATORS Life-worlds and reciprocity in researching ‘Southern’ development cooperation agencies Sebastian Haug1

Introduction Fieldwork processes in social science research depend on people who facilitate access, understanding and reflection. I draw on insights from research in ‘Southern’ development cooperation agencies to introduce the notion of ‘facilitator’ into the conceptualization of fieldwork processes and link it to discussions on positionality and social hierarchy. I suggest that a focus on facilitators – individuals who support and accompany fieldwork processes in a variety of ways – provides a fruitful vantage point for understanding the positionalities of researchers; analysing the dynamics of implicit research bargains; and contributing to more reciprocal relationships during research processes. The empirical material I engage with to discuss these issues has emanated from my fieldwork experiences in ‘Southern’ development cooperation agencies, namely in Mexico and in Turkey, as well as research stays in Kampala, New York City and a number of European capitals. I put the term ‘Southern’ in quotation marks as the traditional divide between the rich, developed societies of the global North and the poor, developing societies of the global South – while always meant to refer to broad patterns – has increasingly come under attack, both politically and analytically. The actors and spaces associated with Mexico and Turkey face peculiar conditions in the evolving landscape of development cooperation. While their engagement with international development processes2 is sometimes framed as varieties of a ‘Southern’ approach to world politics, they are, as member states of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, particularly close to the ‘traditional’ Northern spaces of international development. These liminal or ‘in-between’ characteristics are also reflected in how my research experiences in Mexico and Turkey compare to previous research stays in more ‘traditional’ Northern or Southern settings.

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Addressing questions of positionality and reciprocity is particularly relevant against the backdrop of patterns of ‘extractive research’, where – often building on imperial and colonial trajectories – individual researchers and institutions based in centres of the global North use Southern sites and data according to their needs and dominate research processes through their privileged access to funding and the tools of global knowledge production (Sultana 2007; Wesner et al. 2014; Walsh et al. 2016). While changing these patterns requires long-term collective efforts, I suggest that researcher–facilitator relationships offer one venue for engaging with issues of imbalance and one-sidedness in the lived realities of small-scale research processes. In the first section, I build on literature on qualitative methodologies in the social sciences to develop the concept of facilitator. In the second section, I investigate the particular positions I hold relative to my facilitators. By drawing on Edmund Husserl’s concept of life-world I examine my subjectively lived experiences with facilitators and focus on the social contexts that provide the framework for our encounters. In the third section, I ask how relationships with facilitators unfold. Following Marcel Mauss’s work on gift theory, I focus on the relevance of giving and receiving in social relations and apply this to relationships with facilitators. In the fourth section, I explore ways to address social hierarchies and privilege in relationships with facilitators. Building on the notion of reciprocity, I put forward mutual facilitation as a concrete way of addressing some of the issues of social hierarchy and structural privilege that permeate fieldwork settings.

Facilitators Literature on qualitative research has used different terms and concepts to engage with individuals that play important roles during fieldwork processes. The term ‘informant’ is used in ethnographic research to refer to people and groups who provide information – or ‘data’ – to researchers, normally through interviews, observations or everyday-life conversations (Paerregaard 2002; Wagner et al. 2010).3 Edwards (1998, 203) defines “key informants”, in turn, as individuals who provide “a source of information and discussion” together with a reflexive evaluation of their own positionalities and their links with both the researcher and research subjects. She highlights that the term has also been used to refer to individuals who provide detailed information “in addition to or instead of direct study of a particular social group” (p.203).4 The term ‘sponsor’ has been used to refer not only to individuals and institutions that provide funding for research projects (Burgess 1991) but also to those who “introduc[e] researchers to other members of the social group to which they belong” (Edwards 1998, 203) and thus vouch for their credibility (Saunders 2006). ‘Interpreters’ or ‘translators’, in the narrow sense of the term, are individuals who support researchers with language-related matters and may also function as informants (Edwards 1998; Bujra 2006). Normally they receive some sort of monetary compensation for their services. The concept of ‘translation’ is sometimes also used to refer to broader processes of how individuals that support

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those who want to understand a specific setting condition the negotiation of meanings (Mosse and Lewis 2004, 13). ‘Brokers’ are also said to operate at this interface between researchers and the institutions and processes their inquiry is set to focus on.5 Particularly in development-related settings, the term broker is used to refer to people who “specialize in the acquisition, control, and redistribution of development ‘revenue’” (Mosse and Lewis 2004, 12) and shape the spaces between providers and recipients of development assistance (Bierschenk et al. 2002). This brokering role is often a “career trajectory” (Mosse and Lewis 2004, 16) on its own, particularly in settings where bilateral and multilateral agencies need support in establishing links with local communities. In terms of research processes more specifically, brokers are conceptualized as “‘bridge’ people who have different access to community knowledge, resources, and sources of power” (Muhammad et al. 2015, 1049) and thus function as complex links between researchers and their research subjects. A somewhat related concept is ‘fixer’, used in journalism to refer to “those resourceful, wired-in locals who know all the right people” (Turse 2017) and support journalists – in most cases foreign correspondents – in all sorts of ways for them to get ahead with their work. As with development brokers, fixers receive monetary compensation for their services and work under some kind of explicit if not always formalized agreement (Klein and Plaut 2017). Another concept used widely in literature on qualitative research methodology – with regard to not only ethnographic studies but all kinds of fieldwork in institutionalized settings – is ‘gatekeeper’ (Burgess 1991; Corra and Willer 2002; Saunders 2006; Jones 2015; Singh and Wassenaar 2016). Gatekeepers are understood to be individuals or groups that control access (Saunders 2006). Without their – in most cases explicit – consent, researchers are unable to penetrate institutional spaces. Gatekeepers tend to “hold a pivotal position in the hierarchy of the institution being studied” (Burgess 1991, 47) and they determine whom researchers get to meet, where, when and for how long. While some authors have also used broader definitions of gatekeepers, including anyone who is “controlling, intentionally or unintentionally, who the researcher is able to contact” (Jones 2015, 13), all focus on the role of gatekeepers in relation to attempts of getting access to sites and processes. Against the backdrop of these concepts, and to capture the key features of people who have played crucial roles in my research processes in developmentrelated organizations over the last ten years, I suggest introducing another term to the debate: ‘facilitator’. The English term ‘facilitation’ goes back to the Latin term ‘facilis’ (‘easy to do’) and, more immediately, to the French term ‘faciliter’ (‘to render easy’). At its most basic level, the term ‘facilitator’ refers to an individual who enables a certain process or action, often with the connotation of also improving it, or makes this process or action possible in the first place.6 In organizational settings, facilitators are in a position – and willing – to introduce me (the researcher) to institutional spaces and share their contacts and networks, without this being part of a formalized or even explicit arrangement (contrary to brokers, fixers or gatekeepers). Facilitators sit down with me to explain the unofficial

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dynamics behind shifting organigrams, put me in touch with colleagues down the corridor or pick up the phone to arrange a meeting with someone they know at another office. If other people then agree to meet me for an interview or open the door to meetings or events, this is not because my facilitators have the formal authority to decide about questions of access. While in each individual case there might be other ways of gaining access to people and institutions, the support of facilitators as such is essential for manoeuvring organizational spaces. It is their specific social capital that they share, particularly their institutional knowledge and their networks. Throughout my research on development cooperation dynamics, facilitators have been key contributors to what Buchanan et al. (1988) identify as the four main stages of researching organizations: getting in, getting on, getting out and getting back. 7 Firstly, they facilitate access (getting in) and, in most cases, increase the likelihood of other people’s cooperation without exercising any exclusive control. Initially, or at some point during the research process, they often act as respondents themselves. Secondly, they facilitate understanding (getting on) – of the specific institutional context, of ongoing internal processes or of linkages between different individuals and institutional spaces. They often act as ‘sounding boards’ to corroborate information or provide updates on latest developments and they share the tacit knowledge necessary to make sense of specific institutional practices. They also provide reference points for reflection processes – about the origin of information, the multiplicity of perspectives on the same topic and on how to (not) report on research findings (getting out). And they facilitate and accompany8 the ongoing relationship with the institution(s) they work in – before, during or after a specific research stay has come to an end – and can be the continuing link with research sites (getting back). Facilitators thus take over a range of functions partially attributed in the literature to key informants, sponsors, interpreters/translators, brokers or fixers, while not fitting with any of these concepts entirely. Facilitators are not necessarily controllers of access (like gatekeepers); they do not just share accounts on specific issues relevant for the focus of research (like most informants) or vouch for credibility (like sponsors); and they do not operate under formalized or monetarized arrangements (like interpreters/translators, brokers or fixers). Instead, the logic that the term ‘facilitator’ highlights is a holistic one: facilitators may engage with and support research processes in a variety of – usually informal – ways that contribute to creating the concrete links and the general enabling environment necessary for fieldwork in organizational settings to strive.

Life-worlds and positionalities: Facilitators in ‘Southern’ development cooperation agencies A focus on facilitators – and the many ways in which they are part of, shape and accompany fieldwork stays – points to the “social life” (Long 2001, 14) of research itself. Research processes set up structures and provide the context for different lifeworlds to meet and interact. The term ‘life-world’ refers to the world as directly

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experienced in everyday life. In his work on phenomenology, philosopher Edmund Husserl (1970 [1936]) argues that these subjective experiences provide the foundation for all types of human action, and that all scientific inquiry is rooted in the life-worlds of those who conduct research.9 The subjectively experienced lifeworlds of researchers and facilitators thus provide the framework for how their positions relate to each other and how relationships between them unfold. Questions of how individuals are positioned relative to each other – generally referred to as positionality – have received substantial attention in the academic debate on qualitative research processes (Merriam et al. 2001; Thapar-Bjorkert and Henry 2004; Gould 2014; Muhammad et al. 2015). The emphasis on positionality invites researchers to reflect on their contexts and relationships and examine how their particular features condition and shape research processes and outcomes. My positionality in the spaces I conduct research in seems relatively obvious. I am, by and large, perceived as the archetypical international development researcher many people are tired of: white, male, with a European passport, based at what Ananya Roy and others have called the ‘global university’ (Roy et al. 2016) and with a previous employment record at one of the world’s major international organizations. While there are many more – and arguably more ambiguous – dimensions to my identity, these attributes are often perceived as particularly characteristic when I enter new spaces. As most people “make judgments of others’ competence and power based on only seconds of observation” (Magee and Galinsky 2008, 355), immediately perceptible features – including physical appearance, language ability or speaking styles – condition the relationships, including hierarchical differentiations, between researchers and facilitators. These “ascribed characteristics” (Burgess 1991, 49) – including what people assume regarding my age, gender, ethnicity or nationality, my sexual orientation or social class – play a fundamental role in establishing relations and rapport with facilitators.10 In Mexico, for instance, one of my contacts with whom I first spoke over the phone about links between Mexico and Asia assumed that I was MexicanKorean – because of my Spanish, my Spanish-sounding first name and (what he thought was) an East Asian last name. In Turkey, many people took my institutional affiliation in the UK as a sign that I was British. Responding to these assumptions is most of the time easy, sometimes mutually funny – and in some contexts weird or even potentially problematic. Against the backdrop of heightening tensions between President Erdog˘ an’s government and some of its European counterparts in the spring of 2017, one of my facilitators at an Ankara-based ministry told me that “[i]t is good that you are not Dutch. We have an internal policy saying that we are not allowed to talk to any Dutch individual or representatives of Dutch institutions. Because of all the beef between Erdog˘ an and the Dutch government, you know”. At that point, tensions between the Turkish and German governments were also particularly pronounced, and I was not sure whether the guideline was limited to Dutch nationals, and whether my facilitator knew about my German passport. In this particular case we could have found ourselves in a potentially problematic situation – if I had had a Dutch passport my facilitator

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might have got into trouble for overstepping regulations out of ignorance regarding my nationality. While I had initially not been very specific about my whereabouts in Turkey – sometimes with the intention of leaving things unsaid in order to increase my potential space of manoeuvre – this changed from that point onwards: I always tried to be very explicit about both my institutional affiliation(s) and my country of origin in order to prevent potentially awkward or dangerous situations. Beyond questions of individual labels, there are also broader dynamics that condition life-worlds and thus relationships with facilitators. The concept of social hierarchy refers to systems “through which actors are organised into vertical relations of super- and subordination” (Zarakol 2017, 1) that come to play with regard to specific social dimensions (Magee and Galinsky 2008, 354).11 The social hierarchies underpinning my position relative to my facilitators in ‘Southern’ development cooperation agencies, for example, are broadly related to the growing ‘global middle class’12 and my privileged place within it. While there are still striking differences in terms of material conditions and opportunities between the place I grew up in and the places where I conduct research, these differences have changed in both relative and absolute terms over the last decades. My fieldwork settings in Mexico and Turkey point to evolving income levels and the increasing heterogeneity of spaces generally referred to as the ‘global South’. The characteristics and outlook of middle classes in what has been referred to as the “First South” (Eyben and Savage 2013, 464) – the heavyweights from the (former) ‘developing world’, such as China and other Group-of-20 countries including Mexico and Turkey – often differ significantly from that of middle classes in the so-called “Second South” (Eyben and Savage 2013, 467), those countries that have not benefitted (as much) from the ‘rise of the South’ (UNDP 2013).13 My subjective research experiences mirror some of these shifting dynamics. The civil society representatives and government officials I worked and conducted research with in Kampala in 2010 and 2011 all belonged – at least in terms of access to education and income levels – to Uganda’s middle class. At the same time, their life-worlds – including material conditions, cultural reference points or education and career paths – were often very different from mine. The individuals I have engaged with during research in Mexico and Turkey, however, represent a segment of the global middle class whose life-worlds are more closely connected to mine. While development realities of course differ drastically within countries,14 I have, in terms of my research in development cooperation agencies in Mexico (since 2013) and Turkey (since 2016), mostly engaged with people from (upper-) middle-class backgrounds. The fact that their reference frameworks are by and large similar to those of middle classes in the ‘global North’ has had a palpable impact on my relationship with Mexican and Turkish facilitators. We often share cultural reference points, consumption patterns as well as career paths and plans. We apply to the same degree programmes, are interested in the same fellowship opportunities and follow the same academic or global policy debates. We also read the same novels (mostly written by US-American and European authors, or

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authors whose work has been translated into English), listen and dance to the same music and learn the same (mostly European) languages.15 At the same time, there are – more or less obvious – differences between me and facilitators in Mexico and Turkey that point to more or less subtle social hierarchies which provide the backdrop against which research processes unfold. My general habitus,16 my educational background and my working experience in a variety of geographical and institutional settings – rather typical for a Northern development practitioner – mean that I am perceived as different and sometimes even exotic. In Turkey, my difference was particularly palpable in the context of a post-coup attempt state of emergency in 2016. As a foreigner from a European country I had expected to experience difficulties in terms of people’s readiness to share their take on bureaucratic processes or foreign policy dynamics. The contrary was the case: across the board, public officials were very interested in talking to me and most of them were not shy – once I had assured anonymity – to voice critical opinions about the Turkish government. “They felt safe with you”, a Turkish academic told me later, “I mean, look at you. You don’t belong to a political camp. You are from Europe. I probably wouldn’t get that kind of access now”. In Mexico, facilitators I talked with about the ease with which I had been able to get people to talk to me mentioned ‘malinchismo’ as an important everyday feature of my social encounters – the alleged Mexican “tendency to reject our own culture in favor of that which is foreign” (Arias de Leon 2014), valuing in particular what comes from Europe and, more recently, also the USA.17 While not an overt characteristic of the spaces I have conducted research in, malinchismo has been referred to as a general subtext in Mexican society (Messinger Cypess 2010). It points to broader questions related to the social hierarchies of whiteness and highlights the extent to which my research has evolved in seemingly invisible yet powerful and complex postcolonial settings.18 There is yet another set of structural factors that has set my realities apart from those of Mexican and Turkish facilitators: the places where I come from provide a level of material and institutional stability that offers me the freedom to carry out and focus all my energy on months of in-depth research. In addition to scholarships and fieldwork funding, extensive social security systems, like public health insurance in the UK or social benefit schemes in Germany, have allowed my research processes to be more flexible and, overall, less risky. I allow myself to exclusively focus on my research and use all the resources at my disposal to try and embed myself abroad without worrying too much about other (material) aspects of my life – also because I know that there is a cushion I can fall back on. Most of my facilitators in Mexico and Turkey – particularly those at junior or mid-career levels – are often unable to count on similar backup schemes. Their risk-taking, career planning or general outlook therefore differ from mine. The fieldwork part of the research process where our life-worlds meet, in turn, is one step towards outputs, such as degrees or publications, that count in the – Northern-dominated – ‘global’ spaces of higher education. In many ways, I am confronted with and responsible for the “intersecting levels of privilege and power that come with being

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a highly educated researcher whose job depends on the generosity of time and resources of others” (Wesner et al. 2014, 4). Social hierarchies that spring from the historical distribution of material and institutional resources (that manifest themselves, for instance, in funding and social security schemes) and are reflected in widespread patterns of perception (such as the Mexican malinchismo) permeate the contexts in which my research on ‘Southern’ development cooperation agencies takes place. While some of these dynamics in Mexico City or Ankara have appeared more subtle than in Kampala, they have been more visible and, in most cases, more pronounced than in the context of research in Paris, London or Berlin. A particular mix of proximity and distance has defined my positionalities during research in and on development cooperation agencies in Mexico and Turkey: In Mexico City and Ankara, I am neither an insider nor a complete outsider. Facilitators in the organizations in which I conduct research generally do not perceive me as someone who could be a potential colleague (or direct rival), as in ‘traditional’ Northern development spaces; nor do they perceive me as fundamentally different, to the extent that – as has happened in more ‘traditional’ Southern settings – people point at me in corridors and explicitly highlight my obvious otherness in meetings. This in-between dynamic – that is particular to my positionality and relationship with facilitators in ‘Southern’ development cooperation agencies – sometimes cuts me off from blending in completely, but often allows me to blend in ‘just enough’ so as to be able to establish rapport and observe processes without noticeably disrupting them.

Giving and receiving: Facilitators and research bargains The structural features that underpin life-worlds and shape positions relative to one another have conditioned my concrete engagement with facilitators, and the specific dynamics of how ‘facilitation’ processes unfold. In Mexico, for instance, many government employees at the technical level were roughly my age. In their late twenties and early thirties, some of them were thinking about doing a degree abroad and, therefore, were interested in finding out more about European higher education systems, particularly about Master programmes that they would be able to fund via government scholarships. It happened several times that we would sit down for a chat about a particular initiative they were currently working on – and then transitioned to a discussion of different Master’s and PhD programmes. In Turkey, one facilitator was in the process of translating an urgently needed letter into different UN languages and had difficulties with the Spanish version. After we had spent an hour discussing budgetary processes and reporting mechanisms, she asked me if I would mind having a look at her translation. And this is how I ended up spending another hour at her office, at the desk next to hers, working on the letter and exchanging anecdotes from our attempts to embrace the particularities of different Spanish dialects. In many ways, the support that facilitators provide to researchers in the course of fieldwork can be seen as a gift – and “the act of giving creates a social bond

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between giver and receiver” (Mawdsley 2011, 258). The sociologist Marcel Mauss (1966 [1950], 1) argues that gifts “are in theory voluntary, disinterested and spontaneous, but are in fact obligatory and interested”. According to Mauss, there is an inherent reciprocal dimension to ‘giving’ as it comes with the – mostly implicit and not always conscious – expectation of getting something in return; and this reciprocity is a crucial aspect of building rapport. The specific dynamics of giving and receiving during fieldwork are part of what Burgess (1991, 45) calls “research bargains”. Contrary to access arrangements with gatekeepers, research bargains with facilitators are almost exclusively implicit, and they often evolve over time. There is some sort of exchange happening, but what exactly is exchanged, and how, often remains unsaid. And the particular ‘goods’ or ‘gifts’ we give and receive – and the expected reciprocity inherent in these exchanges – depend very much on the extent to which our life-worlds overlap or can be made accessible to each other, how we understand our positions relative to one another and what kinds of potential ‘gifts’ we bring to the table. All parties involved in facilitator–researcher relationships usually expect, in one way or another, to get something out of the exchange. Generally, at the rational level at least, I – as the ‘researcher’ – want insights into institutional structures, processes, strategies and practices. As I am the one who normally gets in touch first, I try to communicate my expectations in a straightforward way, not least to justify my reaching out to them. It is often less clear, however, what potential facilitators expect or want from me. I enter my fieldwork settings with specific information, insights and, in relative terms, structural advantages or disadvantages – including the need to deal with assumptions about my ‘Europeanness’ and to overcome initial expectations on behalf of my interlocutors (often stemming from previous interaction with think-tank analysts) that I am only interested in a brief, one-off superficial exchange. Depending on the context and circumstances, my knowledge of current changes in the landscape of international development, my experience of working with the UN, the languages I speak, my educational background as well as my present and past institutional affiliations can play a decisive role in defining whether I am able to reciprocate my facilitator’s support. According to my experience over the last decade, dynamics of giving and receiving – including the eye-to-eye relationships it has the potential to generate – unfold more smoothly in settings where facilitators come from backgrounds that are, by and large, similar to mine. During interactions with research facilitators at bilateral or multilateral development organizations in the USA or Western Europe, schemes of giving and (actual or anticipated) reciprocating – like exchanging information on the policies and processes in the institutions we are affiliated with – have often provided smooth mechanisms that enable and condition my fieldwork in organizational settings. In contexts where facilitators come from and operate in settings that are completely different from the places I am familiar with, it has been more challenging to understand conditions and expectations, and to engage in implicit schemes of giving and reciprocating. In particular the life-world differences between a researcher framed as ‘white’, ‘European’ or ‘Northern’ (me) and public

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officials or civil society activists framed as ‘black’, ‘African’ or ‘Southern’ (my facilitators) has made research on more ‘traditional’ North–South development linkages more complex for me. This is different from the particular mix between proximity and distance that has conditioned my general positionality with regard to facilitators in development cooperation agencies in Mexico and Turkey that has also shaped dynamics of giving and receiving: the shared realities with Mexican and Turkish facilitators – including our shared belonging to a specific segment of the (still quite heterogenous) global middle class – have made it, overall, easier for me to reciprocate gifts of facilitation than during research in ‘traditional’ Southern contexts.

Mutual facilitation: Towards reciprocity While it is all well and good to examine my positionalities relative to facilitators in contexts shaped by specific social hierarchies and to analyse the particular mechanisms of exchange between us, a question of more immediate relevance has been how to address and deal with social hierarchies and structural privilege in my relationships with the people I encounter during fieldwork processes, beyond a paragraph on positionality in my academic writings. Wesner et al. (2014, 4), for instance, hold that “we must… go beyond simply criticizing privileged interests without… giving back”, and that, for many, the starting point for focusing on ‘giving back’ in research-related settings has been a “sense of guilt, privilege, and the inability to ‘do enough’ to thank… hosts and collaborators”. Against the backdrop of Mauss’s account of giving and receiving as an inherent part of social reality, I suggest that the particular dynamics of facilitator–researcher relationships point to an approach that builds on the very nature of this kind of social bond, invites us to frame these relationships in (slightly) different ways and thus points to maybe limited but very concrete ways of ‘giving back’: mutual facilitation. From my perspective as researcher, the setting in which my relationships with facilitators unfold is the ‘research’ or ‘fieldwork’ process. For my facilitators, however, our encounters are embedded in their everyday lives, normally closely related to their workplace, where my research project plays – if at all – a rather marginal role. At the end of the day, I am an individual that has entered spaces they are used to operating in; I come in with my own (for most of them largely irrelevant) agenda; and for a variety of reasons they end up supporting my endeavours. If their support is understood as a ‘gift’ – following Mauss – it carries some sort of mostly implicit and vague expectation of being reciprocated. While small, informal acts of reciprocation are an inherent part of how my relationships with facilitators generally unfold, the mechanism of mutual giving and receiving points to a way of (slightly) reframing my positionality in fieldwork settings. While I might see myself primarily as a researcher, I can also be – and am arguably often perceived as – a facilitator for my facilitators. In Turkey, for instance, one of my facilitators was preparing for his next position in a field posting and wanted to get my feedback on the programmes and initiatives he wanted to set

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up. Over the course of the ensuing weeks, we therefore had detailed discussions about project management issues and the ways in which UN bodies collaborate with bilateral development agencies. In Mexico, the support I was able to provide often touched upon the academic world. Some of the cursory exchanges on Master and PhD programmes that were an inherent part of the giving–receiving dynamics with some of my facilitators evolved into longer exchanges over several weeks, similar to an informal coaching scheme. People would share with me their thoughts on the current stage of their application preparations and asked for advice, not only about academic issues but also on practical questions regarding scholarship payments and the living environment in small English towns. While giving classes in a Master’s programme in Mexico City I also met a student who had started working on a dissertation focusing on German development cooperation. My support for her project – discussing both the concepts she intended to use and the organizations she wanted to do research with – mirrored, to some extent, the support I had received from Mexican facilitators for my own research. Not all of my facilitators have reached out to me, but many have asked for advice and support related to processes or challenges they felt I might be able to help with – from questions related to translations and proofreading to issues of academic life and degree programmes, professional contacts or clues for understanding some of the intricate inner workings of UN institutions. When I take on a facilitating role for my facilitators, the hierarchical settings we operate in, including structural privileges, still play a role, but they are part of a reciprocal arrangement. My facilitators use the specific features of their positionalities and life-worlds to support me, and I do the same. This does not offset the structural dynamics we are embedded in, but it makes us accomplices: we engage in “awkward and earnest attempts… to build relationships across difference” (Shaw Crane 2015, 350), well aware of the (structural) gaps and mismatches between our life-worlds that we decide to put to use. ‘Giving back’ to those one encounters during fieldwork processes is – as Gupta and Kelly (2014, 2) suggest – inherently relational (it focuses on specific people in specific places) and reciprocal (it presupposes that these specific people have already provided something that is now being reciprocated). While facilitators facilitate my endeavours, I facilitate theirs. These exchanges – including the idea of ‘giving back’ – do not just reflect a transactional logic. Following Mauss (1966 [1950]), reciprocation is intrinsically connected with broader sets of ties between people. Mutual facilitation can contribute to “the creation and tending of social relationships” (Mawdsley 2011, 258) that may well outlive fieldwork stays and create long-lasting ties.19

Conclusion With reference to Husserl’s focus on subjectively perceived life-worlds and Mauss’s emphasis on reciprocity in the creation of social bonds, I have argued that facilitators are an important part of fieldwork processes and that a focus on facilitator–researcher relationships is a particularly insightful way of approaching

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questions of positionality. Based on that I have suggested that schemes of mutual facilitation can be a way of addressing issues of social hierarchy and structural privilege during fieldwork by putting an emphasis on reciprocal exchanges. Fieldwork experiences in Mexican and Turkish development cooperation agencies have been particularly insightful for me in this regard because they have not followed the same lines as arrangements in more ‘traditionally’ Southern or Northern settings. My research in Mexico and Turkey has been conditioned by subjective experiences of structural proximity and distance; and these dynamics have provided the context for explicit attempts to think about and try to practise reciprocity in my relationships with those who facilitate my fieldwork. Mutual facilitation is certainly not an ‘easy way out’ of the complex dynamics of hierarchy and privilege that permeate research processes and are particularly visible in fieldwork related to questions of ‘North’ and ‘South’ in international development. What it offers is a way to explicitly engage with questions about one-sided data extraction and the perpetuation or reproduction of social hierarchies in individual research processes. Mutual facilitation cannot substitute for but might enable and accompany efforts directed at changing some of the structural traits of global realities, in academia and beyond. It offers cues to exploring ways in which the multi-directionality of relationships that are established or deepened in the context of fieldwork can be strengthened. Acknowledging the importance of reciprocity in relationships with facilitators also means recognizing that research processes are an inherent part of the lived realities of all those involved and offer ways of sharing knowledges and experiences and, thus, life-worlds. It also serves as a reminder that – despite persisting social hierarchies – individual decisions on how to engage with fieldwork processes affect others, and that it actually matters how we think about and conduct research.

Notes 1 I would like to thank Emma Mawdsley, Wiebe Nauta and Elsje Fourie for their helpful and encouraging comments on earlier versions of this chapter as well as those involved with the ‘Methodologies in the Field’ seminar series in Cambridge for inspiration and feedback. 2 For a recent overview of current dynamics in the field of international or global development, see Horner and Hulme (2017). 3 For a more detailed discussion of different kinds of informants, see Bisaillon and Rankins (2013). 4 Burgess (1989) uses the term in a very broad way, arguing that key informants provide specific data, introduce the researcher to other people and can also act as gatekeepers. 5 For a more detailed discussion of ‘brokers’, see Mosse and Lewis (2004, 10). 6 For dictionary entries on related terms – facilitate, facilitation – see Cambridge Dictionary (2018); Online Etymology Dictionary (2018); Vocabulary.com Dictionary (2018). 7 For a detailed discussion, see also Jones (2015). Of course, the roles facilitators play during these four stages differ depending on context and specific circumstances; the point here is to argue that they are relevant – to varying degrees – at all stages of the process of research organisations.

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8 This accompanying feature links the research facilitation discussed here with facilitation processes in development cooperation projects; see Umans (2012). 9 For a more detailed discussion of Husserl’s conceptualisation of life-world and its link to scientific inquiry, see Hitzler and Eberle (2004); Zelic (2008). 10 Glesne (1989, 46) defines rapport in research processes as “a relationship marked by confidence and trust, but not necessarily by liking” that most researchers establish and maintain in order to serve research needs. 11 In the so far most comprehensive study on fieldwork for researching organisations, Jones (2015) discusses hierarchies within organisations but puts no explicit focus on social hierarchies in relationships between researchers and organizational interlocutors. 12 The ‘global middle class’ is defined in very broad terms according to income levels and is discussed together with phenomena of growing rates of consumption and the potential for (disruptive) change; see Kharas (2017); Naim (2017); Salam (2018). 13 In Eyben and Savage’s (2013) contribution, the distinction between ‘First’ and ‘Second’ South highlights the power differentials between different groups of countries outside the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development. In order to avoid the implicit hierarchy of this numerical classification, I use the terminology of ‘traditional’ Southern or Northern settings to refer to the broad poles of North (‘donors’) and South (‘recipients’) that – although simplistic and in many ways anachronistic – still shape the ways in which international development is thought about and practised. It is against this backdrop that I put the term ‘Southern’ between quotation marks when referring to those spaces and actors that – like Mexico and Turkey – identify as providers of South–South cooperation. 14 The case of Mexico is a particularly striking example. Taking the Human Development Index as a proxy, and applying it to available data at the subnational level, there are municipalities in Mexico (mostly in Mexico City) that have the same scores as Germany, one of the highest-ranked countries overall, and others (particularly in the States of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Chiapas) that have the same scores as Sierra Leone, one of the lowest-ranked countries; see UNDP Mexico (2014). 15 These parallels reflect dynamics during my fieldwork in traditional ‘donor’ countries (such as Germany and the UK) or at international organisations (such as those based in Paris or New York City) where both staff and organizational culture tend to be infused with ‘Western’ reference points. 16 The Bourdieuan notion of habitus refers to “deeply ingrained habits, skills, and dispositions that we possess due to our life experiences” (Routledge 2016). 17 On malinchismo, see Academia Mexicana de la Lengua (2017); on the notions of first (Europe) and second (USA) malinchismo, see Caloca (2008). 18 On mestizaje and the colonial legacy of social hierarchies in Mexico, see Lovell Banks (2006); on the colonial legacy in Latin America, see Quijano (2000). 19 On friendships in fieldwork settings, see Glesne (1989); Burgess (1991).

References Academia Mexicana de la Lengua (2017) Malinchismo y malinchista. Available at: www. academia.org.mx/espin/respuestas/item/malinchismo-y-malinchista (accessed 27 April 2018). Arias de Leon, D. (2014) Mexico’s malinchismo: Why deposing Pena Nieto is not the solution, The Huffington Post, 12 September 2014. Available at: www.huffingtonpost.com /delia-m-arias-de-leon/the-malinche-problem-peop_b_6264298.html (accessed 27 April 2018). Bierschenk, T., Chaveau, J.-P. and Olivier de Sardan, J.-P. (2002) Local Development Brokers in Africa: The Rise of a New Social Category, Working Paper 13. Mainz: Department of Anthropology and African Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University.

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Bisaillon, L. and Rankins, J. (2013) Navigating the politics of fieldwork using institutional ethnography: Strategies for practice. Forum Qualitative Social Research, 14(1). Available at: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1301144 (accessed 27 April 2018). Buchanan, D., Boddy, D. and McCalman, J. (1988) Getting in, getting on, getting out and getting back. In Bryman, A. ed., Doing Research in Organisations. London: Routledge, pp. 53–67. Burgess, R. (1989 [1982]) Elements of sampling in field research. In Burgess, R. ed., Field Research: A Sourcebook and Field Manual. London: Routledge, pp. 76–78. Burgess, R. (1991) Sponsors, gatekeepers, members, and friends: Access in educational settings. In Shaffir, W. and Stebbins, R. eds, Experiencing Fieldwork: An Inside View of Qualitative Research. London: Sage Publications, pp. 43–52. Bujra, J. (2006) Lost in translation? The use of interpreters in fieldwork. In Desai, V. and Potter, R. eds., Doing Development Research. London: Sage Publications, pp. 172–179. Cambridge Dictionary (2018) Facilitator. Available at: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dic tionary/english/facilitator (accessed 27 April 2018). Caloca, E. (2008) La condición mexicana posmoderna: un nuevo conflicto. Razón y Palabra, 13(62). Available at: www.redalyc.org/pdf/1995/199520738015.pdf (accessed 27 April 2018). Corra, M. and Willer, D. (2002) The gatekeeper. Sociological Theory, 20(2), 180–207. Edwards, R. (1998) A critical examination of the use of interpreters in the qualitative research process. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 24(1), 197–208. Eyben, R. and Savage, L. (2013) Emerging and submerging powers: Imagined geographies in the new development partnership at the Busan Fourth High Level Forum. Journal of Development Studies, 49(4), 457–469. Glesne, C. (1989) Rapport and friendship in ethnographic research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 2(1), 45–54. Gould, J. (2014) Positionality and scale: Methodological issues in the ethnography of aid. In Gould, J. and Secher Marcussen, H. eds., Ethnographies of Aid: Exploring Development Texts and Encounters. Roskilde University IDS Occasional Paper 24, pp. 263–290. Gupta, C. and Kelly, A. (2014) The social relations of fieldwork: Giving back in a research setting. Journal of Research Practice, 10(2), E2, 1–11. Hitzler, R. and Eberle, T. (2004) Phenomenological life-world analysis. In Flick, U., Von Kardoff, E. and Steinke, I. eds., A Companion to Qualitative Research. London: Sage, pp. 67–71. Horner, R. and Hulme, D. (2017) Converging divergence? Unpacking the new geography of 21st century global development. Development and Change, 1–32. Husserl, E. (1970 [1936]) The Crisis of European Science and Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Jones, M. (2015) Researching Organizations: The Practice of Organizational Fieldwork. London: Sage Publications. Kharas, H. (2017) The unprecedented expansion of the global middle class: An update, Working Paper 100. Washington: Brookings. Available at: www.brookings.edu/wp-con tent/uploads/2017/02/global_20170228_global-middle-class.pdf (accessed 27 April 2018). Klein, P. and Plaut. S. (2017) ‘Fixing’ the journalist-fixer relationship. Nieman Reports, 15 November 2017. Available at: https://niemanreports.org/articles/fixing-the-journalist-fix er-relationship/ (accessed 27 April 2018). Long, N. (2001) Development Sociology: Actor Perspectives. London: Routledge. Lovell Banks, T. (2006) Mestizaje and the Mexican mestizo self: No hay sangre negra, so there is no blackness. Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal, 15, 199–233.

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Magee, J. and Galinsky, A. (2008) Social hierarchy: The self-reinforcing nature of power and status. The Academy of Management Annals, 2(1), 351–398. Mauss, M. (1966 [1950]) The Gift. Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies [Essai sur le Don]. London: Cohen and West. Mawdsley, E. (2011) The changing geographies of foreign aid and development cooperation: Contributions from gift theory. Transactions, 37, 256–272. Merriam, S., Johnson-Bailey, J., Lee, M.-Y., Kee, Y., Ntseane, G. and Muhamad, M. (2001) Power and positionality: Negotiating insider/outsider status within and across cultures. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 20(5), 405–416. Messinger Cypess, S. (2010) La Malinche in Mexican Literature: From History to Myth. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Mosse, D. and Lewis, D. (2004) Theoretical approaches to brokerage and translation in development. In Mosse, D. and Lewis, D. eds., Development Brokers and Translators: The Ethnography of Aid and Agencies. Bloomfield, NJ: Kumarian, pp. 1–26. Muhammad, M., Wallerstein, N., Sussman, A., Avila, M., Belone, L. and Duran, B. (2015) Reflections on researcher identity and power: The impact of positionality on community based participatory research (CBPR) processes and outcomes. Critical Sociology, 41, 7–8, 1045–1063. Naim, M. (2017) The uprising of the global middle class. The Atlantic, 25 August 2016. Available at: www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/08/global-middle-cla ss-discontent/535581/ (accessed 27 April 2018). Online Etymology Dictionary (2018) Facilitate. Available at: www.etymonline.com/word/ facilitate (accessed 27 April 2018). Paerregaard, K. (2002) The resonance of fieldwork: Ethnographers, informants and the creation of anthropological knowledge. Social Anthropology, 10(3), 319–334. Quijano, A. (2000) Coloniality of power and Eurocentrism in Latin America. International Sociology, 15(2), 215–232. Routledge (2016) Habitus. Available at: http://routledgesoc.com/category/profile-tags/ha bitus (accessed 25 October 2018). Roy, A., Negrón-Gonzales, G., Opoku-Agyemang, K. and Talwalker, C. (2016) Encountering Poverty: Thinking and Acting in an Unequal World. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Salam, R. (2018) The growing global middle class and the persistence of poverty. National Review, 28 April 2018. Available at: www.nationalreview.com/corner/growing-global-m iddle-class-and-persistence-of-poverty/ (accessed 26 October 2018). Saunders, M. (2006) Gatekeepers. In Jupp, V. ed., Sage Dictionary of Social Research Methods. London: Sage, p. 126. Shaw Crane, E. (2015) Conclusion: Theory should ride the bus. In Roy, A. and Shaw Crane, E. eds., Territories of Poverty: Rethinking North and South. Athens, GA, University of Georgia Press, pp. 344–353. Singh, S. and Wassenaar, D. (2016) Contextualising the role of the gatekeeper in social science research. South African Journal of Bioethics and Law, 9(1), 42–46. Sultana, F. (2007) Reflexivity, positionality and participatory ethics: Negotiating fieldwork dilemmas in international research. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 6(3), 374–385. Thapar-Bjorkert, S. and Henry, M. (2004) Reassessing the research relationship: Location, position and power in fieldwork accounts. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 7(5), 363–381. Turse, N. (2017) Fixers are the unsung heroes of journalism. The Nation, 5 October 2017. Available at: www.thenation.com/article/fixers-are-the-unsung-heroes-of-journalism/ (accessed 27 April 2018).

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Umans, L. (2012) Intervention, facilitation and self-development: Strategies and practices in forestry cooperation in Bolivia. Development and Change, 43(3), 773–795. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (2013) The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World, Human Development Report 2013. New York: UNDP. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Mexico (2014) Municipal Human Development Index in Mexico [Índice de desarrollo humano municipal en México]. Available at: www.mx.undp.org/content/mexico/es/home/library/poverty/idh-municipa l-en-mexico–nueva-metodologia.html (accessed 27 April 2018). Vocabulary.com Dictionary (2018) Facilitation. Available at: www.vocabulary.com/dictiona ry/facilitation (accessed 25 October 2018). Wagner, S., Rau, C. and Lindemann, E. (2010) Multiple informant methodology: A critical review and recommendations. Sociological Methods and Research, 38(4), 582–618. Walsh, A., Brugha, R. and Byrne, E. (2016) ‘The way the country has been carved up by researchers’: Ethics and power in north-south public health research. International Journal for Equity in Health, 15(204), 1–11. Wesner, A., Pyatt, J. and Corbin, C. (2014) The practical realities of giving back. Journal of Research Practice, 10(2), M6, 1–9. Zarakol, A. (2017) Theorising hierarchies: An introduction, in Zarakol, A. ed., Hierarchies in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–14. Zelic, T. (2008) On the phenomenology of the life-world. Synthesis Philosphica, 2, 413–426.

VIGNETTE: “WHEN YOU LEAVE, THEY WILL KILL ME” Ethnography, ethics and (post)colonial entanglements in SSDC research Katharine Howell

This intervention critically reflects on my personal experiences of conducting ethnographic research in rural northern Mozambique, exploring the impacts of ProSAVANA, a controversial trilateral development project. It examines ways in which power inequalities with colonial genealogies can be (re)produced through the performance and practices of development cooperation, and through the very process of researching them. I call for closer attention to be paid to the ongoing coloniality of research, especially within the complex postcolonial dynamics of SSDC research.

Research ethics as life and death “When you leave, they will kill me”, Odeta told me. We were sitting on the veranda of her house in Bairro, a rural neighbourhood in Mozambique. Odeta had an ache that started in her neck, and had moved through her shoulders and her temples to her back. These were the unmistakable symptoms of an illness caused by witchcraft. I had been living with Odeta and her children for over ten months, and working with the peasants’ association of which she was a member, researching the association’s interactions with ProSAVANA. When I arrived, I asked the members of the association if I could stay and conduct research with them. I explained my plan to stay in the household of one of their members to experience their everyday life. The members of the association nominated Odeta to host me, explaining that as a widow, and one of the poorest members of the association, she would benefit the most from my contributions to rent and food. I leapt at this apparent chance to help someone. Soon, however, there were problems. The leaders of the farmers’ association started making financial demands of Odeta, and others spread vicious gossip about

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her family. Now Odeta was expressing fear for her life. Some members of the community, she said, consumed with envy for the money and prestige that my place in her household had brought her, would use sorcery to attempt to murder her. I was horrified. I was under few illusions that my research would actively benefit local people, but had little idea that I could cause so much harm. When I left Bairro, Odeta did too, moving to a house belonging to her sister-in-law in the nearby town. Deeply unsettled by these experiences, I discussed them with my colleagues and at conferences. Often, people rushed to minimize my concerns. I was making too little of the agency of local people, too much of my own guilt. After all, it’s not as if we can just stop doing this kind of research, can we? Increasingly, I wondered how much was about me – my naivety, my misguided wish to help? How much was about my institution – the limitations of its ethics procedures, its entitled attitude towards overseas fieldwork, and the bureaucratic and financial barriers to recruiting more diverse research students? How much was a wider issue, about research, development, and the ways in which they reinscribe colonial legacies and actively (re)produce colonial relationships?

SSDC research from the North: Desire, authenticity and ‘voice’ My doctoral research explores the impacts of ProSAVANA, an agricultural development project supported by the governments of Brazil, Japan and Mozambique and targeting smallholder farmers in northern Mozambique. Much previously conducted research on ProSAVANA has focused on discourse at the level of international and national policy. Planning my research project, I became passionate about moving beyond discourse- and policy-based analysis of SSDC and finding out how projects like ProSAVANA are experienced from the perspective of the people they nominally aim to help. In my attempts to ‘make space’ for the marginalized ‘voices’ of peasant farmers, I made problematic assumptions about the nature and value of marginalized voices, reinforcing narratives that position peasant farmers as victims and beneficiaries, and the experience-based accounts of such people as inherently authentic. Additionally, I assumed for myself a right, and an ability, to somehow access and represent these voices (Coddington 2017). In retrospect, my approach to these ‘voices’ demonstrates a saviour complex (McWilliam et al. 2009), and failed to consider the uneven landscape of power in which those voices are shared, collected and used – let alone the kinds of research in which local people might actually want to engage. The act of a white British student going to Mozambique in pursuit of a more ‘authentic’ account of SSDC is inherently political. It reinforces (neo)colonial narratives which position SSDC and its impacts as phenomena to be known, understood and morally evaluated by the West (c.f. Mawdsley 2008). Too late, I realized that the sensitivity and reflexivity I was trained to exercise in my research practice were not enough to overcome the assumptions I made about Bairro – or the assumptions that Bairro people made about me. In fact, my research

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was not separate from the processes and the intersecting axes of oppression that it sought to explore. Navigating these tensions is particularly challenging in the context of SSDC research, where the categories of race, and of ‘North’, ‘South’ and ‘(post)colonial’ take on different histories and meanings. In the next section, I consider some of the meanings of race, colonialism and development in Bairro.

(Post)colonial meanings: Unravelling race and power in crosscultural encounters Race and ethnicity were central in these interactions. My appearance, as well as my behaviour and position, interacted with past experience and cultural associations to inform how people in Bairro saw and related to me. People often thought I was a Catholic nun, a Jehovah’s Witness, or a US Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). Although local people would certainly have come across nuns, missionaries, and maybe even PCVs, of colour, my presence as a white person in that space could only be explained in a limited number of ways, and particular associations and expectations accompanied my whiteness. My Britishness also had specific historicogeographical significance in Bairro. The UK was near Maputo in some local imaginaries, and Britain meant the Spinning Jenny and the colonization of Malawi. It also meant the English nun who helped local families during the civil war, and the English Baptist missionaries who taught local children Wesleyan hymns. In everyday Makhuwa discourse, people articulated race in terms of power, positionality and being an outsider, as well as through skin colour. Outsiders were akhunya (singular makhunya), which was often translated into Portuguese as brancos [whites] but carried different connotations. I was makhunya, but so were the black Mozambican NGO workers who visit from Maputo, so was the Bangladeshi shopkeeper in town, and so was Jesus in The Watchtower. This understanding of race as outsiderness was also central to perspectives on colonialism. The term ‘postcolonialism’ has been critiqued, not least for its implicit suggestion of a rupture between colonialism and what follows (Loomba 1998). One of my Eurocentric assumptions arriving in Bairro was that participants’ most pertinent experience of oppression and colonization would be Portuguese rule. Portuguese colonialism is indeed significant in the memories of elderly members of the community. However, the subsequent 40 years of independence have also brought oppression, though by whom was often unclear: people attributed violence and poverty to their neighbours as well as to the state, and international actors like the IMF were not mentioned. The defining moment of disempowerment, for many of the people I interviewed, came at the height of the 1977–1994 war, when almost everyone in the neighbourhood fled their homes to escape violent attacks by RENAMO1 troops. In contrast to this period, many memories of colonialism were rosy: a time of predictability and security, with stable, even good (if paternalistic) relationships between the Portuguese plantation owners and local people working on the plantations. Experiences of development in Bairro were also mixed. SSDC has a long history (Mawdsley 2013), which was reflected in Bairro people’s recollections. The 1970s

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post-Independence period was characterized by technical assistance from Cuba, the USSR and the GDR. As a young man, Mário went to the USSR for military training, while Calisto studied a course in tobacco production and agricultural extension run by Cuban educators. People in Bairro had also interacted with a range of nationalities through Christian organizations. In the 1940s there were English missionaries and Portuguese nuns, but there were now many Nigerian and Brazilian missionaries, and the Catholic mission was staffed by an Indian nun, several Mozambican nuns and a Mexican priest. In the postwar neoliberal era, development cooperation was increasingly delivered by non-governmental organizations, sometimes in partnership with government departments, and often represented by Mozambican nationals. Bairro people’s framing of Maputo-based Mozambicans as akhunya was part of a wider narrative about southern Mozambique and central government, and their distance from and otherness to Makhuwa peasants. Local responses to akhunya interventions, from Portuguese colonialism to neoliberal development projects, were overwhelmingly characterized by ambivalence. In this complex context, my own positionality was therefore more unequal and immutable than I had expected and been led to expect by my academic training. This history of interactions and power relations meant that when I arrived to do research in Bairro, bearing official letters of permission, and especially when I started giving out money, I was entering an arena of meaning and expectation. As the most recent actor in a long history of ambivalent interactions and experiences, I was playing into and reinforcing dominant ideas about the relationship between akhunya and Makhuwa people. Aspects of my identity which I had considered important, such as my gender, nationality and even my ethnicity, and my attempts to address the power differentials by building friendships with local people, were secondary to this fundamental monetary dynamic. Most geographical research, from design and fieldwork to analysis and dissemination, is actively entangled in (post)colonial politics and inequalities (Tuhiwai Smith 1999). Research on SSDC can introduce further complexities of positionality and power, but these questions also apply to the disciplines of anthropology and human geography more broadly. Because researchers and institutions from the global North still play a prominent role in global SSDC research, this research is still often shaped by their colonial epistemologies and methodologies. In the final section, I consider some responses to these challenges.

“Field work” and (post)colonial politics The ways in which research models and methods can reinforce structural inequalities have been thoroughly critiqued, especially by feminist and anti-colonial scholars. There are many brilliant examples of researchers and institutions developing participatory and collaborative projects which incorporate these critiques. However, these critiques have also been co-opted and depoliticized. Considerations of reflexivity and positionality are often limited to the effect these have on data

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quality. Ethics has become a routine procedure, rather than an in-depth consideration of consent, positionality and the agency of participants in an unequal landscape of power (Sultana 2007). In 2014, it was still acceptable within my institution and my discipline to hire me – someone who had no connections with Mozambique and spoke no Portuguese – to undertake this sensitive research project. I was hired on the basis of what the academy values – good exam results and EU citizenship – rather than any connection to my ‘field’ site or experience of working in similarly sensitive contexts. Clearly there was a strong element of white privilege at play (Faria and Mollett 2012). So how do we produce SSDC research that does not further entrench the power and material disparities it studies? As Ahmed (2007, 165) suggests, rather than inventing “new tricks”, perhaps we need to show “how we are stuck”. Here, I suggest two responses, which offer ways of recognizing and addressing our stuck-ness. One response is to reinvigorate reflexivity, taking it beyond the performance of recognizing one’s positionality in terms of identity, “the customary laying out of the ‘me’ in the usual ‘race class and gender’ mantra” (Puwar 2003, 27 in Raghuram and Madge 2006, 274) to which it is often limited, and which is inevitably skewed by pre-existing biases and assumptions about power. Being reflexive should take us to a place of discomfort, acting as a tool for ensuring that we apply the same critical examination of the relationship between structural power inequalities and individual experience that forms the basis of our analytical work, and apply it to the actual process of research. To achieve this, reflexivity has to be engaged as an institutional and community practice as well as a personal one, encouraging us to ask questions not just of research encounters, but of whole projects. In the case of my research in Mozambique, the question is not about how I could have navigated power imbalances more sensitively, but whether I should have been in Bairro at all. This brings us to a second response, which involves thinking more critically about the very notion of doing research about a particular topic at all. Who does that research? Who does it benefit? What are the implications for the participants, both immediate and indirectly? What are the implications of not doing the research? (cf. Cronin-Furman and Lake 2018). Answering these questions can mean proceeding carefully, without “glossing over the uncomfortable” (Coddington 2017, 318). It can also mean refusal, and identifying when doing or continuing with research makes us complicit in colonialism (Tuck and Yang 2014). This is not the responsibility of individual researchers alone: we also have to turn this critical gaze back on our institutions and disciplines, and engage in decolonizing work there too (Tuck and Yang 2012). This is not to say that we can never do research, but that we should continue to interrogate the researcher’s “prerogative to know” (Coddington 2017, 316). Odeta, sitting and worrying about who would feed her children if she was murdered, reminds us of how much that prerogative can cost.

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Notes 1 RENAMO (Resistência Nacional Moçambicana).

References Ahmed, S. (2007) A phenomenology of whiteness. Feminist Theory, 8(2), 149–168. Coddington, K. (2017) Voice under scrutiny: Feminist methods, anti-colonial responses, and new methodological tools. The Professional Geographer, 69(2), 314–320. Cronin-Furman, K. and Lake, M. (2018) Ethics abroad: Fieldwork in fragile and violent contexts. PS: Political Science and Politics, 34(1), 1–8. Faria, C. and Mollett, S. (2012) Critical feminist reflexivity and the politics of whiteness in the ‘field’. African Geographical Review, 31(1), 79–93. Loomba, A. (1998) Colonialism/Postcolonialism. London and New York: Routledge. Mawdsley, E. E. (2008) Fu Manchu versus Dr Livingstone in the Dark Continent? Representing China, Africa and the West in British broadsheet newspapers. Political Geography, 27(5), 509–529. Mawdsley, E. E. (2013) From Recipients to Donors: The Emerging Powers and the Changing Development Landscape. London: Zed Books. McWilliam, E., Dooley, K., McArdle, F. and Tan, J. P.-L. (2009) Voicing objections. In Jackson, A. Y. and Mazzei, L. A. eds., Voice in Qualitative Inquiry: Challenging Conventional, Interpretive, and Critical Conceptions in Qualitative Research. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 63–76. Raghuram, P. and Madge, C. (2006) Towards a method for postcolonial development geography? Possibilities and challenges. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 27, 270–288. Sultana, F. (2007) Reflexivity, positionality and participatory ethics: Negotiating fieldwork dilemmas in international research. ACME, 6(3), 374–385. Tuck, E. and Yang, K. W. (2012) Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society, 1(1) 1–40. Tuck, E. and Yang, K. W. (2014) Unbecoming claims: Pedagogies of refusal in qualitative research. Qualitative Inquiry, 20(6), 811–818. Tuhiwai Smith, L. (1999) Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books.

VIGNETTE: “I’M TALKING TO YOU BECAUSE YOU ARE POLISH” Reflections on identities and historical memories in researching North–South relations Katarzyna Baran

From August 2017 to February 2018, I was doing fieldwork in Haiti. Although I thought I was familiar with the history of Polish legionnaires in Haiti, I could not have imagined that events that happened over 200 years ago would have any impact on my positionality as a researcher. It was a hot day, like any other, when I arrived at the Ministry of Agriculture for the final round of interviews. With the aim of going back to people who had been especially insightful, I entered the office of one of the busiest men in the institution, whom I had previously interviewed. My expectations were not high, considering how difficult it had been to schedule our first meeting. To my surprise, he received me in his office and we talked for over an hour. When we finished, he explained that he had found time for me because I am Polish. “Your ancestors helped us Haitians, so I am willing to help you”, he said. And this was not the only case in which my interviewee would refer to my nationality and recall the Polish involvement in the Haitian revolution. At the beginning of the 19th century, Poland did not exist on the map of Europe due to its partition between Prussia, Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After the Third Partition of Poland in 1795, 35,000 Polish soldiers fled to pro-French Lombardy where in 1797 they formed the Legions – military units ready to serve Napoleon – hoping that he would keep his promise to restore freedom to Poland. In 1802 and 1803, about 5,500 thousand of these soldiers were sent to Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), the richest French colony at the time, in order to suppress the slave revolt. The Haitian revolution that finally led to the creation of the world’s first black Republic in 1804 was a particularly bloody war, with mass atrocities on both sides. Poorly equipped, badly treated by the French and unfamiliar with local guerrilla tactics, the Polish legionnaires spoke very little French and no Creole. However, over the course of the fighting many realized that the situation of Haitians was

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similar to their own – they too were fighting for freedom (Pachon´ski and Wilson 1986; Orizio 2001; Rypson 2008). Looking through the literature about Polish legionnaires in Haiti, I was hoping to find an account of heroic actions that would help me understand Haitian sympathies towards Poles. However, what emerges is instead an image of hopelessness and disappointment. The legionnaires’ morale sank as they realized that they were being sacrificed to an immoral and lost cause, instead of fighting for their own cause. Without compensation for their effort, decimated by malaria and yellow fever, many of them died. When evacuating, the French left behind many Polish soldiers, some of whom had deserted to fight together with Haitians against French oppression; others became simply prisoners of war. Already during the war, Haitians were more sympathetic towards Poles, who even when captured were given better treatment than the French (Pachon´ski and Wilson 1986, Rypson 2008). The decisive moment for Polish-Haitian relations might have been the St. Marc massacre in October 1802, when Polish soldiers refused to execute an unarmed battalion of 400 Haitians. This gained the sympathy of the revolutionary leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who as a sign of respect named one of his corps the “black Poles” (Ardouin 1854). After Haiti declared independence, the new constitution guaranteed the Polish soldiers the right to live and own land in Haiti (Articles 12 and 13 of the 1805 Constitution). Other than some small German communities that had been settled since the second half of the 18th century, and white women who had intermarried Haitians and thus had been naturalized by the government,1 they were the only white people allowed this privilege. Several hundred Poles stayed in Haiti, mostly in the communities of Casale, Fond-des-Blancs and La Valée de Jacmel. In Haiti, it is still believed that entire units of Poles supported the revolutionaries, but their contribution to the overall military effort was insignificant. Only between 120 and 150 legionnaires voluntarily joined the insurgents. The rumours of massive desertions resulted from irregular Polish record-keeping in Port-au-Price (Pachon´ski and Wilson 1986). In 1983, John Paul II visited Haiti, which also had a great impact on the narratives about Poles in Haiti. When the Pope mentioned the legionnaires and their descendants, their history was internalized by a large portion of the Haitian population. John Paul II kept silent about the fact that most of the legionnaires had fought along with the French to the end, focusing instead on the fact that some of them had joined the insurgents and had even become Haitian citizens (Rypson 2008). Article 13 of the 1805 constitution is perhaps the most important physical ‘proof’ of Polish engagement in the revolution, but there are also a few other signs of Polish presence in Haiti. The inhabitants of the ‘Polish’ communities are lighterskinned than most of the Haitian population. Some of them have a surname ending in –sca or –sky. They dance ‘kokoda’ (known also under different names), identified as a Polish-Haitian tune. The Christmas lanterns, faneaux, resemble szopki – decorations used in Poland in the winter holiday season. One of the holiest icons of the Polish Catholics – the Black Madonna of Cze˛ stochowa – is

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the counterpart of the voodoo goddess Ezili Dantò. The image was probably brought to Haiti by the Polish legionnaires who had a habit of carrying the icon in the left breast pocket, close to the heart (Rypson 2008). The proverb “chaje kou Lapolòy” (literally “loaded like Poland”), which means “ready to face the hardships”, is another sign of Polish presence in Haiti (Pachon´ski and Wilson, 1986). The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affaires has also over the past few decades established a couple of small-scale education projects in the ‘Polish’ communities. The legionnaires’ contribution to an independent Haiti has not been forgotten. These memories live on today, especially among more educated Haitians. Affection for Poland has become a tradition as well as a legend. What does this story tell me as a researcher of development cooperation? Whether for analytical reasons or for convenience, I often catch myself thinking in binary categories of North–South and South–South relations. But these relations are much more diverse. The history of Poles in Haiti is an example of a small counter-narrative when we talk about North–South relations. It shows that the global North, or even Europe, is composed of different groupings, whose relations with countries like Haiti can vary greatly. Sometimes, as in this case, peoples from the North can relate to those from the South. Paradoxically, at the beginning of the 19th century, Polish legionnaires had arguably more in common with Haitians than with the representatives of the European colonial empire in which they found themselves: like many Haitians, they wanted to live in an independent nation-state. Individuals from both nations were able to sympathize with each other’s causes, despite all the differences between them. This story also contests the narratives of North–South assistance. Some of the Poles joined the Haitian rebels, and Haitians offered Poles a new home, which

Together with descendants of Polish legionnaires during my visit to Casale in 2014 Photo: Private archive.

FIGURE 7.1

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they could not find elsewhere. Haitians quickly learned how to distinguish Polish soldiers by their language and uniforms and were much more merciful towards those left behind as prisoners of war. Those who survived were given land and had their rights guaranteed by the constitution. Some of the soldiers that escaped to Jamaica, from where they were expelled, were warmly welcomed back by the post-revolutionary Haitian authorities. They were able to find a new home, when the possibility of returning to their homeland was non-existent. “Polone yo, yo bon moun” (Poles are good people), as they told me in Haiti. I don’t know how good Poles really are, but certainly this small moment in history reminds us of occasional counter-currents, and of the importance of seeing below states to the possible solidarities – past and present – of ordinary people.

Note 1 According to the 1805 Constitution, white women who married Haitian men were entitled to Haitian citizenship, whereas white men who married Haitian women were not offered the same privilege. This is perhaps because women were treated as the property of their husbands and the man in the marriage would define the status of both; the citizenship of the husband was the only one that mattered and by default extended to the woman’s citizenship (Koslow 2015).

References Ardouin, B. (1854) Études sur l’histoire d’Haïti, suivies de la vie du Général M. Borgella. Paris: Déxorby et E. Magdaleine, Lib. Éditeurs. Koslow, S. (2015) Writing Race in Haiti’s Constitutions: Synecdoche and Negritude in PostRevolutionary Haiti. PhD thesis. Department of Communication, Baylor University. Orizio, R. (2001) Lost White Tribes: The End of Privilege and the Last Colonials in Sri Lanka, Jamaica, Brazil, Haiti, Namibia, and Guadeloupe. New York: The Free Press/Simon & Schuster. Pachon´ski, J. and Wilson, R. K. (1986) Poland’s Caribbean Tragedy: A Study of Polish Legions in the Haitian War of Independence 1802–1803. Boulder, CO and New York: Columbia University Press. Rypson, S. (2008) Being Poloné in Haiti: Origins, Survivals, Development, and Narrative Production of the Polish Presence in Haiti. Warsaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza ASPRA-JR.

CONCLUSION: AIMING FOR MEANINGFUL CONNECTIONS IN KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION ON SOUTH–SOUTH DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION Navigating and overcoming inequalities Wiebe Nauta, Emma Mawdsley and Elsje Fourie

Contemporary South–South Development Cooperation (SSDC) is here to stay. It has become a recognized, appreciated and critiqued phenomenon in the world of development in the 21st century. It obviously has historical roots: looking back, alliances and partnerships that were formed in previous eras, such as those associated with the Bandung Conference and the Non-aligned Movement, were precursors of what we now label as SSDC. As we are mainly concerned with its present forms in this volume, however, we recognize that nowadays it has risen to even higher levels of prominence as the world is in flux. The Asian century, the formation of BRICS, alternatives to the Washington Consensus, China’s One Belt One Road initiative, the struggles of ‘the West’ with its position in the world that seems to have induced moves towards renewed nationalism and navel gazing, all seem to have added to the realization in all parts of the globe that the powers are shifting –and have been shifting for a while now– in the world of development. Agenda 2030, or the Sustainable Development Goals (UN 2015), clearly indicates that the world is fundamentally changing by for example mentioning the various cooperation axes in capacity-building: “through North-South, SouthSouth and triangular cooperation” (SDG 17.9). But also in academia and research circles SSDC is leading to fundamental reorientations. In 2015, for example, the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI) adapted its definition of development studies in order to do justice to the changes in the field. Not only were references to the prominent role of the West or North removed, the new definition also highlighted “…the emergence of novel topics such as South–South cooperation, poverty and social exclusion in industrialized countries, technological innovation and new (private) actors in international development” (EADI 2016, Annex 5). Although one may criticize the use of the

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term ‘novel’ here, it is nevertheless significant to note that South–South cooperation has been officially recognized in so many forums. In the last decades – with a certain acceleration in recent years – we have also witnessed a growing body of research that has examined, analysed, criticized, endorsed and refined our understanding of SSDC. We ourselves have sought to contribute in various ways to the field (Mawdsley 2012; Fourie 2017; Nauta and Lee 2017). Many studies were from a development anthropology/development sociology/development geography perspective, conducted by relative insiders, while other more ‘independent’ anthropology/sociology/geography of development studies were conducted by relative outsiders.1 However, what in our view was missing was a thorough reflection on the epistemological and related methodological challenges and opportunities associated with researching SSDC, both by investigating the research as well as the researcher(s). This volume has attempted to make such a contribution. Although it is clear that the book represents only a first small step in the right direction, the richness of the volume’s chapters and vignettes gives an illuminating insight into the challenges and opportunities of conducting ‘meaningful’ SSDC research. What the volume demonstrates, as Smith (2008, 87) has argued, is that “…[r]esearch is a site of contestation not simply at the level of epistemology or methodology but also in its broadest sense as an organized scholarly activity that is deeply connected to power”. In this conclusion we aim to bring together some of the fruits of this volume and at the same time endeavour to sketch potential concerns or prospects for research and the position of the researcher in the future. We hope this may also contribute to better alternative (and maybe even radical) new theories, which according to Bhambra and Santos (2017, 6) “…always implies other epistemologies (ways of knowing) if not other ontologies (ways of being) and definitely other methodologies (how to advance knowledge within a given way of knowing)”. SSDC, as we argued in the introduction to this volume, blurs boundaries, seeks hybrids and questions orthodoxies, involving processes of identity redefinition for states, institutions, activists and development practitioners and researchers themselves. Our contributors have opened this debate, and posed questions that we hope future research will take up: Is critical SSDC research postcolonial? What is the impact of power and inequalities on SSDC research? How do we critically examine positionalities in SSDC research? How can critical SSDC research contribute to the public sphere and democracy?

Is critical SSDC research postcolonial? Whether we take the seminal work Theory from the South by Comaroff and Comaroff (2015) as a point of departure, or the rich contributions in this volume by Mohan, Lampert, Tan-Mullins & Atta-Ankomah; Gonzalez-Vicente; Kaag & Ocadiz; Cesarino; Mageza-Barthel & Ruppert; and Cheng, it is clear that our conceptual apparatuses regularly fail us, ‘the South’ being a prominent example. This prompts Gonzalez-Vicente to ask: “so where do we start to map out the ‘South’ within an age of globalization?” This is mirrored by Mohan et al. who

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convincingly show how the rise of China clearly “‘ruffles’ the spatialities and epistemologies” that we normally employ. According to them, China is at the same time “‘Southern’, ‘Northern’ and neither”. Not only may the South – for some – refer to the former ‘Third World’ (a problematic category in itself), others use it largely in a ‘simple’ geographic sense. Still others actually use it to mainly refer to situations of inequalities, wherever these occur. Accordingly, for some scholars and quite a few development actors the term invokes images of solidarity, particularly in the context of SSDC, while for others it actually has strong connotations of new forms of exploitation. Although in certain contexts, for example, where local actors negotiate with outsiders, a certain ambiguity over terms may yield room for manoeuvre to bend the rules in their favour, in our view it is pertinent that any researcher of SSDC still aims to clearly position herself and to clarify her uses of the concepts and terms. In order to do this, it helps to keep the three perspectives in mind that Gonzalez-Vicente presents in this volume: a global perspective; a postcolonial perspective and an intersectional perspective. The first helps us to distinguish the global and transnational linkages in our capitalist world that may be at play in the subjects that we research and thus avoid methodological nationalism. The second assists us to recognize and acknowledge the legacies of oppression and exploitation at work, while the third perspective aids us in understanding how mutually reinforcing global inequalities like race, gender and class may influence our research fields (including ourselves). When each of us in our capacity as researcher does this in a self-critical manner, it facilitates an open and critical academic, societal or political debate. Nevertheless, it is also clear that because we come from different fields, such as geography, gender studies, anthropology, IR, postcolonial studies, development studies – while also being shaped by our political, social, gender and/or class orientations – our understanding and use of concepts may have quite different connotations. One such concept is decolonialism, for which, according to Cheng in this volume, “there is no singular definition”. For some it is a progressive term and endeavour which seeks to break the dominance of ‘the West’ or ‘the North’ and guides us to understand and view the world from Africa, Latin America or Asia from ‘the South’. Yet, scholars like Tuck and Yang (2012, 1), who focus on exploited and expropriated indigenous communities, warn us of the dangers of turning decolonization into a metaphor. Although they sympathize with struggles for social justice and the aims of ridding our research methods and educational systems of such legacies, they are convinced that ultimately these different uses of the term may lead us to avoid the real struggles and issues. In their view, the metaphoric use of the term may obscure the need for the full restoration of ownership and rights to land and resources for indigenous communities, whether they are situated in South Africa, the US or Norway. In addition, Cheng in this volume discusses another dimension which problematizes the term decoloniality as he points out that it often seems to imply a finished process and also keeps the West as a point of reference. Therefore, he chooses to frame his research instead as anticolonial as it stresses “the incomplete processes of overcoming knowledge inequality”. By developing a “situated postcolonial outlook”, Cesarino in this volume

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interrogates how the analytical framings developed to interrogate NCDC were found wanting when analysing the attempts of Brazil to engage in South–South partnerships on the African continent. Thus, she manages to avoid presenting Brazilian aid as an “embryonic form of Northern aid”. By discussing “the particular kind of coloniality involved in Brazil’s relations with Africa”2 – at times Brazilian actors sided with freedom movements while others in fact sided with ‘the West’ – she illustrates the complexity of Brazil’s participation in SSDC. According to Cesarino, it is a multi-scalar assemblage where the various Brazilian development institutions, actors and levels of engagement each have their different and sometimes contradictory logics and purposes. In our view, these conceptual and theoretical discussions are highly useful. They stimulate and enrich us as well as sensitize us to the pitfalls of our flawed epistemologies, which are frequently shrouded in the former colonial languages still dominant in the global academy. What for some are progressive concepts and categories that make us see and help to open up spaces for debate, these same concepts and categories, for others, may work in highly constraining and restrictive ways, contributing to the invisibility of issues and actors and thus increasing our ignorance. Whether the term ‘colonial’ in whatever combination – de-, anti-, neoor post- – is applicable depends on our field, research topic and research community. For some of us, without ignoring the enduring legacies of colonialism, it might be helpful to opt for other terminologies, like ‘counter-hegemonic’ or ‘antidomination’ in order to be more open for ‘modern’ forms of exploitation, patriarchy, expropriation, disenfranchisement, paternalism and class domination. Others may argue that these terms overlook the agency of various social actors and the intersubjective nature of social norms, and that SSDC research can therefore be reflexive without making ‘counter-oppression’ (or whichever term is used to express it) a central part of its analysis. In fact, according to Kaag and Ocadiz in this volume, who use the metaphor of the kaleidoscope, we should not be afraid of these differences and theoretical discussions but actually embrace them as such dialogue and friction may present opportunities “to move forward – with the promise to find new and refreshing perspectives”.

What is the impact of power and inequalities on SSDC research? In his recent book Life: A Critical User’s Manual, Fassin (2018, 68) contends that a “… critical approach consists precisely in giving evidence to the processes through which certain facts are rendered visible and others invisible”. It is such an approach, or even attitude, that most authors in this volume strive for. With regard to processes of power and concomitant inequalities, they do so on two fronts. First, we look at ourselves and our own world: the world of research and academia. As was shown above, this leads to uncomfortable discussions and conclusions. Second, in many of the contributions the enduring inequalities in the ‘development industry’, here with a focus on SSDC, are examined. In this section we will touch briefly on both.

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In nearly every contribution in this volume it becomes clear that the ‘Global’ academy is still highly unequal and not as ‘global’ as it is frequently portrayed. This endorses Bhambra and de Sousa Santos’ (2017, 6) belief that “…the social sciences as currently constituted continue to be in need of deep questioning”. Although one should not dismiss the truly critical scholars in the North, who are willing to stand up and point out what is wrong in their own academic circles, it is safe to say that many in the world still accept and even endorse the dominance of Northern academic institutions in terms of status, prestige, language, resources, funding and career opportunities. In fact, this book project also partly played into this. It was preceded by a conference in Cambridge – and although we strove for inclusivity by also seeking funding to invite and bring over colleagues from the South – it came with a certain extra prestige, certainly when viewed from academia in the Netherlands. In order to examine such continuing forms of Northern domination, Tilley (2017, 27) thus tells us that “…any decolonial knowledge production must involve a consideration of the political economy of knowledge – its forms of extraction, points of commodification, how it is refined as intellectual property, and how it comes to alienate participating knowers”. The image sketched by Abdenur in this volume through the notion of ‘anthropophagy’, or cannibalism, may be particularly relevant in this regard. It not only highlights the contradictions and power inequalities around and within SSDC, but also offers a more positive perspective: “by devouring and regurgitating the paradigmatic theories into a distinctive way of understanding international politics, Global South researchers of international cooperation may continue the quest for more applicable, relevant perspectives without renouncing a large body of theory and scholarship”. One way through which dominance of various kinds is sustained is through language, particularly the former colonial languages (of which English is usually the most prominent example). Secondly, particularly in development, we must acknowledge that ‘Northern’ governments and funding institutions are still displaying forms of institutional hegemony, pushing certain research agendas and priorities. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that academia in Northern countries may not necessarily be as closely associated with government agendas, as is the case for their ‘Southern’ contemporaries, operating in more authoritarian settings. The third manner in which the inequality of global academia is reinforced is through global capitalisms or the neoliberalization or marketization of the academy, particulary public universities.

Language When we focus on the dominance of certain languages in global academia it is hard to ignore the historical colonial roots and legacies of prominent academic languages. In fact, according to Collyer (2018, 63) “…in many countries of the global South, internationalisation of the research sector is assumed to have occurred if there is a widespread adoption of English as the language of publication”. However, as Abdenur argues in this volume, these mainstream languages may

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actually sanitize academic writing and the resulting publications may “reproduce mainstream ways of knowing”. At the same time, the adoption of, for instance, English in the South continues to reinforce barriers for vast numbers of bright young people raised in indigenous languages like, for example, isiXhosa in South Africa. This complicates and frequently even prohibits access to higher education, research and, as a result, exclusive global academic circles. Moreover, when young Southern scholars finally do make it to global academia, by for example getting a scholarship to study in the North, much of their rich intellectual background may become partly redundant as they are forced to primarily relate to scholarship wellknown in ‘the North’, as shown by Rubens Duarte in this volume. In addition, their potential struggle with proficiency in one of these global languages may also impact negatively on their publication record. At the same time, it also works the other way around. As Kaag and Ocadiz contend in this volume, the lack of proficiency by Northern researchers in these ‘local’ Southern languages and the relative physical and cultural distance of these powerful academic centres in ‘global academia’ may also prevent easy “…access to more subaltern, marginal and local voices”. However, this distancing does not always hamper Northern researchers in their careers. Hopefully, this volume can therefore be read in support of the call by Bhambra and Santos (2017, 4) for the need to undo such hierarchies and to also provincialize dominant knowledges.

Institutional hegemonies In terms of the continuing dominance of ‘Northern’ governments and funding institutions, pushing certain development research agendas and priorities, several contributions in this volume are pertinent. Mohan et al. in this volume, for example, show how the UK’s Department for International Development pushed the international group of researchers investigating Chinese business migrants in West Africa to consider the value of ‘the China model’ for ‘Africa’. When the researchers in a meeting with DFID executives argued convincingly that no such singular model exists, the funding agency made it clear that they, nevertheless, had to consider it anyway. In the Dutch context, similar issues are encountered: according to Kaag and Ocadiz not only is it the case that institutional and legal barriers prevent many more Africans from studying and working at the African Studies Centre, but also the collaboration with African partners is frequently shaped by partnering with larger, well-established institutions in ‘core’ countries rather than the smaller less well-known ones in ‘peripheral’ countries. Although it is indeed important to be cognizant of such relative hegemonies, we want to acknowledge that academic research agendas in many Northern countries may have more room for critical and ‘independent’ views and agendas, leading to a more plural set of priorities when compared to peers struggling in some authoritarian Southern settings.3 An example of such a research programme, with ample space for critical research, highlighting the complexity of African–Asian interactions, is Africa’s Asian

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Options (AFRASO) funded by the German government.4 Mageza-Barthel, a South African, and Ruppert, a German, in this volume show how this research programme gave them as feminists the wonderful opportunity to study gender politics in Chinese-African interactions. In a reflexive piece they contemplate their own experiences in these global networks of feminist researchers. These confronted them with their situatedness in Western academia and impacted their relationship with global South partners. Not only did they become acutely aware of their extraordinary institutional possibilities through a state-funded German research project, they also realized, at times, that their partners were embedded in quite different realities. Being part of other networks and preferring other research priorities, these partners faced their own institutional difficulties and were not always “as keen on the China-Africa topic” as they were. Similarly, writing from the South in this volume, Kamwengo shows as well how there are quite different realities on the ground in Zambia where the concept of South–South, for instance, doesn’t really resonate with the Zambians who simply refer to ‘partners’ wherever they are from. These last examples, in a way, may be read as restoring a certain balance in potentially skewed relationships, by making those in affluent academic bubbles realize that other realities exist. One other way of becoming more acutely aware of these imbalances is when Cheng observes in this volume that research on SSDC may involve ‘studying up’ and observing elites, which raises challenges for ethnographers in terms of not being automatically allied to authority. Whether the highest echelons of development bureaucracies in the North would be open to such scrutiny can be questioned, while similar circles in Beijing and Moscow would probably be entirely off-limits. One reality, however, remains crystal clear. We have yet to witness much by way of South–North Development Cooperation (SNDC), which was so brilliantly brought to the world’s attention by the YouTube clip of Radi-Aid5 (radiators for Norway), a satirical initiative in which Africa is urged to bring warmth to those suffering from cold in Northern Europe. It effectively raises the issues of continued stereotypes about Africa that are reinforced by charities, the media and academia identified by Andreasson (2005, 972) as “reductive repetition”. In our day-to-day functioning as human beings – and frequently also as researchers – we seem to be influenced by and trapped in matrices of power and the manner in which actors, processes and phenomena are framed. Should we not acknowledge that SNDC, although not labelled as such, actually does exist?6 We could for example see the thousands of Zimbabwean health professionals in the United Kingdom7 as providers of development assistance to a struggling health system. Or the manner in which South African peace and transition negotiators, associated with the African National Congress (ANC), assisted the Irish parties during their peace negotiations in the 1990s (Guelke 2000). Although most development scholars may be aware of such ‘modernities’, most still struggle to fundamentally alter mindsets. What we can conclude, however, especially in terms of research, is that we are yet to see a Burundian team of researchers conducting ethnographic research on the way in which such SNDC is delivered. In that sense, and so many others, global academia is still highly uneven.

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Neoliberalization of the academy One of the factors responsible for reinforcing inequalities in global academia is the influence of global capitalism or, as some scholars may say, the neoliberalization or marketization of the academy. Competition, commercialization, marketization and public–private partnerships with corporate entities are increasingly shaping public universities and generally benefitting the affluent institutions (although not necessarily their faculty, staff or students). Indeed, as Smith (2008, 92) contends, “[k]nowledge is a key commodity in the 21st century”. In terms of the marketization of the academy, many countries, like South Africa, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, witness students and staff who are engaged in protests for lower tuition fees, fewer bureaucratic auditing procedures, lower costs for academic publishing and wider access to academic journals (along with more local ownership by professionals). Acknowledging these political economies of knowledge at work in various contexts, whether North–South or South–South, is therefore crucial. With the acceleration of the commoditization of knowledge at the dawn of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we may witness many of these issues becoming even more pressing, particularly when we acknowledge the fact that billions in the global North and South increasingly lead digital lives. In order to make sense of our digital lives, including our avatars, we must also debate, learn and improve the way we conduct online research and engage in, for example, digital ethnographies (e.g. Pink et al. 2015). How will artificial intelligence, sophisticated biotechnologies, 3D printing, blockchain and Big Data shape contemporary development challenges as well as global academia? Taylor and Broeders (2015, 232–235) have convincingly shown how “the datafication of the global South” is speeding up. How can we make sure that these developments do not exacerbate existing inequalities? And how will they specifically impact the research on SSDC? How do South–South partnerships, where large Southern corporations or authoritarian governments are involved, with limited checks and balances from civil society, treat the ethical and socioeconomic dilemmas involved? Who owns the data and who profits? Who has access? Where does safety end and surveillance start? China’s Social Credit System (SCS), for example, which according to Liang et al. (2018) is on target to be fully implemented by 2020 and incorporates 1.4 billion Chinese citizens, is according to the authors also linked to and targeted towards the One Belt One Road initiative as China encourages other countries “…to accept and even adopt their state surveillance infrastructure” (p.435). In this regard, these issues will also be increasingly relevant for the research on SSDC. As was shown above, various contributors to this volume make us mindful of the enduring inequalities in knowledge production and access to and dominance of certain knowledges. It may therefore also be useful to take inspiration from activist student groups around the world who raise awareness about the dominance of certain ‘paradigms’. For example, at the University of Manchester The Post-Crash Economics Society argues that certain types of mainstream economics that are taught and researched are too closely associated with the way in which most economies

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and societies are organized. Therefore, they call for other alternative strands of economics to be incorporated into the curriculum. In South Africa and Oxford, other activists under the banner of #RhodesMustFall not only raised the issue of institutional racism and demanded the removal of colonial references on campus (e. g. the statue of Cecil Rhodes) but also struggled for the structural decolonization of the curricula which, according to them, still reflect white, heterosexual, male, Western, capitalist worldviews. Obviously such struggles are also associated with controversies in which some are unjustly silenced, for example, just because of a different skin colour. Yet, in our view, such critical examination of and reflexivity regarding class, gender, ethnicity and political background is important. This is also what this volume strives for, particularly in the chapters and vignettes in which authors reflect on and grapple with their own positionalities.

How do we critically examine positionalities in SSDC research? After the workshop at Maastricht University, the subsequent conference at the University of Cambridge took place with an extraordinary atmosphere in the room. This was not your standard conference, dominated by well-established bigname academics who flew in and out to deliver their keynote. Instead, it aimed at being a safe space where younger and older scholars of various genders and backgrounds (hues of skin colour, geographical origin, queer and straight, up-andcoming and established) truly interacted, listened and debated the challenges they had faced and the successes they had achieved in the field of researching SSDC. There were emotional moments when some of us shared our vulnerabilities and the vulnerabilities of our research partners and/or subjects. It was in these moments that we experienced meaningful connections as we became aware of commonalities in our anxieties, insecurities, mistakes made and successes achieved. As a result, we wrote in our introduction, this volume has yielded a rich palette in which the various positionalities including their concomitant struggles are represented. So what did we learn? In navigating the field of SSDC research, researchers encounter persistent socioeconomic and cultural barriers, hindering more emancipatory agendas and trajectories. Sadly, one of these is still the gender dimension which often intersects with class, race and generation. Mageza-Barthel & Rupert in this volume argue that particularly “state-led South–South discourses have only casually and sparingly had recourse to feminist perspectives or raised questions of gender equity”. This is vividly illustrated by the various authors in this volume such as Kim (Jinhee), Kim (Sung-Mi) and Roychoudhury who all raise the issue of older generations of men in Korea, India and partner countries still dominating the development cooperation field and frequently still determining access to positions, research agendas and determining the legitimacy of what is debated by whom. Yet, in the case of Korea, although the experiences of Kim (Jinhee) and Kim (Sung-Mi) mirror each other regarding the dominance of men, Kim (Sung-Mi) also explains that although women generally “…cannot easily penetrate into male-dominated traditional

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policy mainstreams”, it is foreign aid, as a fairly “new niche policy field” which is “relatively open to female leadership”. In many of the other contributions on positionality in this volume, such as Kamwengo, Herbst, Haug, Cabral, Bracho, Howell, Baran, Van Wyk, Karugia, Gonzalez-Vicente and Duarte, the identities, categories and frames that we frequently find ourselves in are critically examined. The authors show, each from rather unique positions, that identities, categories and frames are frequently blurred and of a hybrid nature, as are their counterparts and other actors in the research settings. In fact, this may lead to uncomfortable questions. Who is truly Southern? Does a stint as a postgraduate at a Northern university ‘contaminate’ the legitimacy of someone from the South? Is it about skin colour, name or other defining characteristics like class? And are those who are ‘really’ from the South the only ones who may be allowed to speak? Perhaps one of the whole points of critically engaging with SSDC is to unravel these boundaries and demonstrate that ‘authentic’ Southern or Northern voices are impossible. This also problematizes the idea of actual South–South spaces. It is here that Gonzalez-Vicente in this volume may point us in an significant direction. According to him, “actual ‘South–South’ spaces are those open for transversal collaboration between movements against diverse forms of oppression in the post-national South”. This resonates with Bhambra, who argues for “connected sociologies” (2016, 965), reminding us that we should aim to explore “the possibilities of meaningful social critique and resistance – and thus democratisation”, which “…requires us to remove the ‘mental fences’ that enclose knowledge and, instead, to extend our engagements in the world, connect with others globally and put the sociological imagination to work on new worlds of possibility”. If indeed we are serious about promoting connections, social justice and social critique, we may have to acknowledge the importance of and maybe even work towards processes of democratization, no matter how messy these might be. Because when people have a say in and can influence the processes that shape their lives, we can speak about human development or even “development as freedom” (Sen, 1999). One way to make their voices heard is through active participation in public spheres (Habermas 1989/1997; Lang 2013; Edwards 2014) and through the support to and participation in critical (emerging) civil societies including civil society organizations, global activist networks and social movements. What SSDC researchers may be able to contribute is discussed in the next section.

How can critical SSDC research contribute to the public sphere and democracy? Some will be sceptical when we suggest that researchers of SSDC can learn from – and form alliances with – critical civil society groups in order to overcome inequalities and fight poverties. But NGOs are not necessarily representative, are often Northern-dominated and are frequently undemocratic themselves, they will argue. And here they are right. It is not automatically NGOs that we identify as

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beacons of hope. It is civil society organizations (CSOs) and their networks that are active in the public sphere by forging debates and advocacy that we see as relevant. The relevance has three dimensions. First, SSDC can also take the shape of CSO– CSO cooperation. Secondly, global activist networks in which CSOs play their part can serve as an inspiration for global networks of SSDC researchers. Thirdly, research on SSDC can assist by delivering input through solid research to provide empirical evidence, debunk myths and expose (populist) rhetoric. In addition, researchers themselves may take part in those debates. First, when focusing on CSO–CSO cooperation in SSDC, we can take inspiration from Chandhoke (2013, 306), who asks how we can make sure that the rising powers (many of which are engaged in forms of SSDC) will contribute “to realis [ing] justice for the global poor”. She identifies two problems. First, emerging powers like India, Brazil and China are increasingly seen as representatives of the South while in her view “there is little indication that such qualities underlie claims to represent the global South. The discourse is purely self-referential, and the wedge between the better off and the worse off in the global South has been widened”. Second, she argues that the primary responsibility and power to act for the benefit of the poor still lies with states and to some degree international institutions. She contends, therefore, that an “essential precondition for such action is provided by collective action in civil society” since they are able to put the suffering and injustices on the agenda. Furthermore, since the world is globalized, “civil society activism has to be global in scope”, forging protest or advocacy networks across borders (2013, 309). This idea of global civil society has been expounded by Kaldor (2003) too, who warns that we should not confuse a call for civil society with a call for more NGOs because potentially –here she cites Mamdani8 – “NGOs are killing civil society” (p.589). In other words, when professional international NGOs, with headquarters in the North and staffed with middle-class personnel, are invited by powerful development institutions to ‘represent’ the interests of ‘the South’, communitybased organizations and critical civil society groups of the global poor in the global South may actually lose their voice. Thus, when a call for including civil society in development processes in actual fact only means the inclusion of professional NGOs, there is a danger that more politicized forms of civil society activism and advocacy may be supressed. According to Kaldor (2003), Edwards (2014) and Lang (2013), such depoliticized interpretations of civil society,9 with an emphasis on the associational dimension, are problematic. In their view, it is essentially those places which are accessible to all for open (political) debate – the public spheres – that are too scarce or being actively limited and discouraged in many countries as well as at regional and global institutional levels. Without these, the voices of the vulnerable in precarious circumstances may not be heard. As SSDC sometimes also takes the form of cooperation between civil society groups from the global South,10 or includes CSOs in its design, management or operation, it is worth reflecting on potential challenges. In SSDC, although many actors stress the importance of widening the room for and role of civil society,

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research shows, as was shown above, that the interpretations of what constitutes civil society greatly varies. As a result, for example, a well-established democracy like South Korea is able to export an old-fashioned rural development model (Saemaul Undong), which was developed under authoritarian rule in the seventies, to Rwanda, which is also ruled in an authoritarian fashion. And although there is some room to manoeuvre for progressive actors involved in the various stages of the programmes, and maybe embryonic forms of ‘emerging civil society’ in Rwanda are stimulated, progressive Korean CSOs like ODA Watch raise many critical issues (Nauta and Lee 2017). Similar to points raised in this volume by Roychoudhury, Haug, Kim (Jinhee), Kaag & Ocadiz, Kim (Sung-Mi) and Cesarino, ODA Watch argues that conservative and patriarchal groups in the state apparatus may actually be too dominant in shaping the SSDC with various African countries. Although this may be productive when dealing with more authoritarian regimes in the South, it may actually prohibit the more emancipatory potential of SSDC and also in the process clip the wings of CSO–CSO contacts. In this regard, it is also useful to reiterate a point often made in the literature (e.g. Hsu 2014), namely that SSDC in which China plays a role may suffer from a lack of a Chinese domestic critical CSO audience. When Northern countries make mistakes in NSDC, they are often highly scrutinized and criticized by their domestic CSOs who attack these governments in various public spheres. As China lacks an independent civil society, such domestic criticism is also much rarer and therefore the Chinese authorities may not be prompted to learn and change to the same extent. Secondly, when examining the way in which CSOs play their part in global activist networks and can serve as an inspiration for global networks of SSDC researchers, many contributions to this volume show how brokers and translators (Lewis and Mosse 2006) are of the utmost importance to the success of SSDC research. Mohan et al. in this volume show how crucial their broker Rosemary was and how her knowledge and ability to bridge social and cultural spheres helped to overcome mainstream binary understandings of South–South. The resulting stories actually “…highlight the cultural connection and mixing that can underpin apparently binary ‘South–South’ relations and suggest that embracing this helps us to better understand these relations”. Furthermore, we may learn from the way in which these global activist networks work when we form our own networks. As Keck and Sikkink (1999) showed 20 years ago, transnational advocacy networks do not only consist of progressive civil society groups. Other institutions like international intergovernmental organizations and parliamentary delegations or even representatives of the executive branches may play a dominant role or even attempt to capture the agendas. Various contributions in this volume indeed illustrate that we as researchers of SSDC (and NSDC for that matter) should not be too naive in the face of such arrangements and forces. A third key role for researchers of SSDC is essentially to do what they do best: that is, conducting rigorous research and sharing widely the well-researched evidence that they have collected. As this volume has shown, such research can illustrate the shortcomings of binaries, dichotomies and stereotypes, thereby adding to

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new insights, and furthering debates on ethical, methodological and epistemological challenges. In a day and age when many people are confined to their social media bubbles, when ‘fake news’ competes with fact-checked sources possibly manipulated by trolls and when populist politics is on the rise on every continent (e.g. Trump, Bolsonaro, Duterte, Orbán), it is up to the sciences and investigative journalism to expose ‘alternative facts’ and untruths, debunk myths and expose (populist) rhetoric. In addition, researchers too may be inclined to take part in those debates and thereby sustain the often ‘vulnerable’ public spheres. This vulnerability is usually connected to the developments in domestic politics in the donor and/or recipient country, quite frequently also impacting the room for critical social science research (including research on SSDC). The ways in which domestic politics may impact the position of researchers is best explored in the chapter by Cesarino in this volume. She critically examines the way in which research on Brazil’s role in SSDC in various African countries was shaped by consecutive Brazilian administrations under Lula, Rousseff, Temer and now Bolsonaro. As she observes, SSDC may be viewed increasingly negatively under the new administration, and she warns us that the “South–South cooperation landscape may change more significantly if sovereignist, antiglobalist populisms continue to spread worldwide”, in the process potentially challenging “the very political and epistemological foundations on which SSC research has been conducted thus far, as well as the possibilities of [international] dialogue and collaboration”. This influence of domestic politics on the SSDC agenda is also raised by Bracho in this volume as he – being both a diplomat and a researcher – shows that Mexico is facing “so many pressing domestic issues” which impact “the political will to develop a more active and ambitious foreign policy, including in development cooperation”. One potential means to make sure that checks and balances and critical voices in (emerging) public spheres are safeguarded is to invest in quality journalism. Van Wyk in this volume shows how the Africa-China Reporting Project aims to do exactly that by, for example, investigating whether China is dumping e-waste in Lagos, how Ugandan criminals steal from Chinese investors, and other important investigative projects. When social scientists get involved in SSDC research that may criticize or even incriminate their domestic donor governments, they face various dilemmas of loyalty, quite often also intertwined with their own career trajectories. These issues come to the fore in various contributions to this volume, but are most explicitly discussed by Kim (Sung-Mi) who writes about her own research and career trajectory in researching Korean SSDC and the conflicted loyalties involved. Reflecting on these rich discussions presented above, we would like to thank all authors of the chapters and vignettes alike for their contributions to the ethical, methodological and theoretical debates that we are all – in different ways – engaged in as we conduct research on SSDC. Some of these challenges are similar to research on NSDC and some are distinctly related to SSDC. But it is also good to be cognisant of what Smith (2008, 91) has argued. Research which was “once the tool of colonization and oppression” can also come “…to be seen as a potential

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means to reclaim languages, histories, and knowledge, to find solutions to the negative impacts of colonialism and to give voice to an alternative way of knowing and of being”. Especially, as this volume has shown, through the establishment of meaningful connections.

Notes 1 See Grillo and Stirrat (1997) for a useful and critical discussion on the distinction between development anthropology and anthropology of development. 2 One of the examples she gives is that although Brazil historically expressed solidarity with anti-colonial movements, she shows, partly based on Dávila (2010), that Brazil in fact frequently sided with the old colonial powers in the 20th century when it, for example, failed to take an oppositional stance towards Portuguese colonialism and the Apartheid regime in South Africa. 3 Even the binary ‘North’ versus ‘South’ is highly problematic here when we think of the recent forced move of the Central European University from Hungary to Austria. 4 Though government funded, the programme provided ample opportunities for critical, original research in various fields (www.afraso.org/). 5 See: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkOUCvzqb9o. 6 There are some nascent examples: e.g. Constantine et al. (2016) and Constantine & Shankland (2017). 7 See for example Gwaradzimba and Shumba (2010). 8 Kaldor attended an Expert Conference where Mamdani made these remarks. 9 Edwards (2014, 10) refers to such representaions with an emphasis on associations as “Neo-Tocquevillean”. 10 Think of the successful way in which the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) mobilized Brazilian HIV/AIDS activists in the fight for HIV/AIDS treatment in South Africa: e.g. Nauta (2011).

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Fourie, E. (2017) The intersection of East Asian and African modernities: Towards a new research agenda. Social Imaginaries, 3(1), 119–146. Guelke, A. (2000). Ireland and South Africa: A very special relationship. Irish Studies in International Affairs, 11, 137–146. Gwaradzimba, E. and Shumba, A. (2010). The nature, extent and impact of the brain drain in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Acta Academica, 42(1), 209–241. Grillo, R. D. (1997). Discourses of development: The view from anthropology. In Grillo, R. D. and Stirrat, R. L. eds. Discourses of Development: Anthropological Perspectives. Oxford: Berg, pp. 1–33. Habermas, J. (1989/1997) Institutions of the public sphere. In Boyd-Barrett, O. and Newbold, C. eds., Approaches to Media: A Reader. London: Arnold, pp. 235–244. Hsu, J. Y. (2014) Chinese non‐governmental organisations and civil society: A review of the literature. Geography Compass, 8(2), 98–110. Kaldor, M. (2003) The idea of global civil society. International Affairs, 79(3), 583–593. Keck, M. E. and Sikkink, K. (1999) Transnational advocacy networks in international and regional politics. International Social Science Journal, 51(159), 89–101. Lang, S. (2013) NGOs, Civil Society, and the Public Sphere. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lewis, D. and Mosse, D. eds. (2006) Development Brokers and Translators: The Ethnography of Aid and Agencies. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press. Liang, F., Das, V., Kostyuk, N. and Hussain, M. M. (2018) Constructing a data‐driven society: China’s social credit system as a state surveillance infrastructure. Policy & Internet, 10(4), 415–453. Mawdsley, E. (2012) From Recipients to Donors: Emerging Powers and the Changing Development Landscape. London: Zed Books. Pink, S., Horst, H., Postill, J., Hjorth, L., Lewis, T. and Tacchi, J. (2015) Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practice. London: Sage Publications. Nauta, W. W. (2011) Mobilising Brazil as ‘significant other’ in the fight for HIV/AIDS treatment in South Africa: The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and its global allies. In Dietz, T. et al. eds., African Engagements: Africa Negotiating an Emerging Multipolar World. Leiden: Brill, pp. 133–162. Nauta, W. W. and Lee, T. J. (2017) South Korean civic actors in Rwanda: Promoting rural development and an emerging civil society in contexts controlled by the state. In AfricanAsian Encounters: New Cooperations and Dependencies. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 183–215. Sen, A. (1999) Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, L. T. (2008) On tricky ground. In Denzin, N. K. and Lincoln, Y. S. eds., The Landscape of Qualitative Research (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., pp. 85–113. Taylor, L. and Broeders, D. (2015) In the name of Development: Power, profit and the datafication of the global South. Geoforum, 64, 229–237. Tilley, L. (2017) Resisting piratic method by doing research otherwise. Sociology, 51(1), 27–42. Tuck, E. and Yang, K. W. (2012) Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 1–40. United Nations (2015) Transforming our world: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. A/RES/70/1. Available at: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/tra nsformingourworld (accessed 11 November 2015).

INDEX

Abdenur, A. E. 101 Abels, G. 63 abyssal line 18 Accra 13, 15 Afrabian spaces 78 Afrasian spaces 78 AFRASO (Africa’s Asian Options) 79, 136, 138, 186–7 Africa-China Reporting Project 104–8, 193 Africa-China see China-Africa relations African scholars 73, 81, 139 see also Southern academics, marginalized voices African studies 81–2, 137 African-Asian relations 136–7, 186 see also China-Africa relations AFRICOM 13 agency: African 16, 18, 23, 136, 138; anthropophagist 45; of less powerful 50; of researched 95; of researchers 52, 94, 172, 175; of social actors 184 agribusiness 118–19, 123–4 Ahmed, S. 175 Ahmedabad 78–80 akhunya 173–4 Amaral, T. do 39–41 AMEXCID (Mexican Cooperation Agency) 130, 132; fieldwork in 155, 160, 162, 164, 166 Andrade, O. de 41–3 Andreasson, S. 187 Anthropophagist Manifesto see Manifesto Antropófago

anthropophagy: 5, 185; in Brazilian art 38–41; in international relations 33–6; Manifesto Antropófago 38–41; taboo 36–7; Tupi 37–39; uses of 41–45; Western depictions 32, 37 anti-coloniality 92, 95 Araújo, E. 117–9 Bairro (Mozamquique) 171–5 Bandung Conference 3, 136, 181 Beck, U. 5 Behrens, M. 63 Beijing 14, 27, 93–4, 141, 187 Bennett, J. 141, 143 Bhambra, G. 16–18, 182, 185–6, 190 Boissevain, J. 23, Bolsonaro, J. 109–10, 116–20 Brazil: agricultural cooperation 4, 123, 126–7; agricultural sector 124; Brazilian Cooperation Agency 51, 111–12, 114, 125; BRICS 45, 62, 110, 118, 181; development cooperation 8, 51, 53 109–17, 120, 125; EMBRAPA 109, 112–14, 116; Itamaraty 51, 110–11, 118–20; shift in foreign policy 119–120; as Southern actor 3, 133, 184; see also anthropophagy, ProSAVANA Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC) 51, 111–12, 114, 125 BRICS 45, 62, 110, 118, 181 Broeders, D. 188 broker 6, 12, 20–24, 157–8, 192 Bruno, R. 126

Index 197

Bry, T. de 32 Brzezinski, Z. 130 Burgess, R. 163, 166n4, 167n19 Burkina Faso 86 Busan 56–9, 61–2, 65–6, 133 Caldas, M. 42 Campos, A. de 41 cannibalism see anthropophagy Chad 82 Chakrabarty, D. 35, 93 China-Africa relations: gender politics 136–138; journalism 104–108; knowledge production 15–24; researching 13–15; Zambia 73–5 China: 65, 88 182–183, 191; BRICS 45, 62, 110, 118, 181; intellectuals 19, 95; knowledge production 92, 94; One Belt One Road 181; TAZARA railway 73; Xi Jinping 15, 19, 29; see also China-Africa relations civil society organizations see CSOs Collyer, F. 19, 185 coloniality: and Brazilian SSC 110–11, 114–16, 184; experience of 3, of research 171; see also anti-coloniality Columbus, C. 37 Comaroff, J. 5, 16–18, 93, 182 Comaroff, J. L. 5, 16–18, 93, 182 Connell, R. 16, 18 Costa e Silva, A. da 41 Cox, R. 34, CSOs 6, 56, 190–2 Cuba: fieldwork in 83–85; medical cooperation 73, 83, 100–1; Mozambique 174 cultural brokerage 13, 16, 20–24 see also broker DAC (Development Assistance Committee) see OECD-DAC Darfur 13 Dávila, J. 115–16 decolonialsm 5, 92–5, 183 democracy: Korea 57, 154, 192; racial 115,120; and SSDC research 182, 190–4 development aid discourse 115 DFID (Department for International Development) 14–15, 51–3, 186 Diani, M. 21 diplomats: discourse 112–15, 127; as informants 57–9, 61–2, 112; positionality 130–131 Dunn, C. 41

Ecuador 29 Edwards, M. 191 Edwards, R. 156 efficacy paradox 112 EMBRAPA (Brazilian Agriculture and Livestock Research Corporation) 109, 112–14, 116 Escobar, A. 9, 93, 115 ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) 13–15, 19 Ethiopia 31, 104, 108, 139, 152 Evora, C. 85 Ex-Im Bank 59–60 facilitator: functions 5, 158; researcherfacilitator relationship 156, 162–6; in ‘Southern’ development cooperation agencies 158–62; term 155–7 family farming 119, 123–127 Fassin, D. 184 feminism: feminist abstention 136; intersectionality 28, 30–1, 183; feminist researchers 9, 139–43, 146, 148–9, 174, 187; in studying SSC 7, 9, 137–9, 143; as Western theory 35; see also gender, marginalized voices Ferguson, J. 9, 112 Foucault, M. 95, 111–14 Fourie, E. 5 Frankenberg, R. 140 Freyre, G. 115 gatekeepers: vs. facilitator 158, 163; of SSC scholarship 146–9; term 157 GDR (German Democratic Republic) 174 gender: equity 137, 151–154, 189; inequalities 29; politics in South-South relations 9, 136–9, 187; power hierarchies 149; rights 29; see also positionality, feminism Germany 79, 138, 161 Ghana 13–15, 19–24 global approach 28–9 Gulf charities 82–3 Gupta, C. 165 Haiti 8, 98, 177–80 health cooperation: 97, 100; China 105; Cuba 73, 83, 100–1 Hinderaker, E. 21, 24 horizontality 98–9, 101, 115, 125 Hungary 118 Husserl, E. 156, 159, 165 hybridity 42–3

198 Index

Jamnagar 78–9 Japan 38, 61, 74, 118; ProSAVANA 114, 116, 172 Jáuregui, C. 36–7 Johannesburg 104, 106 Jong, S. de 21 journalism 104–108, 157, 193

Laclau, E. 30 Lagos 15, 22, 106, 193 Lang, S. 191 language: barrier 52, 186; Chinese 23; English 19, 20, 34, 52, 185; Northern/ Western/mainstream 8, 35, 43, 45, 87, 184–6; skills 85, 156, 159, 163 Lee Myung-Bak 56–7 Léger, F. 39 Lery, J. de 37 Lesotho 9, 106 Lévi-Strauss, C. 36, Li, T. 112 Liang, F. 188 liberalism 34, 35, 50 life-worlds: term 158–9; relationship with facilitators 6, 160–3, 165–6 Lindquist, J. 21 Lula Silva, L. I. da: agricultural policy 119, 124; economic growth 120; ProSAVANA 114; relations with Africa 115, 193; South-South Cooperation 109–10, 113–14, 116, 121, 193

Kabore, R. 86 Kaldor, M. 191 Kaunda, K. 73 Keck, M. E. 192 Kelly, A. 165 Kenya 8, 80, 108 Kissinger, H. 130 knowledge production: anthropophagy 45; co-production of knowledge 95; China 92, 94; cultural brokerage 20–24; decolonialism 92–5, 185; feminism 139–43; inclusive forms 16–17; India 7, 35, 146–9, 189; inequalities 8, 12–13, 16, 34, 51–2, 81–2, 188; political economy of 18–20; politics of 49–54; Southern 12–13, 16, 36, 51, 81, 93; Western/Northern 12–13, 15–18, 34, 87–8, 93; see also Northern institutions, positionality Korea: 3, 192; academic culture 151; education of women 153; foreign aid sector 8, 56–67, 69, 133, 150–4, 189; gender equity 151–154; ODA sector 151–154; OECD member 150 Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) 58, 60, 154 Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) 58, 60 Korean Ministry of Strategy and Finance 59, 60 Korean Permanent Delegation to OECD 58–9

Macron, E. 86 Makhuwa 173–4 Mali 114 malinchismo 161–2 Mani, L. 140 Manifesto Antropófago 38–41 Maputo 13, 83–4, 173–4 Marcondes, D. 101, 121 marginalized voices: 87–8, 90n3, 101, 172, 186, 190–1; African scholars 76–7, 82, 139; peasants 172; Southern scholars 3, 54, 76–7, 82; women 148–50; see also feminism Mauss, M. 156, 163–5 Mawdsley, E. 115, 121, 125 McGrath, S. 52 medical cooperation see health cooperation Meneses, M. P. 85 Mexico: 3, 7, 132–3, 193; AMEXCID 155, 160, 162, 164, 166; diplomacy 130–3; researcher’s positionality 84–6, 159–62 Mier y Terán, M. 126 modernization theory 33, 36, 44 Montaigne, M. de 38 More Food Programme 126 Mosse, D. 112 Mouffe, C. 30 Mozambique: Cuban medical aid 83; fieldwork in 83–5, 127, 171–5; ProSAVANA 8, 114, 116, 126, 171 Muscat 78

India: 133, 191; in Africa 73, 115, 127; BRICS 45, 62, 110, 118, 181; Indian ethnic minority 8, 79; Indian researchers 65, 79–80; knowledge production 7, 35, 146–149, 189 Indian Ocean 8, 78 Indonesia 35 informant protection 67 institutional isomorphism 44 intersectional perspective 28, 30–1, 183 Islam, G. 38, 42–3 Israel 118–19 Italy 118 Itamaraty (Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Relations) 51, 110–11, 118–20

Index 199

Network of Southern Think Tanks (NeST) 133, 147–8 NGOs (non-governmental organisations): in China 14; in Korea 56, 59–60, 63, 66; in Africa 83, and SSC 101; in India 146–8; and SSDC research 190–1 Nigeria: 88; Chinese migrants in 14, 21–4; Chinese oil investments in 14–15, 20; fieldwork in 19–24 Nizwa 78 Non-aligned Movement 73, 181 non-governmental organisations see NGOs Nordic donors 61 North-South divide 3, 28, 127, 132–3, 155 North-South relations: 7; aid/cooperation 49–50, 53, 97–9, 126, 179, 181; asymmetries in knowledge production 12, 24, 52, 142; diversity 179–80; research 13, 140, 179 Northern institutions: researchers in 2, 6, 8, 52–3, 76, 88; knowledge production 35, 50, 76, 88, 95 see also language, knowledge production northernness see positionality Norway 183, 187 ODA (Official Development Assistance) sector 151–154 OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) 31, 56, 154 OECD-DAC (OECD-Development Assistance Committee): aid regime 56, 132; fieldwork in 59–69; Korea 57, 150 Oman 78, 80 One Belt One Road 181 Ong, A. 18 Orientalism 33, 43, 115 Ostrander, S. A. 66 Paris Agreement 118 Pereira, C. 141, 143 Poland 118, 177–9 Polanyi, K. 5 Polish legionnaires 177–180 Portuguese colonialism 173–4 positionality: age 94; ascribed characteristics 159; class 2, 142, 160; gender 30, 62–3, 83–4, 94, 151–154, 159, 174; inside/ outside-ness 95, 162; institutional affiliation 2, 159; language 23, 85, 159, 163; nationality 30, 60–2, 64, 84, 133, 159–160, 174; Northernness/Westernness 7, 79, 83, 142; post/de-colonial dimensions 92; power dynamics 33, 95;

profession 133; race 2, 30, 141–2, 159, 174; reciprocity 156; sexual orientation 141; Southernness 7, 84, 142 positivism 34–5, 44 ProSAVANA: 8, 114, 116–17, 126, researching 171–2 public sphere 182, 190–3 race see positionality Radcliffe, S. 29, Raghuram, P. 17, 175 realism 34–5, 50 research institutions 16, 52, 76 see also Northern institutions Rousseff, D. 109–10, 116–17, 120, 193 Russia 3, 27, 31, 45, 118, 177 see also BRICS Said, E. 92, 115 Salazar, A. 115 Sanborn, G. 37, Santos, B. S. 16–18, 85, 114, 182, 185–6 Savransky, M. 17 self-censorship 64, 68 Senegal 82, 86 Sevá, J. 126 Shaw, L. 22–3 Siddis 79–80 Sikkink, K. 192 Simmel, G. 23 Smith, L. T. 17, 182, 188, 193 social hierarchy 152, 156, 160, 166 South (term) 27–8 South Africa: apartheid 81, 115; BRICS 45, 62, 110, 118, 181; Cuban medical cooperation: 100–1; indigenous communities 183, 186; journalism 104, 106–8; research in 139, 141; universities 81, 88, 188–9 South Korea see Korea South–North divide see North-South divide South–South Cooperation (SSC) see South–South Development Cooperation South–South Development Cooperation (SSDC): Brazilian 8; 51, 53 109–17, 120, 125; Chinese 93; complexity 99; concepts 97; discourse 18, 137; emergence 49; gender politics 137; Korean 8, 56–67, 69, 133, 150–4, 189; Mexican 133; vs North-South Cooperation 81; similarities 97–8, 100; South-South learning 5; study of 41–2, 44–5, 49–51, 140; term 1, 4, 73; in Zambia 73–6

200 Index

South–South Global Thinkers’ forum 147–8 South–South relations: 27–30, see also South–South Development Cooperation, China–Africa relations southern academics 51, 53–54, 76, see also marginalized voices southern scholars see southern academics Southern theory 13, 16 southernness see positionality Staden, H. 32, 37 stakeholders 57, 59, 61, 75, 81,152 Stovel, K. 22–3 Strathern, M. 113 Structural Adjustment Programmes 19 Sudan 13, 15 Sustainable Development Goals 150, 181 Taylor, L. 188 TAZARA railway (Zambia) 73 Thévet, A. 37 Tilley, L. 16–18, 20, 185 trilateral cooperation 74–5, 126 Tropicália 34, 40–1, 45 Tropicalismo see Tropicália Trump, D. 117–19 Tsing, A. 82 Tupi 32, 37–40, 42 Turkey 35; fieldwork in 155, 159–62, 164, 166

UK (United Kingdom): academic dominance 20, 52; DFID 14–15, 51–53, 186; researchers based in 12–17, 49, 60, 159 UNDP 74, 114, 148 United Nations 45, 138 US (United States): 13, 34, 52, 118, 127, 161 USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) 174 Veloso, C. 40–1 Venezuela 101 Vennet, B. V. 126 Washington Consensus 132, 181 Wesner, A. 164 Western institutions see Northern institutions westernness see positionality wildlife trafficking 106–7 Wolf, E. 23 women’s organizations 138–9 Wood, T. 42 World Bank 4, 9 World Trade Organization 116 Xi Jinping 15, 19, 29 Zambia 73–6, 187 Zanzibar 80