Routledge Handbook of South-South Relations 2018035010, 2018046607, 9781315624495, 9781317229155, 9781317229148, 9781317229131, 9781138652002

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Routledge Handbook of South–South Relations

South–South cooperation is becoming ever more important to states, policy-makers and academics. Many Northern states, international agencies and NGOs are promoting South–South partnerships as a means of ‘sharing the burden’ in funding and undertaking development, assistance and protection activities, often in response to increased political and financial pressures on their own aid budgets. However, the mainstreaming of Southern-led initiatives by UN agencies and Northern states is paradoxical in many ways, especially because the development of a South–South cooperation paradigm was originally conceptualised as a necessary way to overcome the exploitative nature of North–South relations in the era of decolonisation. This handbook critically explores diverse ways of defining ‘the South’ and of conceptualising and engaging with ‘South–South relations’. Through 30 state-of-the art reviews of key academic and policy debates, the handbook evaluates past, present and future opportunities and challenges of South–South cooperation, and lays out research agendas for the next 5–10 years. The book covers key models of cooperation (including internationalism, pan-Arabism and pan-Africanism), diverse modes of South–South connection, exchange and support (including South–South aid, transnational activism, and migration), and responses to displacement, violence and conflict (including Southern-led humanitarianism, peace-building and conflict resolution). In so doing, the handbook reflects on decolonial, postcolonial and anticolonial theories and methodologies, exploring urgent questions regarding the nature and implications of conducting research in and about the global South, and of applying a ‘Southern lens’ to a wide range of encounters, processes and dynamics across the global South and global North alike. This handbook will be of great interest to scholars and post-graduate students in Anthropology, Area Studies, Cultural Studies, Development Studies, History, Geography, International Relations, Politics, Postcolonial Studies and Sociology. Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh is Professor of Migration and Refugee Studies, Department of Geography, University College London, UK. Patricia Daley is Professor of Human Geography of Africa at the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford, UK.

“Within the complex topographies of global power relations and the struggles for more just ways of life, this book restores vitality to the notion of many "Souths" through a comprehensive exploration of relations of all kinds—which in turn substantiate different ways of being in the world.” AbdouMaliq Simone, Senior Professorial Fellow, Urban Institute, University of Sheffield, UK “Only action from the global South will change world inequalities; but how? This handbook explores South-South connections, from economic development to politics, education, art and science, refugees, environment, and more. It is a great resource for all concerned with global justice.” Raewyn Connell, Professor Emerita, University of Sydney, Australia “Much has been written about the South, but very little has been written with the South and, even less, from the perspective of the South. This path-breaking book fills this gap. A must-read for everyone interested in knowing that one of the causes of our current global crisis stems from a massive waste of precious social experience forcefully emerging in this book.” Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Professor of Sociology, University of Coimbra, Portugal, and Distinguished Legal Scholar, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

Routledge Handbook of South–South Relations

Edited by Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Patricia Daley

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, Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Patricia Daley; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Patricia Daley 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 Names: Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Elena, 1978- editor. | Daley, Patricia (Patricia O.), editor. Title: Routledge handbook of South-South relations / edited by Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Patricia Daley. Other titles: Handbook of South-South relations Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018035010 (print) | LCCN 2018046607 (ebook) | ISBN 9781315624495 (Master) | ISBN 9781317229155 (Adobe Reader) | ISBN 9781317229148 (ePub) | ISBN 9781317229131 (Mobipocket unencrypted) | ISBN 9781138652002 (hbk) | ISBN 9781315624495 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Developing countries—Foreign relations. | Developing countries—Foreign economic relations | Developing countrries— Relations. | International cooperation. Classification: LCC D887 (ebook) | LCC D887 .R68 2019 (print) | DDC 327.09172/4—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018035010 ISBN: 978-1-138-65200-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-62449-5 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK

In memory of our friend and colleague, Kenneth Tafira

Contents

List of illustrations xi Acknowledgements xiii List of abbreviations xv Notes on contributors xx   1 Introduction: conceptualising the global South and South–South encounters Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Patricia Daley

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PART I

Conceptualising and studying South–South relations

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  2 Sociology through the ‘South’ prism Sujata Patel

31

  3 Postcolonialism and South–South relations Dominic Davies and Elleke Boehmer

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  4 ‘When spider webs unite they can tie up a lion’: anti-racism, decolonial options and theories from the South Amber Murrey

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  5 Postcolonialism’s after-life in the Arab world: toward a post-authoritarian approach Sari Hanafi

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  6 South–South relations in the academic world: the case of anthropology Gordon Mathews

86 vii

Contents

  7 Geographies of South–South relations and regionalisation processes in Latin America-Caribbean Thomas Muhr   8 Creating indigenous discourse: history, power and imperialism in academia, Palestinian case Janette Habashi

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112

PART II

South–South cooperation: histories, principles and practices

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  9 The invention of the global South and the politics of South–South solidarity Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Kenneth Tafira

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10 South–South cooperation and competition: a critical history of the principles and their practice Urvashi Aneja

141

11 Dreaming revolution: tricontinentalism, anti-imperialism and Third World rebellion Isaac Saney

153

12 The rise and fall of pan-Arabism Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou

168

13 Pan-Africanism: a history Ama Biney

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PART III

South–South cooperation: reviewing international development

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14 Southern leaders, Northern followers? Who has ‘socialised’ whom in international development? Emma Mawdsley

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15 South–South approaches to international environmental negotiations: the case of climate change Eberhard H. Weber and Andreas Kopf

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16 Climate change and the future of agriculture in the Caribbean: prospects for South–South cooperation Kevon Rhiney

215

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Contents

17 South–South relations in African agriculture: hybrid modalities of cooperation and development perspectives from Brazil and China Lídia Cabral

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PART IV

South–South cooperation in displacement, security and peace

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18 Southern-led responses to displacement: modes of South–South cooperation? Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh

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19 China, ‘state-centric’ humanitarianism, and the International Committee of the Red Cross: a historical background Caroline Reeves

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20 South–South cooperation in international organisations: its conceptualisation and implementation within UNDP and UNHCR Naohiko Omata

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21 Cooperation on refugees in Latin America and the Caribbean: the ‘Cartagena process’ and South–South approaches David James Cantor

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22 The ‘need to be there’: North–South encounters and imaginations in the humanitarian economy Estella Carpi

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23 Security cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean: threats, institutions and challenges Yonique Campbell

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24 Toward South–South peace-building Patricia Daley

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PART V

South–South connections

333

25 Struggles for gender justice: regional networks and feminist experiences of South–South collaborations Sohela Nazneen

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Contents

26 A political economy analysis of South–South youth relations in Africa: drivers and future research questions Grace M. Mwaura 27 South–South education relations Thomas Muhr and Mário Luiz Neves de Azevedo 28 South–South cooperation through education? The example of China with/in Africa Johanna L. Waters and Maggi W.H. Leung

345 357

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29 South–South migration and diasporas Jonathan Crush and Abel Chikanda

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30 South–South medical tourism Meghann Ormond and Heidi Kaspar

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31 Art connections: South–South transnational flow(s) Miguel Rojas-Sotelo

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Index 425

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Illustrations

Figures 10.1 10.2 10.3 28.1 29.1 29.2 31.1

Panchsheel Principles and Bandung Principles Principles of South–South cooperation Nairobi document Sino-African higher education programmes and initiatives Changes in the share of migrants by migration corridors, 1960–2000 Proportion of female migrants by region, 1960 and 2000 Circular plot of migration flows between and within world regions during 2005 to 2010 31.2 Miguel Calderón, Evolution of Man, 1995 31.3 Jaime Ávila, Dios de la Miseria (Life is a Catwalk series); Diez metros cúbicos (Fourth World series) 31.4 Percentage of biennials organised in each area of the world by 2010 31.5 History of the Havana Biennale 31.6 The South Network. The Havana Biennale 31.7 Percentage of regions participating in the Havana Biennale from 1989 to 2006 31.8 Overall women’s participation in the Havana Biennale from 1989 to 2006 31.9 Distribution of the top 500 artists by gender and contemporary artists born after 1980 31.10 10th Havana Biennale, 2009

143 146 147 371 383 388 408 413 414 416 417 418 419 420 420 421

Tables   7.1 14.1

Latin America-Caribbean regionalisms in the ‘Greater Caribbean’ Dominant narrative framings of DAC aid and South–South development cooperation

98 196 xi

List of illustrations

17.1

Selection of Brazilian and Chinese agricultural initiatives in Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe 29.1 Different definitions of South–South migration 29.2 International migrant stock by region of origin and destination, 2015 29.3 Number of South–South migration origin and destination countries, 2015 29.4 Major South–South migration countries of origin, 2015 29.5 Major South–South migration countries of destination, 2015 29.6 Major South–South migration corridors, 2015 29.7 Proportion of female migrants in top 20 South–South migrant origin countries, 2015 29.8 Proportion of female migrants in top 20 South–South migration destination countries, 2015 29.9 Proportion of female migrants in major migration corridors, 2015 29.10 A typology of South–South migration 29.11 South–South remitting to major migrant origin countries, 2015 29.12 South–South remitting from major migrant destination countries, 2015

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229 382 383 384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 393

Acknowledgements

This handbook has been born from our academic, personal and political commitment to different forms of social justice and a determination to identify and critically examine alternatives to diverse forms of structural inequalities and modes of exploitation and marginalisation around the world. We are grateful to the chapter authors who have joined us on this journey to individually and collectively explore various ways of studying, knowing and responding to diverse encounters within, across and beyond the global South (in addition, of course, to delineating and critiquing the contours of the very notion of ‘the South’ itself). On a personal level, Elena is grateful to Yousif M. Qasmiyeh and Bissan-Maria FiddianQasmiyeh for their patience and support throughout the process of preparing and bringing this project to fruition. In innumerable ways, they have helped frame the volume and Elena’s resolve to continue tracing ways, individual and collective, for us to articulate, embody and develop critiques, counter-narratives and alternative ways of knowing, being in, and responding to the world. Elena would also like to extend her thanks to the European Research Council for funding her on-going research into South–South humanitarianism, through the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (Grant Agreement No. 715582). Patricia would like to thank Elena for giving her the opportunity to work with her on this seminal text, and her current and former students who have continued to stimulate her interests in critical development studies, feminist political ecology, pan-Africanism, and other forms of decolonial thought. At Routledge, we are very grateful to Rebecca Brennan, Margaret Farrelly, Helena Hurd, Matthew Shobbrook and Khanam Virjee for supporting this project from its inception; for their assistance at different stages of putting the volume together, we would like to extend our thanks to Rosanna Gillespie, Erkan Gursel, Andrew Knight, Oska Paul, Sorcha Daly, and Rachel Carter. Chapter 8 is a reprint of Janette Habashi’s 2005 article by the same title, ‘Creating Indigenous Discourse: History, Power, and Imperialism in Academia, Palestinian Case’, published in Qualitative Inquiry 2005 11: 771. We are grateful to the publishers for allowing us to reprint this article. Chapter 14 by Emma Mawdsley is based on a longer paper published by Asia Pacific Viewpoint under the title ‘The Southernisation of Development’. We are grateful to the editors of the journal, and the publishers, Wiley, for allowing the author to use material from that paper. Thanks are also due to the special issue editors, Kearrin Sims and Lisa Law of James Cook University. xiii

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the artists who have granted permission for the usage of images of their artworks in Chapter 31 by Miguel Rojas-Sotelo, as noted in the chapter, and as follows: Miguel Calderón, Evolution of Man, 1995. La Colección Jumex, México. Courtesy: Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo; and Jaime Avila, Dios de la Miseria (Life is a Cat’s Walk series); Diez metros cúbicos (Fourth World series). Photographs of shanty towns of the megacities of the South, printed and folded in cardboard (2003–2007) – courtesy of the artist.

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Abbreviations

AAPC AAWORD ACC ACS AIMS AKAA ALBA-TCP

All African Peoples Conference Association of African Women in Research and Development Arab Cooperation Council Association of Caribbean States African Institute of Mathematical Studies Also Known as Africa Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – People’s Trade Agreement (Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América – Tratado de Comercio de los Pueblos) AOSIS Alliance of Small Island States APRM African Peer Review Mechanism ARROW Asia Resource and Research Centre on Women ASA Africa–South America ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations ASF African Standby Force ASK Ain Salish Kendra ATDCs Agricultural Technology Demonstration Centres AU African Union BAPA Buenos Aires Plan of Action for Promoting and Implementing Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries BCE Before the Common Era BCM Black Consciousness Movement BDPA Brazil Declaration and Plan of Action BPoA Barbados Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) BRIC Brazil, Russia, India, China BRICS Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa BRICS STI BRICS Science, Technology and Innovation BRIICS Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China, and South Africa CAADP Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme xv

Abbreviations

CAFRA CAFTA-DR CARICOM CARIFORUM CBDR CCCCC CDB CDM CE CEEWA CELAC

Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Advocacy Central American Free Trade Agreement-Dominican Republic The Caribbean Community CARICOM and Dominican Republic Common But Differentiated Responsibilities Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre Caribbean Development Bank Clean Development Mechanism Common Era Council for the Economic Empowerment of Women Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños) CIA Central Intelligence Agency (United States of America) CIAT International Center for Tropical Agriculture (Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical) CIF Climate Investment Fund CIMH Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology CIP Citizenship by Investment Programme CIREFCA International Conference on Central American Refugees (Conferencia Internacional sobre Refugiados Centroamericanos) CONVIASA Venezuelan Consortium of Aeronautics Industries and Air Services (El Consorcio Venezolano de Industrias Aeronáuticas y Servicios Aéros) COP Conference of Parties CRA Contingent Reserve Arrangement DAC Development Assistance Committee DAWN Development Alternatives for Women in a New Era DCF Development Cooperation Forum DEMIG Determinants of International Migration DRC Democratic Republic of Congo EAC Eastern Africa Community ECCAS Economic Community of Central Africa States ECOALBA Bolivian Alliance for the People of Our America Economic Space (Espacio Económico de Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América) ECOALBA-TCP ECOALBA – Tratado de Comercio de los Pueblos ECOSOCC Economic, Social and Cultural Council ECOWAS Economic Community of West African States EFA Education for All FAO Food and Agriculture Organisation FARC Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) FBO Faith-Based Organisations FEMNET African Women’s Development and Communications Network FERAP Federation of African Women FOCAC Forum on China–Africa Cooperation FSLN Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional) xvi

Abbreviations

GATT GBMD GCC GDP GEF GHG GMD GMOD GONGO GPEDC GRULAC G-7 G77 HDI IADB IAFA IASB IBSA ICRC ICT IDP IFRC IGC IGTN IMF IMI IMPACS INDC INGO IOM IPCC IPLAC IR ITEC IUAES JCR LAC LAIA LDCs LOC MDA MDG MDPA MENA

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Global Migration Bilateral Database Gulf Cooperation Council Gross Domestic Product Global Environmental Facility Global Health Governance Guo Ming Dang (Chinese Nationalist Party) Global Migrant Origin Database Government-Organised Non-Governmental Organisation Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation Group of Latin American and Caribbean Countries Group of Seven (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States) Group of 77 (Charter of Algiers) Human Development Index Inter-American Defense Board International African Friends of Abyssinia International African Service Bureau India-Brazil-South Africa Dialogue Forum International Committee of the Red Cross Information, Communication, Technology Internally Displaced Peoples International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies Intergovernmental Consultations on Migration, Asylum and Refugees International Gender and Trade Network International Monetary Fund International Migration Institute Implementing Agency for Crime and Security System Intended Nationally Determined Contributions International Non-Governmental Organisation International Organisation of Migration Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Latin American and Cuban Pedagogical Institute (Instituto Pedagógico Latinamericano y Caribeño) International Relations Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation International Union of Anthropological and Ethological Studies Web of Knowledge Journal Citation Reports Latin American and Caribbean Latin American Integration Association Least Developed Countries Line of Credit (India) Ministry of Agrarian Development Millenium Development Goals Mexico Declaration and Plan of Action Middle East and North Africa xvii

Abbreviations

MERCOSUR MFI MRE MST NAACP NAFTA NAM NCBWA NEPAD NGO NIEO NTCA OAS OAU OCHA ODA OECD OECD-DAC OECS OIC OLAS OPEC OSPAAAL PAC PAM PAP PDV PISA PPCR PRC RFNSP RMF RROCM SADC SAP SCF SCO SDGs SELA SHOCS

xviii

Common Market of the South More Food International Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Brazil (Ministério das Relações Exteriores) Landless Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra) National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People North American Free Trade Agreement Non-Aligned Movement National Congress of British West Africa New Partnership for Africa’s Development Non-Governmental Organisation New International Economic Order Northern Triangle of Central America Organisation of American States Organisation of African Unity Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Overseas Development Assistance Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States Organisation of the Islamic Conference (renamed Organisation of Islamic Cooperation) Organization of Latin American Solidarity Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America Pan-African Congresses Pan-African Movement Pan-African Parliament Petróles de Venezuela Ltd Programme for International Student Assessment Pilot Program for Climate Resilience People’s Republic of China Regional Food and Nutrition Security Policy Rhodes Must Fall Regional Network of Civil Organisations on Migration (Red Regional de Organizaciones Civiles para las Migraciones) Southern African Development Community Structural Adjustment Programme Strategic Climate Fund Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Sustainable Development Goals The Latin American and Caribbean Economic System (Sistema Económico Latinoamericano y del Caribe) Strengthening Hydro-meteorological Operations and Services in Caribbean Small Island Developing States

Abbreviations

SICA SIDS SPS SSC SSCI STEM STI SUCRE TCP TNE TVET UAE UAR UAS UK UN UNAC UNAM UNASUR UNCED UNCHE UNCTAD UNDESA UNDP UNESCO UNFCCC UNHCR UNIA UNIDO UNIFIL UNOSCC UNTS UNU UPC USA USD WASU WAU WCAA WLUML WTO ZEP

Central American Integration System (Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana) Small Island Developing States Sanitary and Phytosanitary South–South cooperation Social Science Citation Index Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics Science, Technology and Innovation Unitary Regional Clearing System (Sistema Unitario de Compensación Regional) Peoples’ Trade Agreement (Tratado de Comercio de los Pueblos) Transnational Education Technical Vocational Education & Training United Arab Emirates United Arab Republic (al-Jumhuriyah al-’Arabiya al-Mutahida) United Arab States United Kingdom United Nations National Union of Small-scale Farmers, Mozambique (União Nacional de Camponeses) National Autonomous University of Mexico (Universidad Autónoma de México) Union of South American Nations (Unión de Naciones Suramericanas) United Nations Conference on Environment and Development United Nations Conference on the Human Environment United Nations Conference on Trade and Development United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs United Nations Development Programme United Nations Education Scientific & Cultural Organisation United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Universal Negro Improvement Association United Nations Industrial Development Organisation UN Interim Forces in Lebanon United Nations Office for South–South Cooperation United Nations Treaty Series United Nations University Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (Union des Populations du Cameroun) United States of America United States Dollar West African Student Union World Anthropological Union World Council of Anthropological Associations Women Living Under Muslim Law World Trade Organisation Petrocaribe Economic Zone (Zona Económica Petrocaribe)

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Contributors

Urvashi Aneja is Associate Professor of International Relations at the OP Jindal Global

University, India, and Founding Director of Tandem Research, a multidisciplinary research collective generating policy insights on technology, society and sustainability. Ama Biney is an independent scholar based in the UK with research interests in African his-

tory and politics, international development and the political economy of Africa. Elleke Boehmer is Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford, and a founding figure in the field of colonial and postcolonial literary studies. She is the author, editor or co-editor of over 20 books. Her website is www.ellekeboehmer.com/. Lídia Cabral is a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex.

Her work focuses on the governance of development assistance and the politics of agricultural policymaking, especially in Africa and Latin America. Yonique Campbell is Lecturer in the Department of Government at the University of the West

Indies where she teaches public policy and management. Her research interests include national security, substantive citizenship rights, state legitimacy and policy effectiveness in small states. David James Cantor is founder and Director of the Refugee Law Initiative at the School

of Advanced Study, University of London. His wide-ranging research on the displaced in Latin America recently won the Times Higher Education research project of the year award (2017–2018). Estella Carpi is Research Associate in the Migration Research Unit, Department of Geography, University College London. Her present work focuses on Southern-led humanitarian responses to displacement from Syria. Abel Chikanda is Assistant Professor in the Departments of Geography & Atmospheric Science, and African and African-American Studies at the University of Kansas. His research focuses mainly on migration and development, and food security in Southern Africa.

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Contributors

Jonathan Crush holds the CIGI Chair in Global Migration and Development at the Balsillie

School of International Affairs, and is University Research Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. From 2006–2016, he was an Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town. Jonathan has published extensively on international migration, food security and African development. Patricia Daley is Professor of the Human Geography of Africa at the School of Geography and the

Environment at the University of Oxford. She has published extensively on refugees, peace-making and gender issues in Eastern and Central Africa. Patricia is co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of South–South Relations. Dominic Davies is Lecturer in English at City, University of London. He has written a mono-

graph and co-edited two essay collections, as well as a number of journal articles and book chapters, relating broadly to the field of postcolonial studies. Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh is Professor of Migration and Refugee Studies and Co-Director of the

Migration Research Unit at University College London (UCL). Her research examines experiences of and responses to displacement, with a particular focus on protracted refugee situations in the Middle East and North Africa. Elena is co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of South–South Relations. Janette Habashi is a Full Professor in the Human Relations department at the University of

Oklahoma. In addition to teaching, her passions include researching sociopolitical issues on children and youth in a multitude of societies and cultures as well as indigenous discourse. Sari Hanafi is Professor of Sociology at the American University of Beirut, editor of Idafat: the

Arab Journal of Sociology, and President of the International Sociological Association. He was previously Vice President of the Board of the Arab Council of Social Science. Heidi Kaspar is a senior researcher and social and health geographer at the Kalaidos University

of Applied Sciences in Switzerland. Her research focuses on transnational health care and care work as a product and productive of everyday, as well as extraordinary, practices and global and intimate relations. Andreas Kopf is Lecturer in Sociology at the School of Social Sciences at The University of

the South Pacific. His research interests include examining the social and human dimensions of contemporary global climate change, particularly in relation to sustainable development and human security in the global South. Maggi W.H. Leung is Associate Professor at the Department of Human Geography and Planning,

Utrecht University. Her research interests include the geography and impact of migration and mobility (esp. academic and professional mobility), and the internationalisation of education. Gordon Mathews is Professor and Chair in the Department of Anthropology, The Chinese

University of Hong Kong. He has written, most recently, with Linessa Dan Lin and Yang Yang, The World in Guangzhou: Africans and Other Foreigners in South China’s Global Marketplace (University of Chicago Press, 2017). Emma Mawdsley is Reader in Human Geography at the University of Cambridge. She has

worked extensively on South–South Cooperation, and more recently on the implications for the (so-called) ‘traditional’ donors. From October 2018 she will be Director of the new Margaret Anstee Centre for Global Studies at Newnham College, Cambridge.

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Contributors

Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou is Professor of International History and Chair of

the International History Department at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. Thomas Muhr is Assistant Professor at Habib University, Pakistan, and Honorary Assistant

Professor at the University of Nottingham, UK. He has published widely on education policy, and development and cooperation geographies of the global South. Amber Murrey is a decolonial political geographer and anti-racist scholar. Her work has been

published in Political Geography, Third World Quarterly, Journal of Black Studies, The Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography and more. Grace M. Mwaura is a non-resident Research Fellow with the African Centre for Technology

Studies. She is interested in the multidisciplinary work on youth, environment and development in Africa. Sohela Nazneen is a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex and

previously based at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Her research mainly focuses on gender and governance, feminist movements and women’s empowerment in South Asia and Africa. Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni is an historian and decolonial theorist. He is Executive Director of

the Change Management Unit in the Vice-Chancellor’s office and former Founding Head of the Archie Mafeje Research Institute for Applied Social Policy at the University of South Africa. Mário Luiz Neves de Azevedo is Full Professor at Universidade Estadual de Maringá, Brazil. He

was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Bristol in 2011 and has been a Researcher at CNPq (Brazil) since 2008. Naohiko Omata is Senior Research Officer at the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) at the

University of Oxford. Prior to joining the RSC, Naohiko was a Senior Teaching Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. Meghann Ormond is Associate Professor in Cultural Geography at Wageningen University in

the Netherlands. Her research focuses mainly on transnational mobility, health and care. Her work offers insight into how shifting visions and practices of citizenship and belonging transform travel, health and social care practices. Sujata Patel is National Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies. Her work explores

the episteme that organise social science theories and methodologies on unequal, exclusionary and discriminatory discourses and social relationships. She is the author/editor of ten books and 60 peer-reviewed articles/book chapters and has contributed to social theory and urban studies. Caroline Reeves is an Associate in Research at the Harvard University Fairbank Center for

Chinese Studies. Her works focuses on the history of Chinese charity. She has published widely in English and Chinese. Kevon Rhiney is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at Rutgers University,

USA. His research is situated at the nexus of critical development studies, human-environment geography and political economy, with a focus on the Caribbean. Miguel Rojas-Sotelo is an art historian, visual artist, media activist, scholar and curator. He directs

the Hemispheric Indigeneity project, and co-leads the Working Group on Environmental | Arts | Humanities: Narrating Nature at Duke University.

xxii

Contributors

Isaac Saney teaches at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada. His research encompasses Africa,

Cuba and African Canadian history. He is currently finishing the book manuscript, Africa’s Children Return: Cuba, the War in Angola and the End of Apartheid. Kenneth Tafira is an independent researcher and writer, a former Post-Doctoral Fellow at the

Archie Mafeje Research Institute for Applied Social Policy (AMRI) at the University of South Africa (UNISA), and author of Xenophobia in South Africa: A History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) and Black Nationalist Thought in South Africa: The Persistence of an Idea of Liberation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Johanna L. Waters is Reader in Human Geography at University College London (UCL), and

is interested in researching the intersection of migration and education – particularly the mobilities of children, young people and households in search of educational opportunities. Eberhard H. Weber is Associate Professor in Human Geography at the School of Geography,

Earth Science and Environment at The University of the South Pacific. His research interests include social science research on vulnerability and resilience to climate and natural hazards and disasters as well as on environment-induced migration in the Pacific Island region.

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1 Introduction Conceptualising the global South and South–South encounters Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Patricia Daley

The study of ‘South–South relations’ is of increasing interest to states, policy-makers and academics,1 often due to a professed desire to identify ways to maximise the potential benefits of the policies and practices developed by states across the global South. Especially since the 2010s, European and North American states and diverse international agencies have recognised (arguably especially in light of the financial crises which have led to pressures on their own aid allocations) the extent to which Southern states can ‘share the burden’ in funding and undertaking development, assistance and protection activities. As such, United Nations (UN) agencies, International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) and powerful donor states are actively promoting both the ‘localisation of aid’ and South–South partnerships more broadly as a means of promoting sustainable forms of human development. Following the expansion and reconfiguration in 2004 of the ‘Special Unit for South–South Cooperation of the United Nations Development Programme’, the UN Development Programme’s 2013 Human Development Report ‘call[ed] for new institutions which can facilitate regional integration and South–South cooperation’. The Report, entitled The Rise of the South, noted that ‘[e]merging powers in the developing world are already sources of innovative social and economic policies and are major trade, investment, and increasingly development cooperation partners for other developing countries’ (UNDP 2013, p. iv), before concluding, ‘The South needs the North, and increasingly the North needs the South’ (2013, p. 2). Such assertions demonstrate the extent to which South–South relations cannot be viewed in isolation from historic and contemporary modes of South–North and North–South relations. Indeed, South–South relations, including different forms of South–South cooperation (SSC), are by no means new phenomena, and yet the mainstreaming of Southern-led initiatives by UN agencies and states from across Europe and North America is paradoxical in many ways. This is especially the case since SSC and its underlying principles are historically associated with the Non-Aligned Movement, and anticolonial and anti-imperialist struggles around the world. The purposeful development of a SSC paradigm was, in essence, originally conceptualised as a necessary means of overcoming the exploitative nature of North–South relations in the era of decolonisation, with diverse models of transnational cooperation and solidarity developed since the 1950s and 1960s; these include internationalist and socialist approaches and regional initiatives such as pan-Arabism and pan-Africanism. 1

Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Patricia Daley

Importantly, in Chapter 27 in this volume, Thomas Muhr and Mário Luiz Neves de Azevedo make the distinction between SSC – dating back to the 1950s and representing solidarity against imperialism – and forms of ‘triangular cooperation’ and ‘triangular collaboration’ that have been actively promoted by Northern actors since the 1990s under neoliberalism. Indeed, neoliberal globalisation and technological innovations have helped usher in transformations in the nature of political mobilisation and the intensification of population mobility in the global South. Commonalities of experience across the global South have led to diverse forms of regional and transnational activism, a trend toward new social movements (including between women, feminists, LGBTQI and youth) and individual mobility across wide geographical areas, including for employment, education and health. There is a need to understand these forms of cooperation to unpack whether they represent the continuation of older forms of SSC that sought to break with the dominance of the global North, or a reconfiguration of North–South interactions based on links with members of diasporas situated in the North, or are being used to promote Northern ‘best practice transfer’ between global South countries as debated in Chapter 27. These new forms of cooperation have become targets for Northern development interventions, as multilateral development agencies and aid donor countries in the global North attempt to guide the nature of the interactions through what they term ‘triangular cooperation’. In this context, ‘triangular cooperation/collaboration’ – a development policy intervention – is viewed by critics as instrumentalising and co-opting SSC and hence depoliticising potential sources of resistance to the North’s neoliberal hegemony. Against this backdrop, it is clear that the paradoxes of contemporary attempts to promote the mobilisation of Southern states to fulfil goals delineated by Northern and Northern-led actors are indeed manifold. This is because such efforts are antithetical to the history and foundations of SSC, and also inconsistent with the longstanding determination to develop ways of understanding and responding to the world that challenge, rather than reify, global structures of inequality, ‘domination, exploitation, subalternisation and peripherisation’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Tafira, this volume). Indeed, long before the institutional interest in ‘engaging with’, and ostensibly mobilising and co-opting actors from across the global South, rich, critical literatures have been published in diverse languages around the world, demonstrating the urgency of developing and applying theoretical and methodological frameworks that can be posited as Southern, anti-colonial, postcolonial and/or decolonial in nature (e.g. Anzaldúa 1987; Chakrabarty 2007; Connell 2007; de Sousa Santos 2014; Dussell 1977; Grosfoguel 2011; Kwoba et  al. 2018; Mignolo 2000; Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013; Quijano 1991, 2007; Said 1978; Spivak 1988; Sundberg 2014; Trinh T. Minh-ha 1989; Tuhiwai Smith 1999; wa Thiong’o 1986; Wynter 2003). These and other approaches have traced and advocated for diverse ways of knowing and being in a pluriversal world characterised (and constituted) by complex relationalities and unequal power relations, and equally diverse ways of resisting these inequalities – including through historical and contemporary forms of transnational solidarities. Of course, the very term ‘South’ which is included not once but twice in the title of this volume, is itself a debated and diversely mobilised term, as exemplified in the different usages and definitions proposed (and critiqued) across the following chapters. For instance, a number of official, institutional taxonomies exist, including those which classify (and in turn interpellate) different political entities as ‘being’ from and of ‘the South’ or ‘the North’. Such classifications have variously been developed on the basis of particular readings of a state’s geographical location, of its relative position as a (formerly) colonised territory or colonising power, and/or of a state’s current economic capacity on national and global scales.2 In turn, Medie and Kang define ‘countries of the global South’ as ‘countries that have been marginalised in the international 2

Introduction

political and economic system’ (2018, pp. 37–38). Indeed, Connell (2007) builds upon a long tradition of critical thinking to conceptualise the South and the North, respectively, through the lens of the periphery and the metropole, as categories that transcend fixed physical geographies. And of course, as stressed by Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Kenneth Tafira in Chapter 9, such geographies have never been either static or defined purely through reference to physical territories and demarcations: ‘imperial reason and scientific racism were actively deployed in the invention of the geographical imaginaries of the global South and the global North.’ Through conceptualising the South and North through the lenses of the periphery and metropole, Connell argues that there are multiple souths in the world, including ‘souths’ (and southern voices) within powerful metropoles, as well as multiple souths within multiple peripheries. As Sujata Patel notes, it is through this conceptualisation that Connell subsequently posits that ‘the category of the south allows us to evaluate the processes that permeate the nonrecognition of its theories and practices in the constitution of knowledge systems and disciplines’ (Patel, this volume). It enables, and requires us, to examine how, why and with what effect certain forms of knowledge and being in the world come to be interpellated and protected as ‘universal’ while others are excluded, derided and suppressed ‘as’ knowledge or recognisable modes of being (also see Mignolo 2000; Dabashi 2015). Indeed, in her chapter in this volume Patel follows both Connell (2007) and de Sousa Santos (2014) in conceptualising ‘the South’ as ‘a metaphor’ that ‘represents the embeddedness of knowledge in relations of power’. In turn, in Chapter 3, Dominic Davies and Elleke Boehmer centralise the constitutive relationality of the South by drawing on Grovogui (2011, p. 177), who defines ‘the term “Global South” not as an exact geographical designation, but as “an idea and a set of practices, attitudes, and relations” that are mobilised precisely as “a disavowal of institutional and cultural practices associated with colonialism and imperialism”’ (cited in Davies and Boehmer, this volume – emphasis added). Viewing the South, or souths, as being constituted by and mobilising purposeful resistance to diverse exploitative systems, demonstrates the necessity of a contrapuntal reading of, and through, the South. As such, as Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Tafira powerfully argue in Chapter 9, ‘the global South was not only invented from outside by European imperial forces but it also invented itself through resistance and solidarity-building.’ In this mode of analysis, the South has been constituted through a long history of unequal encounters with, and diverse forms of resistance to, different structures and entities across what can be variously designated the North, West or specific imperial and colonial powers. An analysis of the South therefore necessitates a simultaneous interrogation of the contours and nature of ‘the North’ or ‘West’, with Mignolo arguing that ‘what constitutes the West more than geography is a linguistic family, a belief system and an epistemology’ (2015, p. xxv, cited in Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Tafira, this volume). Indeed, the acknowledgement of the importance of relationality and such mutually constitutive dynamics provides a useful bridge between these rich theoretical and conceptual engagements of, with and from ‘the South’ on the one hand, and empirically founded studies of the institutional interest in ‘South–South cooperation’ as a mode of technical and political exchange for ‘international development’ on the other. In effect, as noted by Urvashi Aneja in this volume, diverse policies, modes of political interaction and ‘responses’ led by political entities across the South and the North alike ‘can thus be said to exist and evolve in a mutually constitutive relationship’, rather than in isolation from one another. An important point to make at this stage is that it is not our aim to propose a definitive definition of the South or to propose how the South should be analysed or mobilised for diverse purposes – indeed, we would argue that such an exercise would be antithetical to the very foundations of the debates we and our contributors build upon in our respective modes 3

Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Patricia Daley

of research and action. Nonetheless, a common starting point for most, if not all, of the contributions in this handbook is a rejection of conceptualisations of the South as that which is ‘non-Western’ or ‘non-Northern’. As noted by Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (2015 and this volume), it is essential to continue actively resisting negative framings of the South as that which is not of or from ‘the West’ or ‘the North’ – indeed, this is partly why the (still problematic) South/North binary is often preferred over typologies such as Western and non-Western, First and Third World, or developed and un(der)developed countries, all of which ‘suggest both a hierarchy and a value judgment’ (Mawdsley 2012, p. 12). In effect, as Fiddian-Qasmiyeh argues in this volume (drawing on Brigg 2002), such modes of negative framing risk ‘maintaining rather than disrupting the notion that power originates from and operates through a unidirectional and intentional historical entity’. She – like other contributors to this volume addressing the relationships between theoretical, conceptual and empirical dynamics and modes of analysis, response and action – advocates for us to ‘resist the tendency to reconstitute the power of “the North” in determining the contours of the analysis’, while simultaneously acknowledging the extent to which ‘many Southern-led responses are purposefully positioned as alternatives and challenges to hegemonic, Northern-led systems’. This is, in many ways, a ‘double bind’ that persists in many of our studies of the world, including those of and from the South: our aim not to re-inscribe the epistemic power of the North, while simultaneously acknowledging that diverse forms of knowledge and action are precisely developed as counterpoints to the North. As noted above, in tracing this brief reflection on conceptualisations of the South it is not our intention to offer a comprehensive definition of ‘the South’ or to posit a definitive account of Southern approaches and theories. Rather, the handbook aims to trace the debates that have emerged about, around, through and from the South, in all its heterogeneity (and not infrequent internal contradictions), in such a way that acknowledges the ways that the South has been constructed in relation to, with, through but also against other spaces, places, times, peoples, modes of knowledge and action. Such processes are, precisely, modes of construction that resist dependence upon hegemonic frames of reference; indeed, this handbook in many ways exemplifies the collective power that emerges when people come together to cooperate and trace diverse ‘roots and routes’ (following Gilroy 1993) to knowing, being and responding to the world – all with a view to better understanding and finding more nuanced ways of responding to diverse encounters within and across the South and the North. At the same time as we recognise internal heterogeneity within and across the South/souths, and advocate for more nuanced ways of understanding the South and the North that challenge hegemonic epistemologies and methodologies, Ama Biney’s chapter in this volume reminds us of another important dynamic that underpins the work of most, perhaps all, of our contributors. While Biney is writing specifically about pan-Africanism, we would argue that the approach she delineates is essential to the critical theoretical perspectives and analyses presented throughout this handbook: Pan-Africanism does not aim at the external domination of other people, and, although it is a movement operating around the notion of being a race conscious movement, it is not a racialist one . . . In short, pan-Africanism is not anti-white but is profoundly against all forms of oppression and the domination of African people. While it is not our aim to unequivocally idealise or romanticise decolonial, postcolonial, anti-colonial, or Southern theories, or diverse historical or contemporary modes of SSC and transnational solidarity – such processes are complex, contradictory, and at times are replete 4

Introduction

of their own forms of discrimination and violence – we would nonetheless posit that this commitment to challenging and resisting all forms of oppression and domination, of all peoples, is at the core of our collective endeavours.

Aims and structure of the handbook With such diverse approaches to conceptualising ‘the South’ (and its counterpoint, ‘the North’ or ‘the West’), precisely how we can explore ‘South–South relations’ thus becomes, first, a matter of how and with what effect we ‘know’, ‘speak of/for/about’, and (re)act in relation to different spaces, peoples and objects around the world; subsequently, it is a process of tracing material and immaterial connections across time and space, such as through the development of political solidarity and modes of resistance, and the movement of aid, trade, people and ideas. It is with these overlapping sets of debates and imperatives in mind, that this handbook aims to explore a broad range of questions regarding the nature and implications of conducting research in and about the global South, and of applying a ‘Southern lens’ to such a wide range of encounters, processes and dynamics around the world.3 To this end, and building upon the perspectives outlined above, the contributions in Part I of this handbook critically explore diverse and critical ways of conceptualising, researching and developing new forms of knowledge from and about ‘the South’ and ‘South–South relations’, highlighting ways of resisting rather than (re)producing unequal power relations and modes of exploitation. With these modes of analysis in mind, Part II then examines past, present and future opportunities and challenges of different models of SSC and solidarity, including internationalism, pan-Arabism and pan-Africanism. In turn, Part III explores key debates vis-à-vis SSC in the field of international development, while Part IV analyses Southern-led responses and modes of engagement in processes of displacement, security and peace. Part V brings the previous discussions and debates to bear on a diverse range of connections and modes of exchange, including South–South feminist activism, the position of youth in diverse transnational settings, and the migration of people (including for education and health) and of art across the South.

Part I: Conceptualising and studying South–South relations The contributions in Part I of the handbook trace multiple ways of studying, knowing and responding to a diverse range of encounters within, across and beyond the global South, while simultaneously delineating and critically analysing the very constitution, and contestation, of the contours and content(s) of ‘the South’ itself. We start from the premise that intellectual, political, social, economic and cultural dynamics are simultaneously permeated in, and yet have the potential to resist and overcome, diverse forms of structural inequalities and marginalisation. Indeed, we propose that it is through critical modes of analysis that are historically situated and attentive to a multiplicity of positionalities, spatialities and directionalities of engagement that it becomes possible to more meaningfully understand, and respond to, myriad challenges and opportunities in the 21st century. The seven chapters in Part I set out key theoretical, (inter)disciplinary and methodological approaches to the study both of the South and of diverse relationalities between people across and beyond the South. It opens with Sujata Patel’s chapter on the prospect of developing ‘global theories’ of knowledge that are ‘relevant, inclusive, pluralistic and diverse’. Entitled ‘Sociology through the “South” prism’, Patel’s chapter engages in a dynamic conversation with Raewyn Connell’s field-defining Southern Theory, to offer key insights into the aims of and relationships between decolonial, postcolonial and indigenous perspectives to research. 5

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Throughout the chapter, Patel critically traces the tensions and potentialities of approaches which variously aim (in the case of decolonialists) to ‘create alternate universal theories, concepts and practices moored in a non-Eurocentric episteme’ and those which ‘focus their gaze on the academic production of knowledge’. The latter include postcolonialists aiming to ‘reconceptualise perspectives within the Northern academy’ and proponents of the importance of recognising indigenous knowledge and developing locally and/or regionally specific modes of analysis. Patel concludes by stressing ‘a need to simultaneously combine strategies from different intellectual locations (as these have been constituted in the 19th and 20th centuries) to organise global social theories and perspectives and to communicate these across localities, regions and language groupings’. While framed around the prospect of developing inclusive forms of Sociology from the South, Patel’s chapter provides invaluable insights that are relevant far beyond the remit of one particular discipline. Chapter 3, by Dominic Davies and Elleke Boehmer, echoes and builds upon Patel’s discussions by focusing intently on the history and aims of postcolonial theories, both with regard to its position within Northern (and in particular Anglo-American) academia, and as a theoretical approach that is simultaneously based upon and critiques the constitution of the world into ‘the West’ and ‘the rest’. In addition to critically tracing postcolonial conceptualisations of ‘the South’ (and highlighting the parallels between the ascension of both), Davies and Boehmer argue that through its commitment both to incorporating ‘subaltern’ voices and form of knowledge, and to resisting the structural barriers that have historically led to their exclusion, postcolonial theories are quintessentially modes of exploring and promoting South–South intellectual and political encounters. Postcolonialism, they posit, is not beholden to the Northern academy (where it maintains a ‘radical’ rather than an ‘assimilated’ position), but rather is itself constituted by a ‘practice of constantly seeking to interrogate global cartographic categories and structures of power, precisely by forging links “among” and “between” others’. This means, they conclude, that ‘[t]he postcolonial aim, in other words, is for practitioners and critics to be in intellectual partnership with epistemologies grounded in “South–South relations,” sharing conceptual ground while also reflecting critically upon them.’ Where Patel focuses primarily on sociology and the social sciences more broadly, throughout their chapter, Davies and Boehmer highlight the significance of postcolonial approaches within the field of comparative literature and the humanities. Crucially, they also centralise the importance of (self-)critical methodologies through which scholars might be able to destabilise hierarchies of power and systems of exclusion while simultaneously being within and re-constituting those same systems. Chapter 4, by Amber Murrey, pushes us further by positing that, although a focus on Southern and postcolonial theories might enable us to ‘shift the gaze’ toward hitherto marginalised and excluded speakers and thinkers, they are incomplete since they do not directly tackle the colonial racial hierarchies that sustain these very processes of marginalisation and exclusion. As such, Murrey argues that it is only through a ‘feminist decolonial orientation’ which pivots on a critical evaluation of racial and geographical inequalities that it becomes possible to truly overturn the ‘coloniality of knowledge’. Tracing historical and contemporary projects to decolonise knowledge – including the widespread invocation to decolonise curricula and universities tout court – Murrey powerfully evokes the need to develop modes of both North–South and South–South collaborations and solidarities that directly counter ‘an academic silencing of racial inequality in the scholarship on Southern theories’. Not confronting such silencing, she argues, ‘risks contributing and reconsolidating (rather than effectively challenging) the centrality of the white gaze in global critical theory’. Drawing on Mignolo (2000) and de Sousa Santos (2014), she concludes that ‘[p]luriversality and the ecology of knowledge are frames for imagining beyond, against and outside of oppositional North–South paradigms’, 6

Introduction

proposing that ‘rather than South–South or North–South partnerships, friendship might be more fundamental for anti-racist theories from and with the South(s)’. Just as Murrey reflects on the ‘politics of the mundane in the academy’ – including questions such as authorship, citation patterns, the language of publication and politics of career development and everyday encounters in the academy – so too do these questions come to the fore in the following two chapters, by Sari Hanafi and Gordon Mathews. Focusing, respectively, on knowledge production and collaboration in the fields of Sociology in the Middle East and North Africa and Anthropology in South Asia, Hanafi and Mathews powerfully trace the nature and limits of South–South academic relations in these regions. In his chapter, Hanafi ‘provide[s] a critique of postcolonial scholars and knowledge producers that overstate the role of imperialism and generate an oppositional binary with the West’, arguing that in regions such as the Middle East and North Africa it is essential to complement postcolonialism with what he refers to as a ‘post-authoritarian approach’. He advocates for the development of a post-authoritarian approach as ‘a political project concerned with reconstructing and reorienting local knowledge, ethics and power structures.’ By focusing on ‘the development and social and intellectual changes inside of the Arab world’, Hanafi argues that a series of major challenges remain in the local and regional arena of knowledge production, including a need to more rigorously trace the relationships between social phenomena and the political economy of specific Arab states, and the multifaceted forms of self-censorship performed by scholars in the region. By highlighting the combination of a lack of academic freedom for scholars living under conditions of authoritarianism, and scholars’ decisions not to prioritise production and publication of knowledge in their local language (in this case, Arabic), Hanafi in turn sets out to propose ways to develop ‘not only new epistemologies but also healthy working conditions conducive to dynamic and critical research practices’. Further analysing ‘the intellectual and academic world of South–South relations’, Mathews carefully, and (self-)critically, examines the extent to which anthropology –which ‘throughout the twentieth century remained, to put the matter crudely, as a discipline through which mostly rich white people studied poor black and brown people’ – has taken steps to become ‘increasingly global’. Through a focus on the roles of the World Council of Anthropological Associations and subsequently the World Anthropology Union, Mathews traces the development of contemporary forms of Southern and/or ‘South–South’ anthropologies. With contemporary anthropology ‘consisting not just of the global North studying the global South, but rather of everyone studying everyone else’, however, Mathews notes the restrictions still faced, and at times embraced, by anthropologists from across the global South, who find that they ‘must intellectually imitate the ways of the global North in order to survive’. Echoing but transcending Hanafi’s focus on local scholars and epistemologies, Mathews argues that for anthropology of the global South to overcome its current Anglo-American straitjacket, it cannot only focus on the local in its own local language, but must, at least to some extent address the global South as a whole and the world as a whole, even if the only language in which this can be done today is English. By highlighting one of the key paradoxes underpinning such an approach – ‘the language of the global North’s intellectual Anglo-American core enabling the global South to transcend that Anglo-American core’ – Mathews prompts the urgency of continuing to explore and enact ways of knowing, and writing, about the world in ways that transcend entrenched power inequalities in all areas. 7

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With Hanafi and Mathews having set out the significance of both local and global modes of knowledge production through a particular focus on two regions, in Chapter 7 Thomas Muhr advocates for the application of socio-spatial methodologies to help us better understand the particularities of and relationalities between particular ‘regions’ and regional projects of SSC. Muhr’s chapter, which focuses on the geographies of regionalisms and cooperation in and across the Latin America-Caribbean space, enables us to revisit the question of the role of geography in demarcating particular territories as ‘belonging’ or ‘being’ of (specific parts of) the South. By proposing a socio-spatial methodology embedded within a political economy approach, Muhr brings insights from Human Geography to critique the ‘methodological territorialism and methodological nationalism, through which co-existing generations of regionalisms become deterministically construed as ideologically separate, incompatible and/or conflicting projects’. Instead of fixed and static conceptualisations, Muhr centralises the importance of relational ontologies and of focusing on ‘transnational processes and relations among political and social forces (state and non-state actors) in the construction and reconstruction of regions in/through space/time’. In so doing, his aim is both to highlight the ‘greater commonality, interrelatedness and convergence among different regionalisms in the geographical area than is commonly assumed’, and, precisely, to propose the need to apply critical theoretical insights and critical methodologies to challenge ‘mainstream’ forms of knowledge. In the final chapter in Part I of the handbook, Janette Habashi further explores the contours and limits of diverse ways of studying people and places situated in what is currently denominated ‘the South’. As noted by all of the preceding authors, concrete attempts have long been made to challenge Western/Northern forms of knowledge, including through the development of Southern, postcolonial, decolonial and anti-racist theories, through examining the limits and opportunities of knowledge production from the South, and through setting out methodologies derived from critical theoretical standpoints. In her chapter, however, Habashi sets out ‘not to find a method to decolonise research but to articulate the impossibilities for such an intention’. Through a careful articulation of the nature and implications of the continued occupation of Palestine, Habashi argues that ‘the current indigenous discourse is a remnant of oppression’ and that, ‘in reality, decolonising methodology creates an imaginary supremacy of an alternative research methodology that is very much seeded in traditional Western episteme’. Like Hanafi, who focuses on scholars working in authoritarian settings, Habashi’s focus on the nature of knowledge production in contexts of ongoing oppression and occupation leads her to stress the complex realities faced by such scholars as ‘individuals in the academy’ and as ‘members of the academy’. She pushes this further to acknowledge the paradoxes, both for indigenous scholars and proponents of decolonising research, of ‘claiming individual ownership for collective knowledge’. In her chapter, Habashi powerfully rejects the foundation of the (re)quest for academics within and across the South, and in particular those living under conditions of oppression, to seek solutions to deeply entrenched power inequalities. She argues that [e]ncouraging indigenous scholars to search for a solution is part of a colonialist ideology that maintains the illusion that we have choices and power. Therefore, any proposed research alternative from other oppressed scholars or myself is deeply intersected with colonial discourse. This is not to negate the possibility of finding ways of resisting oppression and inequalities, but rather to recognise the nature – and histories – of diverse constraints, and to move away from individualised attempts to ‘seek solutions’ and rather to focus on developing collective 8

Introduction

understandings and modes of action which, through dialogue and friendship (to echo Murrey, in this volume), might lead to the constructive articulation of new research methodologies. Together, the chapters in Part I provide pivotal entry points, and ways to read and navigate the multi-layered philosophies, ontologies and epistemologies of the South. They also remind us of the ongoing significance, and co-presence, of diverse temporalities, including the extent to which the ‘post-colonial’ coexists with (rather than following, or replacing) the colonial, with decolonisation being far from complete for the peoples of non-self-governing territories and those peoples and territories under explicit and implicit forms of occupation and control.

Part II: South–South cooperation: histories, principles and practices Part II of the handbook expands upon this commitment to historically grounded analysis by turning to specific models, approaches and principles of South–South relations, including a historically informed introduction to notions and principles of SSC and competition, and to the Non-Aligned Movement, the Bandung Conference and the Tricontinental. Individual chapters are dedicated to key models of SSC including internationalism, pan-Arabism and pan-Africanism. Together, these chapters trace the histories and ongoing significance of these approaches to interand intra-regional relations and diverse forms of mobilisations around the world, initially and persistently against global North domination and more recently for reciprocal social, economic, environmental and cultural development. This part of the handbook opens with a chapter by Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Kenneth Tafira, who restate the invention of the global South in relation to the global North, before summarising the unfolding of resistance against European colonialism and economic and cultural domination through diverse approaches to South–South solidarity. Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Tafira historicise the invention of the ‘geographical imaginaries’ of the global South as being predicated on a paradigm of difference that began with the European Renaissance and Enlightenment. To illustrate, they evidence the processes (military expeditions, exploitation, enslavement of non-Europeans, economic domination, and masculinised and racialised hierarchies) that promoted Europe as ‘the centre of the world’ and subjected the other parts of the world to ‘subalternisation and peripherisation’. By documenting the histories of South–South encounters over the long durée, NdlovuGatsheni and Tafira’s chapter – and the handbook as a whole – demonstrates that ‘[t]he most resilient politics in the modern world is that of transforming the world system, its global order and economic system of domination, exploitation, subalternisation and peripherisation’ (NdlovuGatsheni and Tafira, this volume). While recognising the quest for freedom beginning with European encounters in the 15th century, they depict the Haitian Revolution of 1791 to 1804 as ‘the ideal beginning of resistance and solidarity politics of self-invention’. They argue that the Revolution – the successful slave revolt in the French Caribbean colony of St Domingue – ‘not only paradigmatically challenged racism, enslavement and colonialism but built solidarity among the enslaved black peoples’. Since the Haitian Revolution preceded the French Revolution (1789–99), a decolonial reading of its history would present it as the first modern revolutionary movement for emancipation and recognition of the rights of human beings, and correct its neglect in the intellectual history of the global North. Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Tafira historically situate the Haitian Revolution as ‘form[ing] an important base from which to articulate resistance and black solidarity-building as part of self-invention within a context of racism, imperialism, colonialism and racial capitalism’. This resistance is articulated in pan-Africanism – a movement that started in the 1890s among members of the African diaspora in the global North to campaign for the liberation of 9

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African peoples worldwide from all forms of domination and for recognition of the humanity of African peoples (Adi 2018). Pan-Africanism connected people of African descent globally as a concept and a movement, and Biney, later in this volume, examines the ways that panAfricanism has evolved historically with multiple definitions and tendencies, while still retaining its core objectives: its vision of the principles of dignity, freedom, liberation, equality and justice for people of African descent. These objectives seem paradoxical in the context of a EuroNorth American modernity that positions its liberal values as universal. It is with this historical context in mind that Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Tafira can argue that ‘the global South was not only invented from outside by European imperial forces but it also invented itself through resistance and solidarity-building’. Crucially, as Urvashi Aneja notes in Chapter 10, ‘the principles of solidarity, sovereign equality, and mutual assistance came to define the parameters for South–South cooperation’. By tracing the history of institutional modes of South–South cooperation, Aneja points out that development cooperation between Southern states ‘is a form of solidarity rooted in common historical experiences rather than an obligation stemming from a history of economic exploitation under colonial rule’. In their chapters, Aneja, and in turn Isaac Saney, trace the range of state-based attempts to promote solidarity based on mutuality, complementary and common colonial histories that manifested in the launch of the Non-Aligned Movement at Bandung in 1955 and the Tricontinental in 1966. The latter, as Saney shows in his chapter, was an attempt to build anti-imperialist alliances across three continents (Latin America, Africa and Asia) aimed at overthrowing ‘the international global order’. It is, of course, debatable the extent to which these principles continue to be reflected in contemporary modes of SSC among new economic groupings, such as the BRICS, that have emerged with globalisation, or whether these principles exist purely at the level of rhetoric. In effect, the saliency of these blocs is being questioned from several fronts, and Aneja has encouraged states such as India to ‘build alliances and institutions that cut across the binary lens of the North–South divide and to find a balance between its immediate economic and strategic interests and its larger global responsibilities’ (Aneja, in this volume). Indeed, as explored by Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou in Chapter 12, regional groupings such as the League of Arab States, which was built upon pan-Arabism as a discourse and a practice, have often been limited precisely by virtue of their inability to develop connections beyond their specific geopolitical region. Mohamedou’s chapter traces the development of the ideology of pan-Arabism from the middle of the 19th century onwards, examining the ways in which it acted as a ‘mobilising force’ throughout and after the 1970s, and was pursued politically through the League of Arab States. However, he notes that it ultimately persisted ‘more as a sentiment than an actual project’, arguing that pan-Arabism was never ‘politically viable’, ‘was ultimately inconclusive and remains elusive’. In so doing, Mohamedou examines the ways that pan-Arabism ‘was able to grab sporadically the imagination of Arab societies’, including in a transmuted form during the so-called 2011 Arab Spring. While having been a significant force at different historical junctures, Mohamedou concludes by focusing on the limitations of pan-Arabism, arguing that ‘the most evident limitation of its manifestation as a South–South project’ was its inability to ‘make significant political connections beyond the Middle East and North Africa’. Where pan-Arabism remained, or remains focused on/within the MENA region, panAfricanism is intimately related to the roles and relationship within and between ‘diaspora’ and ‘continental’ Africans. As Ama Biney demonstrates in Chapter 13, pan-Africanism is ‘simultaneously, a movement, idea and ideology’, with its roots in the African diaspora opposition to late 19th-century colonialism in Africa. Pan-Africanism has thrived on solidarity between people of African descent, as they assert their common humanity in the context of histories of racialisation, white supremacy and colonial and neocolonial domination, and expressed 10

Introduction

through the concept of ubuntu – a term translated as ‘I am a human being through others’. Biney points to the continued relevance of pan-Africanism in the 21st century, as reflected in the increasing popularity of the concept of ‘global Africans’, now used to unite people of African ancestry irrespective of where they are in the world, whether in Asia, the Americas and/or Africa. Indeed, in many ways, pan-Africanism complicates common understandings of North–South, South–North and South–South relationships.

Part III: South–South cooperation: reviewing international development Building upon the preceding discussions of the history and principles of South–South cooperation (SSC), the four chapters in Part III explore SSC by first examining key debates and examples of South–South cooperation for development and aid, followed by three chapters focusing on Southern approaches to the environment, climate change and agriculture. These chapters, in turn, lay the foundations for, and are complemented by, the following two parts of the handbook which focus (in Part IV) on humanitarian settings – including those characterised by displacement, violence and conflict – and subsequently (in Part V) on diverse forms of connections which are also frequently positioned within the remit of ‘international development’: feminism and gender, youth, migration, health and education. This focus on South–South cooperation for ‘international development’ is particularly important because Northern development trajectories have been key vehicles for the epistemological and geographical framing of the relationship between the global North and South since the Second World War. In effect, the South is invariably imagined as underdeveloped, catching-up, developing or emerging. Within such a framing, international development agencies and Northern aid donors have organised and supervised tutelage for countries on the path to development: pursued relentlessly, and with limited success, such that development has been perceived (or perhaps ‘recognised’?) as an ideology (Amin 1985; Crush 1995; Escobar 2011). ‘International development’ has been extensively criticised for being unidirectional, with aid and knowledge flowing from North to South, maintaining Southern states and societies in an unequal, supplicatory and exploitative neocolonial relationship that espouses global North historical trajectories as universal, desirable and beneficial. However, as noted by Emma Mawdsley in Chapter 14, this Northern hegemony and South–South binary, which has persisted since the 1950s, is being destabilised as the 21st century has brought profound changes in the ‘geographies of wealth and poverty, inequality and precarity’. Economic transformation in some global South countries has resulted in the emergence of diverse global South aid donors and has unsettled the global consensus as to who are the givers and receivers, as well as altering the modalities of aid – whether development (see Mawdsley, this volume) or humanitarian (as discussed in Part IV). As a result, Northern donors have often attempted to socialise Southern donors into ‘how to do development properly’ (Mawdsley, this volume), a process that has typically been characterised by Northern indifference to the principles of SSC which remain ‘neglected in policy and scholarly circles’. However, Mawdsley aims to ‘make the case that many Northern donors have moved further “South” than Southern partners have moved “North.”’ Through her analysis of three main areas – ethical framing, poverty/growth, and aid/development finance – Mawdsley traces ways in which Southern actors are ‘socialising’ the North. In effect, while acknowledging numerous caveats – including an interrogation of what is lost from view when we continue to equate ‘Southern actors’ with ‘Southern states’ – Mawdsley highlights a number of significant ways in which Northern donors and institutions are emulating certain Southern approaches to development assistance. 11

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Planetary transformations arising from climate change, evident in the promotion of the Anthropocene as a new human-induced geological age (Steffen et  al. 2011; Purdy 2015), are also forcing a rethink of the Northern development trajectory as a universal model, as well as its future sustainability. On a practical and policy level, the discourse on the environmental impact of capitalist development illustrates the contrasting perspectives between the global North and global South (Bassey 2012). Eberhard H. Weber and Andreas Kopf, in Chapter 15, consider ‘how the South constructs environment and climate issues as a function of development and is able to speak with a common voice, even when the South is not only internally diverse but is constantly diversifying’. The impacts, and contested discourse, of climate change pose two important challenges for the global South. First the most vulnerable communities, particularly small island states, are based in the global South and are likely to suffer disproportionately from rises in sea level and average temperatures. Indeed, in Chapter 16, Kevon Rhiney examines the significant threat of climate change to agriculture and food security in Caribbean states, to the extent that it makes climate change a national security issue in the region. Second, Weber and Kopf note that as countries in the global South have sought to develop economically and to raise their citizens’ quality of life, they are increasingly arguing that global ‘environmental protection can compromise their right’ to follow a similar development trajectory to the global North; this is especially the case since they bear little responsibility for the current challenge of human-induced climate change. Consequently, Weber and Kopf show how assemblages of state and non-state actors in the global South, using development as leverage, have been able ‘to play an increasingly important role in negotiations about the solution to environmental and climate challenges’. In addition, as Rhiney argues, addressing climate change has led to the ‘forging [of] strategic and mutually beneficial partnerships and collaborations in research, technology transfer and regional advocacy’. While these strategic state partnerships and regional alliances are vital to immediate survival, scholars have also started to reconceptualise the foundations of human–nature relationships in the context of a future affected by climate change, and to trace ways for humans to inhabit the planet without further destruction. In Chapter 17, Lídia Cabral examines the way that these different development approaches play out in Brazil’s provision of aid to countries across subSaharan Africa. In this paradigm, the Brazilian state is seen to continue promoting the extant development model of large-scale farming, while ‘Brazilian non-state actors have worked with their peers in Africa to contest the promotion in SSC of a model of large-scale commodity production for export markets, while demanding alternative forms of cooperation that would strengthen food sovereignty and agroecology’. This is a clear example that state-led South–South cooperation does not necessarily involve a more ecologically sustainable or social justice-directed development model than that emanating from the North. Nevertheless, South–South solidarity, whether in the form of peasant and food sovereignty movements, such as la via campesina, or environmental and social justice movements, have created a political ecology of the global South that has challenged hegemonic global North environmental narratives about the relationship between people, development and the environment (Bailey and Bryant 1997; Peet and Watts 2005; Sundberg 2007; Neumann 2014). Furthermore, the amplification of the need for more environmentally sustainable development arising from climate change and the threat of planetary destruction has led scholars from the global North to look carefully to the ontologies of indigenous communities in the global South (Latour 2004, Escobar 1998) for solutions to live more sustainably. Indeed, unlike the hegemonic capitalist culture of the global North, many cultures in the global South have philosophical traditions that do not dichotomise the relationship between human:nature and subject:object (Foltz 2005), and thus have ecological knowledge that could operate synergistically with global environmental science. 12

Introduction

Part IV: South–South cooperation in displacement, security and peace In contrast to the extensive literature examining the role of South–South cooperation in international development, Part IV aims to fill a longstanding gap of research into the actual and potential significance of South–South cooperation in contexts of displacement, security and peace. In particular, the seven chapters in this part develop detailed analyses of the historical and contemporary significance of Southern actors, and principles of South–South relations through ‘humanitarian’ contexts across the Middle East and North Africa (chapters by Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Carpi), sub-Saharan Africa (examined by both Omata and Daley), China (in Reeves’ chapter), and the Caribbean and the Americas (explored in chapters by Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Cantor, and Campbell). Overall, the section considers the power imbalances redressed, reproduced and/or reconstituted through Southern-led initiatives in diverse contexts of displacement, conflict and both slow-onset and accelerated forms of socio-economic and political change. Chapter 18, by Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, examines how, why and with what effect the rich history of Southern-led responses to disaster-induced and conflict-induced displacement has been marginalised from view by analysts, policy-makers and practitioners, or, indeed delegitimised as not truly ‘being’ worthy of being identified as ‘humanitarian’ responses at all. In particular, she draws on her research into Southern-led responses to conflict-induced displacement in the Middle East and North Africa to examine both the multiplicity of stateled responses undertaken within an institutional framework of South–South cooperation and community-based responses which are less clearly related to the official principles of South–South cooperation. Noting the extent to which Southern actors have often resisted, rejected and developed alternatives to the hegemonic aid regime, she then examines why, and with what outcomes, specific Southern actors have at times been actively mobilised by the ‘international humanitarian community’. Concretely, she focuses on the proposed incorporation of Southern national and regional level actors into the international aid system, as part of the (post-2016) ‘localisation of aid agenda’, while community- and neighbourhood-level responses – including those developed by refugees themselves – continue to be marginalised and excluded. By focusing on both formal and informal, and state- and community-led responses in relation to the localisation of aid agenda, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh argues that exploring diverse principles of South–South cooperation – rather than promoting the incorporation of specific Southern actors into the ‘international humanitarian system’ – offers a critical opportunity for studies of and responses to displacement. She concludes by highlighting the need, first, for further research into the diverse modalities, spatialities, directionalities, relationalities and conceptualisations of Southern-led responses to displacement; and, second, of continuing to trace, resist and challenge the diverse structural barriers that prevent the development of meaningful responses that meet individual and collective needs and rights around the world. In her chapter, Caroline Reeves then examines the long history of China’s approach to state-centric philanthropy, and the early years of the Red Cross Society of China in the 1900s. In so doing, Reeves’ chapter contextualises and makes a case for the importance of developing a more nuanced understanding both of a particular approach to ‘state-civic collaborative aid’ and a well-established model of state-centric humanitarianism. In addition to drawing on her historical analysis to challenge the commonly made assertion that China and other Southern humanitarian actors are ‘new’ or ‘non-traditional’ responders,4 Reeves also challenges the extent to which development practitioners and humanitarians in the global North have vocally critiqued and rejected Chinese aid interventions specifically, as well as being critical of state-led responses developed by Southern political actors more broadly. Echoing the analysis developed by Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Reeves stresses that humanitarians in the global North often promote a 13

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vision of humanitarianism that is dominated by the figure of the non-governmental organisation (NGO) which is guided by supposedly internationally recognised and universal humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality and independence. However, Reeves (joined by FiddianQasmiyeh, and Carpi, both in this volume) argues that the international humanitarian system’s rejection of such forms of state-led responses, on the premise that these are politically motivated rather than ‘truly humanitarian’, is a fallacy – not least, this is because, under neoliberalism, the states of the global North have increasingly funded humanitarian interventions and have even developed forms of ‘military humanitarianism’ (Weiss 2004). Building upon Fiddian-Qasmiyeh’s and Reeves’ historically grounded analyses of diverse forms of humanitarianism and philanthropy across different scales (also see Frost 2017), the following two chapters focus on the roles played by international organisations – including UN agencies and regional organisations – to promote the development of international, regional and national legal frameworks to protect refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs). In the first of these, Naohiko Omata draws on his experience of having worked with the UNDP and with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), to develop a comparative analysis of the way that South–South cooperation has been conceptualised in different international organisations and implemented through their assistance activities. With particular reference to West African examples, Omata argues that the applicability of SSC differs among UN organisations depending on their institutional mandates, noting the extent to which SSC is often presumed to be essential for development partnerships, but ultimately incompatible with ‘humanitarian’ situations. Furthermore, while South–South partnerships are increasingly being ‘extensively promoted’ on the international agenda to ‘address common challenges facing the global South’, Omata notes that ‘there is a paucity of research that systematically investigates the concept and implementation of South–South cooperation within these organisations’. His chapter sheds light precisely on the potential, but also ‘the limitations and risks of over-emphasising the value of South–South cooperation in certain domains’, including in refugee protection. Focusing more intently on regional legal frameworks for refugee protection, David Cantor in turn, examines the ways that governments in Latin America and the Caribbean have worked together to proactively ‘review new challenges facing refugees in the region and to define a common framework of principles, plans and programmes in response’. Building upon the 1984 Cartagena Declaration on Refugees – itself developed several years after the African Unity’s 1967 Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, precisely aiming to fill gaps remaining within the so-called ‘international’ 1951 Geneva Convention pertaining to refugees – Cantor notes that the processes undertaken within and across Latin America and the Caribbean ‘represent an unparalleled example of regional state-based humanitarian cooperation in the refugee field’. By tracing the development – both historical and conceptual – of the post-1984 Cartagena framework, Cantor carefully delineates ‘distinctive components of this unique model of humanitarian cooperation on refugees’. While acknowledging the pivotal role played by the Cartagena framework and process and this highly visible example of interState cooperation on refugees, however, Cantor concludes by reflecting on the complexities and limitations of such an approach, arguing that ‘its contribution to our understanding of South–South approaches is not without complexities’. Moving away from a focus on the roles played by, and the relationship between, Southern states, regional organisations, civil society networks and key ‘international’ UN agencies, in Chapter 22 Estella Carpi examines both ‘the actual’ and ‘imaginary’ ‘encounters between humanitarian providers and their [local citizen and refugee] beneficiaries’ in Lebanon. Based on her longstanding ethnographic research in Beirut and Akkar, Carpi examines ‘the attitudes and thinking that have characterised the Lebanese humanitarian economy during the Israel–Lebanon 14

Introduction

July 2006 war and the Syrian refugee influx into Lebanon from 2011’. In particular, she explores the tension between the humanitarian aid system’s ‘philanthropic spirit’ as it is enacted in the South, and local (including refugee) responses to what she denominates ‘Southism’. Carpi proposes Southism, ‘both as a concept and a mode of analysis which indicates a structural relationship between different sets of providers and beneficiaries, rather than a mere act of assisting the South with a philanthropic spirit’. Inter alia, she examines how the North ‘captures’ the South as a key form of capital and (echoing Fiddian-Qasmiyeh’s earlier chapter) constitutes the South as a space requiring ‘appropriate’ forms of intervention. Simultaneously, and in line with many conceptualisations of ‘the South’ outlined above,5 she also demonstrates how ‘the Southist intent’ to care for ‘the South’ ‘partially transcends physical geographies’, including through the role of ‘local’ (in this context, Lebanese/Middle Eastern) humanitarian workers. Through this ‘de-geographicised notion of Southism’, Carpi argues that Southism does not merely make the global South, or Southern elements in the North, its special place – as [Edward] Said does with the Orient – but it is, rather, employed by Northern and Southern actors to reassert, solidify and legitimise the Northern humanitarian presence and actions. With the preceding chapters in this section having discussed responses to refugees and IDPs in particular, a related issue is how South–South cooperation can or should function with a view to decolonising cooperation and regional governance in security, including as a challenge to traditional North–South security relations. This question is explored by the final two chapters in the section, by Yonique Campbell and Patricia Daley, respectively. Global policies relating to national and regional security (from the threat of war) have, since the Second World War, been dominated by countries in the global North, especially those which have been institutionalised as the permanent members of the UN Security Council (the USA, China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom) and ten non-permanent members which are voted in every two years. During the Cold War, decisions on whether a crisis posed a threat to regional and global security and whether to intervene militarily were dominated by ideological differences between capitalist and communist states, with countries from the global South pressured to support either position. It is in this context, including the threat of nuclear war, that the South’s Non-Aligned Movement was particularly significant (see Daley, Chapter 24). Despite this, the battlefields for the proxy wars between the superpowers took place in the independent territories of the global South. Since then, the security of the global North has dominated the global security agenda and Northern military interventions in the South have tended to support the national interests of Northern countries, even after the ending of the Cold War, which some have argued has seen the re-emergence of the colonial order (Gregory 2004; Harvey 2003). The ending of the Cold War should have provided the opportunity for South–South cooperation on regional security governance; however, the military dominance of global North countries, and, since 2011, the West’s ‘war on terror’, continues to influence the security agenda of countries in the global South. In her chapter, Yonique Campbell examines attempts by Latin American and Caribbean states to develop their autonomy from the USA’s security paradigm – in effect to ‘“decolonise” cooperation and regional governance in security’ through the establishment of new regional and sub-regional organisations that address security issues pertinent to the region, such as the high level of violence perpetrated by organised crime and narco-terrorism. Campbell argues that the success of SSC in the region will depend on the development of shared norms, but also consensus about the region’s relationship with the USA. 15

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Importantly, there is still considerable room for a debate as to what security actually means for the people(s) of the global South. Peace is seen as the outcome of better security, and yet in Chapter 24, Patricia Daley shows how the mechanisms for peace have been defined by the global North since the Second World War, producing a paradigm, now commonly known as the ‘liberal peace’, based on militarisation, liberal democracy and neoliberal capitalism as the only way to ensure peace. In her chapter, Daley looks at how the peace that newly independent postcolonial states in the global South wanted in the 1950s and the 1960s differed from that of the liberal peace. Essentially, newly independent postcolonial states sought to define a non-violent peace that focuses on development and the recognition of the humanity of people in the global South, following years of colonial exploitation and impoverishment. Cold War geopolitics, as well as economic dependency on the global North through the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, and through humanitarian assistance, made it difficult for states in the global South to implement their conceptualisation of peace and to take leading roles in the peace process. However, even with limited resources, initiatives, such as those taken by African states, challenge the hegemonic peace of the global North, and provide alternatives to that pushed by liberal institutions. Daley contends that despite some successes, ‘South–South cooperation on peace has been largely muted, or, in fact, insufficiently researched’.

Part V: South–South connections Building upon Parts III and IV, which have addressed key challenges and trends in relation to international development and humanitarianism, the final part of the handbook shifts to explore in greater detail a range of forms and scales of connection touched upon throughout the previous chapters, including particular attention to the mobilisation and mobility of people, ideas and objects within and across the global South. As indicated in Parts III and IV, North–South and South–South perspectives on, and approaches to, development and humanitarian initiatives are highly heterogeneous, as exemplified by the diverse perceptions and modes of engagement developed by women, feminist and LGBTQI movements around the world. Indeed, as Fiddian-Qasmiyeh notes in her chapter, extensive critiques have by now denounced the extent to which Northern-led development and humanitarian policies alike have often been justified as being a moral imperative for Northern actors to ‘save brown women from brown men’ (Spivak 1993, p. 93), reproducing ‘them’ and ‘there’ as inherently violent, oppressive and oppressed people and spaces while ‘we’ and ‘here’ are positioned as democratic, free and empowered (see Abu-Lughod 2002; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2014b). In effect, scholars, practitioners and policy-makers alike have long been critiqued for universalising Northern gender relations and for misinterpreting the nature of gender and sexual identities, and gender relations in the global South (Narayan 1997; Oyewumi 1997; Cole et al. 2007; Connell 2007, 2014a, 2014b; Daley 2015; Moltlafi 2018; Medie and Kang 2018). So, too, have they often misunderstood and misrepresented the diverse positions, positionalities, performances and modes of resistance developed by people across the South, including on the basis of intersecting identities (gender, race, class, age, religion, sexuality, . . .), and in relation to diverse structures of oppression (patriarchy, misogyny, racism, heteronormativity, transphobia, (neo)colonialism, . . .) (e.g. see Anzaldúa 1987; Basu 1995; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2014a; Lugones 2007; Mohanty 1984, 2003; Moghadam 2005; Trinh T. Minh-ha 1989; also see Murrey, Chapter 4 in this volume). This includes the commonly made assertions that repressive practices, policies and legal systems 16

Introduction

vis-à-vis gender and sexuality are inherent to ‘the South’, rather than acknowledging the extent to which colonialism and neoliberalism are at the root of repressive and patriarchal legal systems that institutionalise gender inequality and violence and, for instance, criminalise same-sex relations, around many parts of the world (Abbas and Ekine 2013; Falquet et al. 2010; Murray and Roscoe 1998; Rai and Waylen 2014; Radhakrishnan and Solari 2015). At the same time, however, Southern feminists have often been rejected from different standpoints, including through the claim that feminism is a Northern import that runs counter to local cultures, and indeed is ‘seeped in and [reinforces] unequal power relations’ (Medie and Kang 2018, p. 38). As Sohela Nazneen notes in Chapter 25, however, the preoccupation with the Northern origins of feminism and the sometimes heated debates between Northern and Southern feminists, has directed attention away from the dynamic Southern regional feminist networks and alliances that have grown since at least the 1980s. Indeed, there is an extensive and long history of writing, and acting, to promote social justice by and for women and gendernon-conforming individuals across what is currently conceptualised as the global South. In practice, Southern activists have developed significant intellectual arguments to challenge both dominant (and dominating) voices from the North and also those within the South who seek to maintain oppressive practices (see Connell 2014a, 2014b; Lugones 2007; Mama 2011). Nazneen discusses the need to extend and study those spaces within the South where ‘regional flows of ideas and norms take place that critically influence national movements and policy and shape regional and global initiatives’, while recognising that even though the North–South power relations are no longer dominant for feminists, new areas of tension and forms of inequalities are emerging based on resource access within the South, between diaspora and home country feminists, elite and grassroots feminists, and between nationalist feminists. As approaches to diverse feminisms (in the plural) continue to expand, we also note the increased attention to masculinities beginning in the last decade of the 20th century (Connell 1995). As critical scholars have noted, global South masculinities have long been constituted as deviant and deviating from hegemonic white male masculinities, and development agencies have, in turn, sought to intervene across the global South to promote a particular model of ‘gender relations’ without attention to the colonial legacy of white male racialised patriarchal systems and militarised masculinities (Connell 2014a, 2014b, 2016; Daley 2008; MadlalaRoutledge 2008). With young men in the global South countries perceived as possessing or being susceptible to violent masculinities, development agencies have persistently conceptualised them as a group in urgent need of modernising influences (Cleaver 2002; Honwana and Boeck 2005; Honwana 2012). This forces the question as to whether masculinities and youth, both previously excluded from being of scholarly concern, will follow the same intellectual trajectory as feminism. Can SSC, and its concomitant principles, provide the space to challenge ongoing attempts by development institutions in the global North to define, frame and transform Southern masculinities and the category youth? Indeed, youth in the global South have collectively become targets of development policy interventions and are being subjected to diverse forms of ‘triangular cooperation’ (as outlined earlier in this introduction). Southern countries are encouraged by Northern aid donors to see youth as a problem to be solved – either a threat or an opportunity – ‘a demographic dividend’ arising from having much younger population profiles than countries in the global North (UNDP/DFID 2010; Honwana 2005). Youth have been targeted as the route to end poverty, as potential agents of economic transformation through their perceived capacity to adopt new leadership practices and technology transfers, especially digital technology, and they are being repackaged as entrepreneurial neoliberal subjects (Jeffrey et al. 2008; Jeffrey and Dyson 2013; Bersaglio et al. 2015; Gough and Langevang 2016). In Chapter 26, Grace M. Mwaura shows how most forms of South–South 17

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youth cooperation are still funded by the North and yet, echoing Omata’s reflections on the lack of evidence vis-à-vis the impacts and outcomes of SSC, she notes that a lack of research means that there is no ‘assess[ment] of the utility of such relationships, some of which have often existed in the form of time-bound programmes’. This North–South perspective also eludes the dynamics of South–South youth initiatives as promoted by countries such as China, or initiatives developed independently of states in the areas of culture, sport, transnational political activism and education. In turn, Mwaura asks What is the utility of South–South relations in a context of idolised Western cultures? Does ‘Turning East’, or in this case, ‘Turning South’, imply emancipation from the North or does it signal alternative opportunities for young people to create livelihoods. In effect, a key area of youth policy intervention is education – a key focus for ‘triangular collaboration’ – where transnational migration for education has grown rapidly in the last two decades, with mobility, South–North and South–South, occurring at the same time as Southern education systems have been subjected to privatisation and attempts at external governance by aid donors and the World Bank.6 Thomas Muhr and Mário Luiz Neves de Azevedo, in reviewing the literature on Latin America and the Caribbean’s engagement with South–South education relations, identify ‘two broad camps’: ‘a mainstream approach, embedded in liberal and (neo)realist international relations theories; and a critical theory approach, associated with counter-dependency thinking’. However, the case studies of the Cuban originated ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! global South literacy cooperation programme, and of BRICS-sponsored educational initiatives show that ‘South–South principles of solidarity, mutual benefits and efforts of selfreliance are very much practised’, despite attempts at the national level to integrate global South countries (China, India, South Africa) into ‘global North-dominated higher education markets’. Nonetheless, Muhr and de Azevedo call for greater research into the hybridity of South–South educational cooperation. In this vein, Johanna L. Waters and Maggi W.H. Leung’s chapter draws our attention to multi-directional trends in South–South higher education mobility and argues for a specific focus on China’s bid to be ‘a powerhouse in global higher education linkages’, by making China a destination for students, as well as funding higher education projects abroad, as it does in diverse African countries. By examining China’s educational cooperation with African countries, they argue that there appears to be a mix of Chinese cultural, neoliberal, and global South solidarity principles and practices informing China’s educational cooperation that ought to be studied further. Beyond the state, transnational forms of educational mobility are encouraged by the private sector, and yet the motivations, experiences and aspirations of individuals, such as those in African countries, who are taking advantage of new spaces of educational opportunities in India, Malaysia and other states within the continent, such as South Africa, largely remain outside the preoccupation of contemporary research. More research might, as Muhr and de Avezedo argue, highlight the hybrid nature of Southern aspects of knowledge transfer to reveal that, while adopting some universalising Northern educational practices such as higher education institutional rankings, Southerners are mobilising to reassert the ‘mutual interests’ and ‘collective development’ of Southern states as being central to their educational goals. Together, these chapters thus emphasise the difficulties of de-linking from Northern dominance under the current global economic systems, as Southern initiatives are co-opted and mainstreamed, yet they also point to examples of difference and cooperation that should be investigated further for lessons of national and collective self-reliance. Moreover, as Waters and Leung conclude, ‘scholarship needs to expose the spatial and social diversity 18

Introduction

characterising contemporary international higher education, which should include a discussion of the potential epistemic pluralism that an alternative to Eurocentric knowledges might bring’ to countries of the global South. The final three chapters in the handbook further contextualise the nature, experiences and impacts of South–South migration and mobility (Crush and Chikanda), before delving in more detail into ‘medical tourism’ both as a form of migration and as a mode of international cooperation (Ormond and Kaspar), and concluding with critical reflections on the important history, present and potential of South–South cultural and artistic flows and exchanges (Rojas-Sotelo). In their chapter, Jonathan Crush and Abel Chikanda indicate that South–South migration has increasingly come to the forefront of policy agendas as states and organisations have expanded their interest in the potential for migration within the South to promote development through different forms (including skilled labour migration, remittances and/or horizontal modes of knowledge exchange). Indeed, as they demonstrate in their chapter, ‘[t]here is substantial evidence that globally [South–South migration] is almost as voluminous as South–North migration, and for most origin and destination countries in the South it is by far the more important form of migration.’ On the one hand, recognising the nature and significance of South–South migration can be viewed as an important corrective to Northern state and non-state discourses which depict the North as a ‘magnet’ for migrants from across the global South (i.e. incorrectly assuming that global migration is primarily a South–North phenomenon). This corrective could be perceived to be particularly important given that such discourses are used by Northern states and regional organisations to justify the implementation of draconian (and often illegal) measures to prevent certain people from being able to reach the North. On the other hand, however, the increasing policy interest in South–South migration has been paralleled by concerns that Northern actors might precisely be instrumentalising and co-opting Southern people and dynamics (in this case, migrants and migration flows) to achieve the aims established and promoted by Northern states and institutions – this raises the question of whether mobilising the benefits of South–South migration is not itself emblematic of the global North’s desire to keep ‘Southerners’ in the global South. In this way, when Northern states and institutions promote the significance of South–South migratory flows, often invoking the ‘fact’ that this is an important way to enhance development outcomes across the South, this can be seen as being part and parcel of Northern states’ inhumane, racist and racialised systems of border and immigration control (Brachet 2016). In such a context, we return to the question posed by Biney in her chapter on pan-Africanism – ‘what reparations for the trans-Atlantic slave trade and colonialism should entail for people of African descent living in the diaspora and those living on the African continent?’ – as this is core to acknowledging and enacting different actors’ responsibilities for a range of historical and contemporary processes and phenomena, including exploitation, occupation and oppression by colonial and neocolonial powers alike. With such questions in mind, Crush and Chikanda note that, in spite of increased policy focus, South–South migration and Southern diasporic constellations remain under-researched and require much more detailed and nuanced analysis. In effect, they argue that ‘the near absence of South–South movement from the migration literature before the turn of the century does not mean that it had not been occurring in the past; it has and for many decades’. They continue by stressing that: This blind spot is indicative of the hegemony of the Northern discourse on South–North migration, which has traditionally attracted widespread attention from scholars based in the North and has been assumed to have greater developmental value relative to other migration flows. 19

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Through analysing the bilateral migration database of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), in addition to other major sources of migration data, Crush and Chikanda take important steps to redress such gaps by tracing key trends in different forms of migration within and between different regions of the global South. Inter alia, they examine the feminisation of South–South migration, and also the ways in which South–South migration has been typologised and conceptualised by different stakeholders. For instance, they note that ‘the typology of South–South migration raises the issue of whether, and to what extent, these different categories of migrant can be classified as members of “diasporas”’ – indeed, their reflection on this matter echoes many of the points made by Biney (in Chapter 13 of this handbook) with regard to pan-Africanism. Overall, Crush and Chikanda note that future research is urgently required vis-à-vis South– South migration, and argue that this provides an opportunity to develop more nuanced analyses of the relationship between migration and development since, ‘while most discussions of South– North migration focus on the positive and negative development implications for countries of origin only, it is clear that South–South migration has development consequences for both countries of origin and destination (Anich et  al. 2014)’. In this regard, a key question is the extent to which different forms of South–South migration can be viewed as having the potential to promote core principles of SSC, such as mutual benefit, solidarity and the development of sustainable systems of ‘self-reliance’ within and across the South in ways that challenge structural inequalities (also see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015). Indeed, Chapter 30, by Meghan Ormond and Heidi Kaspar, examines ‘medical tourism’ across countries of the global South as a form of South–South migration that potentially enables people to fill significant ‘health gaps’ that, for diverse reasons, they cannot meet in their countries of origin. In many ways complementing Muhr and de Azevedo’s and Waters and Leung’s earlier chapters on South–South education and scholarship programmes, Ormond and Kaspar’s chapter draws on their extensive research with patients, medical providers, travel facilitators and policy-makers across South, Central and South East Asia, and in the Caribbean. With reference to structural inequalities on global and national levels, Ormond and Kaspar note that ‘widening health gaps’ in the global South – between those who can and cannot afford or access appropriate medical care – have themselves been ‘produced’ by a combination of ‘[d]emographic and epidemiological transitions in global South countries, on the one hand, and the neoliberalisation both of national health systems and international development aid, on the other’. It is precisely to fill the gaps that have been created and/or widened by neoliberal health and aid policies, that medical tourism across the global South has developed as a major phenomenon, with medical tourists’ ‘transnational movements reflecting and fostering asymmetrical social, economic and political relations that enable actors in some countries to be in a position to address the care deficiencies of people in other countries’. Through detailed attention to the experiences and conceptualisations of people who have themselves sought or provided medical treatment elsewhere in the global South, Ormond and Kaspar argue that ‘medical tourism reconfigures relations between and within source and destination countries’ populations, by establishing novel forms of post-national market-mediated solidarities and forms of aid’. While acknowledging the extent to which such arrangements might enable the development of ‘bonds of social solidarity between states and their subjects’, the chapter also stresses that medical tourism often takes place in ways that ‘largely bypass government-togovernment diplomatic and aid relations’. In line with other chapters in the handbook which explore the diverse roles played by non-state actors – including members of local communities providing humanitarian assistance to refugees in the Middle East (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh), transnational feminist activists promoting social justice in South Asia (Nazneen), and non-state actors 20

Introduction

across Brazil and Africa working together to develop more ecologically sustainable modes of agriculture (Cabral) – Ormond and Kaspar argue that a focus on medical tourism ‘upends conventional thinking about the geography of care and solidarity’. The final chapter in this part, and in the handbook, provides a further critical analysis of the role and potential of collaboration and solidarity with regard to the important flows and counter-flows of ideas, people and objects. Turning his attention to the ‘state of the arts of the global South’, Rojas-Sotelo traces cultural and artistic flows and exchanges within, across and from the global South. Echoing the histories and debates traced throughout the handbook, Rojas-Sotelo notes that ‘most of the global South . . . was transformed by modernity/coloniality, their experiences interconnected under global routes of exchange and diverse forms and processes of migration’. Against this historical backdrop, throughout which the arts of the South have simultaneously been ‘treated as primitive, uncivilized, savage and non-refined, but [also] as a source of inspiration for the Western Euro-North American art history’, and as objects to the collected, consumed and commercialised, Rojas-Sotelo examines artistic production in/ from the South with a particular focus on tropicalism, hybridity and bordering. In so doing, he highlights diverse conceptualisations of the South – including Mosquera’s categorisation of ‘the issue of “Third World” or “Art of the South” not as a geographic problem but as a problem of the geography of power (Rojas Sotelo, 2009, p. 163)’ – the significance of race (and whiteness) in processes of artistic cultural production, circulation and consumption, and the development of pluriversal approaches that challenge, resist and fill gaps in existing epistemologies and ontologies, both of the North and the South. Inter alia, he highlights the extent to which ‘decentred authors from the South, have been documenting how a potent cultural trialectic took place: indigenous and black artistic expression fertilised white modernism, just as white art forms helped shape the indigenous and black modernisms in the South’. Within the context of such trialectics and other forms of interconnections and intersections, throughout his chapter Rojas-Sotelo asserts that ‘the margin is where their power resides’, while also noting, with reference to bordering, that ‘[a] mestizo/liminal and alternative culture has surfaced from the borders, fractures and crevices, creating a physical and symbolic ethos expressed in the work of the Chicana intellectual Gloria Anzaldúa (1988).’ Indeed, Rojas-Sotelo demonstrates the significance of multiple processes and directionalities of interrelatedness, whether through modes of resistance (against Northern denigration or appropriation of Southern art and artists) or collaboration (with differently positioned and situated artists and audiences). Such modes of collaboration include those showcased, created and nurtured through the Havana Bienalle which, since 1984 ‘has been known as “the Tricontinental art event,” presenting artists from Latin America, Africa and Asia, as well as Southern artists living in the North’. Indeed, as is powerfully argued by Rojas-Sotelo, and as we have aimed to demonstrate throughout the course of this handbook: The stories of the peoples of the South cannot be disentangled from those of the global North, as these stories refer to the building of nation-states and the participation of the people of the South in the economies, cultures and epistemic understanding of the world. In effect, while acknowledging the ongoing exclusion and marginalisation of Southern art and Southern ways of knowing, being and acting, Rojas-Sotelo nonetheless concludes that ‘[a]ll these prominent examples of counter-flows, subaltern, situated and localised cultural production from the South may give a hopeful picture of how the world has become more interconnected, diverse and democratic.’ Advocating for the creation of more diverse and meaningfully collaborative spaces, and for the incorporation of both aesthesis (‘the sensing and feeling in opposition to 21

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the pure formal in aesthetics’) and ‘decolonial aesthetics’ (which have thus far been missing in the discourse of decoloniality), Rojas-Sotelo powerfully argues that ‘[b]y reconnecting cultural and artistic production to life itself, in relational terms, by readapting ways of living, belonging and listening to the past and present, alternative systems of governance beyond modern democracy and late capitalism are possible.’ This aim is part of the overarching project that we believe the chapters in this handbook help us better understand, and work toward.

Concluding thoughts The idea of the global South might have arisen out of the deeply unequal and exploitative relationships that developed with peoples of the world subjected varyingly to Euro-Northern American imperialism. As noted by our contributors, the South might be a product of the North, but persistent resistance to Northern domination has produced spatial configurations of common experience, mutual interests, and solidarities. The ending of the super-power rivalry of the Cold War and neoliberal globalisation, seeing the rise of Southern economic powerhouses, has further challenged Northern hegemony and reconfigured SSC. Consequently, and as the chapters in this handbook demonstrate, the South can no longer be seen as an empty vessel to be filled by modernising influences from the North, despite ongoing attempts by Northern institutions to collaborate and shape these new dynamics. To the contrary, global interactions are highly nuanced in the 21st century: flows of people, capital and knowledge have new, complex geographies. In the academy, the universalisation of Northern knowledge and its transfer to the South have been challenged by postcolonial scholars (Chakrabarty 2007; Said 1978; Spivak 1988) and by the decolonial movement (Alatas 2006; Alatas and Sinha 2017; Maldonado-Torres 2016; Mignolo 2000; Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013; Quijano 1991, 2007; de Sousa Santos 2014; Sundberg 2014; Wynter 2003). This is a movement that recognises that political decolonisation failed to address the coloniality of power. A decolonial approach to South–South relations thus offers opportunities for new research agendas that more explicitly address Northern conceptualisations and interpretations of Southern phenomena, and that open up the academy to new ways of thinking through Southern and indigenous approaches (Tuhiwai Smith et al. 2018). It critiques assumptions about the unidirectional flow of knowledge that dominates policy frameworks; recognises the existence of indigenous and multiple knowledge systems, and, in so doing, reveals and emphasises the multi-directional flows of knowledge, including from the South to the North. Decoloniality further nuances South–South dynamics beyond binary and geographic assumptions, finding common ground with colonised societies and oppressed groups in the global North (Spillers 1987; Tuck and Yang 2012). Furthermore, it requires ongoing attention to racial and gendered hierarchies (Spillers 1987; Lugones 2010), and sexuality (Lorde 1984; Tamale 2011; Lugones 2007), with and without the reference points coming from the global North. Learning from the South can only occur if the Northern academy recognises its own dominance in the geopolitics of global knowledge production and the ways in which that dominance undermines and de-legitimises knowledge produced in the global South. Critics from both the global North and South have pointed out how this imagined geography is used to legitimise knowledge produced in the global North or by Northerners on the South (Canagarajah 2002; Briggs and Weathers 2016; Cummings and Hoebink 2017; Medie and Kang 2018). Decoloniality demands a de-centring of global North knowledge through opening up spaces in Northern publications and through genuine collaborations in knowledge production; it demands new forms of transnational collaboration and mutual solidarity, which, 22

Introduction

as Sundberg (2007) contends, ‘encourages individuals and collectives to speak for themselves, while walking with others [to produce the] embodied experiences [that] makes alliances between differently situated actors struggling against unequally constituted geometries of power more possible’ (p. 162). The chapters in this volume all point to new research agendas that are of relevance to the study of the South and the North. One such agenda would be exploring the ‘Southernisation’ of development, in particular how Northern donors and institutions have adopted the discourses and modes of operation of Southern actors, but also new forms of Southern transnational solidarities and cooperation at the state and non-state levels: ‘a de-geographicised notion of Southism that can better capture the complex role of international and local humanitarian workers in crisis settings, as well as the ad hoc relevance of nationality within [South–South cooperation]’ (Carpi, this volume). For the Northern academy to remain relevant, it needs to address the silences in the histories and presents of Southern-led models of cooperation and exchange, interactions and Southern relationalities with other Southern actors (state and non-state) as well as with actors from across and within different Norths. In turn, greater attention should be paid to how Southern lenses have, and must continue to influence and unsettle the Northern academy and institutions (see, for example, Tiostanova and Mignolo 2012; Daigle and Sundberg 2017; Esson et al. 2017). In essence, we must simultaneously remain alert and responsive to the potential for the mainstreaming and co-optation of Southern initiatives and approaches, while continuing to strive for meaningful learning from alternative ways of being, knowing and engaging in and with the world. From a foundational acknowledgement of the dangers of essentialist binaries such as South– North and East–West and their concomitant hierarchies and modes of exploitation, this handbook aims to explore and set out pathways to continue redressing the longstanding exclusion of polycentric forms of knowledge, politics and practice. It is our hope that this handbook unsettles thinking about the South and about South–South relations, and prompts new and original research agendas that serve to transform and further complicate the geographic framing of the peoples of the world for emancipatory futures in the 21st century.

Notes 1 For instance, see Bobiash (1992), Woods (2008), Six (2009), Mawdsley (2012), Amar (2012), Weiss and Abdenur (2014), Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (2015), Gray and Gills (2016), Morvaridi and Hughes (2018). 2 Over 130 states have defined themselves as belonging to the Group of 77 – a quintessential South–South platform – in spite of the diversity of their ideological and geopolitical positions in the contemporary world order, their vastly divergent Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and per capita income, and their rankings in the Human Development Index (for a longer discussion of the challenges and limitations of diverse modes of definition and typologies, see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (2015)). 3 Indeed, Connell notes that ‘Southern theory’ is a term I use for social thought from the societies of the global South. It’s not necessarily about the global South, though it often is. Intellectuals from colonial and postcolonial societies have also produced important analyses of global-North societies, and of worldwide structures (e.g. Raúl Prebisch and Samir Amin).

(see www.raewynconnell.net/p/theory.html, emphasis in the original) 4 The term ‘non-traditional’ donor is often used to differentiate between states that are (traditional) and are not (non-traditional) members of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee. While it is clear that they have a long history of philanthropic action, it has nonetheless often been argued that China, India and other postcolonial donors defy the Northern development model because they occupy a different place in the history of colonial and postcolonial relations (see Six 2009). For this reason, they are often seen as occupying a ‘dual position’ in the aid world, with their historical and contemporary global position contesting the traditional dichotomy of Southern recipients and Northern donors (ibid., p. 1110). 23

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5 For instance, see Connell (2007), Grovogui (2011), Mignolo (2007) and Patel (this volume). 6 For example, in 1997, the World Bank established its African Virtual University (www.avu.org/avuweb/ en/), promoting liberal economics departments in universities and providing training courses for Africans in Washington DC on debt management, urban violence prevention, municipal finances and health management; in 2014, the Bank approved US$280 million to set up Higher Education Centres of Excellence in selected universities across Africa (see www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2014/04/15/ world-bank-centers-excellence-science-technology-education-africa).

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Introduction

Crenshaw, K., 1991. Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review 43(6), 1241–1299. Crush, J. (ed.), 1995. The Power of Development. London and New York: Routledge. Cummings, S. and Hoebink, P., 2017. Representation of Academics from developing Countries as Authors and Editorial Board Members in Scientific Journals: Does This Matter to the Field of Development Studies? European Journal of Development Research 29(2), 369–383. Dabashi, H., 2015. Can Non-Europeans Think? London: Zed Books. Daigle, M. and Sundberg, J., 2017. From Where We Stand: Unsettling Geographical Knowledges in the Classroom. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 42, 338–341 doi: 10.1111/tran.122. Daley, P.O., 2008. Gender and Genocide in Burundi: The Search for Spaces of Peace in Central Africa. Oxford: James Currey; Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press; Kampala, Uganda: Fontana. Daley, P.O., 2015. Researching Sexual Violence in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo: Methodologies, Ethics, and the Production of Knowledge in an African Warscape. In: Anne Coles, Leslie Gray, and Janet Momsen (eds), A Handbook of Gender and Development. London: Routledge, pp. 429–440. de Sousa Santos, B., 2014. Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Dussel, E., 1977. Filosofía de Liberación. Mexico City: Edicol. Escobar, A., 1998. Whose Knowledge, Whose Nature? Biodiversity, Conservation, and the Political Ecology of Social Movements. Journal of Political Ecology 5, 53–82. Escobar, A., 2011. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Esson, J., Noxolo, P., Baxter, R., Daley, P., and Byron, M., 2017. The 2017 RGS-IBG Chair’s Theme: Decolonising Geographical Knowledges, or Reproducing Coloniality? Area 49(3), 343–388. Falquet, J., Hirata, H., Kergoat, D., Labari, B., Le Feuvre, N., and Sow, F. (eds), 2010. Le sexe de la mondialisation: Genre, classe, race et nouvelle division du travail. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., 2014a. The Ideal Refugees: Gender, Islam and the Sahrawi Politics of Survival. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., 2014b. Transnational Abductions and Transnational Jurisdictions? The Politics of ‘Protecting’ Female Muslim Refugees in Spain. Gender, Place and Culture 21(2), 174–194. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., 2015. South-South Educational Migration, Humanitarianism and Development: Views from the Caribbean, North Africa and the Middle East. Oxford: Routledge. Foltz, R., 2005. Environmentalism in the Muslim World. New York: Nova Science Publishers. Freire, P., 1982. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum. Frost, M.J., 2017. Humanitarianism and the Overseas Aid Craze in Britain’s Colonial Straits Settlements, 1870–1920. Past and Present 236, 169–205. Gilroy, P., 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso. Gough, K.V. and Langevang, T. (eds), 2016. Young Entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa. London: Routledge. Gray, K. and Gills, B. (eds), 2016. Rising Powers and South-South Cooperation. Special Issue of Third World Quarterly 37(4). Gregory, D., 2004. The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Grosfoguel, R., 2011. Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political-Economy: Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking, and Global Coloniality. Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World 1(1). Available from: https://escholarship.org/uc/ item/21k6t3fq [Accessed 7 September 2018]. Grovogui, S., 2011. A Revolution Nonetheless: The Global South in International Relations. The Global South 5(1), Special Issue: The Global South and World Dis/Order, 175–190. Harvey, D., 2003. The New Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Honwana, A., 2012. The Time of Youth: Work, Social Change and Politics in Africa. Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press. Honwana, A. and Boeck, F.D., 2005. Makers and Breakers: Children and Youth in Post-colonial Africa. Oxford: James Currey. Jeffrey, C., Jeffery, P., and Jeffery, R., 2008. Degrees without Freedom: Education, Masculinities and Unemployment in North India. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Jeffrey, C. and Dyson, J., 2013. Zigzag Capitalism: Youth Entrepreneurship in the Contemporary Global South. Geoforum 49, R1–R3. Katz, C., 2004. Growing up Global: Economic Restructuring and Children’s Everyday Lives. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 25

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Kwoba, B, Nylander, O., Chantiluke, R., and Nangamso Nkopo, A. (eds), 2018. Rhodes Must Fall: The Struggle to Decolonise the Racist Heart of Empire. London: Zed Books. Latour, B., 2004. The Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lorde, A., 1984. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press. Lugones, M., 2007. Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System. Hypatia 22(1), 186–209. Lugones, M., 2010. Toward a Decolonial Feminism. Hypatia 25(4), 742–759. Madlala-Routledge, N., 2008. We Need an International Campaign to Resist Androcentric Militarized Neo-Colonial Masculinities! Feminist Africa 10, 85–90. Maldonado-Torres, N., 2016. Outline of Ten Theses on Coloniality and Decoloniality [online]. Available from: http://caribbeanstudiesassociation.org/docs/Maldonado-Torres_Outline_Ten_Theses-10.23.16.pdf [Accessed 7 September 2018]. Maldonado-Torres, N. and Minh-ha, Trinh T., 1989. Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Mama, A., 2011. What Does it Mean to Do Feminist Research in African Contexts? Feminist Review, e4–e20. Mawdsley, E., 2012. From Recipients to Donors: The Emerging Powers and the Changing Development Landscape. London: Zed Books. Medie, P. and Kang, A.J., 2018. Power, Knowledge and the Politics of Gender in the Global South. European Journal of Politics and Gender 1(1–2), 37–54. Mignolo, W.D., 2000. Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mignolo, W.D., 2007. Delinking: The Rhetoric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloniality and the Grammar of De-coloniality. Cultural Studies 21(2–3), 449–514. Mignolo, W.D., 2015. Foreword: Yes, We Can. In: H. Dabashi, Can Non-Europeans Think? London and New York: Zed Books, pp. viii–xlii. Minh-ha, Trinh T., 1989. Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Moghadam, V., 2005. Globalizing Women, Transnational Feminist Networks. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Mohanty, C.T., 1984. Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses. Boundary 2(12/13), 333–358. Mohanty, C.T., 2003. ‘Under Western Eyes’ Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggles. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28(2), 499–535. Morvaridi, B. and Hughes, C., 2018. South–South Cooperation and Neoliberal Hegemony in a Post-aid World. Development and Change 49(3), 867–892. Motlafi, N., 2018. The Coloniality of the Gaze on Sexual Violence: A Stalled Attempt at a South Africa– Rwanda Dialogue? International Feminist Journal of Politics 20(1), 9–23. Murray, S.O. and Roscoe, W., 1998. Boy-Wives and Female-Husbands: Studies in African Homosexualities. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Narayan, U., 1997. Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Third-World Feminism. New York: Routledge. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S.J., 2013. Empire, Global Coloniality and African Subjectivity. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Neumann, R., 2014. Making Political Ecology: Human Geography in the Making. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Oyewumi, O., 1997. The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Peet, R. and Watts, M. (eds), 2005. Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development and Social Movements. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Purdy, J., 2015. After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Prashad, V.J., 2012. Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. London: Verso. Pratt, M.L., 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New York: Routledge. Quijano, A., 1991. Colonialidad y Modernidad/Racionalidad. Perú Indígena 29, 11–21. Quijano, A., 2007. Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality. Cultural Studies 21(2–3), 168–178. Radhakrishnan, S. and Solari, C., 2015. Empowered Women, Failed Patriarchs: Neoliberalism and Global Gender Anxieties. Sociology Compass 9(9), 784–802. Rai, S. and Waylen, G. (eds), 2014. New Frontiers in Feminist Political Economy. London: Routledge. Rojas-Sotelo, M., 2009. Cultural Maps, Networks and Flows: The History and Impact of the Havana Biennale 1984 to the Present. Dissertation manuscript, University of Pittsburgh. 26

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Said, E., 1978. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. New York: Vintage Books. Shohat, E. and Stam, R., 2014. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. 2nd ed. Oxford: Routledge. Six, C., 2009. The Rise of Postcolonial States as Donors: A Challenge to the Development Paradigm? Third World Quarterly 30(6), 1103–1121. Skelton, T. and Valentine, G. (eds), 1998. Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Cultures. London: Routledge. Spillers, H., 1987. Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book. Diacritics 17(2), 64–81. Spivak, G.C., 1988. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. New York: Routledge. Spivak, G.C., 1993. Can the Subaltern Speak? In: P.W.L. Chrisman (ed.), Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, pp. 66–111. Steffen, W., Persson, Å., Deutsch, L., et al. 2011. The Anthropocene: From Global Change to Planetary Stewardship. Ambio 40(7), 739–761. Sundberg, J., 2007. Reconfiguring North–South Solidarity: Critical Reflections on Experiences of Transnational Resistance. Antipode 39(1), 144–166. Sundberg, J., 2014. Decolonizing Posthumanist Geographies. Cultural Geographies 21(1), 33–47. Tamale, S. (ed.), 2011. African Sexualities: A Reader. Oxford: Pambazuka Press. Tiostanova, M.V. and Mignolo, W.D., 2012. Learning to Unlearn: Decolonial Reflections from Eurasia and the Americas. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press. Tuck, R. and Yang, K.W., 2012. Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society 1(1), 1–40. Tuhiwai Smith, L., 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books. Tuhiwai Smith, L., Tuck, E., and Yang, K. Wayne (eds), 2018. Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education: Mapping the Long View. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. UNDP, 2013. The Rise of the South. 2013 Human Development Report, UNDP. UNDP and DFID, 2010. Youth Participation in Development: A Guide for Development Agencies and Policy Makers. London: Restless Development. van Dijk, R., Butter, I., de Bruijn, M., and Cardoso, C., 2011. Introduction: Ideologies of Youth. Africa Development 36(3–4), 1–17. wa Thiong’o, N., 1986. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: Heinemann Educational. Weiss, T.G., 2004. Military-Civilian Interactions: Humanitarian Crises and the Responsibility to Protect. 2nd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. Weiss, T.G. and Erthal Abdenur, A. (eds), 2014. Emerging Powers and the UN: What Kind of Development Partnership? Special Issue of Third World Quarterly 35(10). Woods, N., 2008. Whose Aid? Whose Influence? China, Emerging Donors and the Silent Revolution in Development Assistance. International Affairs 84(6), 1205–1221. Wynter, S., 2003. Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation – An Argument. The New Centennial Review 3(3), 257–337.

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Part I

Conceptualising and studying South–South relations

2 Sociology through the ‘South’ prism1 Sujata Patel

In 2007, the publication of Raewyn Connell’s Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science initiated a new way of thinking regarding sociology as a discipline, its theories and its practices and its history. Connell argued that politics of unequal division between the metropole and the periphery (which she called ‘global difference’) has organised the study of this discipline and its scholarship, and that this has led to the universalisation of ‘northern theories’ and ‘its viewpoints, perspectives and problems’ (Connell 2007, p. vii). It is not that similar, if not identical, viewpoints were not presented before. Scholars from various parts of the South2 had made comparable remarks, some of whose ideas have influenced Connell’s work. However, none of these scholars had mapped out the core issues or identified and presented an analysis relating to the reasons for the universalisation of the metropole’s scholarship. Additionally, although some of these works were published, either these were not available in English3 or their distribution was restricted to regional/national markets. The first statement on this issue came from the Marxist political economist Samir Amin (1989),4 when he suggested the need to historicise the myth of Eurocentrism which argued that Greece was the direct ancestor of the West. Amin contended that Eurocentrism was a cultural and ideological representation of Western capitalism and its claim of being unique and the most progressive manifestation of the history must be interrogated through an historical analysis. In his analysis of its history, Amin showed that Greece drew its heritage from Egypt and its Hellenic culture was introduced to Europe through Islam. Amin’s text was followed in 1996 with another document written by Immanuel Wallerstein and his colleagues called Open Social Sciences (1996); this mapped the history of social sciences from the 18th century onward and indicated how geopolitics organised its constitution.5 The latter text gave a fillip to the discussion on the European universals inherent in the discipline and created the conditions for an empathetic and critical reading of Connell’s text. Connell’s Southern Theory was published a decade later and has gained a high reputation for five reasons: first, it introduced Northern readers to sociological scholarship of five different parts of the world, Latin America, Africa, Iran, India and Australia,6 after making a critique of Northern theories. This allowed Connell to present the scholarship of the South as having equal valence with Northern theories. For the first time, a book on the South was written from a perspective of the South. Second, it was published in English by a mainstream international press. 31

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This allowed its wide dissemination across the globe.7 Third, she presented a theory to assess the repertoire of practices organising the discipline. She argued that the production of knowledge and of disciplinary practices is enmeshed in ‘relations of power’ and an analysis of any knowledge system, in this case the discipline of sociology, alludes to ‘authority, exclusion, and inclusion, hegemony, partnership, sponsorship and appropriation-between intellectuals and institutions in the metropole and those in the periphery’ (Connell 2007, p. ix). Fourth, by suggesting that power is central to knowledge formation, she pushed the discussion of the discipline toward a critique of its European epistemology, thereby reformulating the debate inaugurated a decade earlier by Northern sociologists on reflexivity, modernity and the discipline. And fifth, this stance allowed Southern Theory to feed into the emerging discussion on global theory and to give the latter a new perspective on its reconstitution. Published soon after poststructuralism, deconstruction and postcolonial perspectives had already found support in Northern academia, Southern Theory created the impetus to discover, translate, publish, and thus to debate, old and new scholarship from the rest of the world in sociology/social sciences by international scholars (Connell 2013, pp. 178–181). These efforts led to the widening of the international discussion which was bolstered by the publication of the 2010 UNESCO report on the state of social sciences (UNESCO 2010).8 It further funnelled the debate on Eurocentrism and its impact on knowledge construction within academic institutions, including universities and research institutes, and through practices such as curriculum framing,9 pedagogy, strategies/norms regarding the publication of articles in journals and books, selection of books in libraries, and research protocols. These interventions enveloped all matters regarding production, distribution, consumption and re-production of the discipline.10 The scope of the debate widened as mainstream Northern journals, books (Bhambra 2007, 2014; Go 2016), and international fora deliberated the emerging interventions on Southern theory within sociology. Its impact can now be seen in new research and publications that deal with the analysis of the history of the discipline and its various areas and perspectives (such as inequality studies [Boatca 2015], gender and environment studies, labour and urban studies [Patel 2014], historical sociology [Boatca et al. 2010; Bhambra 2016]). Additionally, it has also encouraged the exchange of theories and practices through bilateral and multilateral discussions (e.g. IBSA [India, Brazil, South Africa] and BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa]) within Southern institutions. However, it is important to mention that its purchase within Europe and North American institutions, while increasing, remains limited. Connell argues that Southern Theory is a ‘messy terrain’ and ‘it doesn’t make for a neatly organized text, and the process doesn’t produce a single model that we can easily teach in our courses’ (Connell 2013, p. 179). This chapter follows Connell and the Portuguese social scientist Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2014) in its use of the ‘South’. Both suggest that ‘the South’ is a metaphor and represents the embeddedness of knowledge in relations of power. More particularly de Sousa Santos argues that it describes the coming together of a social sector of the population (e.g., the subalterns) with particular geopolitical areas of the planet. Connell also uses South and North interchangeably with the periphery and the metropole, respectively, and argues that the category of the South allows us to evaluate the processes that permeate the nonrecognition of its theories and practices in the constitution of knowledge systems and disciplines. Thus, for Connell, there are many Souths in the world and these are present both within the metropole and the periphery and the task of social science is to give voice to them. Following Connell, this chapter has also selected a few thinkers and highlighted a number of positions that give direction to the discipline. As this chapter’s focus is on the Southern perspective, a detailed exegesis on postcolonial perspectives within social sciences of the Northern regions, and particularly its contribution to studies on racism, is not being attempted 32

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(discussed in Davies and Boehmer, Chapter 3 in this volume; Murrey, Chapter 4 in this volume; Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Tafira, Chapter 9 in this volume; and Hanafi, Chapter 5 in this volume), nor does this chapter discuss what Steinmetz (2013) and Go (2016) call Empire Studies. This chapter presents an overview of the positions taken by this scholarship and highlights some of the important concepts and positions being used. However, a caveat needs to be introduced: although this scholarship is recognised as the global South perspective, scholars mentioned herein do not necessarily self-identify with this position and have differences among themselves on how to understand Eurocentrism (and whether to use this term at all) and how to assess its impact on the history and practices of the discipline. These differences have led scholars to identify varied pathways of study and to define the focus of their work. Broadly speaking, three pathways can be identified: some suggest that they take decolonial positions (Escobar 2007; Mignolo 2002, 2007; Boatca et al. 2010; Boatca 2015). A second set of scholars argue that their work is within postcolonial studies (Bhambra 2007, 2014; Go 2016). Third, there are scholars who do not use an overarching position to characterise their perspective. Yet their concepts, such as indigenous knowledge (Akiwowo 1986; S.H. Alatas 2006; also see Habashi, Chapter 8 in this volume), indigenous methodology (Tuhiwai Smith 1999), and endogenous knowledge (Hountondji 1997), captive mind (S.H. Alatas 1972), extroversion11 (Hountondji 1995), academic dependency and autonomous knowledge (S.F. Alatas 2003; S.H. Alatas 2006), and colonial modernity (Patel 2006, 2017) have reframed the discussions in this area. Although all scholars affirm a need for the epistemic re-evaluation of the discipline and the necessity of its reorganisation, there are differences between them regarding their objectives and the focus of their deliberations. This chapter discusses the global South position by highlighting two fault lines running through this scholarship. The first fault line is between scholars who affirm a need for a radical reorganisation of the discipline by incorporating the voices of those who have been marginalised and through this process creating a new epistemic position for the discipline of sociology and more generally for the social sciences. The goal here is to create alternate universal theories, concepts and practices moored in a non-Eurocentric episteme, a new sociology/social science that can be used across the world in aid of those who are oppressed and have been made into subalterns. Here the research programme merges with a political project of changing the world through many utopian visions including that of Marxist revolution. On the other hand, there are scholars who argue that their work is limited to a critique of Northern sociology and/or social sciences and that they concentrate their deliberations on academic scholarship with the objective of making social science theories and practices relevant, inclusive, pluralistic and diverse. Their goal is to change the discourse of academic thinking and its monopolistic universal Eurocentric episteme that has dominated sociology since the 19th century. The second fault line lies within the second group of scholars who are focusing their gaze on the academic production of knowledge. On the one hand, one group of scholars in this cohort call themselves postcolonialists and they orient their critique on the discipline as it is conceptualised in the Northern academy. Here Southern theory is used as a critique to deconstruct the universals of Northern positions through a poststructuralist and postcolonial reading of the discipline’s texts. The gaze is on the Northern academic scholarship and its practices. On the other hand, is scholarship which uses the Southern critique of Northern positions to reorganise the concepts and theories of sociology as a global discipline and simultaneously to re-formulate regional/nation-state sociologies within the South. The gaze here is not on Northern scholarship but on Southern scholarship formulated during colonialism, and the attempt here is to displace colonial sociologies to replace them with contextually relevant sociologies. While the first group starts with the assumption that sociology is global and the Southern critique is necessary for an epistemic intervention into the existing Northern theories, with little engagement 33

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with them, the second one wants to make sociology global by reorganising their particularistic sociologies through a Southern critique, thereby reformulating the discipline’s concepts and theories. The genealogy that each scholarship traces for sociology’s reorganisation is distinct and different, and, in the following exposition, I elaborate the way scholars from different regions have organised their work in terms of these two faultlines.

Eurocentrism, geopolitics and modernity Decolonial theory/perspective, also called the colonialism/modernity research programme (Escobar 2007), is an intellectual movement originating in the Latin American region which combines and subsumes many other trends, the most important being world systems analysis (outlined below). It draws its direct legacy from the Latin American dependency theories (Anibal Quijano being a member of both groups), liberation theology of the 1960s and 1970s, ideas popularised by Latin American philosophers (the most important being of Enrique Dussel), issues germane to contemporary Latin America social movements, together with intellectual trends in other regions, such as Indian subaltern theories and the critique of modernity and postmodernity emanating from the North. Its reformulation of these inheritances heralded, in Escobar’s word, ‘its own inquiry in the very borders of systems of thought’ and made possible ‘non-Eurocentric modes of thinking’ (Escobar 2007, p. 180). From the start, it negated its genealogy in Western thought and in the Enlightenment and presented itself as the authentic voice of and for an alternative decolonial position.12 The decolonial scholarship organises its research programme around a number of key concepts explored in more detail below: coloniality of power (the invisible and constitutive side of ‘modernity’) (Quijano 2000), exteriority/interiority and transmodernity (Dussel 1993, 2000), colonial difference,13 border episteme and pluriversality.14 These are stringed together to develop a critique of mainstream sociological globalisation theories that argue that the radicalisation of contemporary modernity has made it universal. The goal of the coloniality/modernity programme is first to critique contemporary sociological language on modernity and simultaneously to highlight some limitations in the world systems analysis; second, to constitute an alternate episteme to frame a new social science language; and third, to assemble concepts and theories to understand contemporary global modernity by reconstructing historical, social, cultural and philosophical positions in social science. The goal here is ambitious: it is to reframe global sociological theory by reconstituting the developments within Marxist post-dependency theory and thereby to include the voices of the marginalised and subaltern populations in order to create conditions for their emancipation and liberation. The decolonial theorists posit that, rather than modernity being the focus of analysis (as is the case with theorists such as Giddens), it is coloniality that should be the centre of attention, for there is no modernity without colonialism. They also argue that analyses developed through the world systems approach, which concentrated on the material relationship of exploitation inherent in the international division of labour, were limiting. For them, the concept of coloniality is both incisive and empirically productive because it heralds a sociology that constitutes, mutually, the global international division of labour together with racial/ethnic hierarchies that were conceived within hegemonic Eurocentric ideologies and imaginaries. Quijano argues that coloniality organises power through the imposition of institutions, practices and knowledge across most of contemporary Asia, Africa and Latin America/Caribbean, given that a significant proportion of peoples and their territories were colonised. No wonder Quijano’s (2000) concept and theory of ‘coloniality of power’ has become a leitmotif for decolonial scholars who consider it the most appropriate analytical frame. 34

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Quijano (2007) distinguishes between direct colonial rule and coloniality, and suggests that coloniality is the imaginary of the capitalist world system and that it continues even after the demise of colonialism. The colonial matrix of power, according to Quijano, has been inscribed in four interrelated domains: control of economy (land appropriation, exploitation of labour, control of natural resources); control of authority (institutions such as the army); control of gender and sexuality (through family and formal and informal socialisation systems); and control of subjectivity and knowledge (epistemology, education and formation of subjectivity), the last being the most important in framing the social sciences. Coloniality is built on two myths: evolutionalism and dualism, both being embedded in Eurocentrism. Although projected as a theory of history, wherein scientific knowledge and technological development progress in an upward linear direction toward higher levels of knowledge and a greater ability to usefully transform the environment, it is an episteme: a theory of power/ knowledge. If this episteme theorised the ‘I’, it also theorised the ‘Other’, the ‘periphery’. Second, this episteme, now termed ‘categorical imperative’ (following Kant), simultaneously creates the knowledge of the ‘I’ (Europe, the moderns, the West) against that of the ‘Other’ (as the peripheral, non-modern and the East). European regional or local history is understood as universal history. Europe serves as the model or reference for every other history, representing the apex of humanity’s progress from the ‘primitive’ to the ‘modern’ (Dussel 2000; Quijano 2000). Third, differences from others are converted into value differences (Mignolo 2002), and hierarchies that define all non-European humans as inferior (‘savage’, ‘primitive’, ‘backward’, ‘underdeveloped’). Eurocentric knowledge is based on the construction of multiple and repeated divisions or oppositions. The most characteristic and significant of these include the basic, hierarchical dualisms of reason and body, subject and object, culture and nature, masculine and feminine. Fourth, these values differences or hierarchies scale from superior to inferior the different peoples of the world in terms of principles of race and gender (Quijano 2000). Coloniality of power together with colonial difference (the division of modernity from coloniality and its use to create further divisions and differences in knowledge) are epistemic tools privileging the intellectual and political space that the Europeans provided themselves to objectify the colonial world, leading to the latter’s invisibility and the subordination of their imaginaries, and their knowledge. This imaginary has permeated the social sciences of the whole world, making a great part of the social knowledge of the peripheral world equally Eurocentric. In those disciplines, the experience of European societies is naturalised: its economic organisation is the capitalist market and its political organisation, the European nation-state, is the ‘natural’ form of political existence. The different peoples of the planet are organised according to a notion of progress: on the one hand the more advanced, superior, modern societies, on the other, backward, traditional, non-modern societies. Decolonial theory is not only a critique of contemporary social sciences, its modernisation theories, and its recent reconstitutions as modernity theories: it is also a reconstruction of it in terms of a new historical sociology. Its research programme has argued that the origin of modernity should be located at the conquest of the Americas and the control of the Atlantic after 1492 and not the Enlightenment or the end of the 18th century. As a consequence, the focus of the analysis of the capitalist system shifts to its colonial moorings and to the colony’s economic exploitation, leading to the use of the world systems approach rather than an analysis of individual nation-states. Thus the world is interconnected in the same circle of colonial/capitalist modernity except that the imaginary of modernity does not recognise the subalternisation of colonial knowledge. Eurocentrism is the knowledge form of modernity/coloniality, a hegemonic representation and mode of knowing that claims universality for itself, and that relies on ‘a confusion between abstract universality and the 35

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concrete world hegemony derived from Europe’s position as center’ (Dussel 2000, p. 471; Quijano 2000, p. 549). Enrique Dussel affirms this point of view when he suggests that the first step in building an alternate modern knowledge (transmodernity), is to affirm the alterity of the ‘Other’ denied within Eurocentrism and give voice to the others’ meanings. In order for social science to rediscover its true mantle it has to discover the Other, to delineate the ways and manners in which the ‘Other’ remained part of the negative and dark side of modernity, and then to correct the original knowledge by acknowledging this injustice. Second, Dussel argues that given the contemporary limited nature of the European conception of emancipatory reason, it is imperative that social science scholars broaden its use by associating it with liberating reason and by unmasking its hegemonic ‘developmentalist fallacy.’ This can be done in and through the methodology of exteriority – to study Europe and its projects from the outside.15 Dussel asserts that what is at stake here is not a retrieval of premodern assessments that would consist of a folkloric affirmation of the past, nor is it an antimodern project of the kind put forward by conservative, right-wing, populist or fascist groups, nor is it a postmodern project that would deny modernity and would critique all reason. Rather, Dussel suggests a need to constitute a new social science that critiques Northern social science through the articulation of the voice of the Other and the reconstitution of the project for emancipation and liberation for all humanity. If decolonial thinking’s first part is an analytic intervention, the second part is a programme of creating a new and de-linked border episteme16 that formulates new tools of thinking that can displace capitalism and its Eurocentric episteme. It is in this context that Mignolo (2007) and Grosfoguel (2007) make a clear distinction between decolonial theorists and postcolonial studies, even though a few decolonial theorists such as Dussel use decolonial and postcolonial interchangeably in some of their essays.17 Mignolo argues that the decolonial perspective gives voice to silenced histories, repressed subjectivities, subalternised knowledges and languages of the people of the ex-colonised regions. Thus decolonial analysis moves away or ‘de-links’ itself from a postcolonial critique located in academia that uses poststructuralism and deconstruction to interrogate Western social sciences. These methodologies merely critique modernity and remain internal to Eurocentrism. These do not have the language to critique the coloniser from the episteme of the colonised, from the exteriority, in terms of changing the terms of discussion. These cannot de-link from Eurocentrism because it has no way to find a new epistemic voice that can formulate new universals which are not totalitarian in its orientation. In addition, Grosfoguel argues that postcolonialists make a cultural argument18 and ignore the materiality that produces exploitation between those who are colonised and those who are colonising. Mignolo (2007) observes that a project of decolonisation must operate in full awareness of its location within the complex relations structured by imperial and colonial differences. It is for this reason that he promotes critical border thinking as a method to enact the decolonial shift. Thus, critical border thinking is the method that connects pluriversality (different colonial histories entangled with imperial modernity) into a uni-versal project of delinking from modern rationality and building other possible worlds. For Mignolo, the universality of the project must be based on the assumption that the project cannot be designed and implemented ‘by one ethnic group,’ but has to be ‘inter-epistemic and dialogical and pluri-versal’ (Mignolo 2007, p. 498). Thus, border thinking becomes the necessary critical method for the political and ethical project of filling in the gaps and revealing imperial complicity between the rhetoric of modernity and the logic of coloniality. In conclusion, I wish to reiterate what Escobar (2007) argues is the contribution of decolonial theory. He suggests that decolonial theory is about redrawing existing notions regarding many contemporary philosophical, social and historical assumptions of social science positions 36

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and presenting alternate ones. These are the decentring of modernity from its alleged European origins; debunking the linear sequence linking Greece, Rome, Christianity and modern Europe; constituting a new spatial and temporal conception of modernity; understanding the first phase of modernity in terms of the conquest of the Americas by Spain and Portugal and the second by northern Europe with the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment, with the second modernity overlapping with the first; the making of the periphery through the two phases; and last, a re-reading of the ‘myth of modernity’. The goal here is ambitious: it is to reorganise the episteme of the social sciences as it was constituted in the 18th century and to constitute new research agendas to redraw the themes, specialisations and research questions in the social sciences. Below I sketch a number of interventions made by academics from the South to change their disciplinary practices in the context of the global South position.

Colonialism, extroversion/academic dependency If the gaze of the decolonial theorists was on the constitution of the social sciences in Europe and its Eurocentric assumptions with the aim of creating a new alternate episteme, the gaze of the next group of interlocutors has focused on analysing the received social science traditions within their respective regions and nation-states. Their queries assess the content, practices and institutional organisation of the social sciences in their own regions/nation-states in order to examine how the global division of knowledge has affected the making and doing of social sciences. As mentioned above, there are differences among these scholars in the ways they assess their dependent intellectual traditions. These differences are related to their contexts – the nature of colonialism – whether settled or non-settled; the time of the colonial encounter; and the way the nation-state organised its scientific knowledge after the formal demise of colonialism. Below, I present two kinds of discussions initiated by scholars of the South. The first set of deliberations analyse the processes, institutions and practices that reproduce colonised and extroverted academic knowledge in the periphery, and the second attempts to formulate an alternative to such forms of extroversion/academic dependencies. The Beninian philosopher, Paulin Hountondji (1995, 1997, 2009), has commented on the ways in which knowledge systems on and of West African colonies were constituted under French domination. In a series of articles, Hountondji has suggested that scholars and scholarship of the ex-colonial regions, such as those in West Africa, have been caught in extroversion or the legitimising of externally oriented knowledge of the metropole/centre on the periphery. Hountondji’s critique incorporates both the sciences and social sciences and identifies seven processes of extroversion. Hountondji argues that extroversion occurs because the production of means of scientific practices or equipment is created outside the region/nation-state where knowledge is organised. This, he contends, allows the slippage of an intellectual chain, that of production and re-production of knowledge. Second, this slippage consequently leads to a dependence on accessing books, journals, archives and publishing houses from the mothercolonial countries. As a corollary, third, a theoretical extroversion occurs, that is the uncritical application of research specialisations, topics and questions to one’s own context. Fourth, this kind of extroversion has other consequences: research is organised in particuarlistic/ localised perspectives. Thereby there is an absence of the knowledge of larger philosophical and scientific understandings that are needed as background information for the reconstitution of knowledge. Fifth, such localisation of research is related to the imposition of knowledge systems by colonial and Western countries, and thus, sixth, it promotes brain drain. Last, he argues that, concurrently, such forms of knowledge reproduce a knowledge tourist circuit between the core and periphery. 37

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This harsh critique finds resonance in the writings of Syed Hussein Alatas (1972, 2006), who speaks of the Singapore-Malaysian colonial experience under British rule. While Hountondji’s gaze is on scholarship, that of Hussein Alatas is on the scholars and particularly on sociologists who, he says, believe that Western knowledge is prestigious. As a consequence they argue for its utility and superiority and thereby promote frequency of contact between Western social scientists and local ones, leading to a weakening of earlier habits of knowledge construction. Hussein Alatas suggests that such beliefs lead to defects and shortcomings in scholarship. The ‘unreality’ of the basic assumptions coupled with misplaced abstraction, ignorance or misinterpretation of data, and an erroneous conception of problems and their signification leads to superfluous knowledge systems. This Hussein Alatas calls the ‘captive mind’. For Hussein Alatas, the captive mind represents a scholarship that uncritically emulates Western social science. The captive mind syndrome occurs when all major constituents of scientific thinking, such as problem setting, analysis, abstraction, generalisation, conceptualisation, description, explanation and interpretation, have been affected by this process (S.H. Alatas 1972, pp. 10–12). Later Syed Farid Alatas (2003, 2006) elaborated Hussein Alatas’s ideas and proposed six attributes of the captive mind which the former terms ‘academic dependencies’. These are: dependence on ideas; dependence on the media of ideas; dependence on the technology of education; dependence on aid for research as well as teaching; dependence on investment in education; and dependence of Third World social scientists on demand in the West for their skills. Farid Alatas argues that tutelage, conformity, the secondary role of dominated intellectuals and scholars, rationalisation of the civilising mission, and the inferior talent of scholars from the home country specialising in studies of the colony, promotes academic dependencies (S.F. Alatas 2003). Why does the captive mind become captive? Or how do academic dependencies flourish? Using the example of India, which experienced non-settled colonialism, Sujata Patel (2006, 2013, 2017) argues that such patterns are moored in the history of social sciences in India. The latter were constituted during the early colonial period and it was anthropology that was first established as a subject. She contends that the production of systematic knowledge in India has been intimately connected to the way the colonial state intervened to create disciplines and used these as techniques to rule. Later the nation-state also made similar interventions to ensure that social sciences articulated the ‘national’ agenda. As a consequence, the university became a site to create expert citizens on behalf of the colonial and, later, national state. Drawing upon the earlier argument presented in Wallerstein et al.’s Open Social Sciences that Eurocentric knowledge divided the disciplines studying the ‘social’ into two – that is, that of sociology as a study of modern society and anthropology as a study of premodern society – Patel elaborates how an anthropologised19 assessment of the ‘social’ was organised by the colonial state in India since the mid-19th century and institutionalised in teaching of the subject of sociology/anthropology. She submits that although colonialism intervened to organise capitalism and thus constituted India into a modern society, it ironically promoted the study of India in terms of its reconstructed past – as a study of Hinduism, of caste and kinship system and that of extended family systems. In contrast to the experience in Singapore/Malaysia (presented by Hussein Alatas and Farid Alatas), the colonial state in the case of India promoted an episteme of colonial modernity to examine and assess ‘the social’ in India.20 As a consequence, the episteme of colonial modernity21 became part of the ‘background understandings’ and ‘beliefs’ of doing anthropology and later sociology in India. Specifically in the case of India, it affirmed that (a) anthropology and its methods should be used as part of the colonial politics of rule, (b) that it should be expressed and organised in terms of values that were in opposition to modernity, (c) that its disciplinary practices such as Indology and ethnography 38

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should be used to elaborate these positions, (d) that this knowledge and the discipline should draw its content from the native intelligentsia, especially the Brahmins (a group who produced and interpreted Hindu scriptures), (e) that it thus reflects the social order as represented by this group both in its expressed articulations (in anthropology and later social anthropology) and in its silences, and last, (f) that it mitigated an examination of the way classification systems of the state organised new forms of inequalities in the colonial territory (Patel 2017). Simultaneously, the colonial state also encouraged the study of modern society as a model for emulation for Indians in and through the study of sociology. This binary, the study of India through an anthropological gaze and of its future through the European model embedded within classical and contemporary sociology, continues to organise the teaching and learning of sociology, and social sciences broadly, within India. Using the concept and theory elaborated by Partha Chatterjee of ‘colonial difference’,22 Patel argues that nationalism imbibed these binaries/dualities and had a contradictory and differential impact on various social sciences. While sociology/anthropology remained embedded within the episteme of colonial modernity and articulated itself in terms of binaries/dualities, economics, history and political science drew their inspiration from the modernist variant of nationalist thought and remained moored in equally dependent principles of European modernity. In the early part of the 20th century, social sciences, including sociology/anthropology, attempted to rethink its epistemic foundations as it associated itself with nationalist movements that confronted colonialism. Of these, the most successful attempt was made in the discipline of history.23 However, after independence, all social sciences, including sociology/anthropology, slipped once again into the episteme of colonial modernity as the nation-state took over the institutions of the state from the colonial state, and scholars and scholarship, in the guise of nationalist affiliations, remained connected to the episteme of colonial modernity which was re-produced as methodological nationalism. Thus Patel contends that methodological nationalism (being the ways theories, methodologies and methods have naturalised the nation and the nation-state as the organising principle of assessing modernity) has played contrary roles during colonial and postindependence India in the articulation of various social science disciplines (Patel 2017). What is the way out? In her book Southern Theory, Connell discusses the work of Akinsola A. Akiwowo (1986, 1999) who argues for the need for an indigenous sociology. While denoting distinctly different attributes to this term, both Hussein Alatas and Farid Alatas, discussed above, have also argued for indigeneity in social sciences by affirming a need for autonomous and alternate social sciences. Later, Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) also used the term to promote a critical methodology of social sciences. Their choice of the use of the term ‘indigenous’, however, has not had many supporters (cf. Habashi, this volume). Hountondji (2009) has continuously argued against the use of indigenous as a concept and theory and proposed the concept of endogenous knowledge instead; this position has also been asserted by Patel (2010, 2015) who argues for contextual diversity. These discussions raise the question regarding the use of science and its Western genesis: to what extent has the Eurocentric episteme been embedded in the sciences as it evolved in the West and how does one connote universals, which is one of the goals of science? This has also led to the debate whether there is one sociology or many. There is no consensus on these issues and scholars continue to be in conflicting positions on this matter. Below I discuss some of the issues germane to this debate.

Indigenous/endogenous social sciences Indigenous sociology/social sciences start with the assumption that it is possible to constitute alternate sociologies from one’s own ‘indigenous’ narratives/cultures. It believes that if the 39

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social sciences grew in the West through an engagement with its philosophical systems, it is also possible to do the same from other cultures and philosophical systems of the rest of the world. It wishes to give an epistemic voice to itself in order to displace the power of the West’s epistemic voice. By displacing the colonial constitution of itself as ‘traditional’, indigenous sociology believes it can create principles/abstractions that are sensitive to its history and social life in order to formulate ‘alternate’ ways of doing sociology outside the language of ‘universal sociology’ as formulated by Western/Northern sociology. Akiwowo (1986, p. 383), a Nigerian sociologist, initiated this debate in Africa when he affirmed that sociology can be constituted from tales, myths and proverbs of the people together with ‘the laws of true African wisdom’ such that it reflects the values of the region. At the Department of Sociology of the University of Nigeria, he and his colleagues attempted to put together a sociological theory extracted from the poetry of the Yoruba ethnic group of Nigeria. Akiwowo and, later, Makinde (1988) argue that an analysis of the Yoruba poems suggests that by using the concept of asuwada as a key philosophical principle, a theory of sociation can be organised. This concept posits that although the unit of all social life is individual, an individual as a ‘corporeal self needs fellowship of other individuals’ (Makinde 1988, pp. 62–63). Thus, community life based on common good is sui generis to the existence of the individual.24 Akiwowo’s and Makinde’s elaboration of the asuwada concept to build an indigenous theory of sociology has led to many comments and has raised fundamental questions regarding the use of folk culture to construct sociological theory. At one level the questions are methodological. What are the reasons for suggesting that the asuwada principle is the basis of sociation? Are their interpretations of these poems correct? Are there other interpretations of Yoruba poems? Adesina (2002, p. 5) argues that there might be differences among social scientists in the interpretation of these poems and thus they might articulate competing meanings of Yoruba poetry. In this case, which interpretation does one accept? What principles will allow us to debate and resolve these scientific issues? In these circumstances, what legitimacy does Akiwowo’s asuwada sociology have? Second, commentators have raised an epistemic issue. Hountondji (1997) suggests that by and large ‘traditional’ knowledge has emerged in juxtaposition to Western thinking and science, not in dialogue with it. In these circumstances it has not developed its own culture of science, that of interrogating its assumptions and that of creating an internal dialogue. Hountondji (1997, 2009) recognises the significance of local knowledge to understand economic and social development but questions the emphasis on oral sources without its interrogation from a scientific perspective. For, he argues, an excursion on ethno-philosophy would necessarily involve contradictory claims regarding the rigour and testable construction of arguments. Also, does basing oneself on ‘culturist’ essentials not reconstruct the coloniser’s gaze that assumes that African cultures were always consensus driven?25 A similar argument is also presented by Adesina (2006) in his assessment of the ‘Akiwowo project’ of indigenous sociology. While agreeing that all sociologies base themselves on particularities (including European and North American ones), Adesina argues that the particularities of Akiwowo’s indigenous sociology have to meet with traditions of sociology across the world in order to create a way to legitimise itself. Resonating Hountondji he asks: have we created methods to examine the truth of indigenous knowledge? Have we explored the reasons for its effectiveness? Why is it grounded in myths and magic? Can we dissociate it from these moorings and construct an endogenous science? To construct endogenous knowledge it is important to move from ‘translation’ to ‘formulation’ (Adesina 2006, p. 9). This implies not only an engagement with modern science but also an attempt to reorganise radically the production, distribution and circulation of knowledge and free it from the imperatives of colonial modernity (Patel 2015). 40

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At this juncture, it is important to add to this debate and assess the interventions made by Farid Alatas (2006) who, as mentioned above, has long been discussing the need to formulate alternative knowledge by removing all kinds of academic dependencies. Earlier, Hussein Alatas (2006), resonating Hountondji, had suggested that it is important not to be bogged down by what colonialists termed ‘traditions’. Local/national sociologies, according to Hussein Alatas, should not be presented in the name of ‘traditions’ for then it reproduces disparate and noncomparative studies of local or regional areas by indigenous scholars. Rather, sociologists need to excavate those traditions – that is, those ideas, issues and problems that have been sustained over a long duration, sometimes decades or centuries – and attempt to understand why these reflect the cumulative development of knowledge concerning particular ways to think. He asks whether we should not understand these ‘traditions’ rather than those termed as ‘traditions’ in the colonial encounter and thus dismissed as being its past. In this context Hussein Alatas suggests that the work of Ibn Khaldun, the 14th-century scholar, is significant because his ideas have endured over centuries. Farid Alatas has followed through this suggestion in his book Applying Ibn Khaldun (2014). Like Akiwowo, Farid Alatas wishes to enrich sociology by using indigenous theories to elaborate ways to comprehend forms of socialities and institutions organised by the people living in nonWestern regions of the world, particularly where Islam flourishes. In a search for new theories he asks whether Ibn Khaldun’s perspective helps us in understanding state formation historically and in present times. Applying Ibn Khaldun weaves together answers to the following questions: how does one rethink state formation in relation to the notion of solidarity and loyalty which is connoted by the key term ‘asabiyya’ used by Ibn Khaldun? To the extent that it includes not just blood ties but also clientelism and alliances, how do various dynasties and ruling groups project authority and maintain power through their manipulation of asabiyya or, conversely, lose power through their failure to do so? This book argues that it is possible to use Ibn Khaldun’s theory to understand the rise of the Ottoman Empire and, also, as an analysis of the Safavid dynasty in Iran. Alatas also suggests that Ibn Khaldun’s theory of the state can also be applied to contemporary Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and Syria. For Alatas, Ibn Khaldun stands out for his rigorous pursuit and analysis and for assessing the messiness that characterises flux and change of dynastic, regional and global history. Alatas suggests that Ibn Khaldun can be applied because he uses logic that is systematic, empirical, materialist and self-critical (also see Hanafi, this volume). Both Hussein Alatas and Farid Alatas assert the need for indigenous sociology but simultaneously argue for an autonomous social science that can integrate Western knowledge with that which is significant in ‘native’ societies. Hussein Alatas (2006) asserts that Western knowledge is scientific and universally valid even though not all its knowledge is significant. He, therefore, argues that Western knowledge that reflects on its own past and present can be used for comparison. Hussein Alatas contends that scholars need to distinguish between particular and universal knowledge. Universal concepts of sociology are those that form the basic foundation of the discipline found in all human societies and valid at all times, such as the concepts of sanction, class, social stratification, social mobility, group, culture, values, religion, custom and many others. These concepts are universally valid in the general and abstract sense, but their historical and concrete manifestations are conditioned by their temporal, spatial and cultural frameworks. The position taken by Farid Alatas is slightly different. While in his earlier articles Farid Alatas’s interventions were against Eurocentric and colonised knowledge, his recent text on Applying Ibn Khaldun allows him to reframe this issue by asking whether distinct cultures and their epistemologies can give new ways of doing critical scientific thought. He contends that such criticality is there in other thoughts/knowledge and he asserts that these too can be used to constitute ways of doing sociology.26 In his recent work he has analysed what he calls the Islamisation of mind or 41

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the epistemology of Islam on knowledge. The question that he poses is: how does Islam provide the metaphysical and epistemological basis for the constitution of new knowledge without committing oneself to an Islamic sociology or an Islamic physics. Such an intervention would not mean abandoning science, especially its moorings in critical and investigative thinking. Given that Islamic thought has a longue durée, he argues that it is not only important to engage with it but also to use it to constitute alternative ways to rethink knowledge. Can it help to displace the power built into the processes of organising Western knowledge, he asks? Alatas asserts that scholars can and should use Islamic ethos to reorganise social sciences.27 A similar approach has been taken by Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) who has presented a new way to re-do methodology. She too asks that we pay critical attention to the process of doing social science and to the cultural values that inhabit the individuals, the community and the people that are being investigated. She asks researchers to reflect on ways to destabilise the power of the objectivist research processes and to integrate the voice of subaltern/indigenous peoples into the research process. Thus she argues that social science research needs to ask the following questions: who defines the research problem; for whom is this study worthy and relevant; who says so; what knowledge will the community gain from this study; what knowledge will the researcher gain from this study; what are some likely positive outcomes from this study; what are some possible negative outcomes; how can the negative outcomes be eliminated; to whom is the researcher accountable; what processes are in place to support the research, the researched and the researcher? In many ways Farid Alatas and Tuhiwai Smith resonate Connell (2007, p. 224) when she argues that systems of knowledge should not remain closed and insular: rather these should be used to make such knowledge ‘corrigible’, that is, capable of being investigated and thus rectified, reorganised, redefined and reformed. It also implies that this practice should involve formulating generalisations which can, in turn, be applied in situations and contexts in worlds and knowledge of other kinds. Connell, and also Farid Alatas, would argue that although there is a link of corrigibility organising the discipline of sociology and broadly social sciences, these sciences need to have many voices and these need to be articulated and circulated by displacing the hegemony of metropolitan and colonial knowledge. As outlined above, discussions have moved from changing the content of sociology into changing the process of doing sociology/social sciences and thereby including other/different critical philosophical traditions of doing sociology. Accepting that colonial power organises all aspects/ practices of doing sociology, both Farid Alatas and Linda Tuhiwai Smith ask us to rethink how to relate culturally sensitive corrigible science to the community. Who we do science for and what kind of relationship it forges between research, researcher and the researched, should be the focus of our examination. Both assert that they do not want to work within binaries of West and East, of science and religiosities, of universities and participative research. Rather they want to destabilise the power that Northern academia builds in order to relate and constitute knowledge that is sensitive to the everyday concerns of those who need it to transform and enrich their lives. Such formulations acknowledge that while globalisation has universalised capitalist modernities, the actual constitution of such modernities is historically and culturally varied and thus sociology/ social sciences has to take a cultural leap to comprehend these nuances. Only then is it possible to promote global social theory. Is Northern theory ready for such a leap?

Toward a conclusion It has been a decade since Connell’s Southern Theory was published. As can be noted from the above, its publication allowed the circulation of various positions and perspectives regarding the way colonialism/imperialism has organised the study of sociology as the universal language 42

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of doing social science. Connell’s book created conditions for new interventions which are confronting the heritage and legacies of Northern scholarship, such as Gurminder Bhambra who first wrote Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination (2007) and subsequently Reconnected Sociologies (2014). Recently Julian Go published Postcolonial Thought and Social Theory (2016).28 In many ways their work extends the initial critique made by Raewyn Connell on Northern sociologies and allows them to deconstruct the traditions of sociology practised in Western universities and their own regions, England and the USA. Earlier, a similar exercise was undertaken when sociology in Europe was analysed through a decolonised lens (Boatca et al. 2010). Bhambra (2014) asserts that it is possible to combine a postcolonial approach with the decolonisation position of the Latin American theorists. Boatca (2015, 2018) represents this trend when she debates how the Occidentalist gaze helps us to examine Europe as seen through its own margins: as a creolised space. She argues that it is necessary to rethink Europe from its Atlantic and Caribbean borders in order to successfully challenge Occidentalist notions of Europeanness, of its institutions such as the modern nation-state and to interrogate its notions of citizenship, sovereignty and modernity. These interventions ultimately allow us to rethink and reconstitute new ways of doing Northern sociologies. However, at this juncture it is important to ask how will this help in building global social theory? Surely to do global social theory there is a need to transcend the focus on Northern theories, to assess the ‘connectedness’ in the constitutions of social science disciplines, and to bring forward the voice of other positions, as done by Southern Theory? If so, should there not be an effort to use concepts and theories from the South (if relevant) to assess both the North and the extensive regions of the South? How does one initiate a dialogue, debate, discussions and deliberations across regions and continents to displace the colonial episteme and constitute a new connected comparative global sociology? In an essay published in 2010, Connell affirmed a need for scholars and scholarship to learn from each other and suggested that Northern universities should be particularly sensitive to such a project. Obviously through such a programme she was alerting Northern scholarship to shift its gaze to Southern sociologies and learn from their particular histories and use of concepts and theories. If this is done, it can build a comparative perspective on scholarship on themes such as inequalities, exclusions and stratification; class/labour/work and social mobility; race, caste and gender; cities and urbanization; consumption and culture or religion and religiosities. Unfortunately the postcolonial-oriented discussion in the North continues to use poststructuralism, deconstruction and post-modernism29 to undertake a critical academic study of the cultural legacy of colonialism and imperialism in their regions, rather than moving a step further in the direction outlined by Connell that can help to build a global comparative sociology/social science. Thus, despite the many steps forward that have been taken in legitimising the global South perspective, this remains a fault line that characterises the work of scholars across the globe. In order to reach the goal suggested by Connell, I would argue that everyone has to learn to transcend their locational epistemes and not only those from the North, although Connell is correct in suggesting that it should start from the North. There is a need to simultaneously combine strategies from different intellectual locations (as these have been constituted in the 19th and 20th centuries) to organise global social theories and perspectives and to communicate these across localities, regions and language groupings. There is a need to recognise that each of these intellectual locations has varied intellectual dependencies constituted within ‘global difference’ (Patel 2010). This is the challenge besetting scholars and scholarship today, and it might need another decade of Southern Theory’s circulation to answer where sociology’s South perspective will take us. 43

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Notes 1 Comments by Manuela Boatca and Raewyn Connell have enriched the arguments in this chapter; any faults in these are my responsibility. 2 Such as Jose Carlos Mariategui (189–1930) from Latin America, D.P. Mukherjee (1894–1961) and Radhakamal Mukerjee (1889–1968) from India, and Bernard Makhosezwe Magubane (1930–2013) from South Africa. 3 This section introduces the reader to the genealogy of English-language texts only, although Mignolo (2007) has mentioned that Anibal Quijano published his theory of coloniality of power in Spanish in 1989 and republished the same in 1991. It was translated and published in 2000, while Dussel (1993) has argued that his perspective was available in an early text in 1977. This chapter can be fruitfully read in conjunction with the following contributions in this volume: Hanafi; Mathews; Murrey; Davies and Boehmer; Habashi; and Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Tafira. 4 In 1987 Martin Bernal had published the first volume of Black Athena which proposed similar arguments. 5 Resonating Amin,Wallerstein (1997) in a seminal article not only named the entire discipline of sociology Eurocentric, he also identified it as the geoculture of the world system. 6 Connell suggests that Australia should be perceived as a ‘South’ and not as one of the developed countries, given its history as a settled colony and its exploitation of aboriginals, the original settlers of the continent (Connell 2013, pp. 179–180). 7 By the 1970s, English had become the language of communication and discussion in social sciences and most of the literature in the discipline was being published by corporate international publishers such as Oxford, Taylor & Francis, or Sage. 8 The UNESCO World Social Science Report suggested that while social sciences have a presence in every part of the world, there are huge divides in research capacities and publications across the world, with the developed countries and English-language communities dominating both research and publishing. 9 See www.globalsocialtheory.org and http://epgp.inflibnet.ac.in/ahl.php?csrno=33 10 Also see Hanafi this volume, and, vis-à-vis anthropology, Mathews this volume. 11 Hountondji writes in French and as I do not read French I have read and quoted only his Englishlanguage papers. In one of these, extroversion is mentioned as extraversion (1997). I am using extroversion in this chapter and explaining what it means in order to ensure that the meaning is clear. 12 This idea was first presented by Walter D. Mignolo at the panel discussion on Alternatives to Eurocentrism and Colonialism in Latin American Social Thought at the Montreal World Congress of Sociology in 1998 (see Mignolo 2001). 13 Partha Chatterjee (1986) also uses the concept of ‘colonial difference’ but his comprehension of this concept has different moorings. Chatterjee’s use of this concept relates to the discussion on the nature of Indian nationalism which was led by the native elites. According to Chatterjee, colonialism has played contradictory roles in defining nationalist ideology in India. On one hand, it presented to its subjects a claim that it is a modern regime and that Indians can improve and develop in order to embrace (European) rationality. At the same time, because colonialism needed to distinguish between the dominated colonised and those who did the domination, it had to create rules for creating differences between the ‘we’ and the ‘they’. Chatterjee’s use of this concept is related to the way that nationalism manifested itself in non-settled colonialism such that it could dominate ‘natives’ in the name of the colonial powers, and is related to his concepts of civil and political society. In contrast, Mignolo, whose work is based on the Latin American experience of settled colonialism, uses it to analyse the imperial episteme. 14 See http://waltermignolo.com/on-pluriversality/ for the genealogy of the term. 15 See the recent work by Boatca (2018) on seeing Europe through Caribbean ‘eyes’. 16 According to Mignolo and Tlostanova (2006, pp. 206–207): Border thinking brings to the foreground different kinds of theoretical actors and principles of knowledge that displace European modernity (which articulated the very concept of theory in the social sciences and the humanities) and empowers those who have been epistemically disempowered by the theo- and ego-politics of knowledge. 17 It is difficult to characterise postcolonialism as it has a large canvass and brings together many strands of thought including, sometimes, Indian subaltern studies and even decolonial perspectives. Postcolonialism started as an intellectual movement within the humanities in order to assess the lasting impact of colonisation in Western/Northern literature, architecture, films and the arts more generally (see Davies and Boehmer, this volume). Postcolonial studies have a geographical location in the Northern countries and the term has been rarely used in many Southern countries except when addressing Northern academics 44

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(ibid.; also see Hanafi, this volume).Thus it is important for analysts to make clear the distinctions between these intellectual interventions, and Grosfoguel’s comment should be seen in this light; scholars in the humanities rarely engaged with Marxism and the political economy approach. Additionally both Mignolo (2005) and Grosfoguel (2007) argue that Indian subaltern studies and decolonial perspectives have distinct genealogies and should not be confused with each other. 18 Also see Dirlik (2007) wherein he elaborates similar ideas on postcolonialism. 19 Levi Strauss argued that, in this process, anthropology became a handmaiden of colonialism. 20 Colonial modernity represents ‘ideas, ideologies and knowledge systems . . . to refract and invisibilise the “modern” contours of everyday experience of the people who are colonised as that being non-modern’ (Patel 2017, pp. 127). 21 I use the concept of colonial modernity to clearly distinguish the genealogy that organises my work from those Indians using postcolonial studies; this term is used mainly by disaporic Indians located outside India and who are influenced by American studies which discuss postcolonialism. On the other hand, because I wish to draw from anticolonial scholarship of early 20th-century India, I use the term colonial modernity. 22 See endnote 13. 23 See Patel (2013) for the role played by D.D. Kosambi in reconstituting theories on Ancient India. 24 Their work has been elaborated in Connell (2007) and in Patel (2015). 25 In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Indian scholars also put forward similar arguments. However, unlike African scholars they used Hindu scriptures to constitute a new sociology. Thus it was called Hindu sociology. On this discussion see Patel (2015). 26 Quijano (2007, p. 177) argues that all cultures represent themselves in ‘total’ ways when they produce knowledge. However, except in Eurocentrism, most cultures accept ‘heterogeneity of all reality; of the irreducible contradictory character of the latter, of the legitimacy, i.e. the desirability, of the diverse character of components of all reality – and therefore of the social.’. This idea is also represented in some Hindu and Buddhist traditions in the concept of vibhinnata – diversities wherein the same can be presented in different ways and a belief that such representations are legitimate. Vibhinnata is differently conceptualised from vividhata – the latter means pluralism or unity of diversity, while vibhinnata asserts ontological difference in ways of thinking. In Patel (2010) I use the concept of diversity as vibhinnata, and this should not be taken to imply fragmentation of positions. 27 Recently, Alatas (2015) has started using the term ‘decolonisation’ as a way to displace all forms of deconstruction of colonial ways to think. 28 Bhambra (2007) uses postcolonialism to interrogate the standard history of sociology of the West and to rewrite it by using the global South perspective. On the other hand, Go (2016) suggests that postcolonialism is a 20th-century interrogation of the way imperialism and the Empire influenced the constitution of sociology. His book maps out the way postcolonial perspectives can help to interrogate the limitations of Northern social theory; simultaneously, he also outlines how social theory can show the limitations in postcolonial thought. 29 Anibal Quijano (1993) has argued that the decolonial perspective cannot use a postmodern position because first it needs to indicate how coloniality/modernity are integrally linked and then reconstitute new ways of thinking of modernity which are related to the cultures of those whose voices have been erased and disempowered by the coloniality of power. This is another reason why the nomenclature of postcolonialism should not be used.

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Alatas, S.F., 2003. Academic Dependency and the Global Division of Labour in the Social Sciences. Current Sociology 51(6), 599–613. Alatas, S.F., 2006. Definition and Type of Alternate Discourses. In: Alternative Discourses in Social Sciences: Responses to Eurocentrism. New Delhi: Sage, pp. 80–107. Alatas, S.F., 2014. Applying Ibn Khaldun: The Recovery of a Lost Tradition in Sociology. London: Routledge. Alatas, S.F., 2015. On Decolonising Academics & Pathologies of Muslim Intellectualism. Interview with Farid Alatas by Mohammed Noushad. Available from: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/yotu/ GtVqbJA9jes [Accessed 17 November 2017]. Amin, S., 1989. Eurocentrism. New York: Monthly Review Press. Bernal, M., 1987. Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press Bhambra, G.K., 2007. Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Bhambra, G.K., 2014. Connected Sociologies. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Bhambra, G.K., 2016. ‘Comparative Historical Sociology and the State: Problems of Method.’ Cultural Sociology 10(3), 335–351. Boatca, M., 2015. Global Inequalities beyond Occidentalism. Farnham, UK: Ashgate. Boatca, M., 2018. Caribbean Europe: Out of Sight, Out of Mind? In: B. Reiter (ed.), Constructing the Pluriverse: The Geopolitics of Knowledge. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 197–218. Boatca, M., Costa, S., and Gutiérrez Rodríguez, E., 2010. Introduction: Decolonizing European Sociology: Different Paths towards a Pending Project. In: E. Gutiérrez Rodríguez, M. Boatca, and S. Costa (eds), Decolonizing European Sociology: Transdisciplinary Approaches. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, pp. 1–10. Chatterjee, P., 1986. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? London: Zed Books for the United Nations University. Connell, R., 2007. Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science. London: Polity. Connell, R., 2010. Learning from Each Other: Sociology on a World Scale. In: S. Patel (ed.), The ISA Handbook on Diverse Sociological Traditions. London: Sage, pp. 40–52. Connell, R., 2013. Under Southern Skies. Political Power and Social Theory 25, 173–182. de Sousa Santos, B., 2014. Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Dirlik, A., 2007. Global Modernity: Global Modernity in the Age of Global Capitalism. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Dussel, E., 1993. Eurocentrism and Modernity (Introduction to the Frankfurt Lectures). boundary 2 20(3), 65–76. Dussel, E., 2000. Europe, Modernity and Eurocentrism. Nepalta: Views from the South 1(3), 465–478. Escobar, A., 2007. Worlds and Knowledges Otherwise: The Latin American Coloniality/Modernity Research Programme. Cultural Studies 21(2–3), 179–210. Go, J., 2016. Postcolonial Thought and Social Theory. New York: Oxford University Press. Grosfoguel, R., 2007. The Epistemic Decolonial Turn. Cultural Studies 21(2–3), 211–223. Hountondji, P., 1995. Producing Knowledge in Africa Today. The Second Bashorun M. K. O. Abiola Distinguished Lecture. African Studies Review 38(3), 1–10. Hountondji, P., 1997. Introduction. In: Endogenous Knowledge: Research Trails. Dakar: CODESRIA, pp. 1–42. Hountondji, P., 2009. Knowledge on Africa, Knowledge by Africans: Two Perspectives on African Studies. RCCS Annual Review 1, 121–131. Makinde, M., 1988. African Philosophy, Culture, and Traditional Medicine. Ohio University Center for International Studies Monographs in International Studies, Africa Series Number 53. Athens, Ohio. Mignolo, W.D., 2001. Coloniality at Large: The Western Hemisphere and the Colonial Horizon of Modernity. CR: The New Centennial Review 1(2) Fall, 19–54. Mignolo, W.D., 2002. The Geopolitics of Knowledge and Colonial Difference. The South Atlantic Quarterly 101(1), 57–93. Mignolo, WD., 2005. On Subaltern and Other Agencies. Postcolonial Studies 8(4), 381–407. Mignolo, W.D., 2007. Delinking: The Rhetoric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloniality and the Grammar of De-coloniality. Cultural Studies 21(2–3), 449–514. Mignolo, W.D. and Tlostanova, Madina V., 2006. Theorizing from the Borders: Shifting to Geo- and Body-Politics of Knowledge. European Journal of Social Theory 9(2), 205–221. Patel, S., 2006. Beyond Binaries: A Case for Self-reflexive Sociologies. Current Sociology 54(3), 381–395. 46

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Patel, S., 2010. Introduction: Diversities of Sociological Traditions. In The ISA Handbook of Diverse Sociological Traditions. London: Sage, pp. 1–18. Patel, S., 2013. Orientalist-Eurocentric Framing of Sociology in India: A Discussion on Three Twentiethcentury Sociologists. Political Power and Social Theory 25, 105–128. Patel, S., 2014. Is There a South Perspective to Urban Studies? In: Susan Parnell and Sophie Oldfield (eds), Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global South. London: Routledge, pp. 37–47. Patel, S., 2015. Colonial Modernity and the Problematique of Indigenous and Indigeneity: South Asian and African Experiences. In H. Sabea and F. Beigel (eds), Academic Dependency and Professionalization in the South: Perspectives from the Periphery [e-book]. Mendoza-Rio de Janeiro: EDIUNC-SEPHIS. www. ediunc.uncu.edu.ar/catalogo/ficha/612 Patel, S., 2017. Colonial Modernity and Methodological Nationalism: The Structuring of Sociological Traditions in India. Sociological Bulletin 66(2), 125–144. Quijano, A., 1993. Modernity, Identity, and Utopia in Latin America. boundary 2 20(3), 140–155. Quijano, A., 2000. Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America. Nepalta: Views from the South 1(3), 533–580. Quijano, A. 2007. Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality. Cultural Studies 21(2–3), 168–178. Steinmetz, G., 2013.‘Major Contributions to Sociological Theory and Research on Empire, 1830–Present. In: G. Steinmetz (ed.), Sociology and Empire: The Imperial Entanglements of a Discipline. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, pp. 1–50. Tuhiwai Smith, L., 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books. UNESCO, 2010. World Social Science Report: Knowledge Divides. Paris: UNESCO and ISSC. Wallerstein, I., 1997. Eurocentrism and its Avatars: The Dilemmas of Social Science. New Left Review I, 226. Wallerstein, I. et al., 1996. Open Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

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3 Postcolonialism and South–South relations Dominic Davies and Elleke Boehmer

Introduction Postcolonial studies or postcolonialism is a critical theoretical approach that emerged in the Anglo-American academy in the 1980s, and has tended to base itself at once conceptually and politically on a division of the world into ‘the West’ and ‘the rest’, even as it then sets out to challenge such distinctions. This rest was first understood to be the non-aligned ‘Third World’ or developing world, but has more recently come to be referred to as the global South. With the rise of the neoliberal order since the 1980s and subsequent increased and intensified global inequalities, there was a perceived need in the South to address such developments and foster greater cooperation and unity, and postcolonial studies was one such response. From the outset, however, this simplistic, binary geographical split was a contradictory position for the field to inhabit. The subject of its critique was precisely the formal dissolution of the imperial world from the 1940s to the 1960s, hence postcolonialism. Meanwhile, its methodology was crossdisciplinary, a mode of analysis applied to various subjects, from the literary and cultural to the anthropological and economic.1 Of course, there were other colonial-era disciplines that, though developed in the Western academy, referenced ‘othered’ subjects and other parts of the world, but they mostly attempted to conceal these contradictions. By contrast, postcolonial criticism was specifically concerned to question, deconstruct and undermine binary divisions of colonial self and colonised other, and to nuance, complicate and interrogate paradigms of West and rest, us and them. Further complicating this conceptual terrain, postcolonialism also attempts to incorporate so-called ‘subaltern’ knowledge – that is, it attempts to learn from critical perspectives developed by formerly colonised and marginalised cultures and peoples. Not least, it seeks to draw upon and build an understanding of the world not as arranged according to a core–periphery, Western-centric model, but as following lateral, networked and periphery–periphery lines of connection – in short, South–South affiliations. Such relations had flourished in the age of high imperialism that preceded the mid-20th-century’s period of formal decolonisation, and manifested most notably in a cross-national transference of anti-colonial methods and ideas. Indeed, as different parts of the globe were connected by ‘worldwide colonial (what we would today term neo-colonial) nexuses of communication and exchange’, these networks at the same time facilitated a ‘nationalist interconnection’ of Southern ‘resistance in interaction’ 48

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(Boehmer 1998, pp. 12–13). Techniques and tactics of anti-colonial resistance were similarly shared, galvanizing empire’s ‘loosely interconnected system, or at least as a series of multilaterally linked, parallel systems’ (ibid., p. 13). Dialogues between anti-colonial and anti-imperial activists and nationalist movements in different colonies also contributed to a global disavowal of the imperial world order. As Robert Young notes, ‘links established between Irish, South African and Indian nationalists at the end of the nineteenth century were developed to share knowledge of anti-colonial techniques and strategies’ (2008, p. 19). Similarly, we might point to anti-colonial connections between Egypt, Algeria and the Caribbean, an assemblage of countries and regions that though emblematic of ‘South–South relations’ in a geopolitical sense, begins to trouble their strictly geographic orientation. Taking forward these transverse, lateral lines of relationship, this chapter at once draws upon and investigates a central practice of postcolonial studies – the practice of constantly seeking to interrogate global cartographic categories and structures of power, precisely by forging links ‘among’ and ‘between’ others. The postcolonial aim, in other words, is for practitioners and critics to be in intellectual partnership with epistemologies grounded in ‘South–South relations’, sharing conceptual ground while also reflecting critically upon them.

Postcolonial relations in the South The strong connections between the key terms that structure this chapter are deeply historical. ‘The global South’, ‘South–South relations’ and ‘postcolonialism’ all grew out of the mid-20thcentury’s era of formal decolonisation, perhaps best encapsulated, as several critics have argued, by the Bandung Conference of 1955 (see Aneja, this volume, and Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Tafira, this volume). Bandung brought together leaders from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, and was chaired by key anti-colonial figures such as China’s Chou En Lai, India’s Jawarharlal Nehru and Indonesia’s Sukarno. It was swiftly followed by related significant events such as the 1961 Non-Aligned Movement and Cuba’s Tricontinentalist movement (Grovogui 2011, p. 176). The ‘Bandung spirit’, as it has since become known, encapsulates a spirit of cooperation between countries located in the global South, forged in order to build solidarity against the discriminations of countries in the global North. Economically, institutionally, militarily and culturally more powerful, the global North continues to benefit from the legacies of imperialism, while continuing to exploit Southern countries through inequitable policies. These events and the South–South relations they fostered were designed to bolster efforts to resist these coercive structures. Postcolonial theorist Robert Young advocates the term ‘tricontinentalism’ over postcolonialism, because the field is born out of ‘the great Havana Tricontinental of 1966, which initiated the first global alliance of the peoples of the three continents against imperialism’ (2008, p. 5; also see Saney, this volume). It then translated this geopolitical intervention into an academic context by publishing its results in a journal entitled Tricontinental. Certainly, postcolonialism is primarily concerned with the three continents of which the ‘Third World’ is mostly comprised (Latin America, Africa and Asia). It shares the ‘Bandung spirit’ of resistance to the global inequalities now roughly traced along the symbolic (if not geographic) boundaries of North and South, and supports an understanding of postcolonial and global relations as organised along South–South as much as North–South (or West–East) axes. However, the fact that Young’s important book-length study remains titularly defined by – and repeatedly attempts to define – not ‘tricontinentalism’ but postcolonialism, is indicative of two things. First, it emphasises the field’s critical stance against all forms of imperialism, including capitalist imperialism as Lenin defined it in 1917. Second, it registers the influence of the institutional contexts 49

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in which the field has traditionally flourished. Here we encounter once again the recognition that, despite its Southern intellectual, political and philosophical roots, it is in the Northern and often Anglophone academy that postcolonialism has been most enthusiastically taken up. There, it has made its small, though not unproblematic, translational steps toward creating space for South–South dialogues to be heard in the North. There are two aspects of South–South relations that are equally applicable to – and descriptive of – postcolonialism as it has grown in this institutional context. First, as Sam Moyo emphasises, ‘[a]n intellectual liberation struggle is a critical part of any South-South movement in order to debunk certain ways of thinking among the disciplines (such as anthropology in particular, history, and the dominant social sciences)’ (2016, pp. 66–67). Similarly, postcolonialism was, and remains, historically and conceptually rooted in the theoretical work of intellectuals committed to liberation struggles: activist writers such as Amílcar Cabral, Aimé Césaire, Albert Memmi, Ruth First and Frantz Fanon, and also creative writers such as Chinua Achebe, Bessie Head, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Sembène Ousmane. Through their techniques of retelling and reshaping colonial narratives, these theorists and writers offered different ways of interrogating the post-imperial world, or of ‘decolonizing the mind’, as Ngũgĩ wrote (1986). Of particular historical importance to these figures were Fanon’s two studies, Peau Noire, Masques Blancs (Black Skin, White Masks, 1952) and Les Damnés de la Terre (The Wretched of the Earth, 1961). These books described and to some extent called up the violent realities of the liberation struggle, while simultaneously theorising those realities in order to reconstruct ‘a process of cultural resistance and cultural disruption, [. . .] writing a text that can answer colonialism back’, or that can anticipate ‘a condition beyond imperialism’ (Parry 2004, p. 27).2 Crucially, as already noted, postcolonialism incorporated the thought of these anti-colonial intellectuals into the various methodologies that it developed. In this way, it used them to deconstruct and re-evaluate Eurocentric and other imperially complicit ways of thinking that had remained inherent in literary and cultural studies, as well as in the disciplines of anthropology, history and other social sciences (see Mathews, this volume; Patel, this volume; Hanafi, this volume; and Murrey, this volume). Insofar as this work was equally influential in French as in English, not to mention translations into other languages, postcolonialism also set out to incorporate into its methodologies techniques of critical translation as one more way of forging and consolidating South–South relations. The second aspect of South–South relations that is equally applicable to postcolonialism concerns precisely the designation of ‘the South’. Although the term ‘Third World’ was originally used to refer to the geopolitical stance adopted by those present at Bandung, this was quickly retired for its apparently ‘crude generalisation’ (although it has in the 21st century been revived ‘to designate embattled new sovereignty in a context of continuing imperialistic domination’) (Boehmer 2005, p. 9). In its place, the term ‘global South’ became increasingly popular during the final years of the millennium, and it was eventually preferred over the equally problematic, because similarly hierarchical, label ‘developing world’. Interestingly, this terminological adoption coincided historically with the rise of institutionalised postcolonial studies in the Western academy. The coterminous historical ascent of these two terms, and the geopolitical and academic movements they signify, might be read as direct, if only slightly belated responses to the planetary neoliberalisation that took hold in the 1970s and 1980s, as well, of course, as ‘the post-1989 dissolution of the Second World’ (Slater 2004, p. 1). As Boehmer and Tickell write in their study of the institutional embedding of the field from the 1980s into the 1990s, ‘the final decade of the twentieth century represented disciplinary consolidation and a coming of age’ for postcolonial literary studies (2015, p. 315). At the same time, as Sara Motta and Alf Nilsen document, 50

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towards the end of the 1970s it was becoming increasingly clear that it would not be [. . .] the second-generation Bandung regimes with their call for a New International Economic Order that were to win the day in the struggle over the future structuring of the postcolonial field. (2011, p. 8) Rather, the widespread ‘disembedding of capital from state intervention and regulation’ increasingly came to ‘define the future direction of the political economy of development in the global South’ (ibid.). Enforced upon the global South most obviously through coercive measures such as ‘Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) administered by the World Bank and the IMF’ (ibid., p. 11), these ‘disembedding’ dynamics reinvigorated political and academic critiques of colonial pasts and ongoing colonial presents. Suggestively, the rise of a neoliberal world order – or ‘globalisation’, as it has become controversially labelled (see Cooper 2005, pp. 91–93) – fuelled projects that self-identified as ‘postcolonial’, or alternatively, as coming from the ‘global South’. As Achille Mbembe observed in his landmark study, On the Postcolony (2001), these critical strategies attempted to diagnose and resist the ‘profound modification of social structures and cultural imaginations’ that SAPs and other neoliberal-oriented policies had produced (2001, p. 57; see also Lazarus 2011, pp. 8–9). In Mbembe’s diagnosis, vast sectors of the global population were confined to a realm in which death and the infliction of death provided the sole means through which power was expressed. With his own voice geographically located in ‘the South’, Mbembe shows how neoliberalism exploited colonial discursive legacies to embroil Southern governments in nihilistic political and economic rituals (that he terms ‘necropolitical’), instead of improving the lives of their postcolonial citizens. With these South–South and postcolonial parallels in mind, it is worth citing Siba Grovogui’s definition of the term ‘global South’ not as an exact geographic designation, but as ‘an idea and a set of practices, attitudes, and relations’ that are mobilised precisely as ‘a disavowal of institutional and cultural practices associated with colonialism and imperialism’ (2011, p. 177). This definition could equally be used to describe the critical tools developed and applied by postcolonial criticism. In contradistinction to the stereotypical view of postcolonialism as primarily preoccupied with a highly theoretical and often abstracted textual resistance (an approach often associated with the work of Homi Bhabha (1994)), its critical tools are much more materially engaged. In particular, postcolonialism is concerned to interrogate the differentials of postimperial world power. It seeks to emphasise the complicity and resistance of cultural production within this dispensation, rather than to read and deconstruct texts in some kind of cultural vacuum isolated from material circumstance. Indicatively, Grovogui’s definition of the global South is repeatedly grounded in the use of the term ‘postcolonial’ itself: The Global South is therefore a multifaceted movement that underscores the need for a postcolonial international community of interest that advances the objectives of equality, freedom, and mutuality in the form of a new ethos of power and subjectivity through foreign policy, international solidarity, and responsibility to self and others in an international order free of the institutional legacies of colonialism. (2011, p. 176) Or as Graham Huggan suggests in his introduction to the Oxford Handbook of Postcolonial Studies: ‘postcolonial criticism returns restlessly to the colonial past, gauging it in and for itself as well as for its multiple secretions in the present’ (2013, p. 4). In so doing, postcolonialism 51

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‘reinvigorates the spirit of anti-colonial resistance – the revolutionary spirit, if you will’ (ibid., p. 4). Slightly prevaricating though they might be, the fact that Huggan’s words appear in an academic collection designed to consolidate the field of postcolonial studies in an institutional context, one recognised by the Northern intellectual heartlands of Oxford, raises both the repeated attempts but also the difficulties of inter-relating South–South relations with postcolonialism. Relatedly, Sue Oldfield and Susan Parnel write in their introduction to another ‘Handbook’, The Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global South, that academic knowledge production continues to reflect ‘a distorted global distribution of research-active scholars and scholarship’, so that, in their case of urban studies, where academics are located creates ‘a dynamic that is difficult for an ascendant southern urbanism to counter’ (2014, p. 2). Postcolonialism, as this chapter readily admits, is undoubtedly complicit in the reproduction of an institutional and geographic bias toward the global North, even as it attempts to bring Southern knowledge into institutions such as the University of Oxford in order to critique, subvert and resist their imperial legacies (also see Murrey, this volume). Indeed, in some respects this processing of Southern knowledge and postcolonial cultural production by Northern knowledge systems is not unlike the exploitation by wealthy G8 nations of Southern economies for their raw materials and manufactured goods. As postcolonialists, we want to acknowledge the problems of this complicity, noting the limitations of postcolonialism. Certainly, the ways in which it claims to speak out for the other – or to be an advocate of ‘transnational social justice’ (Young 2008, p. 58) – are continually, reiteratively compromised. Precarious North–South alliances are undermined each time the North reasserts its economic or political hegemony, often to the detriment of existing South–South collaborations. As this suggests, the paradox of postcolonial claims are given particularly sharp emphasis precisely when they are read through the global justice-oriented and revolutionary dialogues taking place between scholars, activists and politicians located in the global South. Yet, even while recognising these important and difficult contradictions, it is this chapter’s intention to foreground the ongoing utility and salience of the critical perspectives that postcolonial studies allows us to develop. It is exactly the self-reflexivity of postcolonial practice – a self-critical stance that this chapter itself adopts – that forces academic research and writing in still hegemonic Northern institutions to take account of and listen to South–South dialogues. Postcolonial criticism refuses to assimilate (and thus to neutralise) the radicalism of those relations into its hierarchical structures. Arguably, postcolonial academics have been their own best critics, and a constant – if on occasion stifling – vigilance around issues of (self-)representation has become the hallmark of postcolonial practice in its mostly Northern institutionalised applications. As Boehmer and Tickell write, ‘[s]ubstantive critiques of the emerging discipline also appeared even as it unfolded, and by the mid-decade [of the 1990s] a number of critics had interrogated the political and institutional complicities of the postcolonial industry’ (2015, p. 321). Perhaps the most prominent of these was Arif Dirlik, who, writing at this time from the global South (in his case, China), levied the damning assertion that the field functioned ‘to cover up the origins of postcolonial intellectuals in a global capitalism of which they are not so much victims as beneficiaries’ (1994, p. 353). Nonetheless, even here, Dirlik predicted that postcolonialism’s self-reflexive agility might still allow it to unpick the unequal global system in which it was implicated: ‘The question [is whether], in recognition of its own class-position in global capitalism, it can generate a thoroughgoing criticism of its own ideology and formulate practices of resistance against the system of which it is a product’ (ibid., p. 356).

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From the perspective of the second decade of the 21st century, it is clear that Dirlik’s important question is being thoroughly addressed and readdressed. In a 2016 essay, postcolonial critic Claire Westall points out that ‘postcolonial theory and literary studies aid the mutation and survival of English Literature rather than its dissolution in the face of anti-colonial resistance and Britain’s imperial decline’ (2016, p. 17). By rethinking postcolonial studies in terms of capitalist modernity, as Dirlik demanded, she reorients postcolonialism ‘towards a resistant worldliness within which the reorganization of labour, education and literary studies may be possible’ (ibid., p. 14). From this perspective, Westall concedes that English Literature is criticized only as a ‘former’ imperial discipline rehabilitated via postcolonial and multicultural recognition rather than as a capitalist-imperialist discipline still playing a sizeable role in the development and management of international markets, particularly education markets, and socio-economic inequality. (ibid., p. 18) However, we would argue that it is not in spite of, but because of the fact that Westall writes as a postcolonial critic that she is able to exhibit such self-awareness of the issues of complicity and power contained within her own Northern position. Postcolonialism is tuned in, perhaps more than any other critical practice, to ‘the inherently paradoxical positionality of the researcher; at once reinforcing hierarchies of power at the same time as [being] actively involved in transforming these relationships’ (Motta and Nilsen 2011, p. 22). Such self-critique might have become more pronounced in recent years, and its materialist and anti-capitalist emphasis reinforced, but it has been woven into the landmark texts of postcolonial criticism from the field’s outset. Gauri Viswanathan’s field-shaping study, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India, documented ‘the adaptation of the content of English literary education to the administrative and political imperatives of British rule’ in India, emphasising the discipline’s historical complicity in the production of global inequalities that manifest today in divisions between South and North (1989, p. 3). As the student of another foundational postcolonial figure, Edward Said, Viswanathan with her study contributed to a growing awareness among historians of empire and colonialism that power relations were embedded in all forms of cultural and academic production – including contemporary historical and literary writing, from novels and journals to dictionaries and cookery books. Responding to Viswanathan in his similarly important book, Culture and Imperialism (1993), Said himself emphasised that the colonial-anti-colonial ‘conflict continues in an impoverished and for that reason all the more dangerous form, thanks to an uncritical alignment between intellectuals and institutions of power which reproduces the pattern of an earlier imperialist history’ in the present (1993, p. 44). As these keynote contributions to the formation of postcolonialism as a disciplinary field testify, postcolonial criticism has always been concerned to foster a vigilant critique of the power relations embedded in the location and vantage-points of its own practitioners, geographic, institutional, cultural or otherwise. That Westall’s essay is included in a collection entitled What Postcolonial Theory Doesn’t Say is a further indication of this self-critical vigilance. Indicatively, this book-length series of attacks upon postcolonialism’s oversights includes contributions from some of the field’s most prominent figures. As its editors point out, ‘[t]o a certain extent, postcolonial theory is a victim of its own success. The sense of crisis in the field comes in part from the institutionalization of the insights that it has enabled’ (Bernard et al. 2016, p. 7). However, if postcolonialism’s capacity for self-reflexive thinking is a weakness, it is also, in other respects, a strength. Even as

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its constant self-reassessment restricts its ability to adopt a firm, anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist position, its ongoing re-evaluation allows and encourages nimble and adaptable thinking that can respond to the shifting dynamics of global capital. Indeed, editor Anna Bernard and the volume’s other contributors make ‘a claim for what postcolonial theory can say [precisely] through what it still cannot or will not say’ (2016, p. 7). Furthermore, and of particular importance for those interested in South–South relations, the hyper-awareness of institutional power and positionality exhibited by the postcolonial critic writing from Northern institutions across the Anglophone world might, in fact, make space for Southern voices to be heard more clearly. As David Slater comments: The exclusion or subordinating inclusion of the intellectual other can be seen as part of the overall politics of occidental privilege. Signalling such an absence and indicating its significance does not have to lead into implicitly underwriting an uncritical reading of the intellectual South. Rather, it is both to question those texts that make the intellectual South invisible and to open up and amplify the analytical terrain – making the absence critically present. (2004, p. 26) Such space-making, born of postcolonialism’s self-reflexive strategies, means that its advocates and practitioners in the Northern academy might be best placed to respond to and promote other kinds of resistance movements arising in the global South. Here we might consider, for example, the Rhodes Must Fall (RMF) movement, a quintessentially decolonial campaign that originated in South Africa in the mid-2010s, and which also made a particular mark on the UK academy, as we will see. Mobilising around calls for the demolition of the statue of arch-imperialist Cecil Rhodes, a centrepiece of the University of Cape Town’s campus, RMF became a wider student movement which [called] for widespread transformation of the university, including ‘decolonising’ the curriculum, raising issues around the low number of senior black academic staff, and an awareness-raising campaign around artworks on campus which are seen by the movement to promote institutional racism. (Bosch 2016, pp. 221–222) As Kathy Luckett writes in response to RMF’s ongoing activism, ‘a “decolonising” Humanities curriculum for a post-colonial university should provide students with conceptual tools and methodologies that allow them to challenge, de-centre and deconstruct colonial canons and reread old texts in new ways’ (2016, p. 425). As the attempts to sideline in-solidarity protests in the UK academy have shown, postcolonialism is undoubtedly compromised by its predominant Northern positionality and its necessarily selective – and thus problematic – canonisation of various Southern or ‘outsider’ texts, writers and theorists. Nevertheless, postcolonial studies have played an equally crucial role in ‘curriculum transformation’, one that, because of its self-critical stance, ‘deconstructs the historical development of the disciplines – especially in the colonies, the inherited canons and the contents of the colonial archive’ (Luckett 2016, p. 424). Indeed, it is symptomatic that Tayib Salih’s Season of Migration to the North (2003[1969]), a novel originally published in Arabic (1966) and often featured on postcolonial syllabuses, stages a geographic and institutional dismantling of its own. The narrative repeatedly undermines the seemingly sharp separation of London, the ex-imperial capital and presuming source of cultural value, from 54

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the unnamed narrator’s ‘undeveloped’ hometown, a small village near the Nile in northern Sudan. The distance is first eroded by his intentionally exploitative behaviour as a literature student in the metropolis, and then by the covert ways in which he conducts himself after his return to Sudan. More pressingly still, Westall’s self-reflexive essay rightly points out that postcolonialism has not only played a role in the Northern institutionalisation of resistant Southern thought, but has also failed to correct ‘the dominant white, middle-class staff and student pattern’ which continues to hold ‘most forcefully at the “best” institutions’ (2016, p. 17). Indeed, she is ready to acknowledge that she herself has ‘capitalised on English Literature and postcolonial studies and remain[s] caught in the quicksand of [academic] hypocrisy’ (ibid., pp. 23–24). And yet, once again, it is because of her postcolonial training that Westall is determined to foreground these hypocrisies and interrogate them. She opens up, as does Salih’s novel, and as postcolonialism in general has always done, the power politics at play in any academic engagement with, and institutional assimilation of, South–South relations. Southern movements such as Rhodes Must Fall not only draw on ‘the works of Frantz Fanon, Paulo Freire, and Steve Biko’ (Pillay 2016, p. 157) – writers who, as we have shown, have been crucial to the development of postcolonial studies. Significantly, mobilising international student and media networks, these movements also find their way onto the campuses of universities in the global North. One of RMF’s most active sister organisations is based at the University of Oxford, and similarly mobilises around a statue of Cecil Rhodes (this time embedded into the façade of Oriel College on Oxford’s High Street). The movement uses this symbolic architecture to mount a call for greater diversity and more equitable opportunity among academic staff and students, as well as for the dismantling of colonial-era syllabuses and structures. Significantly, this is in order to pay greater and more considered attention to the work of Southern thinkers across the disciplines. While the RMF dialogue in this particular instance is clearly arranged on both South–North and South–South axes (with both directions of intellectual and activist flow clearly carrying significance), the protests alert us to the fact that blocking off the world into geographic binaries is no longer an adequate model – even when those labels function as signifiers of a political or cultural stance as much as they do a physical region or assemblage of nation-states. As Slater writes, ‘the capitalist states of the centre not only have external Third Worlds but also internal Third Worlds’, that is, ‘peripheral zones of underdevelopment inside the centre’ (2004, p. 7). Moreover, the ‘favelas of Rocinha and Jacarezinho in Rio’ are ‘just as emblematic of modernity’ as ‘the “futuristic” skyline of the Pudong District in Shanghai’ (WReC 2015, p. 12).

Conclusion Postcolonial studies has, from its outset, advocated and attempted to implement the demands of groupings like RMF to decolonise a Eurocentric syllabus. It has repeatedly set out to deconstruct the ‘metageographic categories’ that have ‘effectively’ served ‘as visual propaganda for Eurocentrism’ (Lewis and Wigen 1997, p. 10), a world order that was clearly projected during the historical phase of European expansionism. In recent years, however, postcolonial scholars have sought to move ‘beyond disciplinary strategies that overdetermine the problem of Eurocentrism or fetishise the category of the West in binary terms’ (Deckard 2016, p. 239). They have attempted, in the influential words of Dipesh Chakrabarty, writing in 2000, subtly and subversively, to provincialise Europe, but also to develop a critical history of the ongoing ‘colonial present’, to use Derek Gregory’s term (2004). As Sherae Deckard writes: 55

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[P]ostcolonial studies ought to theorise new imperial formations and geographies, such as the ecological imperialism implicit in the scramble for resources as China and India compete with Western cores to secure raw materials in Africa and South America for their ongoing industrialisations. It should be able to address the changing world order implied by the incipient terminal crisis of American hegemony, the US pivot to Asia and the so-called rise of the BRICS, re-establishing capitalism as the primary horizon of its analysis. (2016, p. 239) Once again we see how postcolonialism’s self-critical poise and analytic agility allows it to retune its political project to the wavelengths of a world shaped not only by North–South relations, but by South–South and indeed intra-Northern relations as well. While it might remain constantly vigilant of its own privileged positionality in Northern universities, it refuses to allow this self-reflexive stance to inhibit its vocal condemnation of contemporary forms of colonialism, as we again find in the work of Gregory and others (2004: p. xv; see also Boehmer and Morton 2010; Mishra 2017). In so doing, it can offer radical critiques of the continued settler colonial practices of, say, Israel in the Palestinian West Bank, or imperial excursions such as the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003. However, its attentive historicist materialism and its strategic self-criticism also allow it to deconstruct claims that, for example, ‘Africa is being “colonised” by China’, a thesis ‘mainly posited by various liberal Western scholars’ and that is ‘widely floated in the mainstream media’ (Moyo 2016, p. 59). In short, while invoking the radicalism of South–South relations as they are epitomised in the ‘Bandung spirit’ of the 1950s and 1960s, postcolonialism nevertheless remains ready to critique South–South relations when they are compromised by power dynamics that disenfranchise and immiserate the world’s most marginalised populations. If postcolonialism is the main avenue through which South–South relations might be incorporated into the Northern academy, then that is, in the end, no bad thing. The self-critical methodologies deployed by postcolonial scholars mean that such incorporation will remain radical rather than assimilationist. As for those who congregated at Bandung in 1955, postcolonial critics are also South-affiliated activists, committed ‘to a future free of colonial power’ by revealing ‘the continuing impositions and exactions of colonialism in order to subvert them: to examine them, disavow them, and dispel them’ (Gregory 2004, pp. 7–9).

Notes 1 Though still most commonly found in literary and cultural studies departments, postcolonialism has migrated in productive ways into spheres such as economics, development studies and geography (see, for example, Hughes et al. eds, 2011; McEwan 2008; Blunt and McEwan 2002; Sharp 2009). With this in mind, it is worth making a clear distinction here between ‘postcolonialism’ and ‘post-colonial’ with a hyphen. While the former signifies an analytical lens and political stance, the latter instead denotes a clearly demarcated historical period that comes temporally ‘after’ colonialism, and that still occurs more frequently in disciplines such as area studies, political sciences and international relations, not to mention mainstream media and political discourse (Young 2008, p. 58). 2 Given this tendency to theorise, it is worth noting a further disambiguation between postcolonialism, as we are discussing it here, and ‘postcolonial theory’. This latter term describes the field’s ‘overriding preoccupation with textual resistance’ in the late 1980s and 1990s, one that resulted in ‘a densely discursive, even (possibly strategically) recondite commentary that although insightful, can be highly abstract and generalising in its effect’ (Boehmer 2005, p. 6). This work, and especially the debates it ignited, undoubtedly shaped the field into its current form. A recent collection of essays from leading critics in the field (to which we return later in the chapter) is indicatively entitled What Postcolonial Theory Doesn’t Say 56

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et al. 2016). The editors of that collection rehearse ‘the field’s primary oppositions – materialists versus poststructuralists, activism versus literature, revisionism versus revolution’, but they also conclude, rightly in our opinion, that ‘the materialist/poststructuralist opposition no longer dominates the field’ (Bernard et al. 2016, pp. 3–4).

Bibliography Achebe, C., 2006. Things Fall Apart. London: Penguin Classics. Bernard, A., Elmarsafy, Z., and Murray, S. (eds) 2016. What Postcolonial Theory Doesn’t Say. New York and London: Routledge. Bhabha, H., 1994. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge. Blunt, A. and McEwan, C. (eds) 2002. Postcolonial Geographies. London: Continuum. Boehmer, E., 1998. Empire, the National and the Postcolonial, 1890–1920: Resistance in Interaction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Boehmer, E., 2005. Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Boehmer, E. and Morton, S., 2010. Terror and the Postcolonial. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Boehmer, E. and Tickell, A., 2015. The 1990s: An Increasingly Postcolonial Decade. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 50(3), 315–352. Bosch, T., 2016. Twitter Activism and Youth in South Africa: the Case of #RhodesMustFall. Information, Communication & Society 20(2), 221–232. Chakrabarty, D., 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Cooper, F., 2005. Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History. London: University of California Press. Deckard, S., 2016. Inherit the World: World-Literature, Rising Asia and the World-Ecology. In: A. Bernard, Z. Elmarsafy, and S. Murray (eds), What Postcolonial Theory Doesn’t Say. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 239–255. Dirlik, A., 1994. The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism. Critical Inquiry 20, 328–356. Fanon, F., 2001. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. by Constance Farrington. London: Penguin Classics. Gregory, D., 2004. The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Grovogui, S., 2011. A Revolution Nonetheless: The Global South in International Relations. Special Issue: The Global South and World Dis/Order 5(1), 175–190. Head, B., 1986. A Question of Power. London: Heinemann African Writers Series. Huggan, G., 2013. General Introduction. In: G. Huggan (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Postcolonial Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–26. Hughes, A., McEwan, C., and Pollard, J. (eds) 2011. Postcolonial Economies. London: Zed Books. Lazarus, N., 2011. The Postcolonial Unconscious. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lenin, V.I., 1934. Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. London: Martin Lawrence Ltd. Lewis, M.W. and Wigen, K., 1997. The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography. London: University of California Press. Luckett, K., 2016. Curriculum Contestation in a Post-Colonial Context: A View from the South. Teaching in Higher Education 21(4), 415–428. Mbembe, A., 2001. On the Postcolony. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. McEwan, C., 2008. Postcolonialism and Development. New York: Routledge. Mishra, P., 2017. Age of Anger: A History of the Present. London: Allen Lane. Motta, S. and Nilsen, A., 2011. Social Movements and/in the Postcolonial: Dispossession, Development and Resistance in the Global South. In: Social Movements in the Global South: Dispossession, Development and Resistance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1–31. Moyo, S., 2016. Perspectives on South-South Relations: China’s Presence in Africa. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 17(1), 58–67. Oldfield, S. and Parnell, S., 2014. From the South. In: S. Parnell and S. Oldfield (eds), The Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global South. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 1–4. Parry, B., 2004. Postcolonial Studies: A Materialist Critique. New York: Routledge. Pillay, S.R., 2016. Silence is Violence: (Critical) Psychology in an Era of Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall. South African Journal of Psychology 46(2), 155–159. 57

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Said, E., 1993. Culture and Imperialism. London: Chatto & Windus. Salih, T., 2003[1969]. Season of Migration to the North. London: Penguin Modern Classics. Sharp, J.P., 2009. Geographies of Postcolonialism. London: Sage. Slater, D., 2004. Geopolitics and the Post-Colonial: Rethinking North-South Relations. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Viswanathan, G., 1989. Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India. Oxford: Oxford University Press. wa Thiong’o, N., 1986. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: Heinemann Educational. Westall, C., 2016. Capitalizing on English Literature: Disciplinarity, Academic Labour and Postcolonial Studies. In: A. Bernard, Z. Elmarsafy, and S. Murray (eds), What Postcolonial Theory Doesn’t Say. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 13–29. WReC (Warwick Research Collective), 2015. Combined and Uneven Development: Towards a New Theory of World Literature. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Young, R.J.C., 2008. Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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4 ‘When spider webs unite they can tie up a lion’ Anti-racism, decolonial options and theories from the South Amber Murrey

In this chapter, I focus on two discrete but interrelated intellectual projects: Southern theory and decolonial options. With a focus on race-aware and anti-racist critiques of Southern theories, I argue that assertions of the need to focus more centrally on Southern theory are not equivalent with assertions of the need to end, unequivocally, the coloniality of knowledge. Some of the critical and celebrated scholarship critiquing the (ongoing) hegemony of Eurocentric theory and knowing – broadly, theories from the South – has failed to systematically engage with the racialisation of actors within the university and racial inequality in knowledge making. In such paradigms, Southern theories are importantly recognised as valuable for shifting the gaze at the same time that there remains a certain blindness to the colonial racial hierarchies that create and sustain the invisibilisation(s) and destructions of them. Situated in the context of coloniality, such projects risk reiterating the global knowledge hierarchy. I sketch an alternative approach for knowing across and between North(s)–South(s) and South(s)–South(s). This approach is a feminist decolonial orientation founded on an open assessment of racial and geographical inequalities within the university, along with a critical feminist attention to the politics of the mundane in the academy (authorship, citation, language, promotion and impromptu encounters in classrooms and corridors).

Introduction Projects of decolonising knowledges have roots as long as those of colonisation.1 Revived struggles in the last decade to decolonise the academy have given rise to new iterations of decolonising struggles as students seek social justice in the transformation of universities. These have included, among others: the #RhodesMustFall campaign to remove a statue of Cecil Rhodes from the University of Cape Town, which emerged in March 2015. The Why is My Curriculum White? collective at University College London that, since 2014, fosters awareness of non-white publications, ontologies and voices in academic institutions where the dominant curriculum remains overwhelmingly white, heteronormative, masculinist and Eurocentric. The 2014 ‘I, too, am Harvard’ (and later Oxford, Cambridge and elsewhere) video campaign that addressed wideranging experiences of black college students with racisms and sexisms in the university while 59

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(re)claiming the space of the campus. The Dear White People film that cinematically captured the intersecting racisms, classism(s) and sexisms present on US college campuses and sparked numerous subsequent discussion forums, often in a context of ongoing protest against and discussion regarding police violence and institutionalised racism. Such was the case in December 2014, while I was a Fellow in African and African Diaspora Studies at Boston College and students responded to the announcement that the grand juries had decided against indicting the policemen responsible for the deaths of Michael Brown (in Staten Island, NY) and Eric Garner (in Ferguson, Missouri) by organising a die-in on campus. A group of unaffiliated students and faculty occupied space in a campus residence, St Mary’s Hall, and lay down together in silence, symbolically re-enacting the brutality of police violence. Twenty-two students were subsequently intimidated with threats of disciplinary action. Protests and organising across the United States in 2014, including at the University of Missouri and Clark University (Worcester, Massachusetts), resulted in written demands from students for significant social justice and racial redress on campus. Primary among student demands was the demand for anti-racist education for incoming students, greater numbers of faculty of colour, and improved support facilities for underrepresented students, students of colour, international students and first-generation students. While these campaigns for institutional change are each situated within and shaped by particular regional and global processes, they reflect shared anti-racist and anti-colonial genealogies that are – as Malose Langa (2017, p. 7) showed of the #FeesMustFall movement that began in late 2015 at South African universities – ‘extension[s] of the unresolved past’. They are student- and youth-initiated. They reveal dissatisfactions with facile celebrations of decolonisationas-diversity such as that offered by the ‘multicultural’ and ‘rainbow nation’ social and educational ideologies of the 1980s and 1990s. These student movements and efforts to decolonise the university occur as decolonial thought and pluriversal (many) ways of knowing continue to grow in momentum in universitybased projects for cognitive justice and ‘knowledge for a decent life’ (de Sousa Santos 2007), particularly in the humanities and qualitative social sciences (although not exclusively, see FalsBorda and Mora-Osejo (2003) for perspectives from the natural sciences; see Eglash (1999), Raju (2016) and Zaslavsky (1973) for examples in mathematics; see Atalay (2006) and Rizvi (2006) for examples in archaeology; see Muzaffar (2007) for an example in architecture and design practices; see Pe-Pua (2006) for an example from psychology). More recent articulations of decolonial thought build on an expansive body of multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary scholarship that asserts the significance of indigenous, pan-African, subaltern, Chicano/a, critical and women of colour feminist, black Radical, queer, critical disability (DisCrit), postcolonial, and decolonial scholarships (also see Davies and Boehmer, this volume, Patel this volume, and Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Tafira, this volume). This broad scholarship advances world imaginings otherwise to decolonise the creation of knowledge. This endeavour has in no way been unique to the English-speaking world. Work in French has included the politique par le bas (politics from below) and the scholarship of Fanon, Césaire, Mimmi, Atiyihwe, Bayart, Mbembe, SavonnetGuyot and Toulabor. In Spanish and Portuguese: Coronil, Dussel, Hinkelammert, Quijano and Walsh. This considerable body of multidisciplinary and multilingual scholarship emphasises that linear modernist theories and colonial knowledge productions do not sufficiently account for past or contemporary moments, relations, knowledges, and ways of being in the world (also see Rojas-Sotelo, this volume, Patel, this volume, Mathews, this volume, and Hanafi, this volume). Central to decolonial thought is the assertion that global social injustices are produced and reproduced through continuing colonial paradigms (a ‘coloniality of being’), in which cognitive justice is central: ‘global social injustice is by and large epistemological injustice’ (de Sousa 60

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Santos 2007, book cover). Anibal Quijano (2000, p. 530) explains the coloniality of power, which has persisted despite formal or juridical decolonisation: One of the fundamental axes of this model of power is the social classification of the world’s population around the idea of race, a mental construction that expresses the basic experience of colonial domination and pervades the more important dimensions of global power, including its specific rationality: Eurocentrism. The racial axis has a colonial origin and character, but it has proven to be more durable and stable than the colonialism in whose matrix it was established. Therefore, the model of power that is globally hegemonic today presupposes an element of coloniality. Such thinking perpetuates the ‘internal logic of colonialism’ (Costa 2014). That is to say, there is nothing inherently benevolent about the pursuit, creation, dissemination and implementation of knowledge. Rather, the global structuring of knowledge is characterised by the dominance of Eurocentric knowledges, which perpetuate a stifling of knowledges otherwise by ‘prevent[ing] the construction of a form of scientific knowledge embedded in the realities of [all] regions’ (de Sousa Santos 2007, p. 11). A coloniality of being stifles critical thinking and creativity otherwise through pervasive channels of knowledge-transfer that ensure liberal and neoliberal thinking dominates political and economic spheres. Projects to decolonise knowledge demystify positivist paradigms and logocentric metanarratives – those ways of knowing the world that privilege the measurable, visible and material as ‘true’ and allowing of descriptive, knowing enclosure of the world through ‘logical’ and ‘deductive’ claims to ‘fact’. Chandra Kant Raju (2016, n.p.) powerfully asserts that ‘to decolonise maths, [we] must stand up to its false history and bad philosophy’; among the false history of maths is the illusion of infallible deductive proofs that, because they cannot be verified empirically, are based on a dogma of superiority. This dogma of superiority is racialised, as she writes, ‘we teach only those postulates approved by Western authority . . . [we do not teach] Indian non-Archimedian arithmetic . . . [or] Indo-Egyptian cord-geometry.’ These metanarratives – these dominant and foundational conjectures about the world that endorse the logic and empirical truths of the powerful – gain authority, are accepted as ‘true’ and subsequently are deployed to (re)order the world. This continues to be the case for neoliberal thinking that advocates tirelessly for market-based solutions to social inequality. While a ‘post-truth’ discourse has received global popularity since the election of Donald Trump in the US, it is nonetheless still a mechanism of a neoliberal metanarrative: naming particular knowledge ‘fake’ is merely the most recent mechanism through which the elite dismiss other ways of knowing. De Sousa Santos (2007, p. 12) critically assesses such logocentric metanarratives, which perpetuate what he calls an ‘epistemology of blindness’: Such an epistemology is at the core of a form of knowing that reaches knowledge through a trajectory leading from a point of ignorance conceived as chaos to a point of knowledge conceived as order; this is what I call knowledge-as-regulation. Herein lies the epistemological foundation of the imperial order that the developed North imposes on the global South. Knowledge making can be, and is often, a most aggressive tool for violence, social control and colonialism, not the least of which is the destruction and suppression of certain ways of knowing; what is known as ‘epistemicide’. While the critique of colonial modes of knowing is important, more immediately crucial for decolonial thinkers are the epistemologies that arise out of and within non-destructive social relations. De Sousa Santos refers to such epistemologies as ‘ecologies of knowledge’: the ecology 61

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of knowledge is horizontal and allows for the simultaneous co-existence of multiple ways of knowing without invalidation. This ecology of knowledge ‘rejects the idea of the timelessness of truths as advocated by the Global North’s scientific knowledge traditions and therefore the idea of the evolution and completeness of knowledge implied therein or the ideas of advancement and expansionism’ (Oliveria 2017, p. 7). In pursuing an ecology of knowledge, de Sousa Santos offers a framework of the ‘sociology of absences’: a way of looking at the world that seeks to see what has been rendered absent, unseen and invisibilised by scientific traditions in the global North. In this chapter, I consider two intellectual movements that give greater attention to these invisibilised and marginalised knowledges: ‘theory from the South’ (also, ‘Southern theory’) and decolonial thought.

Outline of arguments I was asked to contribute a chapter for this handbook that considers how scholars in and/or from the North might collaborate in the ongoing project(s) of opening up spaces ‘with the South’ to develop global propositions for social justice. My central question, therefore, was: what do geographies of collaboration and solidarity – Norths–Souths and Souths–Souths – reveal about movements to (re)create and (re)assert ‘Southern theories’? While I wanted to emphasise the significance of decolonising knowledge for such collaborations, I also recognised quickly that addressing the question would be a project of enormous scale and are outside the scope this chapter. I focus, then, on drawing attention to (a) the persistent divides that permeate efforts against coloniality and/or Euro-American-centrism in global knowledge creations and circulations as well as (b) the potentials for some friendships between them. I focus on two somewhat discrete intellectual projects: that of asserting the importance of ‘Southern theory’ and decolonial options. In so doing, I assert the need to acknowledge the force of feminist race-aware critiques, with a particular focus on race-aware and anti-racist critiques of Southern theories. I look at intellectual projects that geographically and expressively orient themselves toward pluralistic and variegated epistemologies of the South – ‘Southern theories’ and ‘theories from the South’ – in the context of the mainstreaming of South–South alliances and Southern knowledges. In such a context (see below), an academic silencing of racial inequality in the scholarship on Southern theories risks contributing and reconsolidating (rather than effectively challenging) the centrality of the white gaze in global critical theory. I first consider what, precisely, ‘decolonising knowledge’ might entail (with the perspective that any descriptions of ‘decolonising knowledge’ are necessarily partial and that my engagement with them does not pretend to be complete). Rather than deconstruct what is admittedly an immeasurably diverse literature – (and, in so doing, inadvertently fracture and isolate these projects from one another) – I focus on what unites critical and radical decolonial energies: an Ethiopian proverb has it that, ‘when spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion’. Next, I consider the dilemmas of the vocabularies of ‘inclusion’ and ‘alternatives’ (each of these terms is problematic due to the reiteration of the centrality of a Eurocentric core against which action occurs) as well as oppositional politics (including ‘non-Western’ and North–South) in moves against the dominance of Western knowledge and theory. My principal argument here is that assertions of the need to focus more centrally on ‘Southern theory’ are not equivalent with assertions of the need to end, unequivocally, the coloniality of knowledge, which is deeply racialised (as well as classed, sexed, gendered, spiritual, linguistic, geographical (admittedly, my energy here is on race; for a more thorough consideration of gendered inequalities in decolonial thought see Anzaldúa (1987) and Grosfoguel (2011)). Some of the critical and celebrated scholarship critiquing the ongoing hegemony of Eurocentric theory and knowing – broadly, theories 62

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from the South – has failed to systematically engage with the racialisation of actors within the university and racial inequality in knowledge making. In such paradigms, Southern theories are importantly recognised as inherently valuable at the same time that there remains a certain blindness to the colonial racial hierarchies that create and sustain the invisibilisations and destructions of them. Situated in the context of coloniality, such projects risk reiterating the global knowledge hierarchy. An alternative approach for knowing across and between North(s)–South(s) and South(s)–South(s) might be an (anti-racist) decolonial orientation founded on an open assessment of racial and geographical inequalities within the university (including authorship, citation, language, promotion and everyday practices such as those encounters in classrooms and corridors).

‘Decolonising knowledge’ across the South(s) and North(s) In contemporary academia, projects to ‘decolonise knowledge’ have been alternately (a) misappropriated by powerful academic associations that operate in ways similar to corporations and (b) dismissed as an activist-academic ‘fad’ or ‘buzzword’. This latter narrative functions to dismiss radical projects based on their temporal (and presumably temporary) popularity while simultaneously re-establishing boundaries around the normative core of academic knowledge, even critical knowledge, such as Marxist thought (which retains its secure dominant position within liberal academia as being a ‘sustained’ critique rather than a ‘mere’ fad). These simultaneous movements have contributed to the muddling of the concept and project in a way that de-privileges and de-legitimises pluriversality and decolonial thought. De/anti-colonial struggles arise out of many mouthpieces, many embodiments, many histories, many oppressions and many geographies. These energies unite, nonetheless, in shared pursuits of decolonised languages and decolonised practices through decolonial thought and those ‘pluriversal’ decolonial options. Efforts to ‘decolonise knowledge’ demand recognition of (a) the intersections between academic research, colonialism, global racialisations and power; (b) the significance of emplacement, being-in-place and embodiment in knowledge creation; and (c) the importance of engaged and collaborative research praxes that provide avenues for meaning-making grounded in a need to be useful to/with people (also see Habashi, this volume, and Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Tafira, this volume). Decolonial scholarships demystify the illusion of objectivism in academic knowledge. This illusion provided the socio-cultural imagery necessary for the expansion of Western empires and for the ideologies of racism, heterosexism, patriarchy and classism. The demystification of modernity (to expose its limited ways of knowing) demands knowledge making that has engaged, accountable and non-Eurocentric methodologies (Mignolo 2000a). Decolonial scholarships critique the colonial destruction and commodification of knowledges and ontologies otherwise. This is what Francis Nyamnjoh refers to as ‘real or attempted epistemicide’. Nyamnjoh (2012a, p. 129) describes epistemicide as the ‘decimation or near complete killing and replacement of endogenous epistemologies with the epistemological paradigm of that of the conqueror’. Against epistemicide, Mignolo and fellow decolonial scholars demand we attend to the material, corporeal knowledges (geo- and body-politics of knowledge) that have been excluded from the production of knowledge in modernity (Mignolo 2000a). This attention to the bodypolitics of knowledge works to effect what Mignolo calls an ‘epistemic disobedience’ of the non-Eurocentric semiotic code (Mignolo 2009). This decolonial disobedience moves us to consider the ‘affects, emotions, desires, anger and humiliations’ that are left out of dominant social scientific work (Mignolo 2009, p. 19). Knowledge is rooted in places and in bodies of sensation and experience. This recognition echoes work of Fanon, who affirms, ‘O my body, makes of 63

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me always a man who questions!’ (Fanon 1952, p. 206). A decolonial approach does not ‘simplify indigenous or black thought or relegate it to the category or status of localized, situated, and culturally specific and concrete thinking’ (Walsh 2010, p. 85). It recognises the importance of the physical, the material and the emotional in structuring knowledge (Walsh 2007, p. 231).

Southern theory The project of (re)situating knowledge and critiquing the Eurocentric epistemology that is thoroughly linked with the violence of coloniality has compelled a shift toward the South for theory-making (or Southern theory). Jean and John Comaroff’s (2012) Theory from The South Or, How Euro-America is Evolving Toward Africa and Raewyn Connell’s (2007) Southern Theory are examples of this shift in critical social theory. As I return to the imperative to situate knowledge in critical theory-making, I identify two easily conflated routes for theory-making from the South. The first is theory-making from the South out of the North. This is a post-Eurocentric praxis that opens up occasions for new ways of theorising but whose intellectual ancestors and institutions remain positioned in the Western cannon and the Western world. The second is an epistemological project from the South out of the South.

What is ‘the South’? The emergence of the ‘global North’ and ‘global South’ conceptual divide in the post-Cold War era (and a turning away from the Three Worlds subset2) has reiterated a centre/periphery (West/non-West; developed/underdeveloped) dichotomy that glosses over the history, exercises of power and global political relations that create and perpetuate those very global divisions. These divisions are based on racialised hierarchies, many of which are facile distinctions and are unhelpful in conceptualising significant reconfigurations of power, place and social relations, as Jean-Philippe Thérien (1999) asserts. Geographically such a separation simply does not hold: many of the places subsumed within the rubric of the ‘global South’ are positioned above the equator, firmly in the Northern hemisphere. Indeed, the ‘global South’ operates as a fictitious metaphor within global linear thinking, portioning the world through a ‘racialization of the planet [that is] compounded [by] the racialization of people’ (Mignolo 2011a, p. 174). North-based scholars have long been interested in mapping, categorising, quantifying, characterising, critiquing and contextualising the peoples, societies and places of the South, especially economic, gendered and racialised minorities within Southern places. Morag Bell (2002), for example, examines Northern fixations of ‘examining poverty at a distance’ as constitutive of the uneven relations and knowledge paradigms between the global North(s) and South(s). At the same time, scholars caution against unproblematic celebrations of the now fashionable terminology of partnerships that are ‘North–South’ (de Jong 2017) or ‘South–South’ (Bond and Garcia 2015). Repressive governmental leaders, multinational corporations and military superpowers increasingly invoke the language of Southern cooperation to legitimise dispossession and accumulation. North–South and South–South interactions and transfers have become a foundational part of the neoliberal global governance structure operating under the auspices of promoting ‘good governance’ (see Soederberg 2006). Scholars have alternated between definitions, conceptual values and limitations of the terms South and North. Some scholars have expressed an apprehension of employing the terms at all, particularly due to concerns about the authoritative and top-down imposition of terms on people and places. Others note that the people involved in activist and empowerment projects use terms such as the Third World, the underdeveloped world, (semi-)periphery, postcolony, 64

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postcolonial, indigenous, subaltern, non-western, Other, and Two-Thirds World – each of which have their own conceptual dilemmas. Trinh T. Minh-ha (1989, p. 94) writes, ‘categories always leak’. Chandra Mohanty (2003, p. 506) likewise contends, ‘we are still working with a very imprecise and inadequate analytical language’ in which we use that which ‘most clearly approximates the features of the world as we understand it’. In this handbook, we would want to be critical of totalising epistemologies that conceal significant differences and particularities in experiences (as ‘the South’ and ‘the North’ are inclined to do): I remain aware of these problematisations here while nonetheless employing the language. To nod to the pluriversality of experience across place, I use plural forms: ‘South(s)’ and ‘North(s)’. The term ‘the South’ is sometimes employed as an empowerment tool that, while attempting to avoid dogmatism, draws upon the shared historical experiences of exploitation, extraction, exclusion and struggle as a foundation for unified social movement or international solidarity (Prashad 2013). The terms Third World/Other/South draw attention to the history of racism and colonisation (Mohanty 2003) and can be a means to foreground North–South relations: ‘authority, exclusion and inclusion, hegemony, partnership, sponsorship, appropriation – between intellectuals and institutions in the metropole and those in the world periphery’ (Connell 2007, pp. viii–ix). Mignolo (2011a, p. 184) similarly explains, ‘if the enunciation [of the “Global South”] is located in the Global South, then the term “Global South” refers to the epistemic places where global futures are being forged by delinking from the colonial matrix of power’. That is to say, artificial divisions imposed by a Northern-based scientific monoculture might be repurposed in calls for epistemic and cognitive justice. This latter articulation of the concept of the ‘global South’ echoes critical thought from the past three decades, including the wide-ranging academic deliberations (including, oftentimes, those of scholars based in the North), which have asserted the need for Southern-oriented epistemic perspectives for social justice.

What is theory from the South? Within ‘theories from the South’, the South is not a fixed spatial category. ‘The South’ is understood by Jean and John Comaroff (2012, pp. 45–49) as an intricate and polythetic set of political, cultural and material relations. These varied relations are defined by the never uniform historical processes of domination, colonisation, empire, accumulation by dispossession and plunder sustained by global capitalist extraction (Rodney 1972; Harvey 2003). The terms allow us to conceptualise these processes of exclusion, domination and uneven and spatially nested power over the longue durée and across different spaces. As Mbembe (Shipley 2010, p. 657) argues, we are made aware of ‘the interlocking of multiple durées within our single social present’. With theory from the South, we must invariably couple our use of the term with the imperative for empirical precision. Jean Comaroff (Shipley 2010, p. 665) writes of the imperative to ‘allow particular, grounded histories to tell themselves in ways that capture their dynamism from within, their determination from without, and the connection between the two’. This call to respect multiple local particularities echoes those of indigenous scholarships and decolonial options. Importantly, however, the impetuses for these calls differ greatly (as I explain below). The features of theory from the South explored here emerged from critical theory and constructivism, both of which advance alternatives to the positivist and post-positivist schools of thought: reality is fluid, changing, plastic and, as with constructivism, multiple. Among the many intentions of theory from the South is a desire to build and sustain a more inclusive theoretical project, one that includes substantial contributions from the South. Australian sociologist 65

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Raewyn Connell (2007: vii) describes the project as one that ‘ground[s] knowledge of society in other experiences’ to bring about real world change. She urges us to seek out alternate ‘sources of intellectual authority in the present’ and to ‘dialogue with ideas produced by the colonised world’ (2007: xi). A substantial portion of her book, Southern Theory, is a genealogical endeavour to trace the origins of critical Southern theories from Latin America, Africa, the Pacific and the Middle East. This is the important task of tracing a Southern cannon. Southern theory pushes forward the study of the South and ‘makes space’ for Southern theory in the Western cannon. Richard Miskolci (2012, p. 6) points out, however, that: [Raewyn’s] critique lacks deep contact with the local realities in which these southern theories were created, in the context of a privileged dialogue between the socio-economic elites of the South and those of the Northern Atlantic . . . it [also] pays little attention to the interests raised by the third great inflection in the history of knowledge regarding the social: the insurgency of subjugated knowledge that began in the 1960s. Miskolci identifies a critical shortcoming of theory from the South discourse: the conversation seems to remain either a monologue or a privileged dialogue. Scholars working in this tradition contend that the North increasingly resembles the South in rates of inequality, income disparities and structural violence and that ‘Euro-America is evolving toward Africa’, with the suggestion being that this evolutionary path is more of a devolving (2012, pp. 1–50). However, what this seems to do is subjugate theory from Africa: in this theoretical paradigm, Africa continues to be valuable for its ability to illuminate social realities in Euro-America, which remains firmly in the centre. Decoloniality urges us to seek a radical universal decolonial anti-capitalist diversity founded on a common language of anti-capitalism, anti-patriarchalism and anti-imperialism that can initiate a diverse socialisation of power (Grosfoguel 2011). This is a political project toward the creation of alternate social and power structures. The Comaroffs, on the other hand, argue for a historical, grounded and precise theory of the South because doing so has theoretical meaning for the global future and the global North. They argue, ‘the history of the present reveals itself more starkly in the antipodes’ and that theory from the South is meaningful in understandings of capital flows, relationships between capital and government, forms of inequality and exploitative accumulation that are ‘evolving’ northward (Comaroff and Comaroff 2012, p. 7). Thinking from the South, the Comaroffs argue, allows us to better understand the global processes and inequalities of neoliberalism and resistances to them. There is an established intellectual history of this sort of thinking from the South (or writing Southern history onto the North) that includes Walter Rodney’s (1972) How Europe Underdeveloped Africa and Aimé Césaire’s (2000[1955]) arguments for the relevance of events in the South in forming, shaping and influencing Northern history and events. In Discourse on Colonialism, Césaire (1955) illustrates that the techniques and psychologies of violence, genocide and domination were perfected on non-European peoples during colonialism before they were employed against marginalised peoples in Europe during the Second World War. Decolonial thinking likewise shifts ‘the geography of reason and illuminates the fact that the colonies were not a secondary and marginal event in the history of Europe but, on the contrary, colonial history is the nonacknowledged centre in the making of modern Europe’ (Mignolo 2009, p. 16). In the work by the Comaroffs, theory from the South remains situated within the Western cannon through the practices of citation. Those authors whose words and works frame the analysis of ‘the South’ are primarily Western. V.Y. Mudimbe (1985, p. 150) addresses this aspect of Othering in the construction of ideas of Africa in the academy: 66

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[U]p to now, Western interpreters as well as African analysts have been using categories and conceptual systems dependent on a Western epistemological order, and even in the most explicit ‘Afrocentric’ descriptions, models of analysis explicitly or implicitly, knowingly or unknowingly, refer to the same order. Unlike Connell, the Comaroffs argue for a theory from the South but not necessarily one from southerners (I address their South African nationality below). Additionally, theory from the South, through the work of the Comaroffs, is worked through analytically and subsequently disseminated within the North for reflection, although James Ferguson (2012, p. 1) speculates that this is a ‘rhetorical shock tactic rather than an analytic strategy’. ‘Theory from the South’ is restricted by the continued predominance of the English language. And not just any English language but one riddled with a particularised academic vocabulary and particularised manner of word placement. K. Namuddu (1989; cited Chilisa 2012, p. 28) condemned this paradigm of knowledge ‘discovery’ in Africa, which is reliant on language as a colonising tool: ‘our own history, culture and practices, good or bad, are rediscovered and translated into the journals of the North and come back to us re-conceptualised, couched in languages and paradigms which make it all sound new and novel’.3 This has also been a longstanding and by now well-known criticism of postcolonial and subaltern studies: the tendency of theoretical abstraction and densely packed (therefore, alienating) language. Alongside the dominance of English are the compounding exclusions of geopolitics. Intersecting material, ideological, linguistic, financial and political circumstances exclude subjugated knowledges from international conversations. A global academic publication gap establishes the hegemony of Anglophone scholars in the North. This is a persistent continuation of post/coloniality. An analysis of the 9,500 journals included in the Web of Knowledge Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database, for example, reveals a striking global publication gap: the US and the UK publish more indexed journals than the rest of the world combined (Graham 2014). Despite important contributions in unveiling power structures and inequalities, decolonising scholarships are ongoing projects facing ideological, linguistic and geographical barriers. Part of our task is to sustain decolonising energies beyond written words and despite institutional pressures to publish and to do so in privileged languages, in excluding vocabularies, and in exclusive academic journals.

Race and theory from the South The scholarship on Southern theory makes significant inroads in asserting the need for recovering and centralising knowledges otherwise, but in a framework that invisibilises the racial subjectivities of the scholar and/or the people generating the theory. Therefore, we might do well to distinguish between projects that assert the importance of Southern theories/knowledges and decolonial orientations in pursuit of radical cognitive justice grounded by a nuanced awareness of the relationship between race/racisms and the coloniality of knowledge. In a decolonial frame of the coloniality of being, some epistemological projects to re-centre ‘the South’ might well perpetuate wilful epistemologies of ignorance; this is apparent, for example, in a tendency to avoid discussions of race (particularly in the positionality of the scholar). Given the sharp racial climate globally since the turn of the 21st century, such quietness on matters of race are discursively agitating in ways that (re)open colonial wounds and reinforce colonial racial inequalities. The work on ‘theory from the South’ might well turn to anti-racist scholarship – including decolonial thought – to address some of these silences. Recognising our own racialised embeddedness within these paradigms is paramount in decolonial work; much as anti-racist activists and 67

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scholars recognise in engaging in work for racial justice, in decolonial and decolonising work, we do not all play the same roles, so to speak. Enrique Dussel (2013, p. 3) argues that before scholarly engagements between and across North–South lines, a ‘dialogue among the world’s post-colonial communities’ is first necessary. The role of settler colonisers and colonists and their decendants will be multiple in the project of decolonising the coloniality of power, but it cannot involve evading issues of deeply entrenched racial and colonial privilege. Scholarship on Southern theory from disembodied authors risks reproducing the perspective of whiteness-as-being or the ‘European “I” which, by virtue of its colonial history, has asserted itself as the universal standard of humanity and philosophy’ (ibid.). As I indicated earlier, one limitation of theory from the South has been its emphasis on seeming to export Southern theory to the North. There is an implicit notion that Southern theory is crucial inasmuch as it says something about our contemporary global moment, with global tending to refer to a global North or ‘globalised’ urban. A limitation of theory from the South has been its ontological grounding in Northern theories, the relative absence of Southern theorists alongside a silence on the role of race and racialisation in the creation and circulation of knowledges at all scales. Without a discussion of race and the coloniality of knowledge, Southern theory seems to recover that which was merely overlooked. A perspective of the coloniality of knowledge forcefully demonstrates that some knowledges are intentionally destroyed (epistemicide) and marginalised. Furthermore, without addressing the race of the scholar, the embodiment of the scholar or even the political-ethical orientation of the scholar, the ‘zero-point’ illusion so central to Euro-dominant knowledge remains intact (Castro-Gómez 2003). The ‘zero-point’ is a term that captures the long established norm in Western academia to write and speak as if from ‘an artificial, disembodied cerebral in a nowhere space’ (Murrey 2017a, p. 87). In the zero-point, the scholar-author becomes an all-seeing force ‘frozen above time’ (Gordon 1995, p. 12) with the power to declare and therefore determine reality (see Murrey 2017b, pp. 15–16). It is this disembodiment that allows one academic to impulsively remark in an informal academic setting, ‘Oh great, we finally get theory from the South and it turns out to be two white people from the University of Chicago’ (quoted in Ferguson 2012, p. 1). Ferguson (2012, p. 11) responds by asserting that the Comaroffs ‘write from a South that is also the North and a North that is also a South’. The Comaroffs, he asks us to remember, were ‘born and raised’ in South Africa. Nationality from the South becomes a source of identity that erases racial tensions. The commentary from the anonymous colleague was a commentary most directly on the race of the authors rather than their national or geographical place of origin, but nationality to the South (rather than positionality) becomes a means of overlooking racialised whiteness. As I described briefly above, powerful actors are similarly adept at strategically mobilising the language of identity to justify their aims: Southern-born actors can become important symbolic mechanisms for claims to anti-colonial sovereignty, including in cases of corporate enclosure. For example, James Wolfensohn, the former president of the World Bank, endorsed policies and programmes of the Bank in similar fashion. In addressing criticisms that the Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline was neocolonial and appropriative,4 he responded, I have 1,000 Africans working at the Bank, who unanimously support the Chad-Cameroon pipeline . . . This is not for people in Berkeley to decide [referring to Northern-based NGOs]. This is for people in Chad to decide. And I think it’s important that we have a proper balance between the Berkeley mafia and the Chadians, and I for my part, am more interested in the Chadians. (Wolfensohn 2000; cited in Mutume 2000) 68

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In such passages, we see that identity and origins can be strategically employed to assert anti-colonial or indigenous claims in an attempt to legitimise extraction and repression or business-as-usual as much as empowerment (see Go 2016, p. 10). While Ferguson rightly indicates that considerations of origins and identity are more multifaceted than a singular focus on race, a decolonial emphasis on ethical-political orientation and dwelling point (with all its attendant awareness of the politics of citation, embodiment, coloniality and so on) might better address the colleague’s unease. Moreover, no sense of these personal ties is made concrete (methodologically or theoretically) in the work, Theory from the South. A decolonial approach would stress the importance of making the ethical-political orientation – (as Mignolo (2000a) calls it, the place of ‘dwelling’) – of such scholarship clear.5 Knowledge is rooted in places and in bodies of sensation and experience. As long as racial subjectivity and inequality remains ignored, abstracted, appropriated or exported, transformation based on North(s)–South(s) or even South(s)–South(s) dialogue will remain chimerical. Thus, my intention in highlighting such informal exchanges is not to be divisive but rather constructive: these comments and exchanges reveal deep racial and gendered fissures and frictions within the academy that are reflective of the coloniality of knowledge. To decolonise knowledge within, across and beyond North–South divides, such tensions must be spoken (and healed, through sustained attention over time) rather than re-marginalised through silence or dismissed as ‘identity politics’, superficial, or anti-intellectual. To the latter, Julian Go, much like the anecdote from James Ferguson above, reflects on informal dismissals of Connell’s Southern Theory from mainstream American social theorists and sociologists. One prominent scholar said to Go, ‘It’s a nice little book, but it’s a lot of multicultural identity political posturing without much substance, isn’t it?’ (Go 2016, p. 1). In their Introduction to the New Frank Talk: Social Movements Hustle, Athi Mongezeleli Joja and Andile Mngxitama (2013) address the now public Bohmke/Comaroff email correspondence. In the autumn of 2012, Heinrich Bohmke published an essay entitled, ‘The Social Movement Hustle’ in the Harvard International Review’s Youth on Fire issue. The essay focuses on the ‘enormous ideological and logistical influence by university-based mentors’ in the ‘new social movements’ of South Africa (Bohmke 2012, p. 52). These university-based mentors, Bohmke (2012, p. 52) argues, were involved in producing ‘false knowledge about how radical and powerful these movements are while simultaneously facilitating their contraction, political moderation, and irrelevance’. One day after the publication of the article, it was pulled. Later, it was revealed that the article was pulled following an email from John Comaroff, who is a Professor at Harvard, to the journal’s editor. In the email, Bohmke’s piece is characterised as ‘inaccurate’, ‘disturbing’ and ‘scurrilous’ to the point of ‘endangering the good standing of . . . Harvard University’ (see Bohmke/Comaroff email correspondence in Bohmke 2012). Bohmke subsequently argued that the episode uncovers a pernicious form of ‘academic gatekeeping’, in which certain knowledge is silenced when it seems to contradict established and accepted theories. Joja’s and Mngxitama’s interpretation of and commentaries on the event reveal how such encounters illicit echoes of longstanding dissatisfactions with white academics. In a context of the coloniality of knowledge, such encounters reverberate forms of racial power and privilege inherited through colonialism, apartheid and/or institutionalised racial inequalities. After the episode, they write scathingly: [the Comaroff’s] lifestyle attracted the attention of the South African magazine “House and Leisure” whose front-page featured their Table Mountain 1883 Victorian house, built at the time for local bankers. Yes, the same trajectory of comfort and dispossession continues . . . The pieces of artwork in this home are a collection of Africa, a colonial impulse: cut and own. (Joja and Mnxitama 2013, p. 5) 69

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Joja and Mngxitama (2013, p. 7) conclude by declaring that the Bohmke/Comaroff episode is ‘irrelevant white-on-white strife’ and that, ‘the first act of building a radical black project depends to a large extent on the expulsion of white liberals from the war-torn room’ because ‘white engagement in our struggle has produced only one outcome: benefit for them and defeat for ourselves’. Again, my point in citing this intervention is not to be confrontational, provocative, or divisive; it is to be real about the seriousness of racial injustice within the global knowledge hierarchy, even in projects that aim to ‘recover’ theory from the South. Part of doing so would be to take seriously the sense of ‘black anger and white obliviousness’ noted by South African author and political commentator Osiame Molefe (2013), and too often echoed in our unofficial and undocumented exchanges in the classrooms and hallways of academia. Molefe writes of the quotidian racisms experienced as a student in South Africa: I was angry at all the other times my own name was mangled before and – without my permission – shortened to ‘Os’. I was angry at the adjustments I had to make to survive in a Eurocentric work and university culture, whereas that culture made little adjustment for me . . . For as much as white South Africa says it is opposed to racism or committed to building united, non-racial South Africa, that commitment has largely been non-performative. Francis Nyamnjoh’s (2012b) reflection on the role of the Black South African anthropologist reveals many of the same disturbing trends, including the reoccurring dismissals and tokenistic inclusions that too often pit black scholars against other black scholars. He explains that black South African anthropologists are regarded with ambivalence, and [are] more likely to be considered inferior and/or as overly politicised and polemical in their research and scholarship. They are accused not only of being critical but of tainting their research with emotions of anger and hatred, usually supposedly directed at Apartheid and whiteness by extension. (Nyamnjoh 2012b, p. 74) It should not be a surprise that the continued Euro-American theoretical monologue (alongside the ongoing and increasing imperialism led by the Northern Atlantic, geographic subjugation, racial discrimination and uneven global power configurations) generates a mistrust – a deep dislike – of white academics and researchers, particularly when black colleagues, friends and family members continue to be pigeonholed by epistemologies and knowledge systems that perpetuate symbolic violence, ‘render blind’ and deplete the humanity and dignity of African peoples (Nyamnjoh 2012b, p. 78). To move forward, collectively, and to decolonise knowledge (globally, regionally, locally), we must give greater attention to the discrepancies between action and discourse that further consolidate an unequally racialised creation and circulation of knowledge. We must, as Go (2016, p. 10) asserts, ‘think harder about strategies to undo the hegemony of academics in the Global North’.

Beyond inclusionism: Southern thought, anti-racism and radical friendship Part of the importance of the decolonial option is the promise to move beyond ‘recovery’, ‘incorporation’ and other token inclusions. ‘Recovery’ echoes early anthropological work that

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sought to ‘preserve’ indigenous knowledges amid colonial genocides. Projects of ‘incorporation’ are problematic as they preserve power hierarchies: subjugated knowledges are useful insofar as they merge with projects that already exist within current power paradigms and ideological platforms. Decolonising projects seek to move beyond critique to offer ways of knowing otherwise and practices of knowing otherwise. Decolonising the academy requires abolishing the token inclusion of ‘Other’/non-white scholars as well as de-racialised considerations of history and place, even when those places, bodies and knowledges are in or from the South. The Why is My Curriculum White? collective does not advocate for token inclusion but rather a systematic reconsideration of the works included and excluded from the domains of ‘academic knowledge’ – with an explicit focus on the historical whiteness of curricula in the West as well as its exportation elsewhere (for a discussion of the implementation of Western-centric curricula in Ethiopia, see Murrey and Tesfahun 2018). Lewis R. Gordon (1995, pp. 42–43) reiterates, ‘A liberating transformation of the everyday involves an absence of representative blackness. For in such a world, black presence would be no more unusual than any other presence in the world; it would, in short, be mundane’. Robbie Shilliam (2014) echoes these thoughts: [Black students] don’t want people to experience cognitive dissonance when they meet a Black expert on – or enthusiast of – French philosophy or Russian literature. But they also don’t want to be seen as any less worldly if they wish to academically concentrate on Black studies and, heavens forbid, matters of racism. Basically, they want to live a considered life, like any other intellectual . . . Black academics and students are entirely ordinary. What makes them exceptional is only the racism that they encounter in the course of their ordinary pursuits. Decolonising practices are collective, ongoing efforts and considerations of racial inequalities within the coloniality of being are front-and-centre. On South African politics Molefe (2013) asserts that the ‘consequences of [a] lack of white engagement are too gruesome to imagine’ and the same holds for projects of decolonising knowledge. White scholars – without re-centring whiteness – must engage openly and honestly with the discomfort, anger and pain of coloniality within the university. A PhD candidate recently commented at a session (in 2016) on decolonising the discipline of geography: ‘Decolonising the university means you all [white academics] need to willingly disappear from the university’. The comment was met with silence and it has remained with me (and probably many others, the PhD student most of all) since. Writing this is part of acknowledging the difficulty of the project of decolonising, my humble place within it, as well as addressing the intensities of pain and distrust that we live with. So, rather than South–South or North–South partnerships, friendship might be more fundamental for anti-racist theories from and with the South(s). Through symmetrical dialogues and intellectual co-birth – à la Nyamnjoh (2012b), our intellectual coming-into-being-together – I hope that we will continue to forge common political projects that refuse to silence systemic racisms within knowledge projects and in ways that neither silence the violence or emotional landscapes of race and coloniality nor fetishize identity (for a more thorough response to the latter, see Shilliam 2017). Nyamnjoh (2012b, p. 67) calls for knowledge creation as ‘co-birth’. Drawing from the French notion of connaissance, meaning comprehension but literally translating as co-birth, Nyamnjoh advocates ‘a form of being “born with” the other [through] experiential knowing and shared insight’. He quotes from René Devisch (1999; cited in Nyamnjoh 2012b, p. 67) to illustrate that this interpretation of connaissance

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offers an insightful linguistic rendition of the sensual, intercorporeal, dialogical and nonappropriative comprehending and co-implication of subjects and their life-worlds. It is the mode of reception and encounter in which the anthropologist is engaged by virtue of the sensory, emotional and thus corporeal or ‘fleshy’ sensing of, and co-implication in, the significant inter-animating features of life-world and subjects. Such co-creation might be understood through a paradigm of intellectual friendship – one that would extend to the corridors and classrooms of academia. Such intellectual friendships stand in opposition to what Todd May (2012) calls the ‘entrepreneurial relationships’ that are constructed and maintained in the hopes of a ‘return’, as in a capitalist investment. Instead, cobirthing intellectual friendships are founded on trust and honesty. These intellectual friendships engender reinventions and re-articulations of oneself-in-the-world: a state of being re-born with another through our mutual constitution. This is much like the South African ontological orientation of ubuntu, through which humanity is always relational: I am human because you are human; we are human together through our relations. Such an emphasis has possibilities for pluriversal (rather than universal) modes of knowledge creation potentially capable of challenging the individualising logic and simultaneously de-racialising discourse of neoliberal capitalism. An attention to pluriversality, along with Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ ecologies of knowledge, offer potential lenses through which worlds, histories, epistemologies and politics meaningfully co-exist through imaginative acts of renovation and creation. Pluriversality and the ecology of knowledge are frames for imagining beyond, against, and outside of oppositional North–South paradigms (Mignolo 2000b). Decolonial efforts to go beyond critique offer pluriversal conceptualisations and understandings of power, politics, resistance, ecology and agency. These ways of knowing are critical to the project of dismantling a neoliberal global capitalism that propagates a complex and capacious chain of structural violence. These efforts might be modest in the face of capitalism, but they have considerable power in cumulative voice and geographical reach: When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.

Notes 1 Decolonial scholars commonly cite 1492 as a moment of European power consolidation through the ‘coloniality of power’ (see Quijano 2000). See Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Tafira in this volume, and Patel, this volume. 2 The Third Worlds subset refers to the post-Second World War geographical divisions according to a Eurocentric division of the world (a division that was reified during the Cold War era). In this subset, the world was divided into three regions according to power, alignment and capitalist ‘development’: the ‘First World’ referred to those capitalist countries aligned to the United States; the ‘Second World’ were those communist-socialist states (also called the ‘Eastern bloc’); the ‘Third World’ or majority world consisted of the remaining unaligned countries. The ‘Fourth World’ was added later to refer to the indigenous peoples or First Nations Peoples of the Americas, the Caribbean, Australia and Oceania. 3 This powerful quote from K. Namuddu remains a too-real symbol of precisely this effacing of Southern scholars: the passage has been cited dozens of times by prominent critical scholars but never is the scholar’s first name mentioned nor is any additional information given to personalise the author. I am currently searching for further information about this passage and this scholar; please contact me directly ([email protected]). 4 For work on the violence(s) associated with this oil pipeline in Cameroon, see Murrey 2015. 5 For a much more thorough consideration of what I mean by ethical-political orientation and conscious place of dwelling – including reflections on my own place of dwelling – see Murrey 2017a.

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Mignolo, W.D., 2000a. Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges and Border Thinking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mignolo, W.D., 2000b. The Zapatista’s Theoretical Revolution: Its Historical, Political and Epistemological Consequences. Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 25(3), 245–275. Mignolo, W.D., 2009. Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom. Theory, Culture & Society 26(7–8), 1–23. Mignolo, W.D., 2011a. The Global South and World Dis/order. Journal of Anthropological Research 67(2), 165–188. Mignolo, W.D., 2011b. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Minh-ha, T.T., 1989. Woman Native Other. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press. Miskolci, R., 2012. Undisciplined Studies and the (Geo)politics of Knowledge. Paper presented at Queering Paradigms 4, Rio de Janeiro, August 2012. Mohanty, C.T., 2003. ‘Under Western Eyes’ Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggles. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28(2), 499–535. Molefe, O., 2013. Black Anger and White Obliviousness. South Africa: Mampoer Shorts. Mudimbe, V.Y., 1985. African Gnosis Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge: An Introduction. African Studies Review 28(2/3), 149–233. Murrey, A., 2015. Narratives of Life and Violence along the Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline. Human Geography: A New Radical Journal 8(1), 15–39. Murrey, A., 2017a. A Post/Decolonial Geography Beyond “the Language of the Mouth”. In: M. Woons and S. Weier (eds), Borders, Borderthinking, Borderland: Developing a Critical Epistemology of Global Politics. Bristol: E-International Relations Publishing, pp. 79–99. Murrey, A., 2017b. Decolonising the Imagined Geographies of Witchcraft. Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal 2(2–3), 157–179. Murrey, A. and Tesfahun, T., 2018. Conversations from Jimma on the Geographies and Politics of Knowledge. Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies 40(2), 27–45. Mutume, G., 2000. World Bank Chief Takes a Swipe at Non-Governmental Groups. Inter Press Service News Agency [online]. Available from: www.ipsnews.net/2000/09/finance-world-bank-chief-takes-a-swipeat-non-governmental-groups/ [Accessed 7 October 2017]. Muzaffar, I., 2007. The Periphery Within: Modern Architecture and the Making of the Third World. Unpublished PhD thesis. Department of Architecture: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Namuddu, K., 1989. Problems of Communication between Northern and Southern Researchers in the Context of Africa. Unpublished paper presented at the Seventh World Congress of Comparative Education, June 26–30, Montreal. Nyamnjoh, F.B., 2012a. ‘Potted Plants in Greenhouses’: A Critical Reflection on the Resilience of Colonial Education in Africa. Journal of Asian and African Studies 47(2), 129–154. Nyamnjoh, F.B., 2012b. Blinded by Sight: Divining the Future of Anthropology in Africa. Africa Spectrum 47(2–3), 63–92. Oliveira, I.B., 2017. Itinerant Curriculum Theory against Epistemicides: A Dialogue between the Thinking of Santos and Paraskeva. Journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies 12(1), 1–22. Pe-Pua, R., 2006. From Decolonizing Psychology to the Development of Cross-Indigenous Perspective in Methodology. In U. Kim, K.S. Yang, and K.K. Hwang (eds), Indigenous and Cultural Psychology. Boston, MA: Springer, pp. 109–137. Prashad, V.J., 2013. Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. London: Verso. Quijano, A., 2000. Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America. Nepentla: Views from the South 1(3), 530–580. Raju, C.K., 2016. To Decolonise Maths Stand Up to its False History and Bad Philosophy. The Wire [online]. Available from: https://thewire.in/75896/to-decolonise-maths-stand-up-to-its-false-history/ [Accessed 1 October 2017]. Rizvi, U.Z., 2006. Accounting for Multiple Desires: Decolonizing Methodologies, Archaeology, and the Public Interest. India Review 5(3–4), 394–416. Rodney, W., 1972. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. London: Bogle−L’Ouverture Publications. Shilliam, R., 2014. Black Academia in Britain. The London School of Economics and Political Science Blog [online]. Available from: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/equityDiversityInclusion/2014/08/black-academia-inbritain/ [Accessed 13 January 2016]. 74

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Shilliam, R., 2017. How Black Deficit Entered the British Academy [online]. Available from: https:// robbieshilliam.wordpress.com/2017/06/20/how-black-deficit-entered-the-british-academy/ [Accessed 7 July 2017]. Shipley, J., 2010. Africa in Theory: A Conversation between Jean Comaroff and Achille Mbembe. Anthropological Quarterly 83(3), 653–678. Soederberg, S., 2006. Global Governance in Question: Empire, Class and the New Common Sense in Managing North-South Relations. London: Pluto Press. Thérien, J., 1999. Beyond the North-South Divide: The Two Tales of World Poverty. Third World Quarterly 20(4), 723–742. Walsh, C., 2007.‘Shifting the Geopolitics of Critical Knowledge: Decolonial Thought and Cultural Studies ‘Other’ in the Andes. Cultural Studies 21(2–3), 224–239. Walsh, C., 2010. Shifting the Geopolitics of Critical Knowledge. In: A. Escobar and W. Mignolo (eds), Globalization and the Decolonial Option. New York: Routledge, pp. 78–93. Zaslavsky, C., 1973. Africa Counts: Number and Pattern in African Cultures. Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill Books.

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5 Postcolonialism’s after-life in the Arab world Toward a post-authoritarian approach Sari Hanafi

Introduction Throughout 2016–2017, many events in the Arab world commemorated the centenary of the Sykes–Picot Agreement (through which Britain and France demarcated their respective areas of control across ‘Asia Minor’), and the related colonial interventions and geographical divisions in the Arab region. While many commentators have maintained that colonial powers are responsible for the contentious divisions that characterise the region, I suggest that it is essential to also identify the roles played by local politicians and regional state and non-state actors in fostering divisions instead of focusing so intently on French, English, or American politicians. For instance, ISIS removed border posts between Iraq and Syria in 2014, as part of the group’s proclaimed plan to restore the Islamic Caliphate on the ruins of the Sykes–Picot border; furthermore, new geographical borders and social boundaries are at work, developed, reinvented and reinforced by regional powers, which include Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt and Syria. In the framework of such debate, there has been a longstanding tendency in Arab media and scholarly work to blame Arab intellectuals for failing to accompany the Arab uprisings (2011 onwards) and guide their publics and social movements. In this chapter, I challenge this tendency and argue that extensive debates have indeed been raised through scholarly knowledge production and through mass media, especially newspapers and television. The issue for me is, rather, the failure of certain academic and public intellectual schools of thought, including those associated with what I call ‘the postcolonial anti-imperialist left’. By focusing on scholarly work, I will argue that the intersection between the social sciences and postcolonial studies is not without problems, and reflects a crisis among the Arab left which espouses postcolonialism as a singular perspective and whose members distort it while projecting it into the Arab context. I will highlight two features of the Arab left: first, the tendency to be excessively anti-imperialist and second, being anti-Western. Then, I will suggest that this postcolonial approach should be complemented by a post-authoritarian approach. This approach is very important to account for the effects of censorship and self-censorship in a region that has long been riven by dictatorial regimes.

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The postcolonial debate Postcolonialism is a theory and praxis that has, since its inception in the 1960s through the works of scholars including Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak, been riven with debate and controversy (also see Patel in this volume; Davies and Boehmer in this volume; and Murrey in this volume). One major criticism has been the way this trend has generated and reinforced binary categories such as tradition/modernity, East/West, rational/irrational, English language/vernacular language, etc. For others, such as Sadeq Jalal al-Azem and Mahdi Amel from the Arab world, this theory overemphasises the significance of the cultural at the expense of the economic. As Nash, Kerr-Koch and Hackett (2013, p. 12) argue: ‘The tradition of postcolonial thinking that follows after [its] thinkers, however, has sought to theorise the epistemological, psychological and ideological inside western domination, thereby redeeming or reclaiming a version of autonomy rather than overcoming the structures of global capitalism.’ These two very different theoretical orientations and political agendas have become sources of conflict and contention in worldwide debates, but also in the Arab world and Latin America. One can currently witness a wide and heated discussion all over the world. Perhaps the most violent moment (verbally) can be depicted in the debate between Slavoj Žižek, Walter Mignolo and Hamid Dabashi. The latter declares in his 2015 book, Can Non-Europeans Think?, the emancipation of Southern scholars, not just from the condition of postcoloniality, but from the limited and now exhausted epistemics it had historically occasioned. However, this independence of their thought was not translated into acceptance of the innovation and the originality produced by such scholarship. He deplores the fact that, or in fact he doubts whether, ‘European philosophers can actually read something [from the non-Europeans] and learn from it – rather than assimilate it back into what they already know’ (Dabashi 2015, p. 7). In this section, I will trace a different criticism of postcolonial metamorphoses. I will provide a critique of postcolonial scholars and knowledge producers that overstate the role of imperialism and generate an oppositional binary with the West.

Anti-imperialist and conspiratorial scholars Although I agree with Prabhat Patnaik (2011) that imperialism has not become an obsolete concept and has some meaning in current life, its reality has nonetheless metamorphosed and cannot be understood as a simple political and economic domination of the imperial power over the rest of the world – by this I mean to argue that imperialism has lost its hegemony, as evidenced by the importance of the role of the state (Harvey 2005) and the salience of culture and transnational corporation that can be captured by the notion of empire (Hardt and Negri 2001). When scrutinising the relevance of the concept of imperialism to understand the crisis of Arab post-uprisings, it is evident that the influential powers are not only the classical imperial powers, but also Iran, Gulf monarchies and Turkey. They are all seeking to become empires. After half a century of authoritarianism in the Arab world, postcolonial anti-imperialist academics and journalists have been unable to comprehend local power dynamics, or they have overlooked these. For them, democracy is not at the top of their agenda. Worse, some do not have democracy on their agenda at all.1 This is why David Scott (2004) witnessed the end of the Bandung project and the transformation of anti-colonial utopias into postcolonial nightmares (on the Bandung project, see Aneja in this volume). These scholars, for instance, read the Arab uprisings (with all their ramifications: political changes, civil strife and violence) simply as a geo-political game in which former colonial and

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imperial masters are omnipresent and solely to be blamed. This is a conspiratorial thinking in the sense of Kluger: ‘You don’t want to blame yourself for things you may lack, so you blame anonymous forces instead’ (Kluger 2017). Conspiracy theories are indeed for losers, literally, not pejoratively. People who have lost an election, money or influence look for something to explain that loss (Uscinski and Parent 2014). Portraying the current transformation of Arab societies in this way makes many of these scholars simply defend ‘progressive’ Arab dictators. The quasi-conspiratorial apologetic and defensive analysis becomes a tool to justify local repression and even torture. Postcolonial scholars in the Arab region, and sometimes some leftists in the West, have rarely acknowledged and articulated a set of internal and external influences that have shaped the political landscape of the Arab world. In the same vein, Achille Mbembe criticises Marxism for presenting itself as ‘radical and progressive’, when it in fact developed an ‘imaginaire of culture and politics in which a manipulation of the rhetoric of autonomy, resistance, and emancipation serves as the sole criterion for determining the legitimacy of an authentic African discourse,’ such that it was, at root, a ‘cult of victimology’ (Mbembe 2000; cited in Hoffmann 2017). Hamid Dabashi’s The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism (2012) offers the best criticism of the regime of knowledge production that ignores the development and social and intellectual changes inside of the Arab world. More generally, postcolonial critiques have ignored the current crises in Angola, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, East Timor, Myanmar, Peru and other societies suffering from neocolonial structures (San Juan 1998), but also from structures that have nothing to do with the condition of coloniality. Postcolonial attempts to reify cultural differences and to generate cultural compassion unsuccessfully grappled with the reality of globalisation, both its history and its more recent intensification, and the reality of specific historical contradictions in the ongoing crisis of late, transnational capitalism and repressive regimes in many Southern countries. To illustrate this argument, I shall give an example from the work of Gurminder Bhambra. While her excellent scholarship is to be commended on how, within sociological understandings of modernity, the experiences and claims of non-European ‘others’ have been rendered invisible to the dominant narratives and analytical frameworks of sociology (Bhambra 2014), her approach can be reductionist when reading some social phenomena. In her keynote ‘Postcolonial reconstructions of Europe’ at the 9th European Sociological Association Conference (Prague 2015), she portrays Syrian refugees in Europe simply as postcolonial migrants. She explains that Europe attracts them as Syrians’ former colonial masters and maintains that white European societies do not want them because these societies have not addressed the memory of colonial legacies. This postcolonial framing cannot account for the fact that Syrians’ exile was generated by a very violent authoritarian turn in the Arab world, where the weight of local authoritarian regimes (e.g. in the case of Syria the Assad regime, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iran) surpasses that of the imperial Western power.

Anti-Western scholars The second feature of leftist postcolonial scholars is being anti-Western. Instead of following Talal Asad, who looks to any authority behind social science discourses (Bardawil 2016), they understand this authority as something that emanates from the Western powers. Many call for de-Westernising and decolonising knowledge production in the Arab region but have ended up impoverishing themselves because of the tendency to keep on harking back to the achievements of historical vernacular scholars (Ibn Khaldun, for instance). Even if Patrick Williams (2013) defends the importance of Said’s Orientalism and argues that even this book has become embedded in anti-humanist theorising, the West was not portrayed simply as an ‘Other’, and yet 78

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the way this seminal book was understood and cited in the Arab world reproduced the binary of East/West. Some Arab authors were aware of such problematic diatomic thinking: Abdullah Laroui (1967a), argued ‘The refusal of Western culture does not in itself constitute a culture, and the delirious roaming around the lost self shall never stir it up from dust.’ As an editor of the Arab Journal of Sociology (Idafat) since 2006, I have found that authors often either employ a decorative reference to Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) or Malik Bennabi (1905–1973) or force the analysis to fit some of their concepts. For instance, in spite of the fact that the French colonial authority and the post-independent state have destroyed Algeria’s tribal structure, many social researchers continue to invoke asabiyya (tribal cohesion) as a major foundation for political organisations. Indeed, postcolonial arguments suddenly unified a fringe of the left with a fringe of Islamism, whose proponents keep blaming the West for any social, economic, or political problems they face in the region. This use and misuse can also be found among those who advocate for the Islamisation of knowledge tout court and of social science in particular (see Hanafi 2016). They conceptualise an antithesis of the ‘Western’ social science, through a structure of antinomies such as modernity, development, democracy and secularism. This approach was founded on the basis of a presupposed relationship vis-à-vis the West. In identifying a singular and monolithic ‘Western’ tradition, the Islamisation trajectory seemingly ignores ‘inter-paradigmatic’ diversity, such as the axiomatic differences between the Marxist school whose unit of analysis is primarily class-based, and the Functionalist approach which marginalises those class-based units of analysis. A cursory glance at the diverse paradigms within so-called ‘Western’ sociology demonstrates that these competing trajectories cannot be reduced into one school. The same observation applies to the Islamic social sciences; the diversity of the field prevents any such generalisations. The civilisational manufacturing of boundaries (East/West; tradition/modernity, etc.) has not been a heuristic mechanism that enables us to understand changes in the Arab world. Having said that, I am in favour of using local sources of knowledge not only in terms of data but also concepts and theories, and this should be done not as a nationalistic project but as a necessity to grapple with local realities. The recent work of Farid Alatas and Vineeta Sinha (2017) is extremely interesting in proposing an alternative sociology that deals with different sociological traditions, including Western theories but beyond Eurocentrism and androcentrism. In other words, one can generate a discussion between, for instance, Ibn Khaldun and Michel Foucault when exploring the transformation of the political regime in Saudi Arabia, instead of choosing one of them. While there is a necessity to move away from universalised social science and toward looking into the particularities of the context, this latter is not simply a culture; rather, they are social, political and economic settings with a depth of history, whether pre-colonial, colonial, postcolonial or authoritarian. In this regard, using Arab or Islamic culture as a medium of differentiation does not always help: the Arab Gulf countries are closer to Western countries (their political economy, consumption society, etc.) than are the other Arab or Middle Eastern countries.

Toward a post-authoritarian approach What I propose here is to supplement postcolonial studies by what I call post-authoritarian studies. The lexical kinship with postcolonialism means that it could, by association, draw on a number of assumptions underpinning the former category, especially in terms of power structures but not in the meaning of having come to terms with authoritarianism, nor are we ‘post’ this era. This field should pay attention, first, to how authoritarian regimes shape knowledge production in different ways and, second, how scholars manoeuvre and overtly resist these regimes. This means we need to conduct double critiques, following Abdelkaber Khatibi’s advice: 79

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The essential task of Arab sociology is to carry out critical work within two threads: (a) to deconstruct concepts that have emerged from the sociological knowledge and discourse of those who spoke on behalf of the Arab region, marked by a predominantly Western and ethnocentric ideology; and (b) to simultaneously critique the sociological knowledge and discourse on various Arab societies produced by Arabs themselves. (Khatibi 1983, p. 34) With this in mind, why do we need post-authoritarian studies? There are many reasons, including the following. First, there is a paucity of systematic studies, in relation to André Béteille’s (2013) use of the term, i.e. exploring the interconnections among social processes in a systematic way, without presuming whether those interconnections are basically harmonious or basically discordant in nature. Much social research in the Arab world aims to simply understand/ describe a social phenomenon without connecting it to the political economy and the nature of political choice adopted by the state. For instance, browsing two social science journals in the Arab Gulf, Social Affairs (UAE) and The Social (Saudi Arabia), I found that social science is lacking this dimension. Sociology becomes the study of micro problems using scientific techniques but without addressing the authoritarian nature of monarchies there, or, indeed, other power structures. There is, in fact, a trend of empiricism that is disconnected from discussing the political economy or the moral imperatives of justice and respect of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In this regard, and as The Lebanese-Australian anthropologist Ghassan Hage has aptly pointed out, many requests for scientific empirical rigour are often selective in the face of overwhelming evidence and become a technique of denial, as in the case of denying the Syrian regime’s responsibility in mass killings, bombing and using chemical weapons.2 This technique has also been observed among those who deny the Holocaust in the name of the absence of conclusive evidence about gas rooms or about the precise number of Holocaust victims. Second, the self-censorship of scholars means that social science production is full of unspoken issues. For instance, we often find a broad criticism of society or the state where the message becomes diluted. Those who resist authoritarianism use a lot of subtlety,3 since otherwise they will end up in prison. Good critical research produced under authoritarianism often leads to the marginalised career of its authors. Since the start of the Arab uprisings, we have heard evidence of the violation of academic freedom on a daily basis, including the news of the expulsion of Dr Moulay Hisham Alaoui from Tunisia while being invited to participate in an academic workshop there (8 September 2017); expressing sympathy for Qatar is an offence punishable by a lengthy jail term in Bahrain and UAE;4 a demand for an independent inquiry into the deaths of four Syrians who died while in Lebanese army custody in August 2017 was considered as crossing a red line and undermining national unity in Lebanon.5 Scholars’ fears are not only a fear of the state, but also of some violent ideological groups such as radical Islamists and fascist military-secularists. Here, enjoying a form of freedom not available in Arab countries, the role of immigrant and exiled intellectuals in protecting the critical role of intellectuals becomes very important, as suggested by Edward Said (1996). Third, authoritarian states often give primacy to the ‘national’ cause over the social one. With that, external factors are often overstated as compared to local ones. The way the Arab uprisings have been analysed demonstrates this. Browsing some writings of the Arab left in scholarly work (see Hanafi and Arvanitis 2016) or as Op Eds in Lebanese newspapers (ibid., Chapter 9) demonstrates the lack of any sociological discussions on why people revolt; or the extent to which a systematic use of torture in Syria in the last half-century generated a social and political 80

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situation that cannot be overlooked simply because the Syrian regime has been providing arms to Hezbollah and thus contributing to the resistance against Israel. Fourth, the authoritarian Arab regimes have encouraged a mono-culture in line with the official narrative, driving other narratives to private and semi-private spheres. The absence of a Habermasian public sphere, necessary for intellectual cross-fertilisation, has contributed to a deepening rift between the liberal left and large segments of Islamists. The blame here is not on the state alone or on one side, but on both sides, though to varying degrees. It is no exaggeration to say that we witness semi-civil wars between these sides, as is the case in Egypt or Libya. Postcolonial studies has failed to understand the ‘Other’ (popular Islam, political Islam) that becomes domestic as much as external (the West). The work of Christina Phillips (2013) on modern Arabic literature clearly demonstrates that postcolonial theory’s concentration on the coloniser/colonised binary is limiting in relation to a topic such as Arab identity and nation. She argues that the relationship of the self and other as a site of power struggle, ambivalence and independence amounts to a positing of a variant, internal colonisation in which secular writers, if not directly connected with the colonial penetration of Egypt, nonetheless endorsed the Western affiliated nationalist discourse of their generation. Fifth, there is fear and suspicion of any form of universal concepts such as human rights. Some scholarship created under authoritarian regimes propagates the mythology of uniqueness of each society and culture. The Arab region was thought of as a place of cultural specificity and exceptionalism. Many still persist in seeing Arab societies as either a collection of religious devotees or segmented tribal groups. This exceptionalism has distracted from the real debate on societies, politics and culture in the Arab region (Kabbanji 2011), especially in terms of the analysis of social class: instead of studies of Muslims or Arabs, there are studies of Islam and Arabic. Sixth, reluctance to engage with the public and policy-makers has reduced knowledge production into professional knowledge (Hanafi and Arvanitis 2016). In light of the fact that the authoritarian state is not interested in having evidence-based policy, knowledge production becomes more project-based research rather than programme-based, often using funding from abroad. Seventh, one needs post-authoritarian studies because funding agencies are no longer exclusively based in the West but also from countries known for their authoritarianism, such as Arab Gulf monarchs, The Qatar Foundation, the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum Foundation, etc. As such, post-authoritarian studies should address all the above issues, if we are to generate not only new epistemologies but also healthy working conditions conducive to dynamic and critical research practices.

Conclusion Post-authoritarianism is a political project concerned with reconstructing and reorienting local knowledge, ethics and power structures. It does not aim to function in a silo as a singular theoretical formation, but as a broad set of perspectives, concepts and practices to be developed in resistance to authoritarianism. I am not declaring postcolonialism dead and wishing a long life to post-authoritarian studies, but one simply cannot understand the current situation of knowledge production by simply delving into a remote past and forgetting how local political subjectivities have also shaped this very production. To understand the current turmoil and its social, political and economic ramifications in the Arab world we need to pay little attention to postcolonial effects and much greater attention to the effect of authoritarian regimes. One might wonder if post-authoritarianism studies concern only the obvious authoritarian countries such as the Arab world: not at all. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt (1985) urged us to learn to recognise how different elements of fascism crystallise in different 81

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historical periods into new forms of authoritarianism. Such anti-democratic elements combine in often unpredictable ways, and I believe they can currently be found in many of the political practices, values and policies that characterise many countries in the world including in the West. As Henry A. Giroux rightly puts it: ‘The discourse of liberty, equality, and freedom that emerged with modernity seems to have lost even its residual value as the central project of democracy’ (Giroux 2007, p. 77). With the War on Terror, market fundamentalism and religious radicalism, many democratic values are eroded and the first of them is the freedom of expression. Michael Burawoy in his editorial of Global Dialogue in 2017 aptly put it: ‘Duterte [of Philippines], Erdogan [of Tukey], Orban [of Hungary], Putin [of Russia], Le Pen [of France], Modi [of India], Zuma [of South Africa] and Trump [of US] – they all seem to be cut from a similar nationalist, xenophobic, authoritarian cloth’ (Burawoy 2017). For him, Trump’s triumph has given new energy to illiberal movements and dictatorships, but the political reaction has been in the making for decades as liberal democracies have propelled third-wave marketisation with its precarity, exclusion and inequality. The call of the former French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls and his Canadian counterpart, Stephen Harper that there is no time to ‘commit sociology’, as both were referring to the need to get tough with terrorists rather than study the causes of terrorism, was to intimidate sociologists in both countries. In this new wave of authoritarianism, looming so large in the Arab world but also elsewhere around the globe today, there is a serious assault on critical academia. We need to reflect on the unspoken issues of our knowledge production. Social criticism has to be coupled with a vibrant process of self-criticism and the willingness to take up critical positions without becoming dogmatic or intractable (Giroux 2007). Post-authoritarianism studies would find inspiration from the work of the Afro-American sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois. In his autoethnographic work The Soul of Black Folk (Du Bois 2013, p. 2), he forges the notion of the double-consciousness: that sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. With this double-consciousness, one should conduct double critiques in order to analyse the complexity of identity formation in the Arab world in its relationship to local, international and transnational dynamics. This chapter has thus argued for a careful examination of the binary categories developed within postcolonial studies (also see Patel in this volume). The proliferation of such binaries has been at the expense of crucial notions such as class, ethnicity, nation and gender; rendering opaque the economic processes underpinning the appropriation of land in the expansion of territory, the exploitation of resources including human labour, the institutionalisation of racism and gender bias. As outlined above, I am very critical of the East/West binary: one should be very careful not to look at the international circulation of knowledge through the notion of ‘import–export’, as this approach is ineffective in analysing notional and intellectual exchanges from the perspective of the periphery (also see Mathews, this volume). In this regard, Fernanda Beigel’s (2011) book, The Politics of Academic Autonomy in Latin America, is very outspoken against the centre-periphery framework. The use of this approach in social studies of science might lead to the assumption that a dependent economy goes hand in hand with an equally subordinated knowledge production ‘state’, which, in turn, means that peripheral contributions 82

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to international scientific development are expected to be null. Ultimately, these categorisations tend to have a counterproductive effect in the history of science, preserving images of a universal science supported by symbolic violence. The centre-periphery mainly reinforces the very idea that there is a dominant science, grounded in European or American traditions, that wields ‘originality,’ rendering the peripheries as passive scientific spaces necessarily ‘lacking originality’, and merely consuming imported knowledge (Beigel 2011). Sari Hanafi and Rigas Arvanitis (2016) reiterate such analyses when they look specifically to Arab research practices and argue that the issue is framed less by the structural dependency of many Arab scholars based in elite universities and more by optional dependency, by neglecting the production and publication of knowledge in their own language. In other words, those who have decided to publish globally have perished locally. Or the opposite: those who have published in a vernacular language have decided to perish globally (also see Mathews, this volume).

Alternatives based on diversity While Eurocentric structures of knowledge have been eroding, both in core countries and in the periphery, as confirmed by The Gulbenkian Commission Report,6 many alternatives have emerged. To cite but a few, Porte Alegre’s participatory budgeting become a model theorised and promoted by Brazil, and yet now it is used in many cities around the world, especially in Latin America, Germany and the US (Keel 2016). In turn, transitional justice as a discipline developed in Latin America and has provided essential lessons in how to deal with the mass violation of human rights, prosecution, reparation, truth commissions and victim and survivor memory (also see Daley in this volume). I am particularly impressed by the work of the Brazilian sociologist Sergio Adorno on violence, whose work I discovered thanks to the open access virtual library of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO).7 As we see, originality and, I would say, universality need a tool of visibility. The creation of many regional and linguistic databases does, indeed, enable us to overcome Eurocentrism and the effect of coloniality. The alternative, in this regard, should not be based on choosing between Western thought and local forms of knowledge, but the principle of diversity itself. As Sujata Patel argues: Social theory needs to assert the principle of diversities. I use the concept of diversities because it connotes more meanings than other concepts in use, such alternate, multiple and cosmopolitan. In many languages within ex-colonial countries (including colonial ones such as English), the term diverse has had multivariate usage and its meanings range from a simple assertion of difference to an elaboration of an ontological theory of difference that recognizes power as a central concept in the creation of epistemes. (Patel 2013, p. 122) Thus, alternatives in the social sciences need to promote the many voices of sociological traditions, infra-local and supra-national, with their own culturist oeuvres, epistemologies, and theoretical frames, cultures of science and languages of reflection, sites of knowledge production and its transmission across the many Souths. In order to do so, social theory needs to ontologically assert the necessity of combining space/place with a voice (Patel 2013, p. 126; also see Patel, this volume). Often, it is not only the global political economy of knowledge production that hinders this diversity, but the authoritarian states that promote particular meta-narratives. The challenge today is in creating the intellectual infrastructure that can interface the many Souths, dissolve the markers of distinction between and within them, and make their various voices recognise the matrix of power that has organised these divisions (Patel 2013, p. 126). Diversity 83

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is also advocated by Connell, who argues that it means learning from Southern knowledge and not only about it. As Alatas and Sinha (2017) put it, we can think with Ibn Khaldun, Marx and Rambhai, and not just think with Marx about Ibn Khaldun and Rambhai. It is remarkable, in this regard, how the late Syrian intellectual, Yasin al-Hafiz, created his own creative bricolage by drawing upon different theories and advocating the historicist blurring of the distinction between liberalism and socialism in the aftermath of the defeat of 1967. I qualify this bricolage as creative to distinguish it from Abdullah Laroui’s way of seeing it as ‘eclecticism’, i.e. passive adaptation (Laroui 1967b). It is this form of active, critical and creative engagement that is essential now and in the years to come.

Notes 1 This statement is based on the author’s analysis of the knowledge production of research centres such as Center for Arab Unity Studies (Beirut), Al-Ahram Center for Political & Strategic Studies (Cairo); and of newspapers such as Al-Khbar (Beirut) and Al-Safeer (Beirut). 2 Author’s personal conversation with Hage. 3 See, for instance, the interview with the Libyan sociologist Mustafa al-Teer who survived Qaddafi ’s era from 1980s to 2011, published in the International Sociological Association’s Newsletter Global Dialogue, 3.2 (2013). 4 Bahrain and the UAE announced in June 2017 that expressing sympathy for Qatar is an offence punishable by a lengthy jail term. In Bahrain, ‘Any expression of sympathy with the government of Qatar or opposition to the measures taken by the government of Bahrain, whether through social media, Twitter or any other form of communication, is a criminal offence punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine’, while the UAE announced a similar decision, warning that offenders could face between three and 15 years in prison and a Dh 500,000 fine. See www.thenational.ae/world/uae-and-saudi-arabia-cutties-with-qatar-live-updates-1.24574. 5 For more details about the violation of academic freedom in the Arab world see Hanafi (2016). 6 This report offers perhaps the most revealing examination of the profound changes that have been taking place in social thought in the second half of the 20th century (Wallerstein et al. 1996). It shows how Eurocentric structures of knowledge have been eroding and demonstrates how schools of thought have emerged which aim to develop alternative forms of understanding social and historical realities (Germana 2014). 7 In addition to this database there is another created by ProQuest, and yet it is not open access: The Latin America & Iberia Database includes ongoing full-text academic journals that are published locally in a number of Latin American countries, Spain and Portugal.

References Alatas, S.F. and Sinha, V., 2017. Sociological Theory Beyond the Canon. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Arendt, H., 1985. Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Meridian. Bardawil, F., 2016. The Solitary Analyst of Doxas: An Interview with Talal Asad. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 36(1), 152–173. Beigel, F., 2011. The Politics of Academic Autonomy in Latin America (Public Intellectuals and the Sociology of Knowledge). Farnham, UK: Ashgate. Béteille, A., 2013. The Vocation of Sociology: A Pragmatic View [online]. Global Dialogue: International Sociological Association Newsletter, 2013. Available from: http://globaldialogue.isa-sociology.org/wpcontent/uploads/2013/07/v3i2-english.pdf [Accessed: 1 March 2018]. Bhambra, G.K., 2014. Connected Sociologies. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Burawoy, M., 2017. Editorial: Sociology in an Age of Reaction [online]. Global Dialogue: International Sociological Association Newsletter. Available from: http://globaldialogue.isa-sociology.org/editorial-ashort-history-of-global-dialogue/ [Accessed: 1 March 2018]. Dabashi, H., 2012. The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism Makes a Contribution. London: Zed Books. Dabashi, H., 2015. Can Non-Europeans Think? London: Zed Books. 84

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Du Bois, W.E.B., 2013. The Soul of Black Folk. New York: Eucalyptus Press. Germana, C., 2014. The Coloniality of Power: A Perspective from Peru [online]. Global Dialogue: International Sociological Association Newsletter. Available from: http://globaldialogue.isa-sociology.org/ the-coloniality-of-power-a-perspective-from-peru/ [Accessed: 1 March 2018]. Giroux, H.A., 2007. Higher Education and the Politics of Hope in the Age of Authoritarianism: Rethinking the Pedagogical Possibilities of a Global Democracy. Theomai, no. 15, 73–86. Hanafi, S. 2016. Islamization and Indigenization of the Social Sciences: A Critical Appraisal (Islameh Wa Ta’sil Al-Ulum Al-Ijtimaiyya: Dirasat Fi Baad Al-Ishkaliyyat). Al-Mustaqbl Al-Arabi 451, 45–64. Hanafi, S. and Arvanitis, R., 2016. Knowledge Production in the Arab World: The Impossible Promise. UK: Routledge. Hardt, M. and Negri, A., 2001. Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Harvey, D., 2005. The New Imperialism. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Hoffmann, N., 2017. The Knowledge Commons, Pan-Africanism, and Epistemic Inequality: A Study of CODESRIA. Grahamstown: Rhodes University. Kabbanji, J., 2011. Why Do the Arab Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt Surprise Us? Idafat – the Arab Journal of Sociology 14(Arabic), 43–56. Keel, Rebecca K.W., 2016. Models of Participatory Budgeting [online]. Democracy in Principle. 2016. Available from: www.democracyinprinciple.com/blog/models-of-participatory-budgeting/ [Accessed: 1 March 2018]. Khatibi, A., 1983. Maghreb Pluriel. Paris: Denoël. Kluger, J., 2017. Why So Many People Believe Conspiracy Theories [online]. TIME. Available from: http://time.com/4965093/conspiracy-theories-beliefs/ [Accessed: 1 March 2018]. Laroui, A., 1967a. L’idéologie Arabe Contemporaine. Paris: F. Maspero. Laroui, A., 1967b. The Crisis of the Arab Intellectual: Traditionalism or Historicism? Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Mbembe, A., 2000. African Modes of Self-Writing. CODESRIA Bulletin 1, 4–19. Nash, G., Kerr-Koch, K., and Hackett, S., 2013. Introduction. In: G. Nash, K. Kerr-Koch, and S. Hackett (eds), Postcolonialism and Islam: Theory, Literature, Culture, Society and Film. London; New York: Routledge, pp. 1–14. Patel, S., 2013. Towards Internationalism: Beyond Colonial and Nationalist Sociologies. In: M. Kuhn and S. Yazawa (eds), Theories About and Strategies Against Hegemonic Social Sciences. Center for Global Studies: Seijo University, pp. 119–132. Patnaik, P., 2011. Has Imperialism Become an Obsolete Concept? In A.K. Bagchi and A. Chatterjee (eds), Marxism: With and Beyond Marx. New Delhi & London: Routledge, pp. 147–163. Phillips, C., 2013. The Other in Modern Arabic Literature: A Critique of Postcolonial Theory. In: G. Nash, K. Kerr-Koch, and S. Hackett (eds), Postcolonialism and Islam: Theory, Literature, Culture, Society and Film. London; New York: Routledge, pp. 118–130. Said, E., 1978. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Penguin. San Juan, E., 1998. The Limits of Postcolonial Criticism: The Discourse of Edward Said [online]. Solidarity Blog. Available from: www.solidarity-us.org/node/1781 [Accessed: 1 March 2018]. Scott, D., 2004. Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Uscinski, J. and Parent, J., 2014. American Conspiracy Theories. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wallerstein, I., Juma, C., Fox Keller, E.F., Kocka, J., Lecourt, D., Mudimbe, V.Y., et al., 1996. Open the Social Sciences. Report of the Gulbenkian Commission for the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. Mexico DF: Siglo XXI. Williams, P., 2013. Postcolonialism and Orientalism. In: G. Nash, K. Kerr-Koch, and S. Hackett (eds), Postcolonialism and Islam: Theory, Literature, Culture, Society and Film. London; New York: Routledge, pp. 48–61.

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6 South–South relations in the academic world The case of anthropology Gordon Mathews

Introduction In this chapter, I discuss the intellectual and academic world of South–South relations, through the mirror of anthropology.1 This, I think, is a significant point of analysis because, although the intellectual and academic world is largely removed from the more consequential world of material inequality and deprivation of much of the global South as compared to the global North, South–South relations need to grow and flourish not just in the material world but also in the intellectual world in order to help transcend global inequalities and imperialism in all its forms. North–South relations are conventionally viewed as a matter of rich countries and poor countries: the United States, Europe and East Asia as opposed to South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, with prospective immigrants from the latter places often desperate to breach the bastions of the former, as so many newspaper headlines in recent years attest. South– South relations often represent the effort to overcome the economic and political hegemony of the North. But core–periphery relations are differently configured in the intellectual world than in the economic realm. In terms of economic affluence, societies such as Japan or Taiwan or Korea are undoubtedly of the North: companies from these societies operate factories in places such as China, Vietnam and Indonesia, paying locals low wages that no one in their home societies would accept. However, in the intellectual world, societies such as Japan, Taiwan and Korea are beholden to the Anglo-American core, with scholars in these societies sometimes desperate to publish their findings in top Anglo-American journals rather than in those of their own societies in order to advance their careers or keep their jobs. These societies are, in effect, of the material North but the intellectual South. This is true not only for East Asia, but for a range of societies in Latin America, South Asia, Eastern Europe and elsewhere.2 I myself am an American citizen with a PhD from an American university who has lived in Japan and Hong Kong for most of the past 35 years – I am a member of the Anglo-American core I decry in this chapter, although I have argued against that core throughout much of my career. A reader might say that I have no right to say anything about the global South, particularly in the closing section of this chapter, where I am more prescriptive, since I myself am not a ‘member’ of the global South, even the intellectual global South, except by choice. Criticisms such as these could be entirely valid; but I can only say, please read this chapter and decide for yourself. 86

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The emergence of world anthropology Let me discuss my own discipline of anthropology. The founders of anthropology in the late 19th century, Lewis Henry Morgan and Edward Burnett Tylor, set forth evolutionary schemes with Western societies such as the United Kingdom and the United States on top, at the pinnacle of civilisation, and other societies throughout the world trailing behind to various degrees, as less civilised but perhaps eventually able to attain the pinnacle that the West had already attained. Anthropology soon intellectually transcended this view; from the early 20th century on, cultural relativism became the discipline’s watchword. Despite this, throughout the 20th century, anthropology remained, to put the matter crudely, as a discipline through which mostly rich white people studied poor black and brown people: Americans and West Europeans, along with Japanese, investigating tribal peoples under their countries’ colonial purview. Rulers of wealthy societies wanted to have better understanding of the ‘others’ under their control, and anthropologists’ major role was to help them do this (Lewis 1973; Pels 1997). This began to change, particularly after the Second World War; since then, anthropology has become a world discipline, with anthropology departments established in universities all over the world. Since 2000, the contemporary global reach of the discipline has become increasingly recognised worldwide, with numerous new volumes discussing and championing non-Western world anthropology (Bošković 2008; Ribeiro and Escobar 2006; Yamashita et al. 2004; Kuwayama 1997; 2004). Most major Anglo-American anthropological publications have in the past few years added international anthropologists to their editorial boards: anthropologists not based in the United States or United Kingdom, but all around the world. There is the growing awareness in the American Anthropological Association of global anthropology, as can be shown by the section on World Anthropology in its flagship journal, American Anthropologist; and the World Council of Anthropological Associations, as later discussed, has come to have a prominent place in the discipline, as does the other major global anthropological organisation, the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences. This has happened because of a growing cultural and political awareness among anthropologists that their discipline is indeed global, consisting not just of the global North studying the global South, but rather of everyone studying everyone else. This has also come about for more specific technological reasons. Today, anthropologists and anthropological publications and associations around the world can be immediately accessed online, as was unimaginable before the internet, when the weeks required for postal communication and the expense of international phone calls were still limiting for most global communication. In terms of access to scholarship, in the pre-internet era only rich countries could afford adequate academic libraries. Today, open access in its various forms is a major new area of debate in the scholarly world, but it seems indubitable that scholarly knowledge in anthropology has become more globally accessible than it was even in the very recent past, with libraries’ collections of volumes increasingly superseded by terminals’ internet connections. Anthropologists in many areas of the developing world can know global anthropology in a way that would have been inconceivable a few years past. Anyone, or at least anyone who knows English, can participate in world conversations – and with translation services improving, language too is becoming less of an impediment. Of course, pay-walls surrounding much anthropological literature continue to exclude many students and scholars not privileged enough to have access, particularly those in the developing world whose libraries cannot afford them: this remains a very real barrier. Nonetheless, this too can be overcome by scholars making their work available to all through online, open access academic repository sites. 87

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Anthropology is thus increasingly global. However, as I discuss below, this process whereby anthropology of the global North and of the global South can interact on a fully equal basis is inevitably fitful and partial at present.

The workings of the WCAA One sign of the growth of global anthropology has been the World Council of Anthropological Associations (WCAA 2017), an organisation of the presidents of anthropological associations from around the world meeting to discuss the agenda of world anthropology. The WCAA was begun in 2004, and now has 53 member associations. Its members are indeed global, coming from societies ranging from Tunisia to Taiwan to Uruguay to the Philippines, but it is not fully representative of the globe in that many smaller developing-world societies do not have anthropological associations, and thus are not represented. There are, for example, only three African-based anthropological associations, and only two South Asian anthropological associations as members, and none from the Caribbean. The WCAA organisationally has something in common with the United Nations, although its stakes are, of course, many magnitudes lower. The WCAA seeks to place the world of disparate national and regional worlds of anthropology into a common global forum, offering new initiatives, and supporting or not supporting a range of initiatives from the global anthropological world. This is accomplished through face-to-face meetings of the WCAA delegates every two years, meetings made possible through the Wenner-Gren Foundation’s funding of the air passage of developing-world delegates, and through monthly Skype meetings of the elected WCAA Organizing Committee. The WCAA works in an egalitarian way, with presidents of anthropological associations from small developing-world countries having equal say with presidents of the behemoths of the rich world. Indeed, in WCAA meetings one occasionally sees figures such as the president of the American Anthropological Association debating with the president of the Croatian or Chilean or Indonesian Anthropological Association. However, several factors work in practice against a full and complete democracy. One is language: the language in which meetings take place is English, which places non-native speakers of English or those who do not speak the language well at a considerable disadvantage. There have been efforts to overcome this, such as a motion to make Spanish a second official language of the WCAA, but many non-Spanishspeaking delegates opposed this and it was not adopted. Providing simultaneous translation, as at the UN, would be an optimal solution, but is far beyond the economic means of the WCAA, which must struggle to obtain funding. Related to language, it seems generally to be the case that anthropologists from the developed world do more of the speaking than anthropologists from the developing world. This might be largely because of language, as noted above, and perhaps also because they are more accustomed to the large meeting format – WCAA biennial meetings can typically have 30 or 40 or more attendees – and have the confidence to speak their minds more. The Organizing Committee is made up of ten elected members of the WCAA – the Chair, the Deputy Chair, the Treasurer, the Secretary and six others – and has been constructed to be geographically diverse, with, at present, members from six continents, although it is notable that half are based in the United States, Western Europe, or Australia, or have Western European or American citizenships. Because it predominantly meets via Skype, the quality of internet connections is a factor: the participation of Europeans, North Americans and Australians is somewhat more regular than that of South Asians and Africans, in large part, it seems, because of the reliability of technology. What all this means is that what is, in theory, a level playing field is, in fact, somewhat less so. This is no one’s fault – certainly the WCAA does all it can to level the playing field – but seems unavoidable. 88

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Given this overall situation in the meetings of the WCAA, what of South–South relations? The dominant impression I have, as a member of the WCAA since 2009, as a representative of the Hong Kong Anthropological Society, and of the Organizing Committee since 2012, is that there is no obvious unity among members of the global South, simply because no need is felt for such unity. Latin Americans, Africans and South Asians, as well as East Asians, whom I place in the intellectual global South in anthropology, have no common agenda, and no reason for a common agenda: the threats to anthropology in their regions are so different, and the threat of Anglo-American hegemony is sufficiently distant, that there is no reason for unity on most issues. The Latin Americans do form a common interest block, based on their broadly similar cultural and linguistic backgrounds. However, beyond this, different areas of the global South do not tend to come together in their arguments. There are two additional reasons for this lack of global South unity. One reason is that representatives from the global North are outnumbered. There are a large number of European Associations, ranging from those of Latvia to Portugal to Serbia to the Czech Republic – but there are numerically few members from the most influential anthropological organisations in the world – the American Anthropological Association, the European Association of Social Anthropologists and the Royal Anthropological Institute – who are greatly outnumbered because of the structure of the WCAA, whereby every anthropological organisation in the world can only have a single representative. In effect this means that the vast majority of representatives of the WCAA belong to the global South, if not necessarily materially, then intellectually. The second reason is that most anthropologists from the global core of the United States and Western Europe are acutely aware of anthropology’s legacy of Western hegemony and bend over backwards to avoid appearing to repeat it in their words or deeds at the WCAA. There are occasional expressions of unease between global North and global South – an American Chairelect of the WCAA resigned rather than serve her term because of the perceived pressure from various delegates whom, she felt, saw her as a representative of American hegemony. These events are unusual, but they do happen, showing that consciousness of power inequalities in global anthropology is definitely present, even if it might not arise within most of the ongoing mundane workings of the WCAA. In 2017, the WCAA became linked with a larger organisation, the International Union of Anthropological and Ethological Sciences (IUAES) to create the World Anthropological Union, WAU, a huge and truly global anthropological society. Whereas the WCAA has comprised presidents of anthropological organisations around the world, the IUAES has put on conferences attended by members of these organisations – sometimes with thousands of attendees – and has been in existence for seven decades, although it has organisationally experienced vast ups and downs over those decades. Obstacles remain, not least the fact that the attendance of Americans and Western Europeans at meetings of this new organisation, WAU, might continue to be scant as compared to Chinese, Indians, Brazilians and other anthropologists from across the global South. In any case, this new organisation represents enormous organisational promise for global anthropology taking place on a level playing field: this is the future of global anthropology. Nevertheless, a very large problem remains: in crucial intellectual respects, the West continues to be regarded as ‘the best’.

The institutional resurgence of ‘West is Best’ in anthropology The global North casts an intellectual shadow over the global South in a more insidious way than discussed above. I have long been involved in the world of East Asian anthropology, and have been continually surprised by the fact that Japanese, Korean and Chinese anthropologists generally do 89

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not read each other’s publications, and often might not even know one another’s names; but many read Anglo-American theoreticians from which they might take their cues. This seems broadly true across the intellectual global South. Anthropological influence tends to flow from the intellectual core to the periphery, not from periphery to periphery. A partial exception to this is the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world in Latin America, sharing more or less linked tongues and cultural backgrounds. But this does not extend beyond this world. Chinese anthropologists do not read Brazilian anthropologists, who do not read Indian anthropologists, who do not read Kenyan anthropologists: they are generally not intellectually aware of one another’s existence. And yet many in common read American or Western European anthropologists, those ‘big names’ of theoretical fame whose citation might be required in journal articles. Indeed, there is still a sense of West being best in contemporary anthropology. Although anthropology has, for more than a century, embraced cultural relativism, the anthropological centre, the core, remains the Anglo-American world. This is because the Anglo-American anthropological world is bigger and richer. This does not necessarily make it better in its anthropological research, which is very difficult to ascertain in a discipline that no longer proclaims itself to be a science.3 However, it does make it more influential than anthropology anywhere else in the world. Those anthropologists from other societies who go to the United States for their professional careers, from China or India or Mexico, are felt to be (although it might not ever be explicitly stated) superior, ‘winners,’ whereas those who remain at home for their professional careers might be felt to be inferior, an assumption apparent in a number of conversations with anthropologists that I have had over the years. This situation might be changing – I have argued that in some respects the global core of anthropology is shifting from the United States and Western Europe to East Asia (Mathews 2015), in the wake of global accumulations of money, with East Asian GDPs surpassing those of the US and Western Europe (Mathews 2015, p. 365). Nonetheless, in at least one critical respect, as I now discuss, the Anglo-Americanisation of anthropology is proceeding more rapidly than ever before. A major factor shaping universities worldwide has been their increasing awareness of global competition. This has come about in conjunction with the neoliberalisation of university management beginning in the UK in the 1990s and invading many of the world’s universities since that time, leading to the increasing importance of ‘the audit culture’ (Shore 2008; Shore and Wright 2000), and of administrators over professors. World university ranking schemes, such as that of the Times Education Supplement, have become increasingly influential, and university administrators in many societies base their professional lives on somehow enabling their institutions to rise a few places in these rankings. These rankings are based on a wide variety of factors, with some – such as the ‘reputation’ of an institution – being intangible; but one key factor is the publication output of an institution’s professors. This output is typically measured by the quality of the journals that professors publish in, a quality measured, in the social sciences, by such markers as the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI). The necessity for such markers is explained by administrators as follows: those outside a given discipline cannot judge the quality of output in that discipline by actually reading its work; and the only way that output can be measured across disciplines is by having a common mode of measurement, such as that provided by the SSCI in rating journals, as to their impact factor. The fact that anthropologists often publish books and chapters in edited books, and might not rely on journals as their primary mode of knowledge dissemination, is beside the point in many administrators’ views: since book impacts cannot be so easily measured, journals become all important, distorting anthropology. As an editor of a journal, Asian Anthropology, I am constantly asked by potential contributors in China, Japan, India and elsewhere whether it is in the SSCI. If it is, it counts; if it is not, then it does not count (Asian Anthropology is not yet in SSCI). 90

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To anthropologists in these societies and many other societies, the SSCI is an essential indicator of worth, as deemed by department chairs and the administrators who pressure and oversee those chairs. With SSCI publication, a given scholar might obtain promotion and financial rewards; without it, they could lose their job. A problem with the SSCI, and other such measures, is that they are tilted toward Anglo-American publications. This does not mean that the SSCI is practising a conscious bias toward Anglo-American publications – there is a fairly rigorous and more or less objective set of criteria for inclusion in the SSCI, based on the extent of citation among other factors – but this is the effect. In 2017, of 83 journals listed under the category of anthropology, 38 have publishers listed in the United States, and 22 in the United Kingdom: 60 of 83 in all. Of the remainder, 16 are published in Western European countries, three in Australia-New Zealand, and only four – published in Chile and Argentina – from countries outside this Western core. Asian and African countries have no publications on this list. This survey is complicated by the fact that it is based on the country of the publisher, which does not always reflect the editorial focus of a journal, and also by the fact that archaeology and physical anthropology journals, as well as a few sociology journals, are included. The journals it lists are not only in English but are sometimes in other languages; this represents a broad listing of the world’s most prestigious journals related to anthropology. Nonetheless, as the preceding paragraph demonstrates, it is an overwhelmingly Anglo-American and Western European list of journals. If an anthropologist from most societies across the globe seeks to publish in a fully recognised and prestigious journal, they cannot publish in a journal in their home society. If anthropology were a science, then this situation would not be alarming, in that while the findings of engineers, cardiac specialists and particle physicists are culturally shaped, the findings of such a scientist in New Delhi will generally not substantively differ from one in Tokyo or New York. Since these disciplines are largely global and singular – we do not usually speak of Indian and Japanese and American variants of physics or biology – then the fact of a single set of prestigious global journals would hardly be a cause for alarm. But anthropology, given its current drift away from seeing itself as a science, is not singular: there are multiple anthropologies across the globe, and Brazilian anthropology at present has substantially different topics and concerns from Chinese anthropology or Indian anthropology or American anthropology: Chinese anthropologists might write about minority nationalities in China, Indian anthropologists might write about adivasi indigenous groups, and American anthropologists might write about neoliberalism and global assemblages. Despite this, anthropologists from societies around the globe might have little choice but to publish in Anglo-American journals that have little or no interest in the anthropology of their home societies; they are, in effect, forced to ‘become’ Anglo-American in their anthropological concerns (Kuwayama 2004, pp. 9–10). Anthropology has long since transcended Morgan and Tylor intellectually, in their late 19th-century assertion that Western Europe and the United States represented the pinnacle of civilisation, and yet, institutionally, this is exactly what has been happening: Morgan and Tylor and their world are being recreated. This is being done unwittingly: journal editors based in core countries send papers submitted to their journal to referees trained similarly to themselves, tending to enforce a common core-country conception of anthropology (Mathews 2010, 2012). Scholars on the intellectual periphery must think and write like scholars from the core, and scholars from the global South must become de facto members of the global North in order to publish in the North. This is the product of intellectual neoliberalism run wild. The SSCI and other prominent citation indexes are shaped largely by the degree to which given journals are cited from; if anthropologists and other scholars from around the world cite 91

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from journals outside the Anglo-American core, then those journals could eventually attain recognition from citation indexes such as the SSCI. The WCAA has made an attempt to support this endeavour through a journal on its website, Déjà Lu (2017), which I have co-edited since its founding in 2013: each year it republishes articles selected by the journals of the association members of the WCAA on a common platform. The ‘big guns’ among journals of anthropology are present – American Anthropologist, Current Anthropology, and so on – but so too are numerous journals unknown to readers beyond a small circle of anthropologists in a given country. Déjà Lu presents anthropology from around the world within a common forum, to attempt to reconfigure, to at least a small degree, the global anthropological playing field at present, in all its Western biases. This, at least, is the hope; whether or not it succeeds very much remains to be seen.

Conclusion: the future of North–South and South–South relations in anthropology There are thus, at present, two opposing currents shaping contemporary anthropology in its processes of becoming a global discipline. One current is moving toward a global anthropology in which global North and global South exist in a common global arena on a more or less equal intellectual basis. Another current is moving toward a global anthropology on a decidedly unequal basis: an anthropology in which the global South must intellectually imitate the ways of the global North in order to survive. These currents are both moving toward globalisation, but of decidedly different sorts. Technology levels the playing field of world anthropologies, and the increasing awareness of anthropologists as to the global importance of the discipline in a setting of equality, as characterised by the WCAA, is also key. However, as we have seen in the discussion of the audit culture as exemplified by the SSCI, some of the same factors of globalisation that are leading to a levelling of the playing field are also making the playing field less level, rendering anthropology all the more Western-centric. If North- and South-based anthropologists are becoming more aware of one another, at the same time, South-based anthropologists are pushed more and more to conform to the standards of the North. Those standards of the anthropological North are not better or higher than standards of the anthropological South; rather, they are simply different. Still, given the rules of the global game at present, those standards of the global North more or less must be conformed to by anthropologists in various areas of the global South who seek to keep their jobs. There is a way out of this straitjacket, not for the short term but for the long term. I earlier wrote of how scholars from different areas of the global South might not work together in venues such as the WCAA, and intellectually might have no knowledge of one another’s work – instead, many revolve around an Anglo-American anthropological orbit. However, if scholars from the global South can indeed begin to pay more attention to one another’s work, citing one another’s work, critiquing one another’s work, engaging with one another’s work just as seriously as they engage with work from the Anglo-American core, then world anthropology might truly emerge from the intellectual global South – which, after all, collectively now forms a significant majority of anthropologists in the world. The necessity to write for journals in the SSCI and other such indexes could be a blessing in disguise, for it will cause scholars from different regions of the global South to be more able and perhaps more amenable to writing in English, and thus to be able to communicate with one another. This of course is highly ironic – the language of the global North’s intellectual Anglo-American core enabling the global South to transcend that Anglo-American core – but this might, nonetheless, be the best or at least the only plausible way forward. 92

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Some scholars (Kim and Moon 2017) disagree with this idea, saying that anthropologists, in their case Korean, should value the local as much as the global, publishing in Korean for Koreans. Of course, this too is important. But for anthropology of the global South to overcome its current Anglo-American straitjacket, it cannot only focus on the local in its own local language, but must, at least to some extent, address the global South as a whole and the world as a whole, even if the only language in which this can be done today is English. (In the future, machine translation might obviate this necessity – but not yet.) Some critics have pointed out that this is easy for me to say, as a native speaker of English (Huang 2015), and they are right. Still, if the anthropological global South is to counter Anglo-American hegemony, it is difficult to see any other mechanism through which this could happen, except via a common language, which at present, if not necessarily in the future, is English. In a hundred years, if anthropology survives, it will be a discipline of everyone on the planet ethnographically studying everyone else, rather than rich people ethnographically studying poor people. This has not fully happened yet, but if anthropology as a discipline is to continue to flourish, this is what it will need to do. And, I venture to guess, this is true beyond anthropology, for the intellectual world as a whole, if not the material world, as the global North and global South slowly but surely merge.

Notes 1 This chapter can helpfully be read in conjunction with Patel’s and Hanafi ’s chapters (this volume) on knowledge production in the global South, developed through the particular lens of sociology and the context of the Middle East; and Murrey’s analysis (also this volume) on decolonising knowledge and decolonising the academy. 2 See the essays in de Bary (2010) for fuller discussion of the travails of academia in the intellectual global South. 3 See D’Andrade (1995) and Scheper-Hughes (1995) for one well-known debate on anthropology as science versus anthropology as moral pursuit, with the latter view apparently winning out in subsequent years.

References Bošković, A. (ed.) 2008. Other People’s Anthropologies: Ethnographic Practice on the Margins. New York: Berghahn Books. D’Andrade, R., 1995. Moral Models in Anthropology. Current Anthropology 36(3), 399–408. De Bary, B. (ed.) 2010. Universities in Translation: The Mental Labor of Globalization. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Déjà Lu. 2017. www.wcaanet.org/dejalu/ Huang, S., 2015. Situating East Asian Anthropology in the World. American Anthropologist 117(2), 372–373. Kim, K., and Moon, O., 2017. Korean Anthropology between Global Market and Local Community. Asian Anthropology 16(3), 203–218. Kuwayama, T., 1997. Genchi no jinruigakusha – naigai no Nihon kenkyuˉ o chuˉshin ni (Native anthropologists: with special reference to Japanese studies inside and outside Japan). Minzokugaku kenkyū 61(4), 517–542. Kuwayama, T., 2004. Native Anthropology: The Japanese Challenge to Western Academic Hegemony. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press. Lewis, D., 1973. Anthropology and Colonialism. Current Anthropology 14(5), 581–602. Mathews, G., 2010. On the Referee System as a Barrier to Global Anthropology. The Asia-Pacific Journal of Anthropology 11(1), 52–63. Mathews, G., 2012. Contesting Anglo-American Hegemony in Publication. Journal of Workplace Rights 16(3–4), 405–421. Mathews, G., 2015. East Asian Anthropology in the World. American Anthropologist 117(2), 364–372. Pels, P., 1997. The Anthropology of Colonialism: Culture, History, and the Emergence of Western Governmentality. Annual Review of Anthropology 26, 163–183. 93

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Ribeiro, G.L. and Escobar. A. (eds) 2006. World Anthropologies: Disciplinary Transformations Within Systems of Power. Oxford: Berg. Scheper-Hughes, N., 1995. The Primacy of the Ethnical: Propositions for a Militant Anthropology. Current Anthropology 36(3), 409–420. Shore, C., 2008. Audit Culture and Neoliberal Governance: Universities and the Politics of Accountability. Anthropological Theory, 8, 279–298. Available from: http://ant.sagepub.com/content/8/3/278.refs [Accessed 8 September 2017]. Shore, C., and Wright, S., 2000. Coercive Accountability: The Rise of Audit Culture in Higher Education. In: M. Strathern (ed.), Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics and the Academy. London: Routledge, pp. 57–89. Social Sciences Citation Index, Anthropology Journal List 2017. Clarivate Analytics. Available from: http://science.thomsonreuters.com/cgi-bin/jrnlst/jlresults.cgi?PC=SS&SC=BF WCAA (World Council of Anthropological Associations). 2017. www.wcaanet.org/index.shtml Yamashita, S., Bosco, J., and Eades, J. S. (eds) 2004. The Making of Anthropology in East and Southeast Asia. New York: Berghahn.

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7 Geographies of South–South relations and regionalisation processes in Latin America-Caribbean Thomas Muhr

Introduction This chapter disaggregates some of the complexities of the geographies of regionalisation and South–South cooperation (SSC) in Latin America-Caribbean, with a particular focus on the production of an SSC space in the Greater Caribbean.1 The first section integrates a discussion of SSC and generations of regionalisms in the Greater Caribbean with an analytical literature review that distinguishes ‘mainstream’ from ‘critical’ approaches. The mainstream literature is critiqued for its underlying methodological territorialism and methodological nationalism, through which co-existing generations of regionalisms become deterministically construed as ideologically separate, incompatible and/or conflicting projects. By introducing human geography to the study of regionalisation processes in the subsequent section, I argue that a socio-spatial methodology in conjunction with an SSC analytical lens reveals far greater commonality, interrelatedness and convergence among different regionalisms in the geographical area than is commonly assumed. The third section illustrates this by presenting the case of the Petrocaribe Economic Zone (Zona Económica Petrocaribe, ZEP) as an SSC space that traverses national and regionalist territorial boundaries. The conclusion sketches out some case studies for the deployment of a socio-spatial methodology in research of Latin America-Caribbean South–South relations.

Competing approaches to Latin America-Caribbean regionalisation and South–South relations While SSC has, over the past two decades, become associated with so-called ‘triangular collaboration’ that involves international agencies and governments of the North, with respect to the discussions in this chapter the concept refers to the post-Second World War (approximately 1947–1981) idea and social practice of Third World independence and collective self-reliance and self-determination (see Aneja this volume and Saney this volume). Governed by the principles of ‘solidarity’, ‘complementarity’ and ‘cooperation’, SSC pursues more horizontal (egalitarian and just, at times – but not necessarily – altruistic) diplomatic, trade, aid and investment relations and exchanges of mutual benefit (‘win-win’ relations), historically also associated with the 1974 95

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United Nations New International Economic Order. SSC thus viewed is a ‘counter-dependency’ strategy that seeks to transform the historical structure of dependency – the subjection and structural conditioning of (semi)peripheral economies to the interests of transnational capital – through the creation of strategic inter-dependences (Caporaso 1978; Erisman 1991; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015; Gosovic 2016; Muhr 2016a). Regarding ‘region’ and ‘regionalism’, these here denote inter- or supranational units, rather than intra- or subnational areas. Their study has been approached from different disciplinary angles, such as Politics, International Relations, Anthropology, Economics, and Sociology, and competing paradigms, including functional, positivist, constructivist, (neo)realist and (neo) Marxist (Hettne 2005; Robertson et al. 2016). As a comprehensive mapping of these approaches is beyond the scope and purpose of this chapter, for the methodological argument advanced here, it suffices to broadly differentiate between ‘mainstream’ and ‘critical’ approaches. In a nutshell, the ‘mainstream’ approach is embedded in a substantivalist ontology, which assumes pre-formed ‘self-acting entities’, static and coherent ‘things’ or conditions, and actions taking place only among these fixed and unchanging units (Emirbayer 1997, pp. 285–286). This ontology manifests itself in methodological territorialism and methodological nationalism, which spatially conceptualise the (nation-)state in absolute, essentialist terms as an inert, static and timeless backdrop or ‘container’ of societies and social action (Agnew 1994; Brenner 2004, p. 38; Harvey 2006; Taylor 1994). Extended to the regional, I will argue that the mainstream approach views regions as homogeneous, static blocs of (nation-)states territorially bounded (demarcated) by the member states’ borders. By contrast, a relational ontology, which underlies a socio-spatial approach, depicts social reality ‘in dynamic, continuous, and processual terms’ (Emirbayer 1997, pp. 281–286; also Harvey 1996, pp. 46–68) and ‘“opens” the traditional state-as-a-monolith centric view’ (Moisio and Paasi 2013, p. 256). This implies, first, that counter to such commonsensical perceptions as ‘the Latin American region’, regions are here understood as socially constructed rather than geographically designated ‘self-evident blocks of terrestrial space’ (Agnew 2013, p. 12). Second, transnational processes and relations among political and social forces (state and non-state actors) in the construction and reconstruction of regions in/through space/time become a central analytical focus, whereby ‘transnational’ means border-crossing forces, institutions, and economic, political, social and cultural processes. Thus a broader understanding of ‘social’ than as ‘social relations of production’ (and ‘society’ not reduced to ‘mode of production’) is adopted here, as multidirectional, simultaneous and dialectical cultural, ecological, economic, legal, infrastructural, political and social relations, flows, processes and material and discursive practices and activities (see Marston and Smith 2001; Massey 2005; Paasi 2004; Swyngedouw 1997). In other words, I draw from MacKinnon’s (2010) reasoning of a compatibility of more ‘open strands’ of political economic (Marxist) socio-spatial theorising and ‘poststructuralist-inspired’ ones that do not dismiss the material altogether. Such an approach also contributes to overcoming the perceived rigid ‘distinction’ of social constructivist from political economy approaches to regionalisms, pointed to by Hameiri (2013, p. 317). In the following, the critique of the mainstream approach will be developed along two lines of theoretical and empirical inquiry: first, the geographies of generations of regionalisms in the Greater Caribbean will be mapped out according to formal (national-state) memberships; second, the assumed homogeneity of these regionalisms will be problematised by analysing the SSC dimension within them, concentrating on those projects directly involved in the formation of the ZEP.

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Generations of regionalisms in the Greater Caribbean The ZEP was proposed by the Venezuelan government in 2013 and, while not in existence as such as yet, a ‘working programme’ and ‘high level commission’ for its implementation have been established (Petrocaribe 2013b, 2015a). Within the rationale of South–South ‘solidarity cooperation’ and ‘fair trade’, the ZEP seeks to strategically integrate the two major development cooperation and regionalisation schemes in the Greater Caribbean, the Petrocaribe and Caribbean Community (CARICOM) (see Petrocaribe 2013a). As Table 7.1 illustrates, there is no complete congruence regarding formal memberships in these organisations, and in the absence of proper CARICOM declarations in support of the establishment of the ZEP, most CARICOM member governments have supported this initiative through their Petrocaribe memberships.2 Equally important, however, are the overlapping memberships with the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – Peoples’ Trade Agreement (ALBA-TCP). Both Petrocaribe and the ALBA-TCP evolved from the Cuban and Venezuelan decades-long commitments to SSC and are, as I argued almost ten years ago, one political project (Muhr 2008, 2011a, 2011b). This has more recently been affirmed by joint ALBA-TCP/Petrocaribe summits for the establishment of the ZEP (e.g., ALBA-TCP/ Petrocaribe 2013). In this process, the decision in 2012 to create an ALBA Economic Space (ECOALBA) was followed by an expressed ‘commitment’ to integrate the ECOALBA with the ZEP (ALBA-TCP/Petrocaribe 2013), subsequently named the ‘ALBA-TCP/Petrocaribe/ CARICOM Complementary Economic Zone’, defined as a ‘privileged space of economic, trade and productive complementarity, and solidarity cooperation among our peoples’ (ALBATCP 2015, Point 12).3 However, rather than being reduced to the economic sector, this SSC and regionalisation strategy corresponds with Robert Cox’s (neo-)Gramscian approach, in which ‘production’ is ‘about collective life’, i.e. ‘the whole context of ideas and institutions within which the production of material goods takes place’ (Sinclair 1996, p. 9). Accordingly, as a holistic, integrated approach to development, multiple dimensions operate in a mutually reinforcing fashion, comprising the cultural, education and knowledge, energy, the environmental, financial, juridical, legal, military, politico-ideological, production and trade, and the social-humanitarian (Muhr 2013, Table 1). Context then means not simply background or ‘detail’, but ‘those things that environ and thereby define a thing of interest’ (Abbott 1997, n.10). Consequently, as Table 7.1 underscores, the case of the ZEP as an SSC space has to be analysed within the context of the larger complexities of regionalisms in the Greater Caribbean: the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS); the Central American Integration System (Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana, SICA); the Association of Caribbean States (ACS); the Latin American Integration Association (LAIA); the Union of South American Nations (Unión de Naciones Suramericanas, UNASUR); the Pacific Alliance; and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Comunidad de Estasos Latinoamericanos y Caribeños, CELAC). Within this chapter’s concern with South– South relations, however, excluded from the analysis are regionalisms that also involve North actors, such as the Organization of American States (OAS), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Central America Free Trade Agreement–Dominican Republic (CAFTA-DR), as well as such North-oriented formations as the CARIFORUM, composed of CARICOM and the Dominican Republic for the purpose of ‘co-ordinating trade and aid negotiations with the EU’ (Girvan 2000, p. 75). Furthermore, SSC in the Common Market of the South (Mercosur), introduced in the organisation in the 2000s (and, since 2015, subject to contestation), is discussed elsewhere (Muhr 2017).

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Barbados Bahamas Haiti Jamaica Antigua & Barbuda Dominica Grenada Saint Lucia St Kitts & Nevis St Vincent-Grenadines Suriname Guyana Dominican Republic El Salvador Guatemala Honduras Venezuela Cuba Nicaragua Belize Trinidad & Tobago Montserrat∗∗ Costa Rica Panama Mexico Colombia Bolivia Ecuador Argentina Brazil Chile Paraguay Peru Uruguay + + +

+ + + + + + + + + + + +

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

+ +

+ + +

+ + + + + +

ALBA-TCP

+

+ + + + + +

OECS

+ +

+ +

+ + + +

SICA

+ + + +

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

ACS

+ + + + + + + + + + +

+ + +∗

LAIA

+ + + + + + + + +

+

+ +

UNASUR

+

+

+ +

+∗∗∗

+

MERCOSUR

+

+

+ +

Pacific Alliance

+ + + + + + + + + + + +

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

CELAC

Accepted as full member in 2011, in 2016 in the process of complying with the necessary requirements. This has involved, inter alia, ratification by the Nicaraguan government of LAIA (2013) Economic Complementation Agreement. ∗∗  Montserrat is a British Overseas Territory and the only non-sovereign political unit integrated in Latin America-Caribbean regionalisms. ∗∗∗  In process of ratification in 2016.

∗  

Source: compiled by author. The listed regionalisms involve all 33 sovereign Latin America-Caribbean nations. The table is organised for analytical clarity, rather than listing members in alphabetical order.

 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

CARICOM

Petrocaribe

Table 7.1  Latin America-Caribbean regionalisms in the ‘Greater Caribbean’ (overlapping full memberships, 2016)

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The stated regionalisms were formalised at different moments in the post-Second World War era, whereby three generations can be identified: a first generation of inward-oriented developmentalist, modernisation-driven regionalisms, related to import substitution industrialisation; a second generation of neoliberal outward-oriented (so-called ‘open’) regionalisms; and a third, decolonialist generation seeking counter-dependency through SSC (Muhr 2008, 2011a; Ojeda 2010).4 The notion of generations (rather than ‘waves’ or ‘phases’, e.g., Bianculli 2016) underscores that patterns of regionalisms with different empirical qualities can coexist and overlap, and that regionalisms can evolve from previous generations through processes of transformation linked to distinct political economic (ideological) projects promoted by state and non-state actors (Söderbaum and van Langenhove 2006). As will further be shown in the next sub-section, rather than constituting ideal types, this categorisation is a heuristic device, as transformation over space/time can produce hybrid forms. Also, categorisation might not be useful at all with respect to regionalisms devoid of concrete development cooperation policies and/or project or programme implementation. This includes the ACS, founded in 1994 as a forum for political dialogue (ACS 1994, Article 3), and the CELAC, which, while conceived as a third-generation regionalism with an explicit South–South development agenda (CELAC 2011a, Points 27 and 33, 2011b), seems currently – in the apparent absence of a proper constitutive treaty – to principally function as a ‘mechanism of regional political consultation’ (CELAC 2016). While political cooperation is one dimension of SSC, the ACS and CELAC are of no central relevance to this chapter’s analysis of the ZEP as an integral development cooperation project. Also excluded from further consideration is the Pacific Alliance, established as a neoliberal second-generation regionalism in 2011, for its impertinence to an analysis of SSC relations as defined in this chapter. The more complex historical trajectories of the remaining regionalisms CARICOM, LAIA, OECS and SICA, however, require more detailed exploration. First, the 1951 Charter of the Organisation of Central American States, which led to the creation of the first-generation Central American Common Market in 1960, was re-launched as SICA between 1991 and 1993. Second, LAIA, established in 1980, is the reformed Latin American Free Trade Association, founded in 1960 as a first-generation regionalism. Equally, third, CARICOM, established as a first-generation regionalism in 1973, also became subject to reform from 2000 onward. Finally, the OECS, created in 1981, became subject to revision in 2010, in the course of which the Eastern Caribbean Economic Union has been established. Pivotal to the methodological problematique addressed in this chapter is the identification of the SSC dimension in these regionalisms, presented subsequently.

SSC in contemporary regionalisms in the Greater Caribbean With respect to the third-generation regionalisms ALBA-TCP, Petrocaribe and UNASUR, formalised in 2004, 2005 and 2008, respectively, their founding declarations, statutes and consecutive agreements and treaties explicitly refer to ‘SSC’ and/or the principles of ‘solidarity’, ‘cooperation and ‘complementarity’ (e.g., ALBA 2004; Petrocaribe 2005; UNASUR 2008). Equally, LAIA highlights the importance of the 1970s’ project of a ‘new international economic order’ through ‘solidarity’, ‘horizontal cooperation’ and ‘economic complementarity’ (LAIA 1980, Articles 2 and 26), while seeking to ‘drive the participation of communal, native indigenous, peasant, cooperative, small and medium enterprise, social, state and private property productive units, and other forms of undertakings’ (LAIA 2013, Article 11). While principally a regulatory institution rather than an implementer of cooperation projects, the relevance of LAIA consists in promoting Economic Complementation Agreements of either ‘regional’ (involving

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all members) or ‘partial’ scope (two or more members). One such Economic Complementation Agreement of Partial Scope has been signed between the ALBA-TCP governments of Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela, for the ‘creation of the necessary conditions for the implementation of the ECOALBA-TCP’ (LAIA, 2013, Article 1). With this agreement, which has entered into force following its ratification by the set minimum of two signatory states (see LAIA 2013, Article 23; Republic of Nicaragua 2013; Plurinational State of Bolivia 2015), the ALBA-TCP agreements and treaties acquire legal status within LAIA and become generalised across other Latin America-Caribbean regionalisms. On the one hand, this consolidates the ALBA-TCP. On the other hand, SSC per se becomes strengthened: first, those ALBA-TCP members that currently are not LAIA members are expected to join LAIA through this mechanism; second, any other LAIA member state can join this agreement and use the ALBA-TCP economic and financial instruments and mechanisms, such as the ALBA Bank, the so-called grandnational enterprises (empresas grannacionales), and the Unitary Regional Clearing System SUCRE (LAIA 2013, Article 21). As stated, with respect to the ZEP case study it is pertinent to also recognise hybrid forms of regionalisms, especially the CARICOM, but also the OECS and SICA. As a first-generation regionalism, CARICOM adopted the developmentalist principle of protectionist regional import substitution industrialisation for greater collective self-reliance through ‘co-ordination and collaboration’ and ‘complementarity’ in regional production and trade chains (CARICOM 1973, Articles 39, 45 and 49). Solidarity with less-developed members became expressed in the aim of the more developed members sharing technological and research facilities (CARICOM 1973, Articles 47 and 60), as well as in the establishment of the Caribbean Development Bank funding programmes and concessions/exemptions (J. Byron personal communication, 8 July 2015). Despite its reinstitution as second-generation regionalism between 1989 and 2001 (Girvan 2011, p. 158), and increased emphasis on free market mechanisms and intra-regional competition, productive complementation through regional production chains and cooperation in research and development are still pursued (CARICOM 2001, Article 52, also 54 and 57). The activation in 2009 of the CARICOM Development Fund for confronting socio-spatial and sectoral structural asymmetries (uneven development) among the members is one mechanism to realise this objective (CARICOM 2008; SELA 2011). Equally importantly, both the Cuban and Venezuelan states have from the 1960s onward established South–South relations with CARICOM and individual members thereof. Regarding Venezuela, this has involved a preferential trade agreement with CARICOM in 1991, as well as becoming a donor member of the Caribbean Development Bank (Byron 2015). Furthermore, energy, trade, tourism, security, education and cultural cooperation with the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago (which is a CARICOM but not an ALBA-TCP/Petrocaribe member), intensified throughout 2015/2016, is viewed as advancing the ‘consolidation’ of the ZEP (Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela 2016, pp. 99–100; Republic of Trinidad and Tobago 2015). Concomitantly, a comprehensive CARICOM-Cuba South–South agenda (agricultural, biotechnological, environmental, trade, social, cultural, educational, health, sports, tourism, and political cooperation) has been instituted from 1987 onward, culminating in the establishment of tri-annually convened Cuba-CARICOM Summits since 2002 (Byron 2000, 2015; Cotman 2006). In this forum, SSC as an ‘expression of solidarity among our countries’ (CARICOM 2014, Point 3) has been understood as a counter-dependency strategy to ‘reverse the deterioration in the terms of trade between developed and developing countries’ (CARICOM 2002). Similarly, though of only secondary relevance to the ZEP case study, in the SICA and OECS, hybridity is manifest in the pursuit of the second-generation objective of ‘efficient reinsertion’ or ‘successful participation’ in the ‘international’, ‘regional and global economies’ (OECS 2010, 100

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Article 4; SICA, 1991, Article 3, 1993, Article 3), while simultaneously recognising intra-regional ‘inter-dependence’ and the South–South principles of ‘solidarity’ and ‘complementarity’ (OECS 2010, Article 4; SICA 1991, Article 4, 1993, Article 5). It is worth highlighting that all sovereign OECS member states are also full ALBA-TCP and Petrocaribe members (Table 7.1). This hybridity is the outcome of historical processes related to contesting political ideas in/over space/time, and lays the foundation for a critique of the mainstream Latin America-Caribbean regionalisms literature.

Mainstream vs critical approaches to regionalisms in the Greater Caribbean Before scrutinising some of this literature since the 2000s, a brief return to regionalism theory is useful. What has been distinguished as ‘old’ and ‘new’ regionalisms (Hettne 2005) essentially refers to first- and second-generation regionalisms, whereas the methodological implications of this discussion are also of relevance to Latin America-Caribbean third-generation regionalisms: while ‘old’ regionalism theory limited itself to the study of relations between nation states (i.e. formal regionalism as state-led political projects), ‘new regionalism theory’ also considers the role of non-state actors in region-building, associated with processes of regionalisation. Such non-state transnational actors include private enterprises, non-government organisations, social movements and other types of social networks formed through, for instance, cultural, ethnic, gender, informational, political and productive relations and processes (Hettne and Söderbaum 2000). Higgott (1997, p. 166) calls these ‘de jure institutional economic cooperation’ (state-driven, such as institutionally sanctioned cooperation commitments) and ‘de facto structural economic regionalisation’ (driven by intra-regional cooperation relations and processes). In reality, as Higgott argues, the ‘often caricatured dichotomous relationship’ of public and private power in pluralist political science and neo-classical economics is blurred (1997, p. 166). Therefore, as used in this chapter, ‘regionalisation’ dissolves this dichotomisation by referring to ‘the more complex processes of forming regions’, irrespective of ‘whether these are consciously planned [i.e. statedriven] or caused by spontaneous processes [i.e. non-state-driven]’ (Hettne 2005, p. 545). Such considerations are virtually absent from the mainstream literature on Latin AmericaCaribbean regionalisms. Commonly, ‘the region’/‘the regional’ are equated with de jure regionalism, whereby methodological territorialism combines with methodological nationalism in an ahistorical approach that views regions as static and isolated blocs of homogeneous (nation-)states (usually referred to as ‘countries’). With (neo)realist international relations’ underpinnings of nation states as homogeneous, rational unitary subjects in pursuit of distinct interests and enmeshed in a continuous struggle for domination (‘power politics’, e.g., Buzan et  al. 1998), different generations of Latin America-Caribbean regionalisms have become deterministically construed as ideologically separate, incompatible and conflicting projects. Embedded within the ‘two lefts’ thesis promulgated from the mid-2000s onward (for cogent refutations of this tale, see e.g., Beasley-Murray et al. 2009; Chodor 2015; Ramírez Gallegos 2006), this was articulated, above all, in a supposed ‘contest’, ‘fight’, or ‘struggle for leadership’ between ‘Brazil and Venezuela’ (Briceño-Ruiz 2010, pp. 218, 223; Burges 2007, p. 1343; Flemes and Wojczewski 2011). At the regional scale, this translated into claims of ‘fragmentation in the hemisphere’ (Serbin 2007, p. 192), especially with respect to a ‘Venezuela-centred’/‘Venezuelan-led’ ALBA-TCP competing and/or conflicting with a ‘Brazil-centred’/‘Brazilian-led’ UNASUR (Brands 2011; Briceño-Ruiz 2010; Burges 2007; Kellogg 2007; Malamud and Gardini 2012; Riggirozzi 2012; Sanahuja 2009). More generalised, ‘multiple membership’ allegedly generates ‘divisions’ and ‘frictions between and within regional integration projects’ (Malamud and Gardini 2012, p. 123), and ‘a proliferation, 101

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fragmentation and divergence between integrationist initiatives’ results in ‘multiply loose commitments without deepening significantly any aspect of regionalism or collective decisionmaking’ (Gardini 2015, 219). As Gardini (ibid.) sums up, integration models largely based on free trade are still alive (CARICOM, Mercosur, CAN [Andean Community], NAFTA) . . . Countries subscribe to many different agreements, some even contradictory . . . The compatibility of ALBA and CAFTA-DR rules (Nicaragua) or ALBA and Mercosur principles (Venezuela) or ALBA, UNASUR, CAN and soon Mercosur commitments (Bolivia) is at least questionable. (pp. 214, 216–217) Despite awareness of the academic imperative to ‘disentangle’ the ‘extremely complex and overlapping regionalisms’ (Gardini 2015, p. 216), the methodological limitations of the mainstream approach precisely impede such an enterprise. Instead, by resorting to Bhagwati’s ‘spaghetti bowl’ metaphor, the geographies of Latin America-Caribbean regionalisms are depicted as a ‘mass of spaghetti in a bowl’ (Gardini 2015, p. 216; also, e.g., Dabène 2009, p. 195; Malamud and Gardini 2012; Sanahuja 2009). More nuanced accounts in this field, however, do recognise the social construction of regions and/or the role of non-state actors and transnational relations in region-building (e.g., Briceño-Ruiz 2014; Dabène 2009; Riggirozzi 2012; Riggirozzi and Tussie 2012; Sanahuja 2014). Nonetheless, the ontological and epistemological dichotomisation of ‘internal and external dynamics’ (Dabène 2009, pp. 33, 34) is commonly maintained. Above all, despite acknowledging the political (therefore, ideological) nature of regionalisms, less attention is paid to the fact that the identity of a particular region – and distinct geographies of regionalisation – are the outcomes of power struggles among diverse social and political forces (e.g., Hameiri 2013; Hettne and Söderbaum 2000; Hurrell 1995). That is, class struggle, i.e. that different generations and hybrid forms of regionalisms are the product of conflicting class interests, is entirely absent from these discussions. Instead, by labelling third-generation regionalisms as ‘post-hegemonic’, whereby ‘hegemony’ is deployed in the mainstream international relations sense as ‘dominance’ (supremacy) of a ‘country’ (i.e., the USA) (e.g., Chodor and McCarthy Jones 2013; Dabène 2009; Lo Brutto and Salazar 2015; Sanahuja 2014; Serbin 2011; Riggirozzi and Tussie 2012), the methodologically nationalist and methodologically territorialist assumptions prevail. As Agnew (1994) has pointed out, with the exception of critical international relations theory, the geographical assumptions of methodological territorialism and methodological nationalism underpin ‘the field as a whole’ (p. 56). The critical Latin America-Caribbean regionalisms literature, in most general terms, can be viewed as being framed by ‘the question of for whom, how, with what purpose, and through which actors a regional project is being pursued’ (Robertson et  al. 2016, p. 11). A (neo) Gramscian conception of ‘hegemony’, and/or analytically integrating also transnational, subnational and supranational processes and relations among state and non-state actors, overcomes the mainstream fixation on inter-national (inter-state) relations. ‘Hegemony’ here brings culture and ideas alongside material force into the picture. Hegemony in this Gramscian sense means that the great mass of mankind in a particular area or part of the world regard the existing structure of power and authority as established, natural and legitimate. Hegemony is expanded when other people come to accept those conditions as natural. (Cox, cited in Schouten 2009, p. 7) Thus, counter-hegemony – rather than a supposed ‘post-hegemony’ – makes class struggle within and across national territories explicit. A counter-hegemonic project seeks the construction of 102

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a rival structure to the prevailing ‘historical structure’, produced through ‘the conjunction of material and ideological elements’ and institutions (Cox 1996, p. 364). In this approach, SSC, as a counter-dependency strategy, alongside the quest for a ‘new international economic order’, can constitute a ‘counterhegemonic force’ (ibid., p. 365). The critical approach to contemporary Latin America-Caribbean regionalisms and SSC was empirically first deployed in my own research since 2005, starting with the transnational, counterhegemonic construction of the ALBA-TCP in Nicaragua (Muhr 2008), and subsequently extended to the socio-spatial reconfiguration of the geographies of Latin America-Caribbean regionalisms (e.g., Muhr 2011a, 2011b, 2013). Similarly, Chodor’s (2015) (neo)Gramscian critique of the ‘impoverished and superficial’ dichotomisation of Latin America grounded in ‘mainstream’ ontology underscores that ‘important points of congruence’ among distinct national projects ‘form a common ground for the construction of regional integration projects’ (pp. 5–8, 12). This research, for instance, debunks the (at the time dominant) myth of ‘BrazilVenezuela’ rivalry by empirically revealing the comprehensive South–South relations established among Brazilian and Venezuelan state and non-state actors between 2003 and 2015, as part and parcel of the Latin America-Caribbean counter-hegemonic struggle (Chodor 2015; Muhr 2008, 2011b, 2016b). Likewise, Roncallo (2014) integrates Cox’s historical materialism with Henri Lefebvre’s theory of space, in her ‘multi-scalar’ analysis of ‘counter-hegemony’ in Latin America-Caribbean. Finally, albeit less explicitly grounded in critical theory, Aponte-García’s theorisation of the ALBA-TCP as a ‘new strategic regionalism’ empirically affirms the critical ontological assumption of the ‘state/society complex’, i.e. the dialectical intertwinedness of social and political forces (Cox 1996, p. 86). As Aponte-García (2013) shows, ‘commonalities’ among different national development projects drive a ‘counter-hegemonic alternative to neoliberalism’ that ‘integrates socialist and non-socialist countries and societies in a common agenda and regional actorness’ via ‘networks and chains’ that integrate state, private, mixed and social economy enterprises ‘into regional production chains’ (pp. 122–123, 131). To be sure, the incompatibility of different Latin America-Caribbean regionalisms as identified in the mainstream literature cannot entirely be dismissed, and the relevance of SSC in regionalisation is occasionally recognised (Sanahuja 2009, 2014). As Sanahuja (2014) states with respect to the Pacific Alliance as an intended ‘counter-weight’ to the ALBA-TCP/ Petrocaribe, this is ‘obviously incompatible with integration modalities based on customs unions and with the frameworks of South–South integration’ (pp. 84–85). However, the role of SSC in region-building remains unexplored in this literature, or is represented (in accordance with the (neo)realist approach) as a state’s tool in pursuit of ‘its’ interests, which ontologically excludes the possibility of ‘real cooperation’ (Jules and Sá e Silva 2008, p. 53). Although Latin American scholarship has integrated the two fields of inquiry, methodological nationalism and methodological territorialism again prevail. In this literature, three categories of SSC have been established in correspondence with national development models: ‘anti-capitalist’ and ‘anti-imperialist’ ‘Bolivarian countries’ (usually Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela); a ‘moderate left’ of ‘undecided’ or ‘dubious reticent countries’ (especially Argentina and Brazil, pre-2015/2016, i.e. prior to the reinstitution of neoliberal authoritarianism); and ‘globalised’ neoliberal ‘countries’ (Chile, Colombia, Mexico) (Almeida 2014; Ayllón 2016; Malacalza 2016). Case studies, however, show that both the ‘Bolivarian’ and ‘moderate left’ governments actually apply the same principles and practices of SSC (see Ayllón and Surasky 2010; Ayllón and Ojeda 2013; Muhr 2011b). In sum, SSC constitutes a commonality across different national and regional development and integration projects, which undermines the sharp methodologically nationalist and methodologically territorialist dichotomisations advanced in the mainstream literature. The following section introduces a 103

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socio-spatial methodology through which the intertwined regionalisation and South–South relations, processes, flows and connectivities across national and regional territorial boundaries can be analysed.

A socio-spatial approach to the study of regionalisation and South–South relations More recently, integrating space/scale in the study of regions and regionalisation has been argued for (Hameiri 2013; Robertson et al. 2016, p. 12). These discussions, however, are more concerned with the politics of space/scale and of state transformation and governance (power relations and agency) in regionalisation, which is outside the focus of this chapter. Rather, this section synthesises key aspects of a socio-spatial methodology, discussed in greater detail in a complementary analysis (Muhr 2017). Fundamentally, (at least) three conceptions of geographical space can be distinguished: absolute space (fixed, bounded territories, such as administrative units, private property, states); relative space (the relative locations of ‘things’, which depends on the spatio-temporal framework of the observer and what social phenomenon is being studied); and relational space (the production of spatio-temporality through processes) (Harvey 2006). These co-existing spatialities are in ‘dialectical tension with each other’ (Harvey 2006, p. 276), and analytical reduction to either of them – as the mainstream literature does with absolute space – produces misleading results. While reference to ‘space’ enjoys increased popularity in the mainstream regionalisms literature (e.g., Malamud and Gardini 2012, p. 117; Riggirozzi 2012; Riggirozzi and Tussie 2012), in the absence of theoretical grounding ‘space’ is implicitly equated with absolute space (whereby it is irrelevant whether or not the member state territories are contiguous). For instance, Riggirozzi (2012) views ‘the region as a space’ (p. 432), which provides the ontological foundation for presenting the ALBA-TCP and UNASUR as separate ‘regional spaces’ (pp. 423, 426–427, Table 3). Furthermore, claims such as that ‘the regional space can create opportunities’ (p. 424), or that the ALBA-TCP and UNASUR are ‘reclaiming the regional space for the construction of alternatives’ (p. 439), point to what has been termed ‘spatial fetishism’ – the perception of social space as a fixed and static backdrop or container and reified substance with causal powers (Jessop et al. 2008, n. 8). A relational approach, however, views space as a ‘product of interrelations’ (‘relations’ as ‘embedded material practices’ (Massey 2005, p. 8)), whereby social processes and relationships ‘create/define space and time’ rather than occurring ‘in space and time’ (Massey 1994, p. 263, emphasis in original). Different sociocultural practices produce ‘different forms of space-time’ (Harvey 1996, p. 215) and, conversely, the spatial influences ‘the form of social relations’ (Massey 1995[1984], p. 337). This implies that different political projects – such as neoliberal or SSC – produce ‘a simultaneous multiplicity of spaces’ (Massey 1994, p. 3); spaces which ‘interpenetrate one another and/or superimpose themselves upon one another’ (Lefebvre 1991, p. 86, emphasis in original). As ‘always in process’ and ‘never a closed system’ (Massey 2005, p. 11), ‘the spatial’ is ‘open’ and ‘dynamic’, constructed out of the multiplicity of social relations across all spatial scales, from the global reach of finance and telecommunications, through the geography of the tentacles of national political power, to the social relations within the town, the settlement, the household and the workplace. (Massey 1994, p. 4) Relational space, therefore, is here viewed as extending across, or traversing, a plurality of interrelated scales produced in the processes of space production. As institutionalised sets of practices 104

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and discourses (Paasi 2004, p. 537), scale structures or ‘differentiates space’ (Marston and Smith 2001, p. 615), and categorisations include: the body, household and other local and subnational (e.g., building; community; municipal government; ecological niches), national (e.g., nation-state governments), inter- and transnational (e.g., cross-border regionalisms; transnational communities), regional (supranational regionalisms), and global (e.g., finance flows) scales. The significance of such scalar terms depends on the distinctive social processes (localisation, regionalisation, globalisation, and so forth) or organisational and institutional forms to which they refer and are not ‘static entities frozen permanently into geographical space’ (Brenner 2004, p. 7, Box 1.2). Rather than a fixed hierarchical (‘nested’) arrangement (for which ‘level’ would do) (Howitt 1998), scalar configurations are perpetually (re)constituted and redefined through social praxis, ‘in terms of their extent, content, relative importance, and interrelations’ (Swyngedouw 1997, p. 141). While a certain ‘tension between fixity and fluidity in scale conceptualization’ (Moore 2008, p. 205) has been noted – a tension between essentialist and constructionist approaches – such socially produced scales as the (nation-)state (as part of previously constructed, ‘pre-existing scalar structures’ (MacKinnon 2011, p. 30)) arguably do have greater fixity than scales produced through SSC.

The ZEP: producing an SSC space On the basis of the preceding discussions, this section presents purposefully selected instances and social practices of SSC in the ZEP in order to illustrate the interrelatedness of the ALBATCP, CARICOM and Petrocaribe on the one hand, and the production of an SSC space on the other. It is important to recognise that a socio-spatial methodology means neither to repudiate the state nor to discard state power over territorial space (e.g., legislation, finance), which is of utmost relevance to the promotion, regulation and coordination of regionalisation and SSC projects. In accordance with the notion of the ‘state/society complex’ (Cox 1996, p. 86), the political (state) forces are dialectically intertwined with social (societal) forces in the production of this space (Muhr 2008, 2011b), involving popular organisations and movements of different kinds (e.g., collectives and cooperatives, trade unions) (e.g., Muhr 2013; Ojeda 2010, p. 101). In the ZEP, so-called ‘Facilitator Countries’ have been designated to be in charge of coordinating five ‘Organising Programmes’: transport and communication, such as air and sea connections and telecommunication (St. Vincent and the Grenadines); productive chains to generate ‘synergies’, especially in the areas of agriculture and fishing (Venezuela); tourism (Dominican Republic); ‘fair and solidarity trade’ and integration (Nicaragua); and the social and cultural, essentially the arts and education (Haiti) (Petrocaribe 2013b; on the arts see RojasSotelo, this volume). This builds on an already existing counter-hegemonic structure of state institutions jointly administered by the ALBA-TCP/Petrocaribe and CARICOM members, such as the ALBA Bank, grandnational projects and the aforementioned grandnational enterprises, and regional as well as bilateral development funds established within this structure. Examples from the multiple SSC development dimensions across the territorial space of the ZEP include: first, by mid-2015, 15 mixed enterprises (joint ventures for supply, storage and refining of petroleum and derivatives) have been established in 12 Petrocaribe member territories between PDV Caribe S.A. (a regional scale subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela Ltd, PDVSA) and the respective state energy enterprises (Petrocaribe 2015b, pp. 15–16). These enterprises participate in national development policy, and within this national scale structure, local-scale wind farms have been created in Jamaica and Nicaragua (Petrocaribe 2015b), as well as networks of ALBA petrol stations in El Salvador and Nicaragua (Muhr 2017). Regional scale funds, such as the ALBA Caribe Fund, Petrocaribe Development Fund, and ALBA Food Fund, 105

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nourished through the concessional financing scheme, redistributed a total of USD 3,944 million between 2005 and 2014, to 432 local-scale social and socio-productive and infrastructure projects in the ZEP member territories (SELA 2015; Petrocaribe 2015b). Second, the ALBA-TCP/ Petrocaribe multi-state grandnational enterprises, which are ‘lead enterprises’ for ‘controlling and coordinating’ the strategic construction of a transnational structure, incorporate communityscale instances of worker-run micro, small and medium enterprises and cooperatives in such areas as food, finance, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, tourism, industry and mining, and transport (Aponte-García 2013, 2014; Califano, 2015; for a critical discussion see Lubbock forthcoming). Third, the ALBA-TCP grandnational project ‘Literacy and Post-literacy’, via the Cuban government’s ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! (Sure I Can!) literacy method, coordinates ‘literacy points’ (as a distinct local-scale place) set up in virtually all Latin America-Caribbean national territories across national, inter- and transnational scales (Muhr 2015; on other South–South educational connections in/from East Asia, see Waters and Leung, this volume). Similarly, the Misión Milagro (Mission Miracle) ophthalmological programmes, in 2015 and 2016 extended via inter-state agreements to the territories of Antigua and Barbuda, Commonwealth of Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, has also been operationalised transnationally across the entire Latin America-Caribbean via the establishment of local-scale ophthalmological centres and the air transport of patients to the Cuban and Venezuelan territories for treatment in state hospitals (Muhr 2008, 2011b). Finally, the multi-state teleSUR news network, funded by the governments of Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay and Venezuela, connects community media in a counter-hegemonic information structure that produces a range of scales – from the body to the global, inter alia through inter-governmental cooperation agreements and worldwide internet accessibility. Of methodological pertinence is that these material manifestations of SSC are not isolated instances (sometimes dubbed ‘pockets of resistance’), but are structurally interconnected within and across territories through which a relational SSC space is being produced. Simultaneously, as a form of material practice (see Massey 2005, p. 119), the associated connectivities and flows of people and goods simultaneously transform relative space. For instance, newly created state transport systems, including direct sea (e.g., the TRANSALBA oil tanker fleet) and air connections (e.g., the Venezuelan state company CONVIASA), now connect Caracas and Managua with Caribbean capitals (Petrocaribe 2015b; SELA 2015). This changes the relative locations of these places to each other as, historically, these globally peripheral places were mostly only indirectly connected via the USA territory. Finally, to be sure, social relations are not universally, homogeneously and coherently defined by the SSC principles, either in the respective national territories or in the territorial space of the ZEP. As global capitalist structures penetrate all member state territories (finance, production, trade, consumption), as is manifested for instance in the coexistence of global capitalist and ALBA-TCP/Petrocaribe networks of petrol stations in the El Salvadoran and Nicaraguan territories, the SSC space produced neither coincides with the absolute ALBA-TCP, Petrocaribe and CARICOM spaces, nor with the envisioned ZEP regional territory.

Conclusion Rather than ‘new blocs . . . tearing South, Central and North America apart’ (Malamud and Gardini 2012, p. 117), a socio-spatial methodology in conjunction with an SSC analytical lens reveals the commonality, interrelatedness and convergence of different generations of regionalisms in the ZEP geographical space. The reduction of national and regional territories to homogeneous absolute spaces in the mainstream literature ignores that different development projects have 106

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distinct socio-spatial repercussions, and that socio-spatial structures can be transformed through development politics (Massey 1995[1984], pp. 82–85) – in this case, SSC. Deployment of a socio-spatial methodology for future research into Latin America-Caribbean South–South relations would principally focus on producing more detailed accounts of the processes, flows and connectivities generated through these practices. Case studies may include: first, any of the 13 grandnational enterprises and/or 25 grandnational projects (Califano 2015, p. 118; for a recent in-depth study of the ALBA-Food Grandnational Enterprise, see Lubbock forthcoming); second, as central to the fair trade principle, the Petrocaribe Compensation Mechanism through which partner states pay part of their petroleum bills in goods and services, currently implemented with trade partners in Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guyana, Jamaica, Nicaragua and Suriname (Petrocaribe 2015b, pp. 19–21); and third, the formation of the Petrocaribe Common University Space (Espacio Común Universitario), as integral to the ZEP, announced in late 2015 as a network for ‘complementation’ among universities and other higher education institutes in the Greater Caribbean, which inter alia seeks to integrate the University of the West Indies (associated with the institutionalisation of CARICOM) (Petrocaribe 2015b). Such socio-spatial, pluri-scalar research will most likely be of an inter- or transdisciplinary nature, conducted in multiple places across regional and national geographical spaces. Imperative in this endeavour of overcoming methodological nationalism will be to disaggregate national trade and finance statistics into those associated with South–South relations, and those that are not – to make visible this ‘coexisting heterogeneity’ (Massey 2005, pp. 9–11) obliterated from the dominant literature on Latin America-Caribbean regionalisms.

Notes 1 ‘Greater Caribbean’ refers to the Latin America-Caribbean littoral and island states, countries and territories within the geographical space of the Caribbean Sea. 2 I would like to thank Jessica Byron, University of the West Indies, for highlighting this aspect (personal communication, 8 July 2015). 3 For definitions of ‘solidarity’, ‘complementarity’ and ‘cooperation’ in this context, see Muhr (2016a, pp. 633–634). Antithetical to neoliberal free trade agreements, ‘Peoples’ Trade Agreement’ (Tratado de Comercio de los Pueblos, TCP) means that ‘these integration mechanisms are instruments of solidarian and complementary exchange among the countries intended to benefit the peoples’ (Petrocaribe 2015b, p. 5). 4 For examples of counter-dependency effects (a reduction of ‘systemic value extraction’ and increased international intra-ALBA export trade), see Muhr (2017, p. 11).

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8 Creating indigenous discourse History, power and imperialism in academia, Palestinian case1 Janette Habashi

Introduction Decolonising research has been articulated as a new line of thinking in academia. This project initiative provides space and legitimacy to the contribution of indigenous discourse. The approach was primarily produced as a result of postmodern and postcolonial thinking. Traditionally, during the Enlightenment and colonisation period, indigenous scholars had to eliminate prior knowledge and espouse colonial discourse. As a result, decolonising research challenges dominant modern methods of knowing and reinforces indigenous identity and discourse. Elaborating on indigenous knowledge invites questions on the appropriateness of adopting modern paradigms in understanding the indigenous journey (Tuhiwai Smith 1999). Semali and Kincheloe (1999) and Taiaiake (1999) have presented ample perspectives on the issue of integrating indigenous discourse and how it is important to embrace the challenges of such an endeavour. Indigenous discourse resists alien paradigms and uses a native method of knowing. The foundation of decolonising research is the empowerment of subordinate narratives that challenge Western ways of meaning/understanding as well as the views of non-Eurocentric studies. However, this chapter argues that in reality, decolonising methodology creates an imaginary supremacy of an alternative research methodology that is very much seeded in traditional Western episteme. The purpose of this essay is to understand the controversial relationship between the contemporary concept of decolonising research and academic imperialism using the Palestinian people as an example. Some might question how one could decolonise research if the scholar is colonised. The concern is not the methodology of decolonising research but, rather, the impossibility of decolonising research for a community that has frequently been subjugated and muted. The issue of indigenous research versus Western research, although explored extensively, nevertheless requires a new analytic lens. This chapter explores the question of whether decolonising methodology is a genuine epistemic innovation or if it is an extension of colonised discourse. Using the Palestinian experience as a prototype, data from this legacy are presented to examine this question. Such a question is a challenge, especially because oppression has been for so long a daily reality (Carey 2001; Farsoun and Zacharia 1997; Finkelstein 2003; Pappé 1992). Palestinian oppression is defined here as resulting in not only the collective mass displacement and 112

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transfer of the population in 1948 and 1967 but also the incessant and invisible effort of muting (silencing) the Palestinian narrative. The impossibility of decolonising research for genuine indigenous studies becomes more problematic when critiquing indigenous discourse within decolonising research because the author is an indigenous researcher from a culture with a well-established history of scholarship. When the fundamental claim for decolonising research is to empower indigenous discourse, its intention is questionable, especially when some indigenous scholars are experiencing colonisation. A difficult road lies ahead when not only the reader expects final resolution but also the individual becomes the owner of the collective knowledge. The issue of indigenous discourse becomes more complicated by the Cartesian view, which values the individual over the group. It is important to note that the voice of the individual in this chapter is not the focus; rather, the voice is a means of conveying a collective knowledge and does not claim ownership or final representation of such knowledge. In Western academic heritage, scholars and academic institutions glorify the individual over the group and ignore the extensive connections between the individual and the collective. An illustrative example of the misunderstanding that develops between collectivist and Cartesian discourse is demonstrated by a recent experience of the Guatemalan scholar Rigoberta Menchù. Menchú (1996) expressed that the collective experience was part of her suffering. In response, Western scholars attacked Menchú because they claimed she had not personally experienced these calamities (McLaren and Pinkney-Pastrana 2000). The converse of this argument is that the individual is part of the collective voice and, on the other hand, nominates oneself to be the spokesperson of the group. This paradox is part of the inherent oppression in which the roles of the individual and the group are inconsistent. Confusion declines when we consider the indigenous scholars’ agency rights according to their geopolitical culture and do not evaluate scholars according to Cartesian principles. Agency rights to geopolitical culture emerge when the individual is a member of the collective and has responsibility toward the group. Such a perception of agency does not register in Western academic institutions that perpetuate imperialistic principles or in decolonising research attempts, because the Cartesian notion is the foundation and the extension of imperialistic values. The shared expressions in these pages are rooted and articulated within the political upheaval and social injustice that the current Palestinian generation and previous generations have endured. Therefore, the reflections are not those of the author; rather, they are the understanding of the Palestinian people. The reason for taking such a stance is to empower the collective and to treat the individual as a member who is connected and committed to the community cause. The approach makes it necessary to situate both the author and the reader. This chapter works to produce a statement in which the reader locates the author; on the other hand, the essay highlights the author’s location. The stand I take is one of collective reasoning rather than one of individuality. Therefore, I invite the reader to look at the chapter from the collective mentality.

A review of the literature and statement of the problem The current effort of promoting decolonised research to challenge mainstream discourse is not the first attempt in the history of higher education; rather, it is a consistent recurrence of Eurocentric academic trends that perpetuate what is known as ‘academic imperialism’ (Churchill 1995). Such epistemology is in response to the universal ontology that is preset by Eurocentric claims and manifested in education, morals, priorities, women’s issues, and so forth. Some scholars disagree and claim that ample attempts have been made to challenge the dominant way of knowledge, such as in feminism and indigenous and critical studies. The premises of these 113

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studies are to enforce alternative tools of research so they will be accepted into the domain paradigms. However, the blueprint of academic imperialism relies on a single dominant pedagogy to reproduce intellectual discourse. Presenting the views of non-Western scholars does not indicate deviation from the orthodoxy of academic imperialism. It is only reinforcing epistemology that coincides with its values (Barkan 1994). Postmodern and postcolonial social science studies and resulting theories provide evidence for the existence of academic imperialism (Hill et  al. 2002). It is often argued that the work of decolonising research is an academic myth, especially when methodological parameters are designed within existing cultural and academic traditions. Churchill (2000, p. 54) stated, ‘The monolithic White Studies configuration of U.S. higher education . . . thus serves to underpin the hegemony of white supremacism in its other, more literal manifestations: economic, political, military and so on’. The preeminent configuration in higher education institutions does not allow research conditions to flourish that are incongruent with the prevailing Western academic tradition. Therefore, no matter how much methodological reconstruction is done in decolonising research, one cannot have a meaningful account of indigenous contexts without acknowledging the historical and current hegemony of European influence on modern academe. It is difficult to make connections between academic endeavour and cultural imperialism because the prevailing conception is that academia occupies a ‘neutral role’ or is ‘value neutral’ (Churchill 1995; Said 1994). Academic neutrality is a false argument because academic endeavour is constituted in time and processes that intersect with cultural and academic imperialism (Churchill 1995; McLaren and Pinkney-Pastrana 2000). The existence and practice of such a relationship (in terms of valued topics, funding research, research methods, etc.) hinder the establishment of a context that is conducive to genuine decolonising research, particularly from an indigenous perspective. Some indigenous and feminist scholars are working hard to change the situation, but their voices are not heard. The concept of decolonisation implies that scholars from formerly colonised nations are now free from oppressive conditions and have the academic freedom to produce, implement or reconstruct cultural discourses. It is ironic that within this context, the concept of decolonising research is produced from former as well as current imperialistic academic institutions (Greeson 1994; Hiner 1978, 1990). The expectations of ‘ex-colonialist nations’ have not changed in higher academic institutions (Churchill 1995); they are simply disguised under new slogans of liberalism and openness. The subtle association between neocolonialist governments and their academic institutions has never been precisely researched; therefore, little is expressed about colonised discourse and its role in contemporary neocolonialist research. The proponents of decolonising research base their premise on changing the power structure in academia (Mutua and Swadener 2003; Tuhiwai Smith 1999). The objective is noble and the notion of reconstructing the power structure governing research is essential for understanding the impact of colonisation. However, two major problems become apparent concerning these attempts. First, mere deliberation about hegemony does not necessarily provide an instrument for or an outcome of decolonising research. Consideration does not empower non-Western scholars, particularly when academic institutions continue to act as the guardians of imperialistic values (Barkan 1994; Churchill 1995; Hiner 1990). The second problem in decolonising research is the construction of the term non-Western. The term defines an existence by a negation rather than an affirmation. The term is popular in higher education and describes ‘indigenous’ scholarly work. The supposition is that Western thinking is the standard and non-Western thinking is dependent, less dignified, and academically inferior to the Western paradigm. Although some non-Western scholars accept the superiority of Western research standards, indigenous people reject the entire premise. 114

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Steve Biko, a prominent South African political activist, rejected the term non-White to describe the black indigenous people of South Africa: They would no longer use the term non-Whites, nor allow it to be used as a description of them. They were being stated as ‘non something’ which implied that a standard was something and they were not of that particular standard. (Arnold 1978, p. 14) Although Biko was not arguing with Western academy, his point is significant in the context of this chapter for understanding the construction of academic slogans. To empower non-Western research, indigenous scholars should also refuse to be called non-Western researchers. Being called non-Western implies that the researcher accepts the supremacy of Western methodologies, standards and paradigms. To make the case worse, a diversity of knowledge is lumped under the terms Western and non-Western; therefore, new ways to describe such knowledge need to be considered because not all non-Western discourses come from the same school of thought and/or experience. Although considerable work has been done in reconstructing to eliminate attachment to Western knowledge and the term non-Western, such as in indigenous and aboriginal studies, still the work is identified as non-Western discourse. To better understand how decolonising research for indigenous scholars is a myth, I outline a conceptual framework and historical context and present a brief case of Palestine as an illustrative example. The following section provides a framework for the discussion of decolonised research by examining the concepts of oppression, indigenous consciousness and academic discourse. The next part of the essay places indigenous discourse within a historical context. Finally, I examine the case of the Palestinian context.

Oppression, indigenous consciousness, and academic discourse Historical examples reflect the intersection between oppression, indigenous political consciousness and academic discourse. The most significant examples of such articulations are the historiographic works of Biko (as cited in Arnold 1978), Fanon (1965, 1967), Freire (1997) and Memmi (1965). Although the backgrounds of these testimonials are different in location, time and ethnicity, their works are imperative for highlighting the paradoxical reality and consciousness of oppressed people and how their perceptions of subjugation are impediments to progress toward freedom. Fanon belonged to the colonialist nation France, but he acted in contrast to national interest. Biko was the founder of the South Africa Student Organization, Memmi was a Jewish Arab scholar in Tunisia, and Freire was a Brazilian revolutionary. Their works attempt to identify oppressive situations and to note the complexities endured by oppressed people who went through an assimilation process and simultaneously resisted their oppressors. The challenge was to break the sting of oppression and transform the oppressed mentality. These testimonies are exclusive particularly when situating oneself in the collective struggle. Participating in meaningful engagement in resistance and maintaining the integrity of those being oppressed certainly shed some light on those looking in as well as those portraying an outward image of oppression (Bhabha 1998; Gibson 1999). Biko, Fanon, Freire and Memmi pinpointed the mental processes and psychological exertions associated with oppression. Fanon (1967), in his book Black Skin, White Masks, exposed the contradictions that are associated with assimilation, where the uprooting of individuality and collective identity is the expected behavioural outcome. Biko (as cited in Arnold 1978, p. xviii) articulated the nuances of behaviour associated with society’s attempts at integration: 115

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It is an integration in which Blacks will compete with Blacks, using each other as stepping stones up a steep ladder leading them to White values. It is an integration in which Black man will have to prove himself in terms of these values before meriting acceptance and ultimate assimilation. It is an integration in which the poor will grow poorer and the rich richer in a country where the poor have always been Blacks. Psychological distortion is the key to sustaining continual dominance over subordinated groups because it creates internal oppression among the subjugated individuals. Reflecting on subjugated and paradoxical realities and their psychological distortions leads to the understanding of a ‘mind-set’ concept and its role in discourse development. ‘Mind-set’ represents the shared experiences of those who are oppressed and the oppressors who superimpose specific thought processes on the dialectic. The resulting intellectual activities only empower the oppressor’s manifestations and further limit the possibility of any power substitution. The subject matter is the perpetuation of oppression even if national liberation occurs. The oppressed continue to execute the implementations of the oppressors even though the very principles were once wholeheartedly resisted. A concern that is repeatedly emphasised is how such mental conditioning implicitly restricts oppressed people from true liberation. The notion is that once free, oppressed people continue to be locked into oppressive-like patterns. A quandary emerges because the oppressed people have to face not only the consequences of oppression but also the tendency to continue the cycle of oppression (Bhabha 1998). Such is the legacy of colonisation that continues for generations. The answer for this vicious cycle and ‘mind-set’ lies not in the spectrum of oppression alone but in the economic status of the society, as well as in intellectual and social resistance. Within the subjectivity of assimilation as well as resistance, oppression can fluctuate depending on the societal fabric of the intellectual elite and the bourgeois liberals. Such groups are committed to national resource availability, including labour provided by the working class. The bourgeois liberal and intellectual elite always play a significant role in reproducing the ‘mind-set’ and perpetuating oppression. Interior oppression restricts the transformation of ‘mind-set’, and these liberal elitist groups are the major beneficiaries of such discourse. Elaborating on the extent of the oppressed ‘mind-set’, therefore, reflects the limitations of the collective reference and cultural discourse of the oppressed people. Hence, some individuals are radical social agents for transformation as Biko, Freire and Fanon demonstrated. The limitations of oppressed cultural discourse evolve from years of colonisation. People are denied the fundamentals of cultural integrity by means of containment or solitary confinement. After being oppressed, the conquered are denied the right to practise their indigenous religion, and missionary campaigns act vigorously to convert people to accept another’s faith.2 The conquered are also denied the right to speak their native language and are forced to communicate in a foreign language (Bridges 2000; Churchill 1999). New colonial methods of social and economic structures are additional mechanisms for eradicating existing culture. The purpose of new structures is to normalise and humanise the indigenous from their assumed subhuman state and to meet the normative level of their colonialist counterparts. Although Biko and other activists recognised the objectives of the colonisers’ practices, including strategies for psychological distraction, the result was the eradication of cultural discourse. Biko, along with other activists, focused on the perpetuation of oppression and why oppressed people cannot overcome the oppression following their ‘independence’. The authors analysed the characteristics of the perpetuating strategies of oppression, which helped explain the limitations of trying to salvage cultural discourse within the continuous materialisation of oppression. 116

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Historical context of creating indigenous discourse To understand oppression and indigenous discourse, it is essential to consider their history and relationship to academic institutions. Earlier in this chapter, an explanation for the development of indigenous discourse was offered. It is essential, however, to examine the continuance of colonial dominance in different academic schools of thought. It should be noted that this essay neither suggests a magic formula that would break the cycle of the oppressed ‘mind-set’ nor advocates that decolonising research is a means of reconnecting with indigenous discourse; rather, the purpose is to enunciate the issues that lead to the conclusion that decolonising research is a modern academic myth. The understanding of the mythical proportion of decolonising research rests on the familiarity of colonising discourse as it appears within the epistemology of imperialism (Churchill 1999; Lacsamana 1998; Said 1993) as well as in the postmodern and postcolonial notions of Gandhi (1998) and Spivak (1999). A current trend among economically powerful countries is to enforce imperialistic principles in academic institutions (McLaren and Pinkney-Pastrana 2000; Said 1978; ‘The Fight Over “Patriotic Correctness”’ 2002); nonetheless, some scholars relentlessly resist government and political pressure. Such individuals act in defiance, isolating themselves from dominant political views of government and engaging in providing insight on alternative political stands. Interactions of neocolonisation intersect deeply with globalised perceptions of indigenous discourse. The composition and practice of global life encourages each nation-state to follow the lead of the global market policy. Global policy persistently disrupts cultural selfimage such that people have little opportunity to salvage their cultural heritage (Bridges 2000; McLaren and Farahmandpur 2001). Rescuing indigenous heritage was a concern of social scientists in colonial eras. Colonial theories of human development create the idea that, globally, individuals must comply with a universal definition of personal growth, including current needs and future prospects (Cannella 1996; Grieeshaber and Cannella 2001; James and Prout 1997). The imposition of universal development not only crossed cultural barriers but coloured the understanding of historical narratives and indigenous discourse as well. All cultural groups and their individual members had to comply with an imposed knowledge structure. Cultures unable to submit conclusively to imposed ideology provided evidence to confirm their inherent backwardness. Any manifestation of resistance to imposed discourse was indicative of immaturity and refusal to accept the Enlightenment. Acting in accordance with colonialist theories was a gesture of agreement with the prevailing power structure and an acknowledgement of superiority of the colonists’ discourse. Equality within competing discourses was out of the question because truth for the colonisers lay in the recitation of power and superiority according to a prescribed script. Implication of the colonialist intellectual model was necessary for success and became manifested in pedagogies and intellectual processes. Postmodern theories do not contradict the imposed power structure and, therefore, allow the continuation of colonial dominance (Hill et al. 2002). Some postmodern perspectives were built on the ashes of colonial views, yet they never fundamentally disturbed the colonialist agenda. Indigenous voices were cited in postmodern discourse; however, the power discourse never changed, thus, leaving the indigenous to continually be the Other. Postmodernism did not alter the power structure; rather, it enforced the colonial stereotypic assumption about indigenous discourse. Scholars espoused the postmodern paradigm on the ground that it provided an avenue to speak out. However, the result was the maintenance of the colonial power structure because the configuration of postmodern paradigms was built on the foundation of an imposed cultural discourse with the assumption that changing contextual names resulted in a transformation of praxis. 117

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The irony lies not only in postmodern theories but in postcolonial assumptions as well. The postcolonial mantra is that previously colonised countries are now free of outside control (Bartovich and Lazarus 2002; Chrisman and Parry 2000; Gandhi 1998; Spivak 1999). On the contrary, circumstances are created whereby imperialistic interests are served even when physical colonisation is not apparent, a process Parenti (1988, p. 66) described as the ‘practice of direct exploitation without the burden of direct rule’. Oppressed people have only one escape, but the choice relies heavily on the prevailing imperialistic discourse (McLaren and Pinkney-Pastrana 2000). The opportunity to restructure a discourse is consistently conditioned by an imperialist or colonialist approach. Therefore, indigenous people have no alternative – were they to succeed – but to adopt the intellectual imposition of the neocolonialist academy. Although support exists for resisting this approach, the dissenting voices are rarely heard. Choices for decolonisation research conducted within the framework of a neocolonialist equation are not a liberating concept because both insiders and outsiders operate within an oppressive culture where imperialism is a widespread phenomenon. In postcolonial projects, academics have insisted on integrating remaining pieces of indigenous discourse to enhance the assumption of culturally appropriate practice (Barkan 1994; Gandhi 1998). Combining postcolonial theories with fragments of indigenous discourse is delusional. The collaborative hybrid contrasts with the common materialistic experiences of the indigenous and their historical oppression, which often results in a dismissal of some individuals’ activities. Interpreting the accounts of individual activity does not correspond to the historical reasoning of a given tradition; rather, it is a process that denies the systemic pattern of collective subordination and focuses on the remnants of tradition but is void of any understanding of its historical context (Lacsamana 1998). Traditional discourse developed purposefully. Picking and choosing remnants from traditional ritual does not reflect the historical quest of the discourse. Such practices only perpetuate confusion. Current indigenous discourse is the result of oppression experience and is not a response to an original cultural journey or quest. Oppression recklessly eliminates the composition and foundation of indigenous discourse. Contemporary discourse addresses only those issues that concern current cultural materialism. Therefore, the timing of the decolonising research claim is fundamental: It could be perceived as one ‘liberal academic body’ treating the Other in an old/new oppressive regime in the guise of intellectual property. The colonial perception of indigenous culture and discourse classifies them as explicitly exotic (Said 1978); colonised cultures are treated as entertainment entities that require the endorsement of the colonists (Bahl 1997). Hence, the postcolonial continues the colonial notion but with a new twist for rescuing indigenous discourse. The context of feminist writings of the global North (Western culture) is an example. The attempt was to colonise Southern women’s discourse in the name of ‘freedom for all women’ from patriarchal exploitation as perceived by women from the global North. The act of liberating the Other, in this case women, is as exploitative as colonisation. Literature enforces the continuing legacy that the global South needs to be ‘humanised’ and that the appropriate incentive is the global North’s perception of humanity: I would like to suggest that the feminist writing I analysed here is discursively colonizing material. . . . I argue that the assumptions of the privilege and ethnocentric universality on the one hand, and inadequate self-consciousness about the effect of the western scholarship on the ‘third world’ in the context of a world system dominated by the west on the other. (Mohanty 1994, p. 197) 118

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Attempts at postcolonial intervention mislead both readers and indigenous people. Therefore, the interpretations of postmodern and postcolonial theories should be rejected.

Remains of indigenous discourse and neocolonialism: the case of Palestine Colonial hegemony destabilises cultural development and uproots indigenous discourse from its original composition. The remains of the discourse are a mere reflection of the reality of oppression and not the authentic collective reference. For example, Palestinian discourse has been tremendously interrupted by Zionist colonisation. Palestinian discourse was fundamentally disrupted when 80% of the land was colonised in 1948 and the indigenous people were forcibly displaced (Khalidi 1992; Pappé 1992). Consequently, relationships between the land, art and original geopolitical discourse were altered to fit a harsh new reality. Palestinians living in the diaspora number 3.5 million, and most of them are refugees. Eighty per cent of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and 40% of those in the West Bank are refugees. Twenty per cent of the Palestinians living in Israel face discrimination based on age-old European racism (Firer 1998; Ram 2000; Soen 2002). Palestinians in all geopolitical locations are denied the opportunity to learn about their history. The Palestinians who are living in Israel have to learn the ideology of Zionism, and the curriculum does not refer to Palestinian populations that were living on the land before the establishment of Israel in 1948 (Al-Haj 1998; Gur-Ze’ev 2000). The curriculum perpetuates the assumption that it is ‘a land without people and people without land’. This was the rumour that was spread to the Jewish communities around the world at the beginning of the 20th century to encourage individuals to settle in Palestine. The case for the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is different; before 1993, Palestinians living in the West Bank had to take on the Jordanian curriculum, and in Gaza, Palestinians had to adopt an Egyptian curriculum (Parry 1995). However, both curricula were reviewed and modified by the Israeli Security Office. The effect was the elimination of any statements that might imply Palestine or Palestinians. The current curriculum designed by the Palestinian Authority is reviewed by the Israeli government, which has the prerogative to enforce or delete any unit (Asaad 2000). The new curriculum does not teach Palestinian history because it is not in line with the ‘Peace Process’. Ironically, the Israeli government does not follow the same process. Israeli curricula continue to deny the history of Palestinian people who inhabited the land before the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948. Palestinians living in Israel have to learn the history of Zionism without any reference to their own history. Consequently, current Palestinian discourse does not mirror the roots and chronological complexities of original indigenous discourse such as child rearing, communication, land usage, ownership, religion and education. The application of decolonising research to current Palestinian reality is an act of academic imperialism. This is so because it excludes the history of oppression and attempts to salvage remnants of cultural discourse on behalf of the indigenous. In this process, little reflection on the complexity of oppression endured by the indigenous population is attempted. Even if precolonised indigenous discourse is examined, it cannot be used because it is historical and does not mirror current geopolitical circumstances. Nonetheless, remains of indigenous discourse are created to comply with contemporary imperialistic imposition. The decolonising approach is not applicable to the Palestinian people because the Palestinian political situation has not changed since 1948. Indigenous discourse, however, has changed tremendously since Zionist colonisation; therefore, indigenous discourse cannot be treated as an entity separate from the oppressive situation. Geopolitical realities prohibit the introduction of such a notion. However, one could argue that this approach might be significant for another reason. The question in this case is whether the indigenous society is free from colonisation or colonisation has changed to globalisation. 119

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Ignoring Palestinian reality is a colonialist power perception. Colonialist discourse refuses to account for Palestinian rhetoric but enhances the muting of historical narrative. Drawing from this preconceived assumption, academic imperialism (within its language structure) is a power composition because it consciously avoids addressing the historical realities of oppression. Indeed, roots and history prevail in indigenous narratives; history is part of the future and such understandings are not ubiquitous in the global North. Indigenous cultures simply yearn for their history and the time when imperialism was not part of their experience, and they also look to the future when imperialism will no longer be the preference. As a result, academic institutions in the global North fail to reflect on the process of indigenous discourse because imperialistic values do not encompass reflectivity about oppression and its consequences.

The struggles of indigenous scholars Discussing the relationship between academic imperialism and indigenous discourse does not lead to an understanding of oppression if the paradoxical reality of the indigenous scholar is omitted (also see Patel, this volume). Complexity evolves from interactions among academic imperialism, oppression and the day-to-day struggles of indigenous researchers. Struggles occur when endorsing neocolonialist methods while ignoring the historical context of indigenous discourse. The question is in the methods that are contingent on the historical context. Time is an important variable in the discourse process. The assumption is that indigenous scholars must be sanctioned by liberal academics and receive permission to express their perspectives. The discursive sphere of oppression, therefore, is not only perpetuated by the oppressed but also conditioned by the representation of the oppressors in specific forms. Presentations of indigenous discourse are constituted within the framework of ‘liberal’ notions. A different challenge emerges in the reluctance toward, and ambiguity of, self-criticism in neoliberal thinking. The substantive issue in this case is regarding the Other as a separate entity. What can liberals learn from the Other discourse remnants, for example, without first fully understanding the historical spectrum of academic imperialistic praxis? This framework of inquiry, designed by ‘liberal academics/neocolonists’, manipulates indigenous discourse and encourages the continuation of academic imperialism. In addition, an assumption is implied regarding the notion of Others that their history is rooted in indigenous discourse as well as in familiarity with colonial perspectives. This assumption fails to reflect on the interaction between both discourses. It is apparent that decolonising research denotes an attitude similar to the colonial structure associated with the Other; in other words, it is now possible to enclose indigenous discourse (remains) with little reflection on exclusive political and academic practices and their relationship to academic imperialism. Decolonising research, in this context, is a disingenuous call that results from a lack of self-criticism by the global North and its role in promoting academic imperialism. A new account should be based on academic self-criticism and its implication for indigenous discourse. Documenting the impact of colonisation on changing the process of the discursive sphere is essential to successfully expose the original conditions of cultural discourse design. Neocolonial intellectual and materialistic activities should not be disregarded when considering current indigenous discourse. Oppression limits discourse and alters the direction of collective reference; therefore, rather than continuous discourse delivery, only discursive pockets occur in most cases. Making sense of the confusion is no longer the goal. What is important is to be aware of the relationship between the individual and the collective and their relationship to discourse. Current pockets of discourse are not designed solely within the indigenous articulation

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but merely within the persistence of oppression. Nonetheless, continuous indigenous effort is being made to maintain a collective identity that is influenced by current oppression dilemmas. The matrix is far from complete, but it becomes more systematic when options are unveiled to which indigenous researchers acquiesce. A predominant struggle for the indigenous scholar is the contradiction between acting as an individual in the academy and acting as a member of the academy. Each choice has a different connotation. Intellectual property, as well as discourse, is part of indigenous culture and belongs to the collective, not to the individual. When reporting indigenous narratives to the global Northern academy, the language is no longer based on collective knowledge but on individual endeavour. The global Northern academic language, however, is not founded on the same knowledge construction values. Therefore, some indigenous scholars struggle with academic reporting. The knowledge construction of indigenous cultures is a collective property: it is generated from the collective experience. Within a collective cultural context, individual success cannot be claimed because the creation of knowledge is not founded on individual liberty; cultural discourse always belongs to the group of which the individual is a member. Some indigenous scholars are academically torn when negotiating between collective discourse and individual reporting that intends to claim ownership of the collective intellect. The tradition among global Northern scholars is to declare individual accomplishment that is enforced through academia’s traditional values of competition, individualism and ownership. Claiming individual ownership for collective knowledge becomes a paradox for the indigenous scholar as well as another myth of decolonising research. Indigenous scholars face perennial questions when studying cultural issues. Individual ownership, cultural representation, language, and the reconstruction of intellect strongly prevail. Complexity in reporting is only part of the political position a researcher encounters (Churchill 1995; McLaren and Pinkney-Pastrana 2000; Memmi 1965). Failure to establish a political stance on what seems an objective study deludes the researcher in attempting to understand the complexity of the academy and the academy’s response to indigenous research.

Conclusion The primary objective of this chapter is not to find a method to decolonise research but to articulate the impossibilities of such an intention. The prevalent reason for decolonising research is in the method of academic imperialism. Academic imperialist discourse is entrenched in academic methodology, language and ontology. Questions raised in this essay include: Is there an indigenous discourse for the Palestinian situation? Is decolonising research a genuine endeavour? In essence, the purpose of the chapter was not to provide answers to these questions; rather, the intent was to offer an overview of the complexities of decolonising research for both Palestinian people and anyone who endures oppression. Another issue that emerges is whether current research alternatives, which are part of the discourse, are intertwined with the historical context of colonisation. A problem remains about some indigenous and Western scholars’ blindness to the reality of geopolitical and academic culture. Alternatives, in this situation, are accessed only within the global Northern perspective that is already ingrained in the colonialist praxis. The innovation of decolonising research comes from the same framework that uprooted the indigenous method for lexicalising discourse. The current problem lies not only in the historical limitation of cultural discourse but also in the continuing perpetuation of imperialism by local scholars in the global South. A method used to cement the legacy of colonisation is

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to persistently empower the intellectual elite of the global South, who played a significant part in perpetuating strategies of oppression. The intellectual elite might struggle in the process of trying to preserve their individual status and their collective interest, but such are the means of espousing the colonised approach. Elite groups relentlessly adopt the colonialist method of lexicalising discourse and avoiding critiques. Intellectual elites play a significant role by associating with the global North and also neglecting self-reflection of their role in perpetuating oppression and enhancing the continuation of academic imperialism. Therefore, it is essential to disrupt the notion of decolonising research, in particular for Palestinian people and for other scholars who might perceive themselves as colonised. As I mentioned before, the primary purpose of this chapter is not to look for solutions but to pinpoint the paradoxes that indigenous scholars endure. It is too simplistic to wait for a solution; however, highlighting the obstacles demands more insight than one might recognise. The more we preview the paradoxes, the more we understand the challenges. Therefore, I invite the reader to look at and understand the situation as part of the solution, not as a separate entity. The irony is that Western academics expect indigenous scholars to propose a process to solve the problem statement. I believe the case here is no different. I was asked to dictate a solution to this complex academic reality; however, this might contradict the premises of this chapter. During my writing of this essay, I intentionally avoided proposing a solution, not because I was unaware of the existence of such a request but because the recommendation of an answer is another example of Western thinking. This request was not unanticipated, because most Westerners do not experience what I am articulating. Although they show some empathy, in reality, they are at the other end of the oppression spectrum. In addition, the Western academy is, by design, looking for a disclosure. It seems that having the opportunity for disclosure equates, in a way, to having options. However, from the oppressed standpoint, we do not have the luxury of such a prospect; rather, we strive to survive an oppressing reality. The act of surviving and sustaining as a collective is partly our solution. The reality of oppression does not allow oppressed people the opportunity for disclosure. Encouraging indigenous scholars to search for a solution is part of a colonialist ideology that maintains the illusion that we have choices and power. Therefore, any proposed research alternative from other oppressed scholars or myself is deeply intersected with colonial discourse – as is well articulated in this essay. This constrains our options, which to begin with are the result of a contemporary–historical imbalance in structures of power and privilege. In other words, we do not have the choice to form an alternative discourse. The choices are prefigured in the boundaries of colonialist discourse. Hence, we need to look back to history and learn from historiographic accounts from examples such as Biko, Fanon and Freire. These testimonies lead me to restate these discourses of resistance and education as part of the solution. We need to remember that even resisting discourse is not an option; it is prohibited by the paradigm of imperialism. Retaining the essence of the chapter, I would like to invite the reader – especially now that you have a greater understanding of the paradoxes of indigenous discourse – to propose an answer, if there is such a thing, for the Palestinian reality as well as for other geopolitical communities that find themselves the object of the same calculus of academic imperialism. The reader is here reminded that economic and political globalisation is another form of imperialism and colonisation. Creating a collective understanding and, therefore, a dialogue is more powerful than anything other scholars or I might propose. In addition, collective understanding will assist us as scholars to challenge the delusion of Cartesian views, particularly in indigenous work. I encourage the reader to share and debate his or her views in an effort to challenge the article and to be constructive in articulating a new research methodology. 122

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Notes 1 This chapter is a reprint of Janette Habashi’s 2005 article by the same title,‘Creating Indigenous Discourse: History, Power, and Imperialism in Academia, Palestinian Case’, published in Qualitative Inquiry 2005 11: 771, DOI: 10.1177/1077800405276809. We are grateful to the publishers for allowing us to reprint this article in the present handbook. 2 In 2000, the Pope apologised for Catholic acts during periods of colonisation, especially to those people who were forced to change their spiritual beliefs.

References Al-Haj, M., 1998. Arab Education: Development Versus Control. In: Y. Iram and M. Schmida (eds), The Educational System in Israel. London: Greenwood, pp. 91–111. Arnold, M. (ed.), 1978. Steve Biko: Black Consciousness in South Africa. New York: Random House. Asaad, D., 2000. Palestinian Educational Philosophy between Past and Present. Studies in Philosophy and Education 19, 387–403. Bahl, V., 1997. Cultural Imperialism and Women’s Movements: Thinking Globally. Gender and History 9(1), 1–14. Barkan, E., 1994. Post–anti-colonial Histories: Representing the Other in the Imperial Britain. Journal of British Studies 33, 180–203. Bartovich, C. and Lazarus, N., 2002. Marxism, Modernity and Postcolonial Studies. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Bhabha, H., 1998. Remembering Fanon: Self, Psyche and the Colonial Condition. In: K. Williams and L. Chrisman (eds), Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory: A Reader. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 112–125. Bridges, R., 2000. Imperialism, Decolonization and Africa. New York: St Martin’s. Cannella, G., 1996. Deconstructing Early Childhood Education: Social Justice and Revolution. New York: Peter Lang. Carey, R. (ed.), 2001. The New Intifada: Resisting Israeli Apartheid. New York: Verso. Chrisman, L. and Parry, N., 2000. Postcolonial Theory and Criticism. Woodbridge, MA: Brewer. Churchill, W., 1995. White Studies: The Intellectual Imperialism of U.S Higher Education. In: S. Jackson and J. Solís (eds), Beyond Comfort Zones in Multiculturalism: Confronting the Politics of Privilege. London: Bergin & Garvey, pp. 17–37. Churchill, W., 1999. The Crucible of American Indian Identity: Native Tradition Versus Colonial Imposition in Postconquest North America. In: D. Champagne (ed.), Contemporary Native American Cultural Issues. London: Alta Mira Press, pp. 39–65. Churchill, W., 2000. White Studies: The Intellectual Imperialism of Contemporary U.S. Higher Education. In: E. M. Duarte and S. Smith (eds), Foundational Perspectives in Multicultural Education. New York: Longman, pp. 50–68. Fanon, F., 1965. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by C. Farrington. New York: Grove. Fanon, F., 1967. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by C.L. Markmann. New York: Grove. Farsoun, S. and Zacharia, C., 1997. Palestine and the Palestinians. Boulder, CO: Westview. ‘The fight over “patriotic correctness” in the universities’, 2002. Revolutionary Worker 1140, p. 13. Finkelstein, N., 2003. Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. 2nd ed. London: Verso. Firer, R., 1998. Human Rights in History and Civics Textbooks: The Case of Israel. Curriculum Inquiry 28(2), 195–208. Freire, P., 1997. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum. Gandhi, M., 1998. Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction. New York: Columbia University Press. Gibson, N.C., 1999. Rethinking Fanon: The Continuing Dialogue. New York: Humanity Books. Greeson, L.E., 1994. Torsten Husen: A Case of Ethnocentrism in U.S. Educational Research. Interchange 25(3), 241–259. Grieeshaber, S. and Cannella, G., 2001. Embracing Identities in Early Childhood Education: Diversity and Impossibilities. New York: Teacher College Press. Gur-Ze’ev, I. (ed.), 2000. Conflicting Philosophies of Education in Israel/Palestine. London: Kluwer Academic. Hill, D., McLaren, P., Cole, T., and Rikowski, G., 2002. Marxism against Postmodernism in Educational Theory. New York: Lexington Press. 123

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Hiner, R.N., 1978. Wars and Rumours of Wars: The Historiography of Colonial Education as a Case Study in Academic Imperialism. Societas 8(7), 89–114. Hiner, R.N., 1990. History of Education for the 1990s and Beyond: The Case for Academic Imperialism. History of Education Quarterly 30(2), 137–160. James, A. and Prout, A., 1997. Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood. London: Falmer. Khalidi, W., 1992. All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948. Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies. Lacsamana, A.E., 1998. Academic Imperialism and the Limits of Postmodernist Discourse: An Examination of Nicole Constable’s Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Filipino workers. Amerasia Journal 24(3), 37–42. McLaren, P., and Farahmandpur, R., 2001. Teaching Against Globalization and the New Imperialism: Toward a Revolutionary Pedagogy. Journal of Teacher Education 52(2), 136–150. McLaren, P., and Pinkney-Pastrana, J., 2000. The Search for the Complicit Native: Epistemic Violence, Historical Amnesia and the Anthropologist as Ideologue of Empire. Qualitative Studies in Education 13(2), 163–184. Memmi, A., 1965. The Colonizer and the Colonized. Boston, MA: Beacon. Menchú, R., 1996. Rigoberta Menchú: Growing up in Guatemala. In: L.C. Mahdi, N.C. Christopher, and M. Meade (eds), Crossroads: The Quest for Contemporary Rites of Passage. Chicago, IL: Open Court Press, pp. 327–329. Mohanty, C.T., 1994. Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses. In: K. Williams and L. Chrisman (eds), Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory: A Reader. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 196–221. Mutua, K. and Swadener, B.B., 2003. Decolonizing Research in Cross-cultural Contexts: Critical Personal Narratives. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Pappé, I., 1992. The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1947–51. New York: St. Martin’s. Parenti, M., 1988. The Sword and the Dollar. New York: St. Martin’s. Parry, N., 1995. Making Education Illegal. West Bank, Palestine: Birzeit University. Ram, U., 2000. National, Ethnic or Civic? Contesting Paradigms of Memory, Identity and Culture in Israel. Studies in Philosophy and Education 19, 405–422. Said, E., 1978. Orientalism. New York: Vintage. Said, E., 1993. The Politics of Knowledge. In: C. McCarthy and W. Crichlow (eds), Race, Identity, and Representation in Education. New York: Routledge, pp. 306–315. Said, E., 1994. From Orientalism. In: P. Williams and L. Chrisman (eds), Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory: A Reader. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 132–150. Semali, L.M. and Kincheloe, J.L. (eds), 1999. What is Indigenous Knowledge? Voices from the Academy. London: Falmer. Soen, D., 2002. Democracy: The Jewish-Arab Cleavage and Tolerance Education in Israel. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 26, 215–232. Spivak, G. C., 1999. A Critique of the Postcolonial: Reason toward a History of Vanishing Present. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Taiaiake, A., 1999. Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto. London: Oxford University Press. Tuhiwai Smith, L.T., 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous People. New York: University of Otago Press.

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Part II

South–South cooperation Histories, principles and practices

9 The invention of the global South and the politics of South–South solidarity Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Kenneth Tafira

Introduction The most resilient politics in the modern world is that of transforming the world system, its global order and economic system of domination, exploitation, subalternisation and peripherisation. This politics can be traced to the very time of colonial encounters in the 15th century. It is a liberatory politics of seeking freedom from Eurocentrism, asymmetrical power relations and economic domination of the global South by the global North. This chapter performs two broad tasks. First, it grapples with how the invention and entrapment of the global South in global coloniality happened. Second, it documents the unfolding of resistance and struggles for South–South solidarity as a means not only to break from colonial entrapment but also as a terrain of self-invention in opposition to the Northern domination. The Haitian Revolution of 1791 to 1804, which not only paradigmatically challenged racism, enslavement and colonialism but built solidarity among the enslaved black peoples, is given as the ideal beginning of resistance and solidarity politics of self-invention (Trouillot 1995). The revolution is succeeded by pan-African struggles in the African diaspora (William E.B. Du Bois’ Pan-African Congresses 1900–1945);1 anti-colonial struggles that culminated in the political decolonisation of Africa in the 1960s; and other de-Westernisation initiatives that commenced with the Bandung Conference of 1955, calls for a New International Economic Order in the 1960s and 1970s, and, more recently, the birth of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and IBSA (India, Brazil and South Africa) blocs. Conceptually, the chapter posits that what exist today as the ‘global South’ and the ‘global North’ were simultaneous inventions through the operationalisation of the paradigm of difference. The unfolding global paradigms of difference were not only processes of racial hierarchisation of human species and social organisation of people in accordance with assumed differential ontologies, but also enslavement, mapping, claiming, conquest and colonisation (Quijano 2000; Mignolo 2000; Maldonado-Torres 2007). Imperial reason and scientific racism were actively deployed in the invention of the geographical imaginaries of the global South and the global North. With the European Renaissance and Enlightenment, the ideas of progress, civilisation and development were claimed and monopolised and then articulated as inventions of Europeans who then arrogated to themselves the ‘civilising 127

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mission’. Out of these processes, emerged Europe as the centre of the world and other parts of the world as the periphery (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013a, 2013b). These processes of the ‘Europeanisation of the world’ (see Headley 2008) encountered anti-colonial and decolonial resistance, which at the intellectual level has produced what Raewyn Connell (2007) has termed ‘Southern theory’. Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2014) prefers the term ‘epistemologies of the South’. These encapsulate ‘a set of enquiries into the construction and validation of knowledge born in struggle, of ways of knowing developed by social groups as part of their resistance against systematic injustices and oppressions caused by capitalism, colonialism and patriarchy’ (de Sousa Santos 2014, p. x). Southern theory/epistemologies of the South directly confront coloniality. Coloniality as a constitutive part of the unfolding Euro-North American-centric modernity became a terrain of invention and re-inventions of a superior global North and an inferior global South over the past five hundred years. The terms ‘global North/the West’ are used here not to mean a geographical space but, as explained by Walter D. Mignolo (2015, p. xxv): What constitutes the West more than geography is a linguistic family, a belief system and an epistemology. It is constituted by six modern European and imperial languages: Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, which were dominant during the Renaissance, and English, French and German, which have been dominant since Enlightenment. [. . .]. Thus, ‘the West’ is shorthand for ‘Western Civilization.’ What exists is ‘the Rest’/‘the global South’, which depicts those parts of the world that fell victim to Western colonial/imperial domination and exploitation. The long-term consequence of this colonial/imperial domination is what is known as ‘coloniality’ (Quijano 2000). Coloniality refers to longstanding patterns of power that began with the unfolding of modernity itself, resulting in what became known as ‘voyages of discovery’ which opened up other parts of the world to Europe’s rising hegemonic aspirations (Maldonado-Torres 2007). The extermination of indigenous peoples of the Americas, the enslavement of black people from Africa, the indenturing of Chinese and Indians, the eventual colonisation of non-European worlds, the redefinition and re-invention of human cultures and intersubjective relations from a racial perspective, as well as theft and appropriations of history and knowledge for colonial purposes, form part of materialisation of coloniality (Quijano 2000; Mignolo 2000; Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013a). Coloniality survived the struggles against juridical colonialism and extended into the postcolony (see Mbembe 2000; Maldonado-Torres 2007; Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013b). Constitutive of colonial modernity are war, murder, rape, conquest, as well as genocides, epistemicides and linguicides perpetrated against those deemed inferior and subhuman.

The invention of the global South The modern global imperial designs and technologies of domination of the world by Europe and North America can be traced to 1415 when the Portuguese invaded the port of Ceuta in North Africa. This invasion, directed by Prince Henry (who is celebrated in imperial historiography as ‘the Navigator’), announced Portugal’s violent entry into the human trafficking business that laid the foundation of underdevelopment of the global South, on the one hand, and the development of the global North on the other (Rodney 1972, 1975; Frank 1998). Carrie Gibson (2014, p. 2) highlighted the importance of the port of Ceuta:

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In Henry’s time this port was known for its commerce in wheat and gold. Ceuta sat at a crucial location; mirrored by the rock of Gibraltar in the north, it was the southern part of the ‘Pillars of Hercules’—the gateway to the commercial world of the Mediterranean. It was also the exit to the terrifying and mostly unknown waters of the Atlantic. [. . .] Many people believed that Ceuta was the last link in the long supply chain that connected the Mediterranean with the rumoured riches that lay deep in the unknown African interior. The next important event in the invention and entrapment of the global South was Bartholomew Diaz’s circumnavigation of the Cape at the southernmost tip of Africa in 1488, which not only exposed the southern part of Africa to mercantile colonisation but opened important trade routes to India and the Asian subcontinent. In fact on 10 October 1487, the Portuguese King Joao II had appointed and commissioned Diaz to be in charge of an expedition to find a sea route to India (Nowell 1953, p. 435). Part of Diaz’s itinerary was to discover the lands ruled by Prester John, the proverbial opulent King of Ethiopia. Prester John’s mystery and fable piqued European imagination. Nowell (1953, p. 435) observed that: Man or myth, Prester John played a great role. From the twelfth century until well after the discovery of America, he was an established part of the European pattern of thought. As a potential Christian ally in the rear of the Moslem foe, he figured in the plans for the later crusades and thus had a place in European ideas of world strategy. In 1481, Diaz had also accompanied Diego d’Azambuja in exploration of the area formerly known as the Gold Coast; that area became an important part of the transatlantic slave commerce (Nowell 1953, p. 433). In his assignment to the East Indies, Diaz was followed by Vasco da Gama who not only rounded the Cape but managed to reach the East Indies in 1498. Within the same decade, in 1492, Christopher Columbus claimed to have ‘discovered’, what became known in imperial historiography as the ‘New World’ (a reference to the Americas). To highlight the close connectedness of the events that brought Africa, the Americas and Asia into an emerging transatlantic commerce, Diaz and Columbus were, at one point, companions on a ship to the west coast of Africa, in 1482, to establish a slave fort (Nowell 1953, p. 433). Diaz’s accomplishments were enormous and stupendous. The significance of his ‘voyages’ and the passage around southern Africa is that it opened a direct sea route and lucrative trade with India, Africa and Asia, thus extending Portuguese influence. He also obtained invaluable information that would be used by future ‘voyagers’, including Columbus, Vasco da Gama and Pedro Alvares Cabral. He also travelled across nearly 2,000 kilometres of coastline previously unknown to Europeans, and found for Europe the south-east winds and westerly winds that would aid future sailors. On 22 November 1497, Vasco da Gama followed in Diaz’s footsteps and rounded the Cape en-route to India. In 1500, Diaz and Cabral claimed to have ‘discovered’ Brazil but both died on 24 May 1500 in a violent storm near the Cape of Good Hope. What is important to underscore is that the so-called ‘voyages of discovery’ were part of the practical unfolding of what James Blaut (1993) termed the ‘colonizer’s model of the world’ and the slow implementation of what Michael Headley (2008) termed the ‘Europeanization of the world’. At the centre of the ‘colonizer’s idea of the world’ is the notion of ‘emptiness’ outside of Europe. Blaut (1993, p. 15) described the model as follows:

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This proposition of emptiness makes a series of claims, each layered upon the other: (i) A non-European region is empty or nearly empty of people (hence settlement by Europeans does not displace any native peoples). (ii) The region is empty of settled population: the inhabitants are mobile, nomadic, wanderers (hence European settlement violates no political sovereignty, since wanderers make no claim to territory). (iii) The cultures of this region do not possess an understanding of private property—that is, the region is empty of property rights and claims (hence colonial occupiers can freely give land to settlers since no one owns it). The final layer, applied to all the Outside, is an emptiness of intellectual creativity and spiritual values, sometimes described by Europeans [. . .] as the absence of ‘rationality.’ The idea of empty lands (terra nullis) was crucial in the invention of the global South through the schema of colonisation. It was backed up by religious justification and authorisation in the form of issuing of ‘Papal Bulls’ by Pope Eugenius IV in 1436 and Pope Nicholas V in 1455 which granted Portugal rights and title to lands outside of Europe and allowed the enslavement of those who were found outside Europe (Nowell 1953, p. 436). In 1493, Alexander VI issued a ‘Papal Bull’ granting lands of the Americas to Spain. In 1494, the Treaty of Tordesillas was signed between Spain and Portugal, in which the Pope demarcated the two hemispheres between the two Iberian imperial powers (Nowell 1953, p. 437). The very formation and consolidation of what is today termed European identity is traceable to the period after 1500. But it must be made clear that, initially, ‘the Identity formation of Europe-as-Christendom’ was ‘a negative identity formation that was rooted in insecurity and the alleged threat of Islamic empires’ (Terreblanche 2014, p. 202). Sampie Terreblanche (2014, p. 202) elaborated that: After 1500 the Europeans redefined their identity vis-à-vis black Africans and the indigenous Amerindians. In the new definition the Europeans imagined themselves positively as superior to non-European peoples. In this ‘redefinition’ of European identity the Europeans developed a superiority complex that has been perpetrated to this day and has served continuously as a legitimation of European and Western empire building, of capitalist exploitation and of the Great Divergence between the West and the Rest. Taken together, the ‘discovery’ of the Americas, the European opening of the sea route to the East, and the incursions into African coastal areas and the interior of West Africa, laid the foundation for Euro-North American-centric modernity whose commercial nerve centre became the transatlantic world. Previously the nerve centre of global commerce was the Mediterranean and was dominated by the Africans and Muslims (known as Moors). The trans-Saharan trade predated the opening of transatlantic commerce that was underpinned by the emerging capitalist economic system and its global division of labour. Cyril L.R. James (1982) highlighted another way in which the global South was created economically. He noted that the 18th-century slave-society in San Domingo (later Haiti) connected Europe, Africa and the Americas, as the wealth generated through slavery in the Americas resulted in the rise of capitalist bourgeoisie in Europe as well as a new civilisation underpinned by capitalist economy (James 1982, p. 12). He elaborated that the abolition of the slave trade was succeeded by the invention of indentured labour as a new form of enslavement, this time bringing Indians and Chinese into the nexus of evolving capitalist Euro-North American-centric and modernist civilisation (James 1982, p. 13). Building on this background, it becomes clear that the rise of the global North was predicated on ‘a modern racial division of labour’ (Lowe 2006, pp. 192–193). 130

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The entrapment of the global South Historically speaking, the invention of both the global North and global South is a tale of successive empires. The first phase is that of Spanish and Portuguese empire-building supported by the Catholic Church (1500–1630). The second is the age of Dutch colonisation of the world and the activities of the Dutch East India Company (1648–1713). The third phase was dominated by the British from 1688–1945. This third phase included what is known as the period of ‘High Imperialism’ running from 1884 to 1914 and the period of inter-imperial warfare from 1914–1945. The fourth phase is that of the dominance of the United States of America characterised by the rise of financial, capitalist and militarist empires (see Terreblanche 2014, pp. 57–58). This rendition of the invention must not be misread to mean that what is today known as the global South was simply a victim that never challenged the global imperial designs. Indeed, the next section indicates that the global South was not only invented from outside by European imperial forces, but it also invented itself through resistance and solidarity-building. Conceptually and discursively, Ramon Grosfoguel (2007, p. 216) distilled and isolated interrelated, overlapping and intertwined hetararchies of power: ••

•• •• •• ••

•• ••

The making of ‘a particular global class formation’ served by ‘diverse of forms of labour’ including ‘slavery, semi-serfdom, wage-labour, petty-commodity production’, which is entangled with how ‘capital as a source of production of surplus value through the selling of commodities for a profit in the world market’ functioned. The invention of the ‘international division of labour of core and periphery where capital organized labour in the periphery around coerced and authoritarian forms’. The making of an ‘inter-state system of proto-military organizations controlled by European males and institutionalized in colonial administrations’. The introduction of a ‘global racial/ethnic hierarchy that privileges European people over non-European people’ together with a ‘global gender hierarchy that privileges males over female and European patriarchy over other forms of gender relations’. In the social domain, a ‘sexual hierarchy that privileges heterosexuals over homosexuals and lesbians’ and a ‘spiritual hierarchy that privileges Christians over non-Christians/ non-Western spiritualities institutionalized in the globalization of the Christian (Catholic and later Protestant) church’, are also discernible as inventions of modernity/coloniality. At the epistemic level there emerged ‘an epistemic hierarchy that privileges Western knowledge and cosmology over non-Western knowledge and cosmologies, and institutionalized in the global university system’. In the domain of language a ‘linguistic hierarchy between European languages and nonEuropean languages’ emerged.

With specific reference to the entrapment of Africa, Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2013c, 2015) distilled eight epochs through which the continent’s subalternisation and peripherisation unfolded: ••

The first important epoch ran from the 15th to the 18th century and was constituted by a paradigm of discovery and mercantilist order characterised by the slave trade and mercantilist commerce. This epoch practically laid down the framework for the entrapment of Africa, Latin America, Asia and other parts of the global South into the evolving Euro-North American-Atlantic commercial system that included even the selling and buying of black human beings and later the indenturing of those people who were deemed to be ‘yellow’ (Chinese and Indians). 131

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••

The second is the Westphalian order that commenced in 1648 and is credited with laying the foundation of the modern idea of the sovereign nation-state. The Westphalian order cuts across other orders as the notion of nation-state is still ubiquitous across the modern world. This is why Wendy Brown (2010, p. 21) explained that: To speak of a post-Westphalian order is not to imply an era in which nation-state sovereignty is either finished or irrelevant. Rather, the prefix ‘post’ signifies a formation that is temporally after but not over that to which it is affixed. ‘Post’ indicates a very particular condition of afterness in which what is past is not left behind, but, on the contrary, relentlessly conditions, even dominates a present that nevertheless also breaks in some way with this past.

••

••

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The third and particularly important epoch is that which commenced with the 1884–1885 Berlin Conference which inaugurated what Adekeye Adebajo (2010) depicted as ‘the curse of Berlin’ that galvanised the scramble for Africa, heightened the conquest of Africa, as well as enabled the partitioning, dismemberment, and fragmentation of Africa into various colonies. We are not yet beyond the ‘curse of Berlin’ as Africans are still entrapped within colonially drawn boundaries decided by colonisers in Berlin. This epoch is that of the age of colonial governmentality that involved the implementation of dismembering processes of dispossession and the production of unique African colonial subjectivity of subjects rather than citizens, and established direct colonial administrations. These direct forms of colonial administrations were known by different names such as Concessionaire/Company Rule, Assimilation/Association, Lusotropicalism, Indirect/Direct Rule, and Apartheid (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013a, 2013b, 2013c). The United Nations decolonisation normative order that commenced in 1945 is the fourth epoch, which resulted in Africa gaining nominal ‘political independence’ – this was signified by the symbolic accommodation of Africa into the lowest echelons of the modern world system through what is known as the United Nations Organization (UNO). John M. Hobson (2012, p. 185), who emphasised the need to decouple Eurocentric institutional racism from scientific racism, argued that ‘while IR theory did indeed take on a new guise after 1945 by discarding scientific racism, it nevertheless failed to escape the generic political bias of Western-centrism that had underpinned pre-1945 international theory’. He described what took place after 1945 as ‘subliminal Eurocentric institutionalism’, compared to the explicit or conscious Eurocentrism (Hobson 2012, p. 185). In subliminal Eurocentric institutionalism, the binaries of civilised/barbarian and even whites/blacks are allowed to strategically recede from public discourse and international discourse to the extent that some might be confused and think the post-1945 dispensation was the age of the emergence of the ‘postcolonial world’ instead of that of the translation of visible direct colonialism into invisible global coloniality (Grosfoguel 2007; Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013a, 2013b). The post-1945 dispensation was not only entangled in the politics of political decolonisation but also with what is here termed the process of Cold War coloniality that polarised Africa ideologically and reduced it to a theatre of proxy hot wars (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013c, 2015). It is another important epoch that witnessed an Africa that was entrapped in a global ideological warfare that decimated any of the authentic African political and economic formulations and creations. Cold War coloniality invented and financed ‘terrorists’ in Africa, such as RENAMO in Mozambique, and many others, as part of a strategy to keep Africa entrapped ideologically while disciplining militant nationalists and pan-Africanists such as Patrice Lumumba and Kwame Nkrumah. Military coups were also sponsored. Cold War coloniality was as dirty as all forms of coloniality (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013c, 2015).

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••

•• ••

The post-Cold War triumphalism of neoliberal order which Francis Fukuyama (1992) wrongly articulated as ‘the end of history and the last man’ is another important epoch that revealed the entrapment of Africa in another Euro-North American-centric world order. At the centre of this order was what became known as the Washington Consensus – another important lever of global coloniality that de-structured what was remaining of African policy space and sovereignty through the introduction of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs). The attack on the United States of America on 11 September 2001 inaugurated another shift in the world order and instantiated the post-9/11 anti-terrorist dispensation under which the paradigm of war gained a new lease of life and a securitisation order emerged. Today, we live under what is described here as the current coloniality of markets and new scramble for Africa as another global order that is both new and old (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013c, 2015).

Taken together, the hetararchies of power distilled by Grosfoguel and the epochs delineated by Ndlovu-Gatsheni constitute the content of coloniality as a global power design and its trajectories across history. It has always provoked anti-slavery, anti-colonial, anti-racism and decolonial resistances that have formed a strong base for South–South solidarities.

Resistance, solidarity and self-invention Resistance to global imperial designs was another terrain of ‘self-invention’ for and by the global South. Modern South–South solidarity has a long history born out of confrontation and resistance to colonialism and racism involving the diaspora and those in Asia, the Caribbean and Africa (Cooper 1994). The ideal starting point is the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), which was one of the earliest well-organised and purposeful resistances in the history of nonEuropean people in general and black people in particular, which ranged against racism, enslavement and colonisation.

The Haitian Revolution The Haitian Revolution occupies a place of pride at the centre of black people’s history of resistance and solidarity. The revolution directly challenged Euro-North American-centric conceptions of black people as slaves by nature, as popularised by early European philosophers such as Aristotle. In a practical sense, the Haitian Revolution demonstrated to the whole world how a people whose very being was denied and who were reduced to slaves, organised themselves and staged a successful revolution against the global system of slavery. The decolonial paradigmatic significance of the Haitian Revolution is well captured by the Haitian historian Michel-Rolph Trouillot (1995) in Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, as challenging the core of the emerging global system of racism, enslavement and colonisation. The revolution was an epic statement and declaration of the humanity of black people in the midst of an emerging and violent anti-black Euro-North American-centric world. Because of its decolonial paradigmatic significance, the Haitian Revolution became one of those global events that were ‘unthinkable’ for those who had convinced themselves that black enslaved people were not human beings and were naturally slaves with no capacity to rebel. The revolution challenged ‘the iron bonds of the philosophical milieu in which it was born’ (Trouillot 1995, p. 74). Trouillot made it clear that: 133

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The Haitian Revolution did challenge the ontological and political assumptions of the most radical writers of the Enlightenment. The events that shook up Saint-Domingue from 1791 to 1804 constituted a sequence for which not even the extreme political left in France or in England had a conceptual frame of reference. They were ‘unthinkable’ facts in the framework of Western thought. (Trouillot 1995, p. 82, emphasis in the original) Any acceptance of the fact that enslaved black people were up-in-arms against the system of slavery amounted in Western thought to an acknowledgement of the humanity of black people. They were not prepared for this challenge. Europeans and plantation owners in general were not prepared to concede that they were faced with a people claiming their denied humanity. On a world scale, the Haitian Revolution, as noted by Trouillot, was a major test: The Haitian Revolution was the ultimate test to the universalist pretensions of both the French and the American revolutions. And they both failed. In 1791, there is no public debate on the record, in France, in England, or in the United States on the right of black slaves to achieve self-determination, and the right to do so by way of the armed resistance. (1995, p. 88, emphasis in the original) The difficult philosophical and intellectual problem for Western thought included how to think about and conceptualise black revolution in a world in which black people were not considered to be rational and human in the first place. This is why even ‘international recognition of Haitian independence was even more difficult to gain than military victory over the forces of Napoleon’ (Trouillot 1995, p. 95). The most important but silenced significance of the Haitian Revolution is that it led to the collapse of the entire system of slavery and constituted a major chapter in the history of resistance of black people. It was truly an anti-systemic revolution that must occupy a central position in the history of anti-systemic resistance marked by the definitive entry of the enslaved and colonised into modern history as human beings opposed to all forms of domination. As such, the Haitian Revolution formed an important base from which to articulate resistance and black solidarity-building as part of self-invention within a context of racism, imperialism, colonialism and racial capitalism.

Pan-Africanism For the black people who had been dismembered into two (the continental and diaspora), the idea of black solidarity and one united Africa stemmed from members of the diaspora and was readily embraced by those who remained on the continent (also see Biney in this volume). William E. Du Bois observed that ‘Here various groups of Africans, quite separate in origin, became so united in experience and so exposed to the impact of a new culture, that they began to think of Africa as one idea and one land’ (Du Bois 1963, p. 13). Black solidarity crystallised within the series of Pan-African Congresses, which were organised by Du Bois. They formed one of the vehicles through which black consciousness and black solidarity on a world scale emerged and crystallised into a decolonial project. The first Pan-African Congress of 1900 took place when Africa was experiencing conquest and colonisation. Henry Sylvester-Williams from the West Indies was so touched by the experience of colonisation and brutalisation of Africans by imperial powers that he convened the Congress to map out strategies of saving the black race from abuse and dehumanisation. The Congress brought together 30 delegates from Britain and the West Indies. It was at the 1900 Congress that the word ‘pan-African’ was used for the first time (Du Bois 1963). 134

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The next Congress was organised by Du Bois in 1919 during the course of the Paris Peace Conference aimed at ending the First World War (1914–1918). It was attended by 57 delegates from 15 countries, of which nine were African. The conference produced the Mandates Commission that appealed to Western powers to protect indigenous peoples; demanded that land be given to them; the regulation of capital; abolishment of slavery, corporal punishment and forced labour; right to education; and right for indigenous people in Africa to participate in government affairs (Du Bois 1963). The third Congress took place in August and September 1921 and its venues were London, Brussels and Paris. The Congress called for the equality of races and appealed to the League of Nations for intervention (Du Bois 1963). The most important Pan-African Congress was the one held in Manchester in 1945, which was organised by, among others, Du Bois, Marcus Garvey’s widow Amy Jacques Garvey, Jamaican Dr Harold Moody, T. Ras Makonnen from Guyana, George Padmore from the West Indies, Kwame Nkrumah from Ghana, Peter Abrahams from South Africa and Kenyan Jomo Kenyatta; it was attended by over 200 delegates and observers (Du Bois 1963, 1965). The Congress called for the independence of African people, the end of racial discrimination and forced labour, and granting of the universal franchise. The Congress Declaration to the Colonial People called for a United Front in the struggle against colonialism. In addition, a memorandum signed by 36 organisations from the Americas, Africa and Britain was presented to the United Nations Organization calling for adequate representation of coloured peoples in the organisation (Sherwood 1996). According to Shepperson and St. Clare Drake (1986), the conference laid the foundation for independence movements in British Africa. However, the (ex-)colonised in Africa and Asia realised that beyond attainment of political independence, there was a need to fight for what became known as the ‘new international economic order’ (NIEO) because coloniality survived political decolonisation. The Bandung Conference of 1955 was a major meeting of Africans and Asians in the midst of a contending Cold War to continue pushing for decolonisation (also see Saney, this volume, and Aneja, this volume). It is therefore important to underscore the importance of the ‘Bandung spirit’ as a basis of South–South solidarity within a discursive context of Cold War coloniality.

The Bandung spirit Solidarity between people of the global South was strongly expressed during the 1955 Bandung Conference. Richard Wright in his book The Color Curtain (1956, p. 12) underscored the meaning of the Bandung Conference in the following words: The despised, the insulted, the hurt, the dispossessed—in short, the underdogs of the human race were meeting. Here were class and racial and religious consciousness on a global scale. Who had thought of organizing such a meeting? And what had these nations in common? Nothing, it seemed to me, but what their past relationship to the Western world had made them feel. This meeting of the rejected was itself a kind of judgment upon the Western world. But it was the host, President Ahmed Sukarno of Indonesia, who highlighted the importance and purpose of the Bandung Conference in his opening speech: This is the first intercontinental conference of colored people in the history of mankind. [. . .]. Sisters and Brothers, how terrifically dynamic is our time! I recall that, several years ago, I had occasion to make a public analysis of colonialism, and I drew attention 135

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to what I called the ‘life line of imperialism.’ This line runs from Strait of Gibraltar, through the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea, the Sea of Japan. For most of that enormous distance, the territories of both sides of the life line were colonies, the peoples were unfree, their futures mortgaged to an alien system. Along that life line, that main artery of imperialism, there was pumped the life-blood of colonialism. (Quoted in Wright 1956, pp. 136–137) What is paradigmatic about the Bandung Conference is that it did not try to ‘unite the workers of the world but the world of people of color’ (Mignolo 2014, p. 27). Even though anti-colonial liberation movements were caught up in ‘Cold War coloniality’ to the extent of being divided between those who claimed the socialist ideological position and those who adhered to liberal nationalism, they had common roots in resisting colonialism. It would seem that beginning with the Bandung Conference, the anti-colonial movements in Africa and Asia were clear about the Cold War coloniality’s snares, and hence they declared that they were neither for capitalism nor communism but for decolonisation. In the decolonial spirit of freeing themselves from the snares of Cold War coloniality, the Asian and African nationalists imbued with the Bandung spirit formed the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in 1961 and the Group of 77. These two formations comprised Third World countries and formed the fulcrum of South–South solidarities. What is clear is that anti-enslavement, anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism and anti-apartheid all entailed building transnational solidarities among those who have been dehumanised and peripheralised by the Euro-North American-centric world system. After the attainment of ‘political independence’ those countries that have been subalternised fought to change the Northern-dominated world system. Kevin Gray and Barry K. Gills (2016, p. 558) noted that: While the Bandung and the NAM embodied the political dimensions of an emergent SSC [South–South Cooperation], the Group of 77, named after the number of countries present at the founding of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), called for the establishment of an NIEO.

The demand for New International Economic Order The 1960s and 1970s were dominated by the Bandung sprit of trying to avoid neocolonialism’s interference in domestic affairs of the ‘independent’ states and to push for non-alignment in a world of alignments. In the economic domain, the spirit of Bandung translated into the struggle for an NIEO that emphasised structural change so as to create a new global relationship of equality. Resource nationalism entailed guarding the sovereignty of natural resources for the benefit of citizens and this was to be achieved through nationalisation of the economy (Gray and Gills 2016, p. 558; on the implications of this for climate change, see Weber and Kopf, this volume). The overarching decolonisation philosophy was that for uneven development and underdevelopment to be eradicated, the global North had to change structurally its extractiveoriented colonial economies in order for the vestiges of colonialism, inequality and poverty in the global South to be banished. This spirit is well captured by Gray and Gills (2016, p. 557): Development is a concept that attempts to encompass a vast complexity of processes of social transformation. It conveys meanings of great promise and hope to billions of human beings concerning human betterment, and refers to a long-term historical project of the 136

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liberation of peoples and nations from vestiges of colonialism, poverty, oppression and underdevelopment. South–South cooperation (SSC) has been a key organizing concept and a set of practices in pursuit of these historical changes through a vision of mutual benefit and solidarity among the disadvantaged of the world system. The idea of South–South solidarity also entailed the poor creating alliances and solidarities of mutual assistance while consistently fighting for structural transformation of the world system, its global orders and world economy. The spirit of de-structuring and re-structuring of the economic order was pushed forward through the UNCTAD. UNCTAD became a space within which to advocate for the ‘adjustment of the international patent system to the developmental needs of the global South’ (Gray and Gills 2016, p. 558). The late 1970s and 1980s signalled the retreat of South–South initiatives aimed at changing the world economic order. The period witnessed the rise of neoliberalism and the hegemony of the Washington Consensus. New ideas of adjusting not the world economic order but the economies of the powerful countries through what became known as Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) kicked in. UNCTAD was ‘eclipsed by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and its successor, the World Trade Organization (WTO)’ (Gray and Gills 2016, p. 558). The emphasis shifted from demands for structural changes to the architecture of the world economy to the issues of technology transfers. However, in Africa for instance, the spirit of NIEO endured as the African leaders adopted the African Declaration on Cooperation, Development and Economic Independence in 1973, which articulated Africa’s strategy for gradual disengagement from the world economy through the escalation of national and continental self-reliance. This was followed by the production of The Revised Framework of the Principles for the Implementation of New International Economic Order in Africa of 1976. It was produced by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and became the intellectual and theoretical foundation for the drafting of the Monrovia Strategy for the Economic Development of Africa of 1979. The Monrovia Declaration emphasised the collective self-reliance and economic integration of African economies; investment in science and technology as the backbone of Africa’s development process; and ensuring Africa’s self-reliance in food production and a commitment to achieve modern African economies by the year 2000 (Baah 2003). The Bandung and NIEO spirits also influenced Africa, in particular, to continue fighting for autonomous development through the formulation of the following economic plans: the Lagos Plan of Action (1980–2000), the African Priority for Economic Recovery (1986–1990); the African Alternative Framework to Structural Adjustment Programmes for Socio-Economic Recovery and Transformation; the African Charter for Popular Participation for Development (1990); and the United Nations New Agenda for the Development of Africa in the 1990s (Baah 2003). The Nigerian economist Adebayo Adedeji (2002, p. 4) argued that these initiatives were disciplined by powerful institutions such as the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) through what he termed the ‘Development Merchant System’ (DMS) which wants to keep Africa in particular, and the global South in general, tied to asymmetrical economic power relations to facilitate continued exploitation and underdevelopment.

Neo-Third Worldism/dewesternization But the spirit of Bandung and NIEO is still alive and is symbolised by such formations as IBSA and BRICS. Walter D. Mignolo (2011, p. 48) understood the rise of these formations as part of what he termed ‘dewesternization’, marking ‘the end of a long history of Western hegemony’. These formations are emerging within a context of a ‘significant global shift in production and 137

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manufacturing from global North to global South, altering the economic geography of the world’ (Gray and Gills 2016, p. 558). The global economy has, since 2008, been afflicted by numerous crises that have weakened the global North from its pre-2008 position where they strongly believed in neoliberal economic globalisation. It is in this context that Alice H. Amsden (2001) asserted the ‘decline of the West’ and the ‘rise of the rest’. Whether one calls it ‘neo-Third Worldism’ or ‘dewesternization’, the spirit of NIEO is carried over by IBSA and BRICS. The launch of the BRICS’ New Development Bank was announced in July 2014 and the establishment of a Contingency Reserve Arrangement (CRA) indicates the seriousness of the BRICS project as a counter to Western economic hegemony. While launching these initiatives, BRICS has not given up on explicitly pushing for the reform of the global multilateral governance institutions. The global North is not simply watching these development unfolding. It is engaged in what Mignolo (2011, p. 36) has termed ‘rewesternization’: Rewesternization touches all the levels of the colonial matrix of power. In the sphere of economy, the task is to ‘save capitalism,’ to re-imagine the ‘future capitalism.’ In the sphere of authority, the United States is trying to maintain its leadership in international relations. In the sphere of knowledge, the United States is promoting what the country has done best—science and technology—now clearly oriented towards the corporations, which means knowledge to revamp the economy. [. . .]. In the sphere of subjectivity, the financial crisis made evident how important it is for the future of capitalism to have ‘consumers.’ BRICS is pushing an agenda that is not anti-North but seems to be adopting and adapting what is useful from the global North for use in the development of the global South. BRICS’ investment thrust is on infrastructure, energy and communications – those areas of development that were neglected by donors from the global North. What is apparent is that the elites from the global South working through BRICS are not challenging the dominant structures of global capitalism but, rather, they are reproducing them for their own benefit in the global South. This seems to be a different strategy from that of the 1960s and 1970s that imagined a new economic order. In the 1960s and 1970s many (ex-)colonised peoples and states had been enchanted by Marxism and they strongly believed that proletarian revolutions were best positioned to deliver socialism as an alternative to capitalism. This time the BRICS is emphasising ‘economic growth, industrialization and financial capacity by many countries across the global South’ as part of a move ‘on the path to an eventual restructuring of global power relations and the reform of global governance institutions and of the norms and rules of the global economy’ (Gray and Gills 2016, p. 559).

Conclusion While resistances to enslavement, imperialism, colonialism, capitalism and coloniality always subsisted on solidarities across classes, genders, generations and ethnicities, as well as engendering transnational if not global South planetary unities, there is still need to consolidate these alliances in the age of global coloniality. So far, it seems that South–South solidarities have not been sustained beyond specific attainments such as political decolonisation. What Kwame Nkrumah (1965) articulated as ‘neocolonialism’, that is the continuation of domination of the global South economically by the powerful (ex-)imperial powers of the global North has not provoked strong and enduring South–South solidarities. The racial/colonial capitalism world economic system continues to exploit the resources of the global South without encountering any well-organised 138

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resistance. The World Social Forum (WSF) is an attempt to organise and provide a platform for the victims of globalised racial/colonial capitalism. It has a potential to reignite a planetary solidarity movement. The other potential vehicle of South–South solidarity is the BRICS. However, it seems for now that BRICS has succumbed to the witchcraft of capitalism and its self-definition as the only viable world economic system to the extent of simply bargaining and fighting not under the radical banner of decoloniality, but rather within the reformist ‘dewesternization’ discourse. What seems to be happening is that there is a push by BRICS for a shift away from Europe and North America as centres of economic power. Capitalism as a world economic system is being embraced rather than challenged. There is still a need for the global South to take the lead in inventing a new world and a new humanity. However, the tactics and strategies that they are currently using to shift the economic centre of power as well as political power to the global South are commendable in the interim. The long-term strategy should be multi-pronged, encompassing the economic, political, ideological, epistemological and intersubjective radical structural transformations – for another world to be possible.

Note 1 On pan-Africanism, see Biney in this volume.

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Harvey, D., 1984. On the History and Present Condition of Geography: An Historical Materialist Manifesto. The Professional Geographer 36(1), 1–11. Headley, J.M., 2008. The Europeanization of the World: On the Origins of Human Rights and Democracy. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Hobson, J.M., 2012. The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics: Western Theory, 1760–2010. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. James, C.L.R., 1982. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. New York: Vintage Press. Lowe, L., 2006. The Intimacies of Four Continents. In Ann Laura Stoler (ed.), Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, pp. 191–211. Maldonado-Torres, N., 2007. On Coloniality of Being: Contributions to the Development of a Concept. Cultural Studies 21(2–3), 240–270. Mbembe, A., 2000. On the Postcolony. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Mignolo, W.D., 1995. The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Mignolo, W.D., 2000. Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mignolo, W.D., 2011. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. Mignolo, W.D., 2014. Further Thoughts on (De)Coloniality. in S. Broeck and C. Junker (eds), Postcoloniality-Decoloniality-Black Critique. Frankfurt and New York: Campus Verlag, pp. 21–51. Mignolo, W.D., 2015. Foreword: Yes, We Can. In H. Dabashi, Can Non-Europeans Think? London and New York: Zed Books, pp. viii–xlii. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S.J., 2013a. Empire, Global Coloniality and African Subjectivity. Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S.J., 2013b. Coloniality of Power in Postcolonial Africa: Myths of Decolonization. Dakar: CODESRIA Books. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S.J., 2013c. The Entrapment of Africa within the Global Matrices of Power: Eurocentricism, Coloniality, and Deimperialization in the Twenty-First Century. Journal of Developing Societies 29(4), 331–353. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S.J., 2015. Genealogies of Coloniality and Implications for Africa’s Development. Africa Development XL(3), 13–40. Nkrumah, K., 1965. Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd. Nowell, C.E., 1953. The Historical Prester John. Speculum: A Journal of Mediaeval Studies XXVIII(3), 435–445. Quijano, A., 2000. The Coloniality of Power and Social Classification. Journal of World Systems 6(2) (Summer–Fall), 533–579. Rodney, W., 1972. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. London and Dar es Salaam: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications. Rodney, W., 1975. Aspects of the International Class Struggle in Africa the Caribbean and the Americas. In Horace Campbell (ed.), Pan-Africanism: Struggle against Neo-colonialism and Imperialism: Documents of the Sixth Pan-Africa Congress. Toronto: Afro-Carib Publications, pp. 18–41. Shepperson, G. and Drake, S.C., 1986. The Fifth Pan-African Conference, 1945 and the All-African People’s Congress, 1958. A Journal of African and Afro-American Studies 8(5), 35–66. Sherwood, M., 1996. ‘There Is No New Deal for Blackman in San Francisco’: African Attempts to Influence the Founding Conference of the United Nations, April-July 1945. The International Journal of African Historical Studies 29(1), 71–94. Terreblanche, S., 2014. Western Empires, Christianity, and the Inequalities between the West and the Rest, 1500–2010. Johannesburg: Penguin. Trouillot, M.-R., 1995. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Wallerstein, I., 2011. Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Wright, R., 1956. The Color Curtain. New York: World Publishing.

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10 South–South cooperation and competition A critical history of the principles and their practice Urvashi Aneja

Introduction Southern states, organisations and peoples have long shared political, economic and cultural ties. Yet, ‘South–South cooperation’ (SSC) as an institutionalised form of cooperation between Southern states emerged from the 1950s onwards, as a specific response by newly independent Southern states to decades of an exploitative North–South order. The principles of solidarity, sovereign equality and mutual assistance came to define the parameters for SSC, hoping to create a new paradigm for political and economic engagement across the global South. SSC as unpacked here, refers to cooperative action promoted by the governments of Southern countries or multilateral and regional organisations involving these governments that involve the transfer of financial resources, technology, personnel and/or knowledge between developing countries. The definition is thus broad enough to include any form of interaction, ranging from South–South foreign direct investment to the provision of technical experts, yet fundamentally limited to the kinds of cooperation agreed upon and led by Southern states. (On nonstate-led modes of SSC and exchange, see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, this volume, and Rojas-Sotelo, this volume.) The ideals, objectives and modalities of SSC have also been institutionalised, albeit loosely, through the relevant ministries of Southern states, inter-governmental summits and meetings and inter-country groupings as well as the United Nations Office for South–South Cooperation (on the latter, see Omata this volume). It is against this backdrop that this chapter will provide a historical and critical overview of the main principles that define the narrative and practice of SSC. It aims to highlight the various functions played by these principles in institutionalising SSC. It thus analyses the principles in terms of a political project, an economic framework and a performative regime. The principles of SSC help construct a political project to foster Southern solidarity, by crafting a common identity based on a distinction between North–South and South–South relations. The global South and global North can thus be said to exist and evolve in a mutually constitutive relationship (also see Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Tafira, this volume). Yet, the self-identification of states as part of the ‘global South’ also created the basis for constructing

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a framework for economic cooperation based on SSC principles. As Southern economies have grown in size and ambition, SSC has become a more well-defined and distinct framework for fostering mutual economic growth. Numerous small and large strides have been made pertaining to technology transfers, the crafting of new financial instruments and the sharing of common experiences. However, asymmetries in interests and capacities across the global South have often resulted in clear divergence between principles and practice. This divergence between principles and practice has, in some way, amplified the importance of the principles, as a performative device that helps obscure sources of competition within the South, while reinforcing the project of a distinct Southern identity and purpose.

Historical trajectories SSC as a political project: identity In April 1955, representatives from 29 governments of Asian and African nations gathered in Bandung, Indonesia to discuss peace and the role of the Third World in the Cold War, economic development and decolonisation. The conference was co-sponsored by the governments of Burma, India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and they brought together an additional 24 nations from Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The delegates built upon the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence worked out in negotiations between India and China in 1954, also known as the ‘Panchsheel Principles’, as they sought to build solidarity among newly independent nations. With the articulation of the ‘Ten Principles of Bandung’, the Bandung Conference of 1955 is widely regarded as marking the beginning of SSC as a global political movement (see Figure 10.1; also see Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Tafira, this volume; Daley, this volume; and Saney, this volume). The ‘Bandung Spirit’ embodied the belief that a new political order was required – one that challenged the hegemony of the global North and the hierarchical relationship between colonies and metropoles, and built an alternative based on the ideals of solidarity, mutual respect, economic and cultural cooperation, and the promotion of world peace (Gray and Gills 2016). Weary of continued interference by the great powers, particularly in the context of the Cold War, the principles of sovereign equality and non-interference assumed central importance (Prashad 2012). The principles embodying the Bandung Spirit were further renewed through the emergence of the Non-Aligned Movement. Non-alignment as an idea emerged in the context of the Cold War, as newly independent countries in the global South wanted to safeguard their independence between the rival Western and Eastern blocs. The movement thus advocated a middle course for states in the developing world. It provided another critical platform for bringing together Southern states, as well as articulating a vision for an alternative political order. It could, therefore, be said that in its early years SSC was primarily a political project that aimed to foster a common Southern identity, one based on solidarity, and its distinctiveness from exploitative North–South relations; this would be the basis of defining a new set of rules for international order (Prashad 2012).

SSC as an economic project: complementarity While Bandung and the Non-Aligned Movement embodied the political aspect of SSC, the Group of 77 (G77), drawing its name from the number of countries present at the founding of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 1964, called for 142

South–South cooperation and competition

Panchscheel Principles

Ten Principles of Bandung

Mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity

Respect for fundamental human rights and for the purposes

and sovereignty

and the principles of the Charter of the United Nations

Mutual non-aggression

Respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations

Mutual non-interference in each other’s internal

Recognition of the equality of all races and of the equality of

affairs

all nations large and small

Equality and cooperation for mutual benefit

Abstention from intervention or interference in the internal affairs of another country

Peaceful co-existence

Respect for the right of each nation to defend itself singly or collectively, in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations Abstention from the use of arrangements of collective defence to serve the particular interests of any of the big powers, abstention by any country from exerting pressures on other countries Refraining from acts or threats of aggression or the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any country Settlement of all international disputes by peaceful means, such as negotiation, conciliation, arbitration, or judicial settlement, as well as other peaceful means of the parties’ own choice, in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations Promotion of mutual interests and cooperation Respect for justice and international obligation

Figure 10.1  Panchsheel Principles and Bandung Principles.

the establishment of a New International Economic Order (NIEO). Intended as an alternative to what was seen as an exploitative Bretton Woods system, the NIEO was to be established by tackling structural inequalities through ‘a just and equitable relationship’, based on revised terms of trade, the sovereignty of developing nations over national resources and their right to nationalise key industries (Biel 2000). The NIEO also sought for a revision of the free trade agenda, for better commodity prices, and for more generous investment and transfer of technologies from the developed North to the developing South. One of the early successes for the G77 was the acceptance of the principle of differential treatment for exports from developing countries to facilitate market access in those countries. The G77 thus emerged as one of the most relevant institutional undertakings for aligning the interests and views of different states across the global South (Najam 2005). 143

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In 1978, the United Nations adopted the UNCTAD’s ‘Buenos Aires Plan of Action for Promoting and Implementing Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries’ (BAPA). The BAPA was considered a landmark agreement by developing countries as it signified a collective recognition of, and commitment to, the idea of Southern states charting their own development path. In 1978, the United Nations established the United Nations Office for South–South Cooperation (UNOSSC) mandated to promote and coordinate SSC and triangular cooperation (see Omata, this volume). Triangular cooperation, as per the UNOSSC, refers to collaborations in which traditional donor countries and multilateral organisations facilitate South–South initiatives through the provision of funding, training, management and technological systems as well as other forms of support. Thus, while SSC as a political project was formulated in opposition to the vertical and exploitative North–South relationships, it is clear that SSC as an economic project was seen as complementary to, rather than a substitute for, North–South cooperation (United Nations 2016). One of the earliest and most prominent examples of SSC on the economic front is the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC), a programme founded in 1964 that aimed to upgrade skills and build capacity and empowerment for developing countries. Fully funded by the Government of India, the programme has evolved and grown over time and today reaches out to 161 countries. On similar lines, Cuba has been an active contributor to the World Food Programme by contributing agricultural and fishery experts and technicians to share knowledge and technologies with producers in other developing countries (also see Saney, this volume; Cabral, this volume; Omata, this volume; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, this volume).

Splintering of the SSC The SSC project, however, began to splinter due to both internal contradictions and external pressures, and did not yield the economic self-reliance or political independence that developing countries sought. Numerous preferential trading arrangements were established among Southern states during the 1960s, including the Latin American Free Trade Agreement, The Central American Common Market, the Andean Pact, and the East African Community between Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. However, the less industrialised members feared that most of the benefits would accrue to the more developed members within the preferential trade agreement; few attempts were made to devise schemes that would ensure an equitable distribution of benefits (Agarwal 2013). The failure of preferential trading arrangements during this time is a pertinent example that illustrates the fissures within the SSC project: the SSC project attempted to construct a common Southern identity, but when it came to concrete economic policies and decisions, divergent interests and capacities undermined collective action. The principle of solidarity could also not sustain political differences between the states of the Non-Aligned Movement. A number of member states, such as India and Pakistan, had longstanding territorial or geopolitical disputes, and the inclusion of both oil- and non-oilproducing states meant that members had critically different interests at the time of the oil price rises in the 1970s (Mawdsley 2012). The People’s Republic of China and Taiwan were also locked in political dispute: both provided aid to African countries as a way to consolidate their political identities and leadership. China’s economic assistance to aid in Africa was centred on the One China policy, which aimed to gain support for China’s representation in the UN (Ogunsanwo 1974). This, in turn, led to rivalry between China and Taiwan to build diplomatic relations with African states, including through economic aid (Tseng 2008).

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In addition, the two oil crises of the 1970s led to a substantial rise in international interest rates, leaving most Southern states with foreign debt and high inflation. The debt crisis reduced mutual cooperation, and, combined with the rise of neoliberalism, also began to eclipse the NIEO project. The retreat of Southern solidarity was, without dispute, under way by the early 1990s, when, in 1992, UNCTAD dropped its demand for the adjustment of the international system to accommodate the developmental needs of the South, and instead argued that the adoption of effective patent protections and related efforts at General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) would facilitate technology transfers to developing countries. Thereafter, GATT and its successor the World Trade Organization increasingly eclipsed UNCTAD, thus neutralising the latter’s position as an alternative to the dominance of Northern-led Bretton Woods institutions (Williams 1994). As Gladys Lechini argues, the project failed because of its loose nature and broad scope: ‘the fallacy of its argument was that all underdeveloped countries have more in common than they really do, and that all solutions can be uniformly applied with equal success’ (Lechini 2007).

Contemporary resurgence: SSC for mutual economic growth The idea of SSC as a pathway to mutual economic growth gained traction once again in the early 2000s as a result of growing trade and investment between Southern economies and as rapidly growing Southern economies, such as India, China and Brazil, began looking for new markets and natural resources. The need for increased cooperation between Southern countries was further intensified by the global economic crisis of 2008 that led to a decline in Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) flows to developing countries, particularly middle-income countries. These middle-income countries went from being recipients to providers of development cooperation during this period (Cabana 2014), raising once again the spectre of hope that SSC could challenge the hegemony of the global North and Bretton Woods Institutions. This led to the emergence of new forms of SSC, reflected most notably in South–South trade and investment flows and the increasing prominence of groupings of emerging economies such as the IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa) Dialogue Forum and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) (Woolfrey 2013). SSC as a form of economic partnership is typically based on the principles of sovereign equality and non-interference; mutual benefit for win-win outcomes; demand-driven partnerships (i.e. based on requests by recipient states); and the absence of any political conditionalities. The legitimacy of SSC rests at least in part on their departure from the North–South foreign aid model. Unlike a North–South foreign aid model, developing countries of the global South emphasise that development cooperation is a form of solidarity rooted in common historical experiences rather than an obligation stemming from a history of economic exploitation under colonial rule (also see Mawdsley, this volume). It is thus framed as a form of ‘development cooperation’ between ‘partners’ rather than ‘aid’ transfers between ‘donors’ and ‘recipients’. It is based on the fact that there are complementaries to be leveraged in production, consumption, trade, investment, technology and development cooperation. SSC actors thus argue that they are engaged in a form of ‘horizontal cooperation’, that is to say, a form of non-hierarchical partnership between equal actors, as opposed to the ‘vertical’ or hierarchical donor–recipient model that is typical of North–South engagement (on the influence of SSC on Northern-led development, see Mawdsley, this volume). While different states emphasise the principles varyingly, and many are yet to articulate a formal framework, the principles of SSC have been articulated at various meetings of the G77 (see Figure 10.2).

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a.

South-South cooperation is a common endeavour of peoples and countries of the South and must be pursued as an expression of South-South solidarity and a strategy for economic independence and self-reliance of the South based on their common objectives and solidarity;

b.

South-South cooperation and its agenda must be driven by the countries of the South;

c.

South-South cooperation must not be seen as a replacement for North-South cooperation. Strengthening South-South cooperation must not be a measure of coping with the receding interest of the developed world in assisting developing countries;

d.

Cooperation between countries of the South must not be analyzed and evaluated using the same standards as those used for North-South relations;

e.

Financial contributions from other developing countries should not be seen as Official Development Assistance from these countries to other countries of the South. These are merely expressions of solidarity and cooperation borne out of shared experiences and sympathies;


f.

South-South cooperation is a development agenda based on premises, conditions and objectives that are specific to the historic and political context of developing countries and to their needs and expectations. South-South cooperation deserves its own separate and independent promotion;

g.

South-South cooperation is based on a strong, genuine, broad-based partnership and solidarity;

h.

South-South cooperation is based on complete equality, mutual respect and mutual benefit;

i.

South-South cooperation respects national sovereignty in the context of shared responsibility;

j.

South-South cooperation strives for strengthened multilateralism in the promotion of an action-oriented approach to development challenges;

k.

South-South cooperation promotes the exchange of best practices and support among developing countries in the common pursuit of their broad development objectives (encompassing all aspects of international relations and not just in the traditional economic and technical areas);

l.

South-South cooperation is based on the collective self-reliance of developing countries;

m. South-South cooperation seeks to enable developing countries to play a more active role in international policy and decision-making processes, in support of their efforts to achieve sustainable development;
 n.

The modalities and mechanisms for promoting South-South cooperation are based on bilateral, sub-regional, regional and interregional cooperation and integration as well as multilateral cooperation.

Figure 10.2  Principles of South–South cooperation. As reaffirmed in the Ministerial Declaration of the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Member States of the Group of 77 and China, 25 September 2009, New York, USA (see www.g77.org/doc/ Declaration2009.htm, para. 70)

What is noteworthy with regard to these principles is both the continuity with the earlier principles articulated at the Bandung Conference, but also the emphasis on economic cooperation and complementarity. The 2009 Nairobi outcome document of the High-level UN Conference on South–South Cooperation (see Figure 10.3), for instance, describes SSC as ‘a manifestation of solidarity among peoples and countries of the South that contributes to their national well-being, national and collective self-reliance and the attainment of internationally agreed development goals’. It adds that SSC ‘is a common endeavor of peoples and countries of the South, borne out of shared experiences and sympathies, based on their common objectives and solidarity’ (UN General Assembly 2009). However, at the same time, the Nairobi document also lays emphasis on concrete operational goals for development effectiveness, mutual accountability and coordination. Arguably, these goals or principles have slowly entered the language of SSC as a form of economic cooperation in the context of increasing scrutiny from Northern actors and institutions – increasing triangular cooperation has also led to some degree of socialisation of Southern actors into the language of development effectiveness. It is worth pointing out that the reverse is also happening, with a number of traditional donors also defining their programmes in terms of development partnerships (for a detailed discussion of the latter, see Mawdsley, this volume).

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The Nairobi outcome document identifies the following policy and operational principles of South–South and triangular cooperation: (a) Normative principles • Respect for national sovereignty and ownership • Partnership among equals • Non-conditionality • Non-interference in domestic affairs • Mutual benefit (b) Operational principles • Mutual accountability and transparency • Development effectiveness • Coordination of evidence- and results-based initiatives • Multi-stakeholder approach.

Figure 10.3  Nairobi document.

Divergence between principles and practice of SSC Considering the vast power asymmetries among Southern states and their divergent national interests and commitments, it is not surprising that political and economic engagement between Southern states often depart from the principles of SSC. Within the discourses on SSC, the emphasis on equitable partnership defined against the hegemony of the global Northern powers often undermines the diversity of, and unequal power relationships between, countries involved in SSC. While the development of blocs such as BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and the IBSA Dialogue Forum has resulted in the diversification of providers of development cooperation, there is a growing concern that some countries are essentially replacing the traditional Northern donors as hegemons and promoting their own national self-interest at the expense of the poorest countries and peoples. Drawing on examples from India and China’s global political and economic engagements, and the G77 at global climate negotiations, this section highlights the various ways in which the practice of three key principles – non-interference, mutual benefit and solidarity – have departed from the principles of SSC. The aim of this section is not to make an assessment of whether SSC is mostly cooperative or competitive, but to illustrate the various ways and instances in which practice departs from principles. The question that then arises, which is addressed in the final section of this article, is the possible function that the principles continue to play in fostering SSC.

Non-interference India’s official commitment to the principle of non-interference dates back to its founding as a republic in 1947. Yet, it has frequently departed from this principle as it has attempted to carve out and manage its sphere of influence in South Asia – examples include its military operation against East Pakistan in 1971, the annexation of Goa in 1961 and Sikkim in 1975, its defence of the Maldives in 1988, punitive economic measures against Nepal in 1989 and its support for peacekeeping and counter insurgency in Sri Lanka in 1987 and again in 2009 (Virk 2013). Renowned Indian strategic analyst C. Rajamohan even goes as far as to argue that non-intervention is a ‘myth’ attributed to Indian foreign policy. India’s smaller neighbours, he argues, have routinely been at the receiving end of a number of political and military interventions (Rajamohan 2011). Even beyond its neighbourhood, India has been active in promoting intervention on certain issues. For example, India took the lead in pressing the international community to sanction the Apartheid regime in South Africa and backed the Vietnamese intervention of Cambodia in

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the 1980s. Most recently, India’s softening stance on non-intervention was visible in its decision to abstain on UNSC resolution 1973, dated 17 March 2011, to sanction military intervention in Libya (Rajamohan 2011). China has similarly supported various insurgencies in India during the 1960s and 1970s (Lintner 2012), and has provided military support to both Pakistan and Sri Lanka to balance against Indian influence in the region (Popham 2010). China’s commitment to the principle of non-interference has also been wavering in Africa. In September 2006, Beijing, considering the possibility of the 2008 Beijing Olympics being tainted by its support of a regime with a poor human rights record, went out of its way to persuade the government of Sudan to accept UN Security Council Resolution 1769, thus endorsing the UN-African Union hybrid peacekeeping mission. While it is important not to over-state the case, it would seem that China’s stance on non-interference is becoming flexible and case dependent (Lagerkvist 2012).

Mutual benefit The principle of ‘mutual benefit’, another fundamental SSC principle, is particularly fragile in the context of trade and investment between Southern economies. While global trade figures suggest that South–South trade surpasses North–South trade, these figures mostly reflect trade within Asia. Most exports from Africa are directed toward Northern markets – Asia is Africa’s third biggest export market after the European Union and the USA. Brazil and India, for example, allow for more favourable access to products and services from Australia and New Zealand than they do from imports from South-East Asia, and between one another. Less than 10% of exports from the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are destined for markets in emerging economies, owing in large part to trade barriers maintained by these countries. India, for example, continues to maintain a high tariff on the import of agricultural goods, which are likely to be the bulk of exports from LDCs in the absence of a sizeable industrial sector in these countries (Nel and Taylor 2013). Furthermore, the growing centrality of Africa in both India’s and China’s economic diplomacy efforts is driven primarily by a concern with securing energy supplies and minerals. Africa currently supplies 20% of India’s crude oil imports (Anwar 2014) and in 2012, mineral products, precious stones and metal imports from Africa constituted 86% of all Indian commodity imports from the continent (Niekerk 2013). Most African countries thus run a trade surplus and little value addition takes place within Africa. A number of recent studies thus suggest that while India and China’s growing demand for energy is bringing resource gains to Africa, in the long run it could perpetuate structural conditions contributing to poverty and conflict in the continent (Cheru and Obi 2010; Cheru 2014). Others argue that India and China’s current economic relationship with Africa thus parallels colonial trade patterns (Cheru 2014; Cairó-i-Céspedesa and Colom-Jaén 2014). This approach neither promotes the use of domestic labour nor allows African countries to diversify their economies and therefore contradicts the objectives set by New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), the technical body of the African Union. The principle of mutual benefit also obscures the fact that elite projections of national interest drive much decision-making, including the choice of recipients and nature of programmes. Moreover, the requested programmes might contribute to bolstering the power of elites rather than to development effectiveness. Assertions of win-win outcomes are thus founded on a simplistic construction of the national interest of both partners, which obscures the contested and dislocating nature of development (Mawdsley 2014, and in this volume). Sudan, for example, is a key partner for India. Indian state-owned engineering companies are helping build road infrastructure in Sudan, but these projects tend to be geographically 148

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clustered and therefore risk exacerbating the development gap between the centre and the periphery, which is regarded as a key cause of Sudan’s conflicts (Saferworld 2013).

Solidarity Divergent priorities of Southern states have also complicated their rhetorical commitment to collective bargaining and solidarity on behalf of the ‘global South’ in multilateral forums. Global climate negotiations are one of the most prominent examples of this divergence (see Rhiney, this volume, and Weber and Kopf, this volume). The G77 climate negotiating bloc is composed of smaller sub-groups with overlapping interests such as the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and the LDCs as well as emerging economies such as India, China, Brazil and South Africa. The great heterogeneity within the G77 with respect to levels of emissions (total and per capita) as well as per capita income has frequently impeded attempts at developing a cohesive negotiating strategy. For instance, for members of the AOSIS, which are the most vulnerable to climate change and have contributed the least to the problem, high mitigation targets and emissions reduction commitments from major emitters is a priority. On the other hand, OPEC countries are wary of mitigation targets and argue for a fund that will help OPEC economies diversify, thus playing an obstructionist role in climate negotiations (Barnett et al. 2004). In turn, emerging economies such as India, China, Brazil and South Africa make up a third group. These countries, though differing in per capita emissions and income, all have high ambitions to influence global governance on this and other questions. These countries, individually and as a group, have high overall emissions due to their rapid economic growth and are critical to the future of energy supply and carbon emissions (Kasa et al. 2008). While these countries have become less dependent on UN assistance and processes, they nevertheless align with the G77 bloc in climate negotiations. Simultaneously, these countries enter into bilateral and multilateral agreements with developed countries such as the EU-China Partnership on Climate Change and the India-US Climate Change Agreement, among others. These agreements are sought to protect the country’s development ambitions in exchange for modest climate commitments (Kasa et al. 2008). As Kasa et  al. note, maintaining membership of the G77 while simultaneously moving into bilateral energy/environment agreements is an interest-driven strategy that maximises benefits and decreases costs for countries such as India and China (Kasa et al. 2008). However, bilateral agreements between major developing country emitters and developed nations, in turn, compromise the ability for the members of the AOSIS to press both groups for emission reduction commitments in global climate negotiations, reducing the ambition of action possible (Vihma et al. 2011). The 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference was a failure for climate negotiations as a whole and, interestingly, the Northern perspective was that India and China had allowed G77 obstructionism to take place (Vihma et al. 2011).

Conclusion: the performative function of SSC The previous sections have provided an overview of the history and practice of the principles of SSC. As mentioned earlier, there are numerous historical and contemporary instances in which the principles have been upheld. In the field of development cooperation particularly, the growing capacity of emerging economies has provided alternative financing mechanisms and injected new financial flows into global development institutions and practices, while revitalising a discourse on the centrality of economic growth for development. Competition in the field of development cooperation can, arguably, be said to have increased the agency of recipient 149

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states in choosing between alternative development trajectories. Moreover, it has led ‘traditional donors’ to re-examine the values, assumptions and frameworks guiding their practices, and set in motion a new era of triangular cooperation (also see Mawdsley, this volume). However, as the previous sections have demonstrated, the practice of SSC often departs from the principles, with divergent interests and capacities leading to competitive rather than cooperative outcomes. What, then, explains the continued longevity of the principles? This final section argues that this longevity derives from the performative function of the principles: this is to say that they help obscure differences and competition between Southern states, while legitimising the perusal of specific political and economic interests, particularly by the more dominant Southern nations. India’s economic investments in Africa, for example, tend to work around conflict, rather than on conflict, i.e. avoiding the direct causes or outcomes of the conflict, even while making economic investments or cementing trade partnerships. This is frequently justified in terms of the principles of non-interference and sovereign equality (on Southern responses to conflictinduced displacement, also see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, this volume). However, this posturing is at least partly shaped by India’s concern with state stability and friendly government–government relations that can secure its commercial investments. Similarly, India’s SSC initiatives in Africa have also been increasingly used to secure markets for Indian goods and services, particularly through the use of lines of credit. The use of the principles of SSC, however, obscure these sets of interests. In Africa, where the bulk of lines of credit are allocated, they are often used not only to access, for example, hydroelectric power in the Central African Republic, but also to ensure that the majority of the contractors are Indian. However, in many instances of contemporary SSC, the extent to which engagement is mutually beneficial can be evaluated only over a longer-time frame than currently available (on the question of evaluating SSC success, see Omata in this volume). China’s engagement in Zimbabwe provides another example. China openly supported Robert Mugabe despite widespread allegations of rampant corruption and repression committed by his government. This was justified on the principles of sovereign equality and non-interference; however, in return for supporting Mugabe’s regime by providing financial and logistical assistance, Chinese state-owned enterprises assembled a portfolio of shares in some of Zimbabwe’s prominent enterprises. Most notably, China bought a 70% stake in Zimbabwe’s only electricity generation facilities at Hwange and Kariba, and stakes in the national railway (Owen and Melville 2005). In this case, the principles were used to obscure a set of concrete commercial interests. This should not be taken to imply that these Southern nations attach no value to the principles; the project of SSC as a project about identity and differentiation is still one that many leaders in the global South attach importance to, particularly as they distinguish themselves from actors from the global North. Based on this, it can be speculated that the growing heterogeneity among participants of SSC might, in the years to come, mark an end to collective interests and agendas between Southern countries, and SSC principles will increasingly become a normative paean through which the global South seeks to retain its distinct position within the broader realm of international cooperation. Development cooperation and foreign policy are age-old bedfellows and, just as Western governments use the language of charity and altruism to legitimise their aid interventions and further their political and economic goals, so Southern states use the language of Southern cooperation and solidarity to do the same. It is worth noting, however, that the narrative is shifting in some emerging economies, suggesting a diminishing value of even the performative function of SSC principles. Recently, Indian Prime Minister Narender Modi decided to skip the 2016 Non-Aligned Movement summit in Venezuela, the first time any Indian prime minister has been absent from an NAM 150

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summit since the Movement’s inception. Around the same time, India’s foreign secretary, S. Jaishankar, was quoted as saying that ‘Blocs and alliances are less relevant today and the world is moving towards a loosely arranged order’ (The Hindu 2017). Indeed, this author has, in the past, called for India to build alliances and institutions that cut across the binary lens of the North–South divide and to find a balance between its immediate economic and strategic interests and its larger global responsibilities (Saran and Aneja 2016). This challenge remains, not only in the case of India, but around and across the world.

References Agarwal, M., 2013. South–South Economic Cooperation: Emerging Trends and Future Challenges. New Delhi: High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. Barnett, J., Dessai, S., and Webber, M., 2004. Will OPEC Lose from the Kyoto Protocol? Energy Policy 32(18), 2077–2088. Biel, R., 2000. The New Imperialism: Crisis and Contradictions in North/South Relations. London: AbeBooks. Cabana, S.L., 2014. Chronology and History of South–South Cooperation (Working Paper number 5, 2014), http://segib.org/wp-content/uploads/Chrono-South–South2014.pdf [Accessed: 3 March 2018]. Cairó-i-Céspedesa, G. and Colom-Jaén, A., 2014. A Political Economy Approach to India in Senegal: A “Win-Win” Partnership? Canadian Journal of Development Studies 35(3), 376–395. Cheru, F., 2014. Emerging Economies and Africa’s Natural Resources: Avoiding the Resource Curse and Building More Resilient Societies [online]. North-South Institute. Available from: www.nsi-ins.ca/wp-content/ uploads/2014/01/Brief-Cheru-Emerging-Economies-and-Africa%E2%80%99s-Natural-Resources. pdf [Accessed: 3 March 2018]. Cheru, F. and Obi, C. (eds), 2010. Rise of China and India in Africa. London: Zed Books. Gray, K. and Gills, B., 2016. South–South Cooperation and the Rise of the Global South. Third World Quarterly 37(4), 557–574. Kasa, S., Gullberg, A.T., and Heggelund, G., 2008. The Group of 77 in the International Climate Negotiations: Recent Developments and Future Directions. International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics 8, 113–127. Lagerkvist, J., 2012. China’s New Flexibility on Foreign Intervention [online]. New Haven, CT: Yale University. Available from: http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/chinas-new-flexibility-foreign-intervention [Accessed: 3 March 2018]. Lechini, G., 2007. Middle Powers: IBSA and the New South-South Cooperation. NACLA Report on the Americas, Sept./Oct. 2007, 28–32. Lintner, B., 2012. Great Game East: India, China and the Struggle for Asia’s Most Volatile Frontier. New Delhi: Harper Collins. Mawdsley, E., 2012. From Recipients to Donors: Emerging Powers and the Changing Development Landscape. London: Zed Books. Mawdsley, E., 2014. Human Rights and South-South Development Cooperation. Human Rights Quarterly 36(3), 630–652. Najam, A., 2005. Developing Countries and Global Environmental Governance: From Contestation to Participation to Engagement. International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics 5(3), 303–321. Niekerk. H.V., 2013. N Africa-India trading relationship [online]. TRALAC. Available from: www.tralac. org/files/2013/11/Africa-India-trading-relationship-synopsis.pdf [Accessed: 3 March 2018] Nel, P.M. and Taylor, I., 2013. Bugger thy Neighbour? IBSA and South–South Solidarity. Third World Quarterly 34(6), 1091–1110. Ogunsanwo, A., 1974. China’s Policy in Africa, 1958–71. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Owen, O. and Melville, C., 2005. China and Africa: A New Era of ‘South-South Cooperation’ [online]. Open Democracy. Available from: www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-G8/south_2658.jsp [Accessed: 3 March 2018]. Popham, P., 2010. How Beijing Won Sri Lanka’s Civil War. The Independent, 23 May 2010. Prashad, V., 2012. The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. London: Verso. Rajamohan, C., 2011. India, Libya and the Principle of Non-Intervention. Singapore: ISAS Insights. Saferworld, 2013. India and Conflict-affected States. Saferworld Briefing, June 2013. 151

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Saran, S. and Aneja, U., 2016. Economic Diplomacy and Development Partnerships: Rethinking India’s Role and Relevance [online]. Observer Research Foundation. Available from: www.orfonline.org/ expert-speaks/india-economic-diplomacy-development-partnerships/ [Accessed: 3 March 2018]. The Hindu, 2017. Global Blocs Are Less Relevant, Says Foreign Secretary [online]. The Hindu. Available at: www.thehindu.com/news/national/Global-blocs-are-less-relevant-says-Foreign-Secretary/article 14574583.ece [Accessed: 3 March 2018]. Tseng, S.S., 2008. The Republic of China’s Foreign Policy towards Africa: The Case of ROC–RSA relations [Ph.D. thesis] Faculty of Humanities, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. United Nations, 2016. Focus on Importance of South-South Cooperation, Quadrennial Policy Review, as Second Committee Takes Up Operational Activities for Development [online]. United Nations. Available from: www.un.org/press/en/2016/gaef3450.doc.htm [Accessed: 3 March 2018]. Vihma, A., Mulugetta, Y., and Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen, S., 2011. Negotiating Solidarity? The G77 through the Prism of Climate Change Negotiations. Global Change, Peace & Security 23(3), 315–334. Virk, Kudrat, 2013. India and the Responsibility to Protect: A Tale of Ambiguity. Global Responsibility to Protect 5(1), 56–83. Williams, M., 1994. International Economic Organizations and the Third World. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Woolfrey, S., 2013. The IBSA Dialogue Forum Ten Years On: Examining IBSA Cooperation on Trade. TRALAC, No. S13TB05, August 2013.

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11 Dreaming revolution Tricontinentalism, anti-imperialism and Third World rebellion Isaac Saney

Introduction From 3–15 January 1966, Cuba hosted the Solidarity Conference of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America, more widely known as the Tricontinental Conference. It was the largest international revolutionary meeting in history, surpassing in sheer numbers of participants any of the seven congresses of the Third Communist International held from 1919 to 1935. Representing anti-imperialist and revolutionary organisations from 82 countries, 512 delegates, 270 observers and guests discussed and debated the theory, practice and strategy of anti-colonialism, anti-neocolonialism and anti-imperialism, with the principal objective of creating a united struggle of the Third World for national liberation and social emancipation. As a symbol of the peak of the global anti-imperialist movement, its defining characteristic was the popular nature of the organisations gathered in Havana, as ‘the delegates were not government representatives and therefore not bound by the public policies of their home countries. Indeed, they were committed to a militantly revolutionary stand in world affairs’ (Segal 1966, p. 51). The Tricontinental was part and parcel of the wave of anti-colonial, national liberation and revolutionary struggles and movements that swept Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean in the aftermath of the Second World War. Critical in this period was the 1955 Bandung Conference, various meetings of the Afro-Asia Solidarity Organization, and the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in 1961 (also see Aneja in this volume). Together, these developments marked the emergence of the Third World Project. While the term Third World is no longer fashionable, perhaps even obsolete, its use was prevalent as a reference to ‘the newly decolonized countries of Asia and Africa, and the countries of Latin America’ (Burnel 2017, p. 74). The Third World Project sought to ameliorate colonialism and imperialism within the existing inter-state system and world economy. In short, it aimed to change the balance of power between the global North and global South by reforming the international order. An offspring of the Third World Project, the Tricontinental went beyond the goal of mere reform, seeking not only to radically change the relationship between the Third World and the West, but also to transform Third World societies in a truly revolutionary manner. Mehdi Ben Barka, the principal architect and organiser of the Tricontinental, explicitly articulated that the meeting’s revolutionary objective was to ‘blend the two great currents of 153

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world revolution: that which was born in 1917 with the Russian Revolution, and that which represents the anti-imperialist and national liberation movements of today’ (Barcia 2009, p. 208; Knox 2014, p. 219). Thus, the Tricontinental can, perhaps, be viewed as the logical outcome of the deepening anti-imperialist struggles of the 1960s. While Bandung marked ‘the origins of postcolonialism as a self-conscious political philosophy’, the Tricontinental represented ‘a more developed version’ (Young 2006, p. 201). Emerging out of the turbulent 1960s, the Tricontinental seemed to be at the apex of the coming world revolution. The Algerian and Cuban revolutions had ushered in the 1960s, while the raging Vietnam War and heroic resistance of the Vietnamese to the United States was the singular conflict that defined it. Moreover, across Latin America and Africa there were a series of armed liberation struggles. There were guerrilla struggles in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. National liberation struggles were also being waged in Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The United States itself, viewed as the chief imperialist power, was also engulfed in this revolutionary wave, epitomised by the growing international stature of the Black Panther Party (see Biney in this volume; also Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Tafira in this volume). Indeed, revolutionary fervour and possibility gripped the imagination of the world. This chapter will trace the history and motivating principles of the Tricontinental and the movement it inspired, by examining its influence and impact on national liberation and social transformation in the global South.

The Third World Project: from October to Bandung to NAM The intellectual progenitor of the Tricontinental can be traced to the 1917 October Revolution, which galvanised the anti-colonial and national liberation struggles in Africa, Asia and Latin America. From its birth in 1919, under the auspices of the October Revolution, the Third Communist International began organising for colonial liberation (Adi 2013, p. xiv). For example, in 1920, it convened the Congress of the Peoples of the East in Baku, which was held with the explicit goal of fomenting anti-colonial rebellion. The Congress called for ‘the liberation of mankind, without distinction of colour, religion or nationality’ (Pearce 1977, p. 179). In this sense, the call for a Tricontinental conference was an extension of the Third Communist International call for worldwide revolution, a call that encompassed the peoples under colonial and imperial domination. However, the Tricontinental’s direct provenance lies with a number of post-Second World War initiatives to provide an organised and united voice for the so-called Third World. Principal among these was the historic 18–24 April 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia. The 29 newly independent countries that gathered at Bandung were a poignant challenge to what W.E.B. Du Bois had identified as the colour line. In 1900, Du Bois declared that ‘the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour line’ (Foner 1970, p. 125), a line that divided the world into subjugating and subjugated nations (also see Biney in this volume; and Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Tafira in this volume). By confronting the ideology of racism and racial hierarchy, Bandung engendered a deep solidarity between the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America, launching, as previously noted, what became known as the Third World Project. Bandung also endeavoured to chart an independent course by creating a ‘third force within world affairs outside the respective orbits of the Western and Soviet blocs’ (Young 2005, p. 11). While the main challenge facing countries of the global South was economic development, it was thought that this challenge could and should be met collectively through the spirit and practice of unity and internationalism. However, while there was consensus on unity, the basic goals around which to unite, and the basis of that unity, were sharply contested and debated. Comprised primarily of newly 154

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decolonised countries, the Bandung movement brought together heterogeneous groups with different political and ideological dispositions, encompassing a broad range of approaches and conceptions of the way the Third World should approach the existing international political and economic order. As a result, tensions developed as revolutionary Third World movements increasingly demanded a direct challenge to, if not outright break with, the existing global system. This stance placed these movements in opposition to national governments, leading to the realisation that what was needed was an organisation that reflected and represented the popular movements across the South. The key events that further buttressed and drove this radicalisation were the Algerian and Cuban revolutions, leading to Algiers and Havana becoming centres of Third World revolutionary activity. The Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Organization (Organisation de la Solidarité des Peuples Afro-Asiatiques, in the original French) reflected this growing radicalisation. At its December 1957 Cairo meeting, organisations of the national liberation and anti-colonial movements were not only active participants but also played a key role in setting the agenda. The fissures between revolutionaries and reformists were most evident in the NAM, which became embroiled in these ideological and political contradictions. While the 1961 NAM Conference had demanded a United Nations Decolonization Commission, it was still viewed by revolutionary movements as controlled by national governments, which sought to negotiate (or renegotiate) the terms of the Third World’s insertion in a world system controlled by the West, rather than seeking to end the system of Western domination. Indeed, some of the NAM member states openly aligned and allied themselves with the West. An ideological and political struggle ensued. Cuba played a key role in this process. While the 2nd NAM Summit in 1964 affirmed its commitment to the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle, Havana invested it with ‘a new tone and meaning’ that centred on ‘the united action, which must be undertaken for the liberation of still dependent countries, and subsequently the elimination of colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism’ (Roa 1964, p. 62). Cuba’s Foreign Minister, Raúl Roa, ensured that the Conference’s position included ‘clear condemnation of imperialism and neo-colonialism’ (Roa 1964, p. 62). Havana ‘took a firmly aligned position against imperialism, war, racial discrimination and all forms of oppression and domination’ (Roa 1964, p. 51). In his address to conference delegates, Cuba’s President Osvaldo Dorticós (1964, p. 1) underscored: We reject a neutral attitude towards colonialism on the one hand and the freedom of the people on the other; towards neo-colonialism and imperialism, and true economic and social independence. We must condemn and act against the forces of imperialism and neo-colonialism. Roa reasserted this position, stating that ‘international tension can only be relieved and peaceful coexistence can only exist when the countries of the world claim rights; when imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism have been eradicated’ (Roa 1964, p. 62). Roa’s words were mirrored in the Summit’s final declaration, which stated that ‘peaceful co-existence cannot be fully achieved throughout the world without the abolition of imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism’ (NAM 1964, p. 14). These militant stances can only be interpreted as repudiation of reactionary governments that openly and actively opposed any concrete challenge to imperialism. As Roa observed, there existed ‘the paradoxical situation where it was possible for the representatives of a country aligned to imperialism to be present’ (Roa 1964, p. 67). This reality frustrated the consolidation of the international anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movement. The 2nd NAM Conference, therefore, underlined the need to 155

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create an organisation unambiguously dedicated to defeating colonialism and imperialism, centred on building and strengthening the ties, cooperation and coordination between the national liberation and anti-imperialist movements and organisations of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Che Guevara underlined this imperative in his 24 February 1965 address to the Second Economic Seminar of Afro-Asian Solidarity held in Algiers, attended by 63 African and Asian governments, as well as 19 national liberation movements: There are no borders in this struggle to the death, we cannot be indifferent to what happens anywhere in the world, because a victory by any country over imperialism is our victory, just as any country’s defeat is a defeat for all of us. The practice of proletarian internationalism is not only a duty for the peoples struggling for a better world, it is also an inescapable necessity. (Tablada 2007, pp. 153–154) In response to the increasing tempo of international revolutionary developments, the AfroAsian Peoples’ Solidarity Organization decided at its May 1965 meeting in Accra to incorporate Latin America into the organisation. Consequently, the call was made for a founding conference, the Tricontinental, for the new Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America (OSPAAAL), which would bring all the revolutionary movements of the Third World together. The concept of the Tricontinental encompassed both a geographical location and an ideological stance, referring to ‘the region known as the global South or the Third World and of the political formation that aligned itself with the region and its emergent anti-colonial and anti-racism politics’ (Rodríguez 2005, p. 63). The call for a Tricontinental revolutionary gathering reflected the growing and increasingly irreconcilable divisions between radical and conservative wings of the Third World Project. National liberation of the Third World was now seen as indivisibly fused with social transformation within the Third World. This was reflected in the ideological conflict within the dominant course on Third World development: the radical remaking of society or the replication of Western templates. In short, an antinomy was created: ‘revolutionary socialism versus liberal democracy’ (Burnel 2017, p. 198). Moreover, the intransigence of several colonial powers meant that ‘liberation movements increasingly turned to armed struggle’ (Young 2005, p. 14). Thus, as radical aspirations could not be achieved through the existing pan-Third World institutions, a new one had to be created. This realisation led to the call to organise a revolutionary assembly. The stage was now set for the Tricontinental Conference.

Havana 1966: the tricontinental Conference At the heart of the Tricontinental was Mehdi Ben Barka, the Moroccan socialist leader. In 1963, as the leader of the Union Nationale des Forces Populaires (National Union of Popular Forces), he had been forced into exile. Ben Barka was not only the principal organiser; he was also the intellectual author and key theoretician of the anti-imperialist and revolutionary gathering. In his closing address to the Tricontinental delegates, Fidel Castro underscored that ‘Barka was a decisive factor, with his constancy, his personal work, in the organization of this first Tricontinental Conference’ (Castro 1966). Barka travelled extensively to promote the Tricontinental Conference, scheduled for 3–15 January 1966, holding meetings in Algiers, Cairo, Rome, Geneva and Havana. Barka wanted to merge Third World liberation with socialist revolution. In seeking to unify Third World revolutionaries, he warned of the dangers of neocolonialism, arguing that meaningful decolonisation required a revolutionary break with the existing order. The coming 156

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conference represented not only ‘the radical trend within Third Worldism’, but also the definitive alignment ‘with a radical anti-imperialism located firmly in the socialist camp’ (Knox 2014, p. 219). This alignment of the revolutionary wing of the anti-colonial movement with the socialist world was unequivocal, despite the need to navigate the challenges posed by the contradictions between Moscow and Beijing. However, while the divergent views and approaches of these powerful patrons of the anti-colonial and national liberation struggles presented very particular challenges to achieving unity among Third World revolutionaries, these challenges were not viewed as insurmountable. In 1965, Barka, Algerian President Ahmed Ben Bella and Cuba’s Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara met and laid the foundation for the Tricontinental. The priorities established for the Conference were: (1) anti-imperialist solidarity; (2) support for the Vietnamese struggle, and (3) support for Cuba. The global call and agenda was sent out, with Barka calling for ‘greater coordination in the struggles for all peoples, as the problems in Vietnam, Condo and the Dominican Republic stem from the same source, U.S. imperialism’ (Barcia 2009, p. 208). Originally, Algiers was to host the conference. However, with the June 1965 deposal of Ben Bella, this was no longer feasible. Moreover, the building in which the conference would be held had been bombed and destroyed. It became quite clear that in order to ensure the security of participants, the Tricontinental ‘could only be held in a country relatively safe from foreign intelligence agents and provocateurs’ (NACLA 1967, pp. 9–10). Revolutionary Cuba met those requirements. Ben Barka considered Havana the ideal host for the conference because he viewed the Cuban Revolution as a process that had fused the two revolutionary currents of Third World liberation and world socialism, with a leading and consistently anticolonial and anti-imperialist role in the NAM, and the United Nations. Furthermore, the Cuban Revolution had ‘brought Latin America for the first time into the same orbit of resistance as Asia and Africa’ (Young 2005, p. 16). With its successful defiance and resistance of the U.S, revolutionaries viewed Cuba as ‘a model of revolutionary tactics for anti-colonial movements . . . a model of development for post-colonial states’ (Lorini and Basosi 2009, p. 239). Havana accepted this role. Internationalism was central to the Cuban Revolution, becoming an explicit sphere of revolutionary state activity. The Castro government considered the extension of assistance to national liberation and revolutionary movements as both a fulfilment of its internationalist responsibility and as an imperative for the survival of the Revolution. Cuba’s revolutionary leadership saw ‘themselves as part of a larger anti-imperialist movement in the so-called Third World’ (Lorini and Basosi 2009, p. 239). This was explicitly embodied in the First and Second Declarations of Havana, which were adopted at two national mass assemblies on 2 September 1960 and 24 February 1962, respectively (Saney 2009, p. 113). Thus, it was only natural that Havana accepted the offer to host the Tricontinental as a means to further advance the anti-imperial cause. Cuba’s Foreign Minister, Raúl Roa, stated that the Tricontinental has been called in order to strengthen even more the bonds of solidarity among the peoples of the three continents, and at the same time will be a point of departure for broadening and deepening the development of their struggle against colonialism, neocolonialism and imperialism, for social progress, economic development and world peace. (Internal Security Subcommittee 1966, p. 11) On 28 September 1965, Fidel Castro, in the presence of Ben Barka, enthusiastically endorsed the conference: 157

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As comrade Ben Barka rightly told us before, this will be the first time in history in which representatives of revolutionary movements of these three continents (Asia, Africa and Latin America) make contact in a conference of this sort. Undoubtedly this will be a very important event; undoubtedly this meeting will have large repercussions among revolutionary and anti-imperialist movements, among those who fight against imperialism, among those who fight for national liberation in these three continents that have witnessed the worst types of exploitation, slavery and colonialism. (Barcia 2009, p. 208) Indeed, the Cuban government put its entire weight behind the conference. Fidel Castro declared that Cubans ‘must prepare well for this international event and greet it with our best efforts in all fields’ (Internal Security Subcommittee, 1966: 9). Prominent Cuban revolutionary leaders were involved in conference preparations and planning. Armando Hart, the organising secretary and head of the International Relations Department of the Communist Party of Cuba, and Osmani Cienfuegos, the minister of construction, sat on the organising committee. The symbolism of holding the conference right after the 7th anniversary of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on 1 January 1959 was unmistakable. Armando Hart unambiguously emphasised the symbolism: ‘There is an intense mobilization of the people regarding the Tricontinental Conference, the holding, of which coincides with the VII Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution’ (Internal Security Subcommittee 1966, p. 9). Havana marshalled tremendous resources for the conference, including transport and accommodation. The mobilisation included not only resources but also the organisation of intense discussion among Cuba’s citizenry in the two months leading up to the conference. Documents about the Tricontinental and the conditions and struggles in Asia, Africa and Latin America were printed and disseminated across the country, with a variety of seminars held. An estimated 60,000 study circles were organised. Together all of these activities encompassed 2,150,000 Cubans, representing more than one quarter of the island’s population (Internal Security Subcommittee 1966, p. 10). Ben Barka did not live to see the fruition of his work. On 29 October 1965, he was kidnapped and disappeared in Paris. He was never seen again. There seems little doubt that this was a joint operation of agents of the Moroccan government and French police, with the collusion and participation of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. It is also evident that Ben Barka’s central role in organising the Tricontinental was the reason for his assassination. The Tricontinental was considered by Washington a direct threat to the security of the United States. Since one of the main tasks of the Tricontinental was to provide financial and military support for the guerrillas, as well as unify them and work out a common strategy for all the Latin American movements, it was by no means just one more conference. (NACLA 1967, p. 10) In short, Barka’s ability to rally the worldwide anti-imperialist movement reflected the growing momentum of revolutionary developments across the global South, which was viewed by the West as an unacceptable challenge to its hegemony. The murder of Barka did not derail the Tricontinental. From 3–15 January 1966, 512 representatives of anti-imperialist and revolutionary organisations from 82 countries came to Havana: 150 from Africa, 197 from Asia and 165 from Latin America. They were joined by another 270 guests and observers. The Conference’s central theme was the struggle against imperialism, colonialism and neocolonialism. At that time, this meant supporting the liberation 158

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of South Vietnam against U.S. aggression, and the unification of Vietnam. However, the Vietnamese struggle was cast within the context of a global anti-imperialist struggle, leading delegates to affirm the right of peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America to self-determination, national liberation, independence and sovereignty. To achieve this goal, the Tricontinental called for the intensification of all forms of struggle including armed struggle. Summarising the agenda and purpose of the Tricontinental Conference, Granma, the principal Cuban newspaper, in its issue of 6 January 1966, reported: The strategy of the revolutionary movements in their struggle against imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism and, especially against Yankee imperialism – principal enemy of peoples – calls for closer military ties and solidarity between the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the working class, the progressive forces of the capitalistic countries of Europe and the United States and the Socialist camp. (Granma 1966, p. 1) Nevertheless, while the immediate issue confronting the delegates was the various national liberation and anti-imperial struggles, the agenda envisioned an anti-imperialism that encompassed cooperation in the economic, social and cultural spheres. The types of societies and models of economic developments were discussed and debated. Emphasis was placed on economic planning that marshalled human and natural resources for nation-building projects that would be independent of the West. These nation-building projects would also be based on achieving equity and social justice through a series of radical measures, especially agrarian reform. The Tricontintental’s reimagining of the world required extensive cooperation and solidarity across the global South. The conference demanded that economic and political relations between Africa, Asia and Latin America be based on principles of equality and mutual interest. A new economic policy was envisioned that would alter the historical relationship of the countries of the Third World with the West. Trade, economic and financial relations with the West would no longer be negotiated on a unilateral basis in which the development needs of a particular country were the only concern. These negotiations were now viewed as a collective activity premised on the proposition that the development of any single Third World nation was integrally tied to the development of the entire South. In short, no country should envision its own nation-building and development project without determining how it would assist the nation building and development of others. However, this radical transformation in the world’s trade, economic and financial relations was predicated on the main preoccupation of the conference: the liberation of the Third World from imperial domination. In his acclaimed speech, The Weapon of Theory, Amílcar Cabral cast the Tricontinental’s significance in epistemological and existential terms, arguing, ‘the national liberation of a people is the regaining of the historical personality of that people, its return to history through the destruction of the imperialist domination to which it was subjected’ (Cabral 2009, p. 10). Key to ending the Third World’s subjection was the delegates’ endorsement of armed struggle. Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara proclaimed in his famous Message to the Tricontinental and the assembled revolutionaries, ‘How close and bright would the future appear if two, three, many Vietnams flowered on the face of the globe, with their quota of death and immense tragedies, with their daily heroism, with their repeated blows against imperialism’ (Guevara 1968, p. 159). Colonial and imperial violence were crucial in establishing the Tricontinental’s strategic and tactical framework. The revolutionary assembly had also encompassed pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese groups, which had significant disagreements with each other. Beijing viewed the conference as a failure by 159

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Moscow ‘to bring the national-democratic movement in the three continents into the orbit of the U.S.-Soviet cooperation for world domination’ (Peking Review 1966, p. 15). The conference was seen by Beijing as a defeat of the Soviet ‘capitulationist policy of peaceful co-existence with imperialism’ and a victory for the position that the ‘international situation is favourable to the anti-imperialist revolutionary struggles’ (Peking Review 1966, p. 15). In essence, the Tricontinental had proclaimed the ‘right to make revolution and combat imperialism’ (Peking Review 1966, p. 19). Despite initially seeing a Soviet controlling hand, Western ruling circles eventually echoed the Chinese assessment, concluding that at the Tricontinental the Soviet policy of détente had lost out to the more radical Chinese approach (e.g. The New York Times, 6 January 1966; Duncan 1971). While Washington and Moscow pursued détente in their geo-political clash, the South was about to embark on a direct radical frontal challenge to Western hegemony. The Tricontinental’s central task was the translation of the idea of solidarity between the peoples of the world into concrete action. Fidel Castro in his speech to the closing plenary captured the historic nature of the gathering: ‘This has been a great victory for the revolutionary movement. Never before has there been a meeting of such breadth and such magnitude in which revolutionary representatives of 82 peoples, come together to discuss problems of common interest’ (Castro 1966). He then poignantly concluded: [T]he results of this conference demonstrate that Ben Barka’s blood was not shed in vain, and that [with] the Ben Barka crime, his assassination, like the assassination of Lumumba, of Aidit, of Sandino with none of its barbarous acts will imperialism be able to hold back the victorious march, the final liberation of the people. (Castro 1966) At the conclusion of the meeting, the OSPAAAL was formally founded. A new direction had been set for Third World liberation. The import of this development was not lost on the imperial powers. A British diplomat described it as the decade’s ‘most important communist meeting’ (Barcia 2009, p. 208). The overwhelming assessment – fear – was that the Havana meeting heralded the intensification of then-existing revolutionary struggles and the unleashing of new ones.

Tricontinentalism in practice In the immediate aftermath of the Tricontinental, on 16 January 1966, the Organization of Latin American Solidarity (OLAS) was also founded. As Havana had hosted the gathering, Latin American countries felt particularly vulnerable. They almost immediately condemned the Tricontinental. Eighteen governments formally lodged a letter of approach with the UN Security Council ‘protesting the militant and interventionist line of the Tricontinental Conference’ (Duncan 1971, p. 28. See also The New York Times, 8 February 1968). This was followed by the Organization of American States’ formal condemnation of the conference (Finney 1966). The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) considered the revolutionary gathering a significant threat to Western interests, a threat that had to be neutralised. Philip Agee, a former CIA officer stated that the CIA upper echelons had: been preparing the propaganda campaign and asked long ago for stations to try to place agents in the delegations . . . Our themes are two: exposure of the Conference as an instrument of Soviet subversion controlled by the KGB, and frank admission that the danger posed by the 160

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Conference calls for political, diplomatic and military counter-measures. Since the purpose of the Conference is to create unity among the different dis-united revolutionary organizations, propaganda operations are also being directed at these organizations . . . The more we can promote independence and splits among revolutionary organizations the weaker they’ll be, easier to penetrate, easier to defeat. (Agee 1975, p. 399) This fear was perhaps most poignantly illustrated by the U.S. Senate Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Security Laws, which produced the extremely detailed report, The Tricontinental Conference of African, Asian and Latin American Peoples. Despite its prosaic title, the report in almost hysterical terms describes the Tricontinental as an existential threat to the U.S. and the West, declaring: It is humiliating enough to have the international communist conspiracy seize control of a country only 90 miles from American shores, and maintain itself in power despite all the pressures we have thus far brought to bear. It becomes a thousand times as humiliating when that country is transformed into a headquarters for international revolutionary subversion while the OAS and the mighty United States of America look on, helpless and apparently incapable of any decisive action. (Internal Security Subcommittee 1966, p. 32) On 31 July 1967, with more than 400 participants, the OLAS convened its first meeting in Havana. It was at this gathering that Che Guevara’s letter to the Tricontinental was officially made public, with its call for world revolution. Stokely Carmichael echoed Guevara’s call for all the world’s liberation movements to unite and intensify the fight against imperialism, and create a series of Vietnams. He explicitly linked the Black liberation movement in the United States to international revolution: The struggle we are engaged in is international. We speak with you, comrades, because we wish to make clear that we understand that our destinies are intertwined. Our world can only be the Third World; our only struggle, for the Third World; our only vision, of the Third World . . . we are certain that the next Viet Nam will be on this continent . . . we see our struggle as closely related to liberation struggles around the world . . . When black people in Africa begin to storm Johannesburg, when Latin Americans revolt, what will be the role of the United States and that of African-Americans? (Carmichael 1967, pp. 3, 7–8) In the United States there followed widespread condemnation of Carmichael’s presence and prominent role. He was accused of ‘inciting riots and sedition’ in the United States (Seidman 2012, p. 12). The OLAS’s communiqué reflected its support for black rebellion in the U.S. by declaring not only ‘solidarity with the peoples of Asia and Africa and those of the socialist countries, the workers of the capitalist nations’, but also ‘especially with the black population of the United States’ (Seidman 2012, p. 7.) In his closing address, Fidel Castro underscored the OLAS’s radical intent, stating that Latin American governments would be swept ‘away by means of the most violent revolutionary means’ (Duncan 1971, p. 281). He asserted that the Latin American revolution would result in the creation of an ‘organization of Revolutionary States of Latin America’ that would replace ‘the imperialist controlled Organization of American States’, which he dismissed as a ‘discredited, disgusting cesspool’ and ‘the ministry of the colonies of the United 161

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States’ (Mesa-Lago 1974, pp. 109, 122). The coming revolution would be the precursor to the eventual Union of Peoples of Latin America (Mesa-Lago 1974, p. 109). In short, the Tricontinental presaged and initiated ‘a global assault on Western imperialism’, opening ‘an era of international guerrilla warfare’ (Steerling 1981, p. 12). In this context, Barka’s murder cannot be seen as an isolated event; it reflected the West’s intense response to the burgeoning Third World revolution. It is not inconsequential that the Tricontinental was preceded by the overthrow of Indonesian President Sukarno in 1965, which set in motion the mass killing of hundreds of thousands of suspected communists. The Tricontinental only amplified the perception of a significant threat to the imperial order. Washington orchestrated a concerted global campaign of subversion and assassination that targeted national liberation movements, particularly its leadership. For example, Che Guevara was assassinated in 1967, and Amílcar Cabral in 1973. In 1973 the U.S. CIA played a key role in the bloody overthrow of the government of Salvador Allende in Chile. In response to the Tricontinental’s call for international revolution, the West unleashed its own counter-revolution on a world scale (see Blum 2004). Of course, despite the West’s fears, the question is, did the Tricontinental, with its strident revolutionary rhetoric, translate into meaningful revolutionary struggle? While this might seem impossible to ascertain, there does seem to be a correlation between the holding of the Tricontinental and the eruption of revolutionary struggles. It does appear that it did have ‘an immediate impact upon liberation movements around the world’ (Barcia 2009, p. 210). In the Tricontinental’s wake, armed struggle increased in Latin America, for example, in Peru, Venezuela, Guatemala and Nicaragua. In Africa, the Angolan, Mozambican and Zimbabwean national liberation struggles gained impetus. Cuba’s internationalist military mission in Angola, perhaps, represents the clearest translation of Tricontinentalism into praxis. Cuba’s role in Angola has been described as an example of ‘transatlantic revolution’ (Henighan 2009, p. 239). From 1975 to 1990, more than 330,000 Cuban volunteers participated in repelling several South African invasions, with more than 2,000 Cubans losing their lives. As the survival of the racist South African state depended on establishing its domination of all of southern Africa, the region was, therefore, transformed into a vast arena where for more than a decade the forces for and against apartheid clashed. This was underscored by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which concluded: ‘It would appear that conflicts in southern African states, particularly in Mozambique, Namibia and Angola, were often inextricably linked to the struggle for control of the South African state’ (Truth and Reconciliation Commission 1999, pp. 3–4). The South African armed forces embarked on a campaign of massive destabilisation of the region that caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and billions of US dollars in economic damage (Truth and Reconciliation Commission 1999, pp. 46–55; also see Africa Watch 1992; International Defence and Aid Fund 1981). The decisive military confrontation with South Africa occurred around the south-eastern Angolan town of Cuito Cuanavale and on the Angolan-Namibian border. It was a critical turning point in the struggle against apartheid. The Cuban commitment was immense, providing the essential reinforcements, material and planning. This military effort culminated in the decisive defeat of the South African armed forces, leading to the withdrawal of the apartheid army, altering the balance of power in southern Africa. As a consequence, South Africa was forced to the negotiating table, which directly resulted in Namibian independence and accelerated the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa (Gleijeses 2001, 2013; Saney 2006). During a 1991 visit to Cuba, Nelson Mandela outlined the significance of Cuba’s contribution: The Cuban people hold a special place in the hearts of the people of Africa. The Cuban internationalists have made a contribution to African independence, freedom and justice 162

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unparalleled for its principled and selfless character . . . We in Africa are used to being victims of countries wanting to carve up our territory or subvert our sovereignty. It is unparalleled in African history to have another people rise to the defense of one of us . . . Cuito Cuanavale has been a turning point in the struggle to free the continent and our country from the scourge of apartheid! (Mandela 1993, pp. 119, 122) However, alongside the quickening of the revolutionary struggle in Africa, Asia and Latin America and Cuba’s successful intervention in southern Africa, must be placed the general failure of armed struggle in Latin America and the unfulfilled goal of radical social transformation throughout the Third World. The death of Che Guevara in Bolivia had been, of course, a serious setback. Within this context, during the 1970s, Havana tempered its critique of those who pursued revolutionary change by means of reform rather than armed struggle. For example, for 25 days, from 10 November to 4 December 1971, Fidel Castro visited Chile to gain insight into and understanding of Chilean President Salvador Allende’s effort to create a socialist society through peaceful means. At the end of the visit, Castro made brief stops in Peru and Ecuador, before returning to Cuba (Comisión de Orientación Revolucionaria 1971). Nevertheless, Cuba still continued to support the revolutionary movements engaged in armed struggle in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Columbia. Havana also developed strong relations with Grenada when the New Jewel movement seized power in 1979. Moreover, however limited the possibilities, the goal of achieving the unity of all revolutionary and anti-imperialist forces remained. For instance, in June 1984, the Anti-Imperialist Organization of the Caribbean and Central America was formed, representing 38 political organisations from 23 countries (Rojas 1981, pp. 1–2). However, it was in the fight for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) where the ideas of the Tricontinental continued to resonate with great effect. In 1973, the 4th NAM Summit in Algiers called for the establishment of a ‘new international economic order’ (NAM 1973, p. 68). Key NIEO economic proposals centred on ‘substantial and lasting increase in raw material prices, reinforced by a reduction in debt and more favourable terms for the transfer of technologies’ (Amin 1979, p. 65). However, it went beyond pure economic stipulations to also make political demands. While, primarily articulated through the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the NIEO aimed to revolutionise the international order from within, a compromise between the Tricontinental’s revolutionary vision and Bandung’s reformist spirit. The Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order, adopted by the UN General Assembly Resolution on 1 May 1974, reflected core Tricontinental principles. Included among the declaration’s 20 prescriptions for international economic change were the following: full permanent sovereignty of every State over its natural resources and all economic activities . . . including the right to nationalization or transfer of ownership to its nationals, this right being an expression of the full permanent sovereignty of the State . . . The right of the developing countries and the peoples of territories under colonial and racial domination and foreign occupation to achieve their liberation and to regain effective control over their natural resources and economic activities . . . strengthening, through individual and collective actions, of mutual economic, trade, financial and technical co-operation among the developing countries. (UNGA 1974) This rendering of the NIEO placed national liberation and revolutionary politics at the NIEO’s core. The 6th NAM Summit, hosted in Havana from 3 to 9 September 1979, identified 163

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neocolonialism and imperialism as the principal obstacles to Third World development, reaffirming the ‘deep conviction that a lasting solution to the problem of the developing countries can only be achieved by a fundamental restructuring of international economic relations through the establishment of the New International Economic Order’ (NAM 1979, p. 112). The Summit also unequivocally reasserted support ‘for the right to self-determination and independence of all peoples under colonial and alien domination and constant support to the struggle of national liberation movements’ (NAM 1979, p. 12). In the course of enumerating in detail a series of national liberation struggles, the 6th Summit called for greater financial and material support from member states for national liberation movements. Cuba was at the heart of the articulation of the necessity for the NIEO. Fidel Castro’s The World Crisis: Its Economic and Social Impact on the Underdeveloped Countries (1984) best captured this commitment and, perhaps, was the highpoint in the discourse. Prepared as a report to leaders of NAM member countries, it documented the many problems and challenges facing the Third World as a result of an international economy dominated and controlled by the West. Facing these dilemmas, Castro declared the Third World had ‘no alternative but to struggle’ (Castro 1984, p. 6). However, by the late 1980s, with the exhaustion of Third World revolutionary movements, the shattering of Third World unity by the international debt crisis, the uneven economic development of counties throughout the South and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the NIEO and by extension the Tricontinental project not only appeared to have collapsed but also to have completely vanished. In his 1998 address to the World Trade Organization, Fidel Castro lamented the disappearance – the erasure – of these ideas from official discourse, asking: ‘Why isn’t fair trade and unbalanced trade mentioned? Why is the appalling burden of the external debt no longer being discussed?’ (Castro 2000a, p. 3). Nonetheless, Castro continued to issue clarion calls for the NIEO and Tricontinental principles. At the 2000 South Summit of the Group of 77, he declared that Third World countries would have to ‘either unite and establish close cooperation, or we die!’ (Castro 2000b, p. 287).

End of Tricontinentalism? By the end of the 1980s, the Third World as a whole had abandoned Tricontinentalism. Its revolutionary principles were no longer viewed as a viable strategic position and practice. How and why had Tricontinentalism arrived at this impasse? In 1981, Gérard Chaliand argued that the prospects for the revolutionary and social transformation of the global South ‘turned out to be a myth’, in which the ‘revolutionary potential . . . had been overestimated’ (Chaliand 1981, pp. 184–185). This overestimation, he argued, was due to the idea that revolutionary will and zeal were sufficient to bring about radical change. A ‘Third World euphoria’ (Chaliand 1981, p. xiv) had generated ‘a myth of Tricontinental Revolution’ (Chaliand 1981, p. xv; Armes 1987, p. 88) centred on the writings of exceptional figures, such as Che Guevara, Frantz Fanon and Ho Chi Minh. The actions and thinking of these inspirational symbols served as substitutes for engaging in the necessary analysis of each country’s history and actual situation. Chaliand’s chief criticism is that the Tricontinental ignored the specificity of the concrete conditions and circumstances that prevailed among the countries comprising the Third World. In short, Tricontinentalism projected ‘a semblance of unity in what is in reality a multiplicity of worlds’ (Chaliand 1981, p. xvi). If the goal was to dissolve the distinction between the national and international then this was quite clearly a mistaken notion. If the Tricontinental is judged on the extent of the revolutionary transformation of the Third World, then it failed. However, if the Tricontinental is judged by the anti-colonial struggle, then it achieved significant success. Vietnam was unified and Africa was decolonised 164

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despite the violent resistance of Portugal and the white minority regimes in South Africa and Zimbabwe. The failure for the national liberation struggles to telescope into revolutionary social transformations demands examination but does not detract from the immense accomplishment of decolonisation. If decolonisation of the South did not lead to radical social change, merely changing the ruling class from foreign to local, it points to the Tricontinental’s incomplete success, not its total failure. The nexus between national liberation and revolutionary social transformation lay in the ability of the progressive and popular anti-imperialist forces to take state power and then effectively wield that power in the radical socio-economic restructuring of society and the projection of a revolutionary foreign policy. This is why the seizure of state power was a central Tricontinental principle. Cuba, however, was the only country, in which state power was seized, to have fused national liberation and social transformation with revolutionary internationalism. Cuba’s commitment to fulfilling the Tricontinental’s mission was – and is – undeniable. Not only did Cuba host the 1966 conference, but OSPAAAL, the Tricontinental’s organisational expression was – and is – headquartered in Havana. Thus, Cuba became the Tricontinental’s centre as it attempted to coordinate and support liberation movements across the Third World. This was both a strength and a weakness: a strength because Third World revolutionary movements had a reliable base of support, a weakness because it resulted in an overreliance on the Caribbean island nation. This dependence on Cuba only highlighted that the Tricontinental’s pan-Third World discourse and appeal had not been converted into a sustainable and lasting pan-Third World liberation organisation and campaign.

Conclusion: the Tricontinental’s legacy The Tricontinental was a watershed moment for the Third World; it was the first concerted effort since the founding of the Third Communist International to forge a unified force capable of overthrowing the established international order. It constituted the ‘formal globalisation of the anti-imperial struggle’ (Neuner 2004, p. 122) initiating ‘the first anti-imperialist alliance of the peoples of three continents’ (Rodríguez 2005: 63), by ‘uniting them and their interests in a common perspective and position vis-à-vis the overdeveloped world’ (Young 2005, p. 18). As the apogee of the Third World Project, the Tricontinental represented a revolutionary model and approach to South–South relations, a radical example of global South self-determination, especially in terms of the organisation and conceptualisation of the anti-imperialist and national liberation struggles. A number of conjectural and, therefore, contingent events and developments frustrated the Tricontinental project, chief among them the impact of the world economic crisis of the 1970s and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, the vision still lives. OSPAAAL’s International Executive Secretariat, with representatives from Africa, Asia and Latin America is located in Havana. OSPAAAL remains committed to Tricontinentalism, working ‘with the same purposes of uniting the poor countries in their historical fight to realize their most profound demands’ (Pez Ferro 1997, p. VII). The organisation continues to publish the journal, Tricontinental, and to produce posters that support the causes of the South, which circulate globally. It is also a special consulting non-governmental organisation at the United Nations Economic and Social Council (Ávila Gómez 2016). Neoliberal globalisation, with the inequality it has deepened among and within nations, underscores the historical and analytical validity of the Tricontinental. As Robert Young, points out: 165

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[T]he three non-Western continents (Africa, Asia, Latin America) are largely in a situation of subordination to Europe and North America, and in a position of economic inequality. But this position of subordination is also one of insubordination. That is the moment the postcolonial turns tricontinental. (Young 2006, pp. 200–201) The Tricontinental signalled the possibility and promise of Third World unity. The possibility was thwarted and the promise unfulfilled. Nevertheless, whatever its limitations and disappointments, the Tricontinental took the concept of solidarity among the peoples and nations of the South and, if only briefly, made it reality. The idea and mission still retain relevancy and urgency.

References Adi, H., 2013. Pan Africanism and Communism: The Communist International, Africa and the Diaspora, 1919–1939. Trenton: Africa World Press. Africa Watch, 1992. Accountability in Namibia. London: Africa Watch. Agee, P., 1975. Inside the Company: CIA Diary Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Amin, S., 1979. NIEO: How to Put Third World Surpluses to Effective Use. Third World Quarterly 1(1), 65–72. Armes, R., 1987. Third World Filmmaking and the West. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Ávila Gómez, G., 2016. OSPAAAL: 50 Years Promoting Solidarity. Granma, 18 January. Barcia, M., 2009. Locking Horns with the Northern Empire: Anti-American Imperialism at the Tricontinental Conference of 1966 in Havana. Journal of Transatlantic Studies 7(3), 208–217. Blum, W., 2004. Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions since World War II. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press. Burnel, P. et al., 2017. Politics in the Developing World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cabral, A., 2009. The Weapon of Theory. The Journal of Pan African Studies 3(5), 1–18. Carmichael, S., 1967. Black Power and the Third World: Address to the Organization of Latin American Solidarity. Thornhill, ON: Third World Information Service. Castro, F., 1966. At the Closing Session of the Tricontinental Conference, January 15, 1966. University of Texas: Fidel Castro Speech Database. Available at: http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1966/19660216.html Castro, F., 1984. The World Crisis: Its Economic and Social Impact on the Underdeveloped Countries. London: Zed Books. Castro, F., 2000a. There are No Economic Miracles. In: Fidel Castro, Capitalism in Crisis: Globalization and World Politics Today. Melbourne: Ocean Press, pp. 1–4. Castro, F., 2000b. Third World Must Unite or Die. In: Fidel Castro, Capitalism in Crisis: Globalization and World Politics Today. Melbourne: Ocean Press, pp. 279–287. Chaliand, G., 1981. Revolution in the Third World. New York: Penguin. Comisión de Orientación Revolucionaria del Partido Communista de Cuba, 1971. Cuba-Chile: A Symbolic Meeting between Two Historic Processes. Havana: Political Editions. Dorticós Torrado, O., 1964. Speech Given by Doctor Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado at the Second Conference of Heads of States and Government of the Non Aligned. Havana: Government of the Republic of Cuba. Duncan, W.R., 1971. Castro’s New Approach to Latin America. World Affairs 133(4), 275–282. Finney, J.W., 1966. OAS Condemns Havana Meeting; Denounces Moves for Wars of ‘Liberation’ in Americas. The New York Times, 3 February. Foner, P. (ed.), 1970. W.E.B. Du Bois Speaks: Speeches and Addresses 1890–1919. New York: Pathfinder. Gleijeses, P., 2001. Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington and Africa, 1959–1976. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Gleijeses, P., 2013. Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976–1991. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Granma, 1966. Communist Party of Cuba Havana, 6 January. Guevara, E. 1968. Vietnam and the World Struggle for Freedom. In: George Lavan (ed.), Che Guevara Speaks: Selected Speeches and Writings. New York: Penguin, pp. 144–159. Henighan, S., 2009. The Cuban Fulcrum and the Search for a Transatlantic Revolutionary Culture in Angola, Mozambique and Chile, 1965–2008. Journal of Transatlantic Studies 7(3), 233–248. Internal Security Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 1966. The Tricontinental Conference of African Asian and Latin American Peoples, Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of 166

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the Internal Security Act and Other Security Laws, Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office. International Defence and Aid Fund, 1981. Remember Kassinga. London: International Defence & Aid Fund. Knox, R., 2014. A Critical Examination of the Concept of Imperialism in Marxist and Third World Approaches to International Law. Unpublished PhD thesis, London School of Economics. Lorini, A. and Basosi, P., 2009. Cuba and the International Scene of the Cold War: The African Case. In: Alessandra Lorini and Puccio Basosi (eds), Cuba in the World, the World in Cuba: Essays on Cuban History, Politics and Culture. Florence: Firenze University Press, pp. 239–246. Mandela, N., 1993. Nelson Mandela Speaks: Forging a Democratic Non-Racist South Africa. New York: Pathfinder. Mesa-Lago, C., 1974. Cuba in the 1970s: Pragmatism and Institutionalization. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. NACLA, 1967. The Tri-Continental Conference and the Ben Barka Affair. NACLA Newsletter 1(3), 9–10. NAM, 1964. Final Document – 2nd Summit Conference of Heads of State or Government of the Non-Aligned Movement, Cairo, Egypt, September 14, 1964. Cairo: NAM. NAM, 1973. Documents of the Fourth Conference of Heads of State or Government of Non-Aligned Countries – Held in Algiers, Algeria, from 5 to 9 September 1973. Algiers: NAM. NAM, 1979. Documents of the Sixth Conference of Heads of State or Government of Non-Aligned Countries – Held in Havana, Cuba, from 3 to 9 September 1979. Havana: NAM. Neuner, T., 2004. Cuba and the Armed Conflicts (1959–1989): Local Actor or Caught between Bipolar and Colonial Patterns of Politics. Revista de Historia Actual 2(2004), 111–125. Pearce, B. (ed.), 1977. Congress of the Peoples of the East, Baku, September 1920: Stenographic Report. London: New Park Publications Ltd. Peking Review, 1966. Report from Havana: The First Afro-Asian-Latin American Peoples’ Solidarity Conference. Peking Review, 15–21 January. Pez Ferro, R., 1997. La OSPAAAL y sus ediciones Tricontinental: Tribunas de las Solidaridad. El Cartel de la OSPAAAL: Arte de la Solidaridad Tricontinental, Havana, VII–VIII. Roa, R., 1964. The Television Interview on the Second Conference of the Non Aligned Nations Given by Doctor Raúl Roa, Minister Foreign Relations. Cuba in the Second Conference of Non-Aligned Countries. Havana: Information Department, The Foreign Minister, pp. 50–71. Rodríguez, B., 2005. ‘De la Esclavitud Yanqui a la libertad Cubana’: U.S. Black Radicals, the Cuban Revolution and the Formation of a Tricontinental Ideology. Radical History 92, 62–87. Rojas, D., 1981. One People, One Destiny: The Caribbean and Central America Today. New York: Pathfinder. Saney, I., 2006. African Stalingrad: The Cuban Revolution, Internationalism and the End of Apartheid. Latin American Perspectives 35(5), 81–117. Saney, I., 2009. Homeland of Humanity: Internationalism within the Cuban Revolution. Latin American Perspectives 36(1), 111–123. Segal, A., 1966. Havana’s Tricontinental Conference. Africa Report, April. Seidman, S., 2012. Tricontinental Routes of Solidarity: Stokely Carmichael. Journal of Transnational American Studies 4(2), 1–25. Steerling, C., 1981. The Terror Network. New York: Ruehart and Winston, and the Readers Digest Press. Tablada, C., 2007. Che Guevara: Economics and Politics in the Transition to Socialism. New York: Pathfinder. The New York Times, 1966. Leftist Parley Ends in Havana With Victory for Chinese Reds. The New York Times, 15 January. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, 1999. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report: Vol. 2. Repression and Resistance. London: Macmillan Reference Limited. UNGA, 1974. Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order, GA Res./S-6/3201, 6th Special Session, UN. 1 May. Available at www.un-documents.net/s6r3201.htm [Accessed 12 September 2018]. Young, R.J.C., 2005. From Bandung to the Tricontinental. Historein 5, 11–21. Young, R.J.C., 2006. Robert J.C. Young in South Africa: An Interview. English in Africa 33(2), 199–208.

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12 The rise and fall of pan-Arabism Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou

Introduction Between the late-middle of the 19th century and the late-middle of the 20th century, pan-Arabism rose and fell. Constitutive of both a discourse and a practice, seeking to unite Arabs across the boundaries of the different Arab states that were fought for during colonialism and established between the 1920s and the 1970s (Jordan became independent first in April 1921, as the Emirate of Transjordan, and the United Arab Emirates were formed last in December 1971), this ideology profoundly and lastingly impacted the Arab world. Though forcefully pursued during that period, expressed at both elite and street level and embodied in a series of attempts at formal unification by several of these states – notably under the form of the United Arab Republic (al Jumhuriya al ‘Arabiya al Mutahida, UAR), which for three years (1958–1961) merged non-contiguous Egypt and Syria into one single state – pan-Arabism was ultimately inconclusive and remains elusive. Its appeal subsisted after the 1970s, and yet, in effect, since then it has lost its mobilising force and appeal as a political project in the region, raising the question of whether it was essentially but a phase in the political history of the region. For all its important links to Arab nationalism, of which it is a derivative ideology, pan-Arabism is, however, ensconced in a larger history of the global South. Specifically, the particular experience of that Middle Eastern and North African nationalism was illustrative of both a moment and a method of uprising in pursuit of national liberation from colonialism. That point in time and that disposition were equally representative of consequential self-empowering efforts at South– South engagement which were, nonetheless, ultimately only half-born and which strikingly lost momentum early on in the postcolonial era after the 1960s. What then, we might enquire, was pan-Arabism, what drove it and why did it vanish? Benefiting from the correlation of a three-tiered set of distinct phenomena – the legacy of the European age of romantic nationalism in the 19th century, the anti-colonial struggle gathering momentum at the turn of the century, and the desire of most Arabs to rebuild their lost past grandeur as decolonisation struggles forged ahead – pan-Arabism functioned in a ‘perfect storm’ type of logic. The movement then took significant steps in the 1940s and 1950s to encapsulate its ideology in pan-Arab structures both at the regional level – notably with the establishment of the League of Arab States in 1945 – and at the level of several bilateral and sometimes trilateral 168

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country arrangements, only to encounter decisive limits triggered by the increasing political provincialism of those leaders professing it, the inability to connect the ideology with wider and more urgent socio-economic issues and other non-Arab political struggles and, eventually, the debasing of Arab solidarity itself as well as the rise and perpetuation of so-called cold wars between the region’s different regimes. Pan-Arabism remained, nonetheless, a powerful narrative, which was able to sporadically grab the imagination of Arab societies and at times move them anew in the 1980s and 1990s and indeed in a different form during the 2011 Arab Spring – never, however, doing so with the acuity it displayed in its early days.

Genesis The early 20th century witnessed a great deal of uncertainty and repositioning of identities in the Arab region (Gelvin 1999). The commonly portrayed stories of (Arab) nationalism and (Islamic) religion played out alongside other types of tribal and warrior mobilisation, both with equally deep roots in the region’s history. The Arab world entered the modern age, however, transitioning directly from empire to absolutist state (Birdal 2011) and into colonialism. Arguing that ‘in an age of nationalism, there is, in fact, a powerful drive by identity communities to attain a state and by state leaders to forge a shared national identity amongst their populations’, some have, therefore, advanced the idea that ‘the relative incongruity between state and identity is perhaps the most distinctive feature of the Middle East states system’ (Hinnebusch 2005, p. 153). Efforts at grouping Arabs transnationally have indeed historically been both enabled and marred by the very definition of what constitutes an Arab. The ambiguity as to what is an Arab has allowed for vast groupings of peoples across the Southern hemisphere, but ultimately that lack of clarity has been an impediment in terms of the tangible common ‘nation’ aspect of the ideology. Arab identity’s differentia specifica among other nationalisms is that, with eminent ethnic and geographical diversity in the Arab world, Arabhood was in effect defined linguistically. As Albert Hourani remarks in the opening pages of his Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (1962): More conscious of their language than any people in the world, seeing it not only as the greatest of their arts but also as their common good, most Arabs, if asked to define what they meant by the ‘the Arab nation’, would begin by saying that it included all those that spoke the Arabic language. (Hourani 1962, p. 1) The Arab nationalism ideologue Sati al-Husri remarked famously in that sense: Every Arab-speaking people is an Arab people. Every individual belonging to one of these Arabic-speaking peoples is an Arab. And if he does not recognise this, and if he is not proud of his Arabism, then we must look for the reasons that have made him take this stand. It may be an expression of ignorance; in that case we must teach him the truth. (Dawisha 2003, p. 72) Expanding Arabism to join countries in an ideological project carried in its DNA this limitation whereby immediate connections were possible (language) but not lasting ones (the given experience of a nation). The term pan-Arabism itself does not appear as such in Arabic and, instead, the phrases al qawmiya al ‘arabiya (Arab nationalism), al wataniya al ‘arabiya (Arab patriotism), al wihda al ‘arabiya (Arab unity), al ittihad al ‘Arabi (Arab union) and al ‘uruba 169

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(Arabism or Arabhood), are used interchangeably in both the literature and political debate to convey that meaning. Over the years, discussion of pan-Arabism has, unsatisfactorily, seesawed between a metanarrative overemphasising the role of Arab elites and micro-narratives of local experiences, now overplaying the former, now excessively correcting it in favour of the latter (Khalidi 1991; Khoury 1997). Early texts highlighted the notion of ‘awakening’, ‘renaissance’ and ‘making of’ personal stories (such as those of the early Arab nationalism ideologues, Rifaa al-Tahtawi, Abdelrahman al-Kawakibi and Sati al-Husri) (Antonius 1938; Haim 1962; Clements 1976). A second phase during the interwar years was looked at in terms of a (linear) ‘emergence’ of the movement (Dawn 1988). Eventually, the re-examination of the Arab nationalists’ experience over the following decades focused on a dynamic of ‘invention’ (Coury 1982) and, later, more critical inquiries (Tibi 1981). Suffering the larger triple problematic issues associated with Orientalism (including self-generated Orientalism), the absence of a comparative perspective, and the exceptionalism of ‘Middle East studies’, what has been missing in such a discussion of the meaning of pan-Arabism is a historicisation of its trajectory. For to be certain, Arab nationalism was elite-driven but pan-Arabism equally became much more of a popular, and at times populist, movement. The very nature of its starting point, namely an ardent desire for rupture from foreign control conceptualised by a vanguard with a referential to Arab history that starts with the end of jahiliya (the ‘ignorance’ age which Islam brings an end to in the seventh century) and skips to the modern age, was a recipe for such evolution of an ideology that could be moulded any which way. Moulded and modulated it was, as the early aristocratic discussions of the first-generation Arab nationalists in the 1910s (best embodied in the Damascene experience of blue-blooded Prince Abdullah, son of the Sharif Hussein bin Ali of Mecca, liaising, circa 1913, with the secret Al ‘Ahd (Covenant) society of Iraqi officers plotting both the overthrow of the Ottomans and the unification with Syria) gave way a quarter of a century later to a third generation springing from the peasantry and the working class to produce Ba’athism and Nasserism. (In a further indication of the importance of the Arabic language in pan-Arabism, the newsletter of Al ‘Ahd was entitled Al Lisan, the tongue, as in the mother tongue of the nation.) In between, a middle-class generation (Michel Aflaq, Constantin Zureiq and Zaki al-Arzusi) would represent the thinkers setting the intellectual architecture of the pan-Arabist project. If Arab nationalism was, then, initially elite-driven it is because the only way these early actors could connect was through elite channels enabling travel and exchange in privileged circles. However, Hejazi, Levantine, Cairote and Maghrebi elites also spoke the same modernising language and set of ideas because they had been formed in the same Westernised matrix. Paradoxically, pan-Arabism – a distinguishing feature of which was rejection of Western ways – was in many respects influenced by European ideas of nationalism, in particular Johann Fichte’s 1808 ‘Address to the German Nation’ and Giuseppe Mazzini’s Italian Risorgimento movement in the 1830s. A century later, different strands of European nationalism influenced Arab actors, and these included liberal nationalists in the United Kingdom and France as well as Fascists in Italy and Germany. In time, the Arab military was the natural recipient of these shaping forces, notably in Iraq and Syria where a series of coups, starting in 1936 in Baghdad, kick-started the era of the mukhabarat and istikhbarat police state in these two states and across the region. A double reaction to Ottoman and then Western occupation, Arab nationalism – soon growing into pan-Arabism – carried a further specificity beyond the emphasis on language and the decisive influence of its nemesis. Lacking a clear and distinct fatherland was problematic for a burgeoning ideology based on patria. If, in time, Egyptian President Gamal abd al-Nasser came to unambiguously and unanimously embody pan-Arabism, pan-Arabism itself, as an ideology distinct from its best representative, did not have a centre. Was it Cairo or Riyadh? Baghdad 170

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or Damascus? Algiers or Rabat? Indeed, should it be in the Mashreq (the Arab East) or the Maghreb (the Arab West), and what of the Nile Valley and its claim to being oum a dunya (the mother of the world)? Where pan-Arabism was strong was on that dimension of nationalism that forcefully gives shape to it, namely memory. Yet the antecedents for nationalism in the region were religious and imperial, rather than republican and national. Moreover, and problematically for their project, pan-Arabists could not establish exclusive reference to those memories of the Arab-Islamic golden age, as the Islamists could also, and indeed with more legitimacy than the secular and Marxist-influenced nationalists, claim the same narrative. Though a continuing debate on that question would pit nationalists vs. Islamists for decades (Farah 1987), ultimately the collective consciousness of most Arabs was about Islam and the collective consciousness of most Muslims diminished the importance of Arabhood (homeland for the umma is anathema to universality and Mecca and Medina are merely holy ‘sites’). As such, Arab nationalism had to find its operative anchor in something else. That amorphous ‘uruba feeling would be given form, with difficulty, and calls for unity would come by way of the wider Southern narrative about self-determination, independence and sovereignty. Similarly, the ‘Arab nation’ could not also claim to reconnect with an earlier moment in modern history where it had already been fleshed out. Although the Ba’athists, for instance, would later speak of a ‘fatherland’ or ‘motherland’ (borrowing European nationalist phraseology), one nation in the Arab world never, in fact, existed as such except under an Islamic configuration. Moreover, the Arabs were also fighting another ideology, Zionism, which precisely was striving for a homeland of its own, and, as a result, Arab nationalism ended up often modelling itself, in a further paradox, in the image of its Jewish enemy (Palestinian terrorism of the 1970s was prefigured by Jewish terrorism in the 1940s). Absent a territorial political contiguity, the movement would relate to a notion of bridging ‘common spaces’ but was nevertheless devoid of a so-called territorial community of nativity. If it was weak in such respects, pan-Arabism was, however, among the strongest forms of anti-colonialism. It is no surprise that its heyday corresponded with an eminently anti-colonial step taken by Nasser’s stance in 1956, nationalising the Aswan Dam, resisting the British and French assault and revealing these to be naked colonial powers. In not losing to them, Nasser had won and this dynamic captures the essence of pan-Arabism; namely resistance (although Nasser started, soon enough, talking of ‘Arab solidarity’ as the basis of Arab nationalism) (Al Jumhuriya al ‘Arabiya al Muttahida n.d.). As such, pan-Arabism, for all its claims of historical lineage, was an eminently contemporary phenomenon, and indeed a modern one. Such an organic connection with its present enabled it, however, to forge ahead strongly as an eminently anti-colonial movement, as a modernising force and as an enabling national actor – uniting to avoid losing (Khalidi et al. 1991) and coming together to create rather than recreate a state.

Links Once the colonial architecture had provided the context for the deployment of pan-Arabist feelings in the latter part of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century, a ‘search for Arab unity’ (Rejwan 1958; Porath 1986) took place until the middle of the 20th century. In Iraq, for instance, the rising power of the nationalists drove Britain to sign a treaty with these new political actors in that country (alongside Hashemites and local tribal leaders), instead of attempting to administer the country under the terms of the Mandate System, which had been agreed in Paris in January 1919 (Dodge 2003, p. 22). Following on the primacy of the language, the elevation of the nationalist project was particularly enabled by education and the place afforded to it by most pan-Arabist thinkers from the 1920s onwards. 171

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The Sana’a-born, Istanbul-raised, Syrian educationalist Sati al-Husri, in particular, would play a key role in that respect, notably in serving as Minister of Education of Iraq and forming a whole generation of Iraqis who then led the military into the nationalist era imbued with ideas of uniting the Arab world. The more formal pursuit of pan-Arabism was, however, through the project of the League of Arab States, an initiative that, arguably, came quite early. Founded in March 1945 by the six Arab states that were nominally independent then – Transjordan (1921, which became Jordan in 1946), Egypt (1922), Iraq (1932), Saudi Arabia (1932), Lebanon (1943) and Syria (1944), with North Yemen joining in May 1945 – the League had been the subject of formal meetings across the region since 1943. Running parallel to the elite approach, the statist ‘Arab League’, as it would come to be commonly known thereafter, echoed the same dynamics witnessed earlier. Two formative logics came together; on the one hand, the formation of these Arab states was itself an ‘organic’ project establishing a relationship with alternative sites of power (primarily the tribe or ‘ashira). On the other hand, the intensifying diplomatic exchanges between the new states (ultimately representing 22 countries), were the expression of a reaction to colonial arrangements, subsequent strategic calculations, division into different political camps and lasting alliances and counter-alliances. Time and again, unification and foreign control ran side by side (Mohamedou 2016). As a set of social relations, pan-Arabism could function and transcend borders as it meant to positively empower. Shiites and Kurds in the Levant, Copts in the Nile Valley and Berbers in North Africa were not necessarily opposed to the idea of Arab nationalism and indeed, at times, were sympathetic to it. Famously, the co-founder of the ultimate expression of pan-Arabism, the Arab Socialist Ba’ath party in Syria and Iraq, was a Christian, Michel Aflaq, and the long-serving foreign minister of Ba’athi Iraq was a Chaldean Catholic, Tariq Aziz (born Mikhail Yuhanna and baptised Manuel Christo). Indeed, the more heterogeneous the Arab society, you could say, the stronger the pan-Arabist calls were. Initially, however, in their approach to army-building, both of the major imperial powers in the Middle East and North Africa – Britain and France – favoured the recruitment of minorities. This minority identification with empire, and the consequent alteration in their power relations with the majority community, had the inevitable corollary of worsening ethnic and sectarian tensions across the region (Cronin 2014). Berbers (in Morocco and Algeria); Assyrians and Kurds (in Iraq); Christians, Circassians, Druze and Alawis (Syria); and Copts (Egypt) all empowered by the colonial powers, Sunni Arabs always a minority in the rank and file. That power, too, was pitted against the power of the notables and these networks developed control of key positions and a narrative about the boundary-effacing nation. Yet this divide et impera logic proved ultimately beneficial to pan-Arabism which was able to subsume these identities into an all-encompassing ideology of Arabism, expressed often by actors from those minorities. The Palestinian issue additionally provided the core of the set of issues that could be pursued jointly (Woolbert 1938) and, indeed, enabled a wider set of connections toward the Muslim world, notably with the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC, renamed Organisation of Islamic Cooperation). For all its appeal and ideological transcendence, the Palestinian state-building project was, however, predicated on a specific national struggle which followed its own dynamic from armed struggle to peace process (Sayigh 1999), and as such, its blending with pan-Arabism could only be limited. It was politically therefore that pan-Arabism was pursued. Between the mid-1940s and the late 1970s, the ideal was pursued throughout the region with no less than 18 instances of voluntary unification attempts between Arab states: Iraq–Syria (1946, 1949, 1963, 1978, 1979), Jordan–Iraq (1946, 1951 and 1958), Egypt–Syria (1958–1961), Egypt–Syria–Iraq (1963), Libya–Egypt (1972), Egypt–Libya (1973), Libya–Tunisia (1974), Libya–Morocco (1984), Libya–Sudan (1988), and 172

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North Yemen–South Yemen (1972, 1979 and 1990). One of those efforts constituted, in effect, the only success of pan-Arabism, with Syria and Egypt becoming de jure one single state from 22 February 1958 to 28 September 1961 known as the United Arab Republic (UAR) with its distinct flag. Indeed, the UAR went on to pursue its own pan-Arabism within pan-Arabism by striking a formal unity scheme with the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen in 1958; an alliance known as the United Arab States (UAS). In 1971, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were born as a result of a federation of seven previously separate emirates (Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujaira, Sharja, Ras al Khayma and Umm al Qaiwain). In September 1971, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi proposed the creation of a Federation of Arab Republics, Itihad al Jumhuriyat al ‘Arabiya, which initially included Libya, Egypt and Syria and to which Iraq and Sudan were invited. The proposal was submitted to referenda in the different states and continued to be on the table until November 1977. Importantly, these efforts were pursued by actors from different political spectrums, republics and monarchies alike (indeed the Jordan–Iraq attempts were intra-dynastic as they concerned different branches of the Hashemite tribe). The final configuration of pan-Arab unification attempts took place in the 1980s with several parallel, and often competing, regional organisations established. A Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was founded in 1981 bringing together Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman; an Arab Maghreb Union (UMA, from its French acronym) was launched in 1987 grouping Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Tunisia and Libya; and a short-lived Arab Cooperation Council (ACC) was set up in 1989 composed of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and then-North Yemen. The pan-Arab feeling has never, however, consolidated fully around any of these state-led initiatives and a measure of ambiguity was carried over into the implementation of the unification plan. The transregional links of pan-Arabism proved more complex and pan-Arabism itself became a political tool, with, for instance, the conservative monarchical Arab Union of Jordan and Iraq in 1958 an obvious reaction to the progressivist republican UAR of Syria and Egypt declared a few months earlier; or the ACC a response to the GCC. The advance of the colonial project and its Eurocentric narrative had triggered a reaction, with the colonised increasingly developing counter-narratives in pursuit of identity by way of cooperation. In effect, the Berlin conference-type cooperation among countries of the European empires planted the seeds for a counter-cooperation by modern socialism-flavoured subaltern nationalisms that navigated both the roads of their own definition and those of cooperation. As this led, from about the 1880s to the 1910s, to what Cemil Aydin terms ‘the popularisation of geopolitics’ (Aydin 2013, p. 676), the production of ‘new’ nationalisms could, in effect, from the beginning, conceive of ‘solidarity’ as a natural component of Southern identity. As pan-Arabism forged ahead, however, it started encountering the resistance of local nationalisms whereby domestic notions of a given Arab nation stood increasingly in the way of the larger nationalistic project. The distinguishing nature of the former project became more and more elusive as ‘Algerianess’, ‘Moroccaness’, ‘Egyptianess’, ‘Syrianess’, ‘Iraqiness’ and so on started overtaking the minds and hearts of these countries’ citizens. Indeed, how could pan-Arabists push so strongly for Palestinian statehood while calling domestically for a blurring of boundaries among Arab nations? The dissonance was more than conceptual, soon enough encapsulated in the realpolitik game of geopolitical competition between the new Arab nations. Pan-Arabism became anew, or rather remained, an ideal. That to which an Algerian had to exclusively express attachment became a competitive process in which the local inevitably won. Pan-Arabism was also predicated on a symbiotic relationship between state and society. When the regimes showed their colours to be of the repressive kind, the nationalist narrative became associated with dispossession instead of – a decade earlier – empowerment. Finally, in the most evident limitation of its manifestation as a South–South project able to transcend the Arab region, pan-Arabism was never able to make significant political connections 173

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beyond the Middle East and North Africa. In spite of the celebrated April 1955 Asian African Bandung moment and connections between Nasser and Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah, sub-Saharan African, Asian and indeed Latin American issues carried little importance for the nationalists denouncing the West from Baghdad and Damascus. When, for instance, Malcolm X – as, during the last year of his life, he was transforming into a global political leader linking the domestic racial discrimination in the United States with the larger issues of the decolonising world (Ambar 2014) – attempted to reach out to Arab leaders during his visits to the region, notably Nasser and Saudi Arabian Prince Faysal, he was met with socially welcoming but politically tepid responses. The guarded nature of such engagements was evidence of a selfcentredness that had long marked and remains a feature of Arab politics.

Aftermath Pan-Arabism was arguably a moment (1870s to 1970s) which was essentially ‘one sort of modern anti-colonial nationalism’ (Breuilly 1994, p. 149). Even some 50 years since it de facto came to a slow halt, its appeal for Arabs remains strong but it unequivocally lacked that which allows nations to build themselves over time, namely a tangible centre of gravity. Eminently paradoxical and possibly sui generis, Arab nationalism was cogent enough to be recognised and carried appeal for many an Arab but it was equally hollow at its centre, once filled only by the statist machinery of the authoritarian postcolonial Middle Eastern and North African regimes. As nationalism is, however, about duration, pan-Arabism then persisted more as a sentiment than an actual project, and even less a politically viable one. Ever disposed to express scepticism or register Arab shortcoming, Orientalist mainstream media and experts often noted in subsequent decades the ‘end’ or ‘failure’ of Arab nationalism – an example among many is Fouad Ajami’s 1978 text, ‘The End of Pan-Arabism’ – failing to elevate the analysis and see that, in effect, pan-Arabism had merely been an experiment (arguably a successful one in terms of its local anti-colonial dimension), which had been superseded by other local and regional dynamics. Pan-Arabism came on the heels of European nationalism, rode the anti-colonial movement, allowed minorities to strike a balance with majorities, benefited from modernity, enjoyed a fantastic poster child in Nasser (Aburish 2004) and used the Islamist threat and the Israeli bête noire to justify its dominion before reaching the natural limits of the anti-colonial conjunctual movement that it inherently was. Above and beyond the complexity of nationalism itself (Özkirimli 1999) any form of pannationalism also requires a driving logic. The longer-term difficulty for pan-Arabism to survive as a lasting ideology in that sense was then not so much its power as a narrative – it had plenty of that, as noted with its contra mundum logic (against the Ottomans, the French/British/Americans and Israelis) and the Palestine issue – but rather the gnawing fact it had no deep history. This did not have to be an impediment per se since as a modernising ideology it could claim to be propelled forward. In the history-dominated Arab world, however, such a gap proved to be an Achilles’ heel. The deeper pan-Arabism went, the more it encountered Islam. Trans-Islamism, contrary to trans-Arabism, was indeed a reality that both existed historically with the AraboIslamic Empire and the Ottoman Empire, almost uninterrupted until the early 20th century, and was in effect being reborn at the level of irredentist and insurgent transnational Islamist groups across the area from the 1970s onwards. Arguably then, the story of pan-Arabism is the story of the emergence and consolidation of sovereign states in the Arab world (Mufti 1996, p. 2). Indeed, the pan-Arabist approach was always in competition with the demands of statehood. The more the states pushed toward supranational Arabhood, the more their systems were tested and their societies – although sympathetic to Arab unity projects – started asking more forceful questions of their governments. In effect, 174

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the conflicting demands of the various nationalist ideologies have prevented the development of a uniform political identity in these heterogeneous societies (Kelidar 1993, p. 315). What sense to give to Arab solidarity remained vague in the face of statehood, and the Ba’ath slogan, for instance, ‘wihda, hurriya, ishtirakiya’ (unity, freedom and socialism) was not particularly compelling as it looked like a mixture of different orientations. Logically qutriya (regionalism) became the problem for those seeking pan-unity, even though the ambiguity lent itself to modulation as Fred Halliday noted: Nor indeed is such plurality of identities necessarily a negative tension – it may, instead, provide a wider reserve of symbols and legitimation for political leaders and states to draw on. Thus, Arab leaders and nationalist movements have quite easily espoused both forms of nationalism and varied the relationship between them at different times. When co-operation with other Arab states is the priority, or when a state wishes to legitimate its intervention in the affairs of another state, the pan-Arab or qaumi predominates. When a state wishes to downplay the shared interests of the Arab world, or justify confrontation with another state, the local or qutri comes to the fore. (Halliday 2005, p. 210) Bookended by the Great Arab Revolt of 1916 and the June 1967 War, by way of the Palestine question and the Algerian one in that interim, pan-Arabism was always moving forward as a reaction to external agency. Whether it took the form of Ottoman domination that needed to be brought to an end (and doing so, too, in alliance with the British as the HashemiteLawrence association illustrated vividly and problematically), colonial control by France or the United Kingdom, or Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, what often gave a temporary centre of gravity came from an outsider’s initiative. When looking inwardly, the movement had strength of memory and powerful objective cultural and linguistic ties among the Arab nations but it lacked an autonomous and self-sustaining overarching project which would transcend the specific nationalisms that began to gain shape, momentum and structure from the 1940s onwards. Ultimately, was pan-Arabism anything else beyond the rejection of external domination? The answer lies in its inability to resist the challenge of religion. When Arabs in most of these key states (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria) started making the ethos-credo choice between that which they are and that in which they believe, in favour of the latter, pan-Arabism looked nice and desirable but passé, if not obsolete. State-driven and dressed in the clothes of the one-party state it could not serve as a platform to contest authoritarianism. Vague and emotional as an all-embracing concept, it could equally not be useful to join the physical battle against the new occupiers (the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s and, later, the Americans in Iraq in the 2000s). In a coda to the story, many former Arab nationalist leaders, Saddam Hussayn notably (Baram 2014), subsequently developed a penchant for religiosity and the uprisings of 2011 were driven by anti-regime social movements, both in effect closing the book on pan-Arabism.

References Aburish, S.K., 2004. Nasser: The Last Arab. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Ajami, F., 1978. The End of Pan-Arabism. Foreign Affairs 57(2), 355–373. Al Jumhuriya al ‘Arabiya al Muttahida (United Arab Republic), n.d. Majmou‘aat Khutab wa Tasrihat wa Bayanat al Rais Gamal Abd al Nasser (The collection of the Speeches, Statements and Communiqués of President Gamal Abd al Nasser), volume 4, Cairo: Maslahat al Isti‘lamat. Ambar, S., 2014. Malcolm X at Oxford Union: Racial Politics in a Global Era. Oxford: Oxford University Press 175

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Antonius, G., 1938. The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National Movement. London: Hamish Hamilton. Aydin, C., 2013. Pan-Nationalism of Pan-Islamic, Pan-Asian and Pan-African Thought. In: J. Breuilly (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 672–693. Baram, A., 2014. Saddam Husayn and Islam, 1968–2003: Ba’thi Iraq from Secularism to Faith. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Birdal, M.S., 2011. The Holy Roman Empire and the Ottomans: From Global Imperial Power to Absolutist States. London: I.B. Tauris. Breuilly, J., 1994. Nationalism and the State. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Clements, F., 1976. The Emergence of Arab Nationalism: From the Nineteenth Century to 1921, A Bibliography. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources. Coury, R.M., 1982. Who ‘Invented’ Egyptian Arab Nationalism? International Journal of Middle East Studies 14(3 and 4), 249–281 (part one) and 459–479 (part two). Cronin, S., 2014. Armies and State-Building in the Modern Middle East: Politics, Nationalism and Military Reform. London: I.B. Tauris. Dawisha, A., 2003. Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: From Triumph to Despair. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dawn, E.C., 1988. The Formation of Pan-Arab Ideology in the Interwar Years. International Journal of Middle East Studies 20, 67–91. Dodge, T., 2003. Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation-Building and History Denied. New York: Columbia University Press. Farah, T.E., 1987. Pan-Arabism and Arab Nationalism: The Continuing Debate. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Gelvin, J.L., 1999. Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire. Berkeley: University of California Press. Haim, S.G., 1962. Arab Nationalism: An Anthology. Berkeley: University of California Press. Halliday, F., 2005. The Middle East in International Relations: Power, Politics and Ideology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hinnebusch, R., 2005. The Politics of Identity in Middle East International Relations. In: L. Fawcett (ed.), International Relations of the Middle East. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 151–171. Hourani, A., 1962. Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kelidar, A., 1993. States without Foundations: The Political Evolution of State and Society in the Arab East. Journal of Contemporary History 28(2), 315–339. Khalidi, R., 1991. Arab Nationalism: Historical Problems in the Literature. The American Historical Review 96, 1363–1373. Khalidi, R., Anderson, L., Muslih, M., and Simon, R.S. (eds), 1991. The Origins of Arab Nationalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Khoury, P.S., 1997. The Paradoxical in Arab Nationalism. In: J. Jankowski and I. Gershoni (eds), Rethinking Arab Nationalism in the Arab Middle East. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 273–288. Mohamedou, M.O., 2016. Arab Agency and the United Nations Project: The League of Arab States between Universality and Regionalism. Third World Quarterly 37(7), 1219–1233. Mufti, M., 1996. Sovereign Creations: Pan-Arabism and Political Order in Syria and Iraq. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Özkirimli, U., 1999. Theories of Nationalism. London: Macmillan. Porath, Y., 1986. In Search of Arab Unity, 1930–1945. London: Frank Cass. Rejwan, N., 1958. Arab Nationalism: In Search of an Ideology. In: W.Z. Laqueur (ed.), The Middle East in Transition, New York: Praeger, pp. 145–165. Sayigh, Y., 1999. Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949–1993. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tibi, B., 1981. Arab Nationalism: A Critical Inquiry. New York: St. Martin’s Press (originally published in German). Woolbert, R.G., 1938. Pan-Arabism and the Palestine Problem. Foreign Affairs 16(2),309–322.

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13 Pan-Africanism A history Ama Biney

Introduction: the birth of pan-Africanism Pan-Africanism simultaneously refers to a movement, idea and an ideology that seeks to restore the dignity, freedom and right to self-determination for all peoples of African descent around the globe against the historical conditions of enslavement, colonisation, and new forms of domination that have manifested since the attainment of independence across Africa during and following the 1960s. While its origins remain contested, it is clear that key ties of solidarity and unity were forged on the slave ships during the Middle Passage – the journey across the Atlantic to the New World – among slaves of both different and similar ethnic backgrounds, ties that were instrumental in resisting diverse forms of oppression on the plantations (Campbell 1985, p. 14). On arrival in the New World many Africans fled into the swamps, forests and hills of the Caribbean, Southern American states and across Latin America to escape enslavement. They became ‘maroons’ who were runaway slaves who preserved aspects of their African cultural heritage in fugitive alternative communities in the New World of the Americas and Caribbean, and became a thorn in the side of planter societies (Price 1996; Campbell 1988; Robinson 1969). Magubane (1987, p. 129) contends that pan-African consciousness ‘arose at different times, in different places, and manifested itself in different ways’, with Esedebe (1994, p. 4) identifying seven major ideas underpinning pan-Africanism. First, Africans and individuals of African origin recognise Africa as their homeland; second, solidarity among men and women of African descent; third, belief in a distinct ‘African Personality’ and ‘Ubuntu’, which is the African philosophy that ‘I am a human being through others’; fourth; restoration of Africa’s history; fifth, pride in African cultural heritage; sixth, Africa for Africans in church and state; seventh, the hope for a glorious and united future. Drawing on these ideas, in the last 20 years, the struggle for pan-Africanism by grassroots organisations on the ground across the global Diaspora has demanded reparations for slavery and colonialism. On a state level, more recently reparations have been led by the governments of the Caribbean. Pan-Africanism does not aim at the external domination of other people, and, although it is a movement operating around the notion of being a race-conscious movement, it is not a racialist one: this is to say that it does not assert that people of African descent are superior to Europeans 177

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or any other peoples in any way. In short, pan-Africanism is not anti-white but is profoundly against all forms of oppression and the domination of African people (also see Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Tafira, this volume). Williams (2008, p. 13) observes that, ‘For more than a century, now, Pan-Africanism has evolved into a movement that has included variants of nationalism and socialism as its two major components’ (italics in original). Integral to African nationalism has been the struggle for self-determination and pride of race, and the struggle for socialism has advocated the equitable redistribution and nationalisation of resources in the control of ordinary people rather than a few. This chapter will examine the early pioneers of pan-Africanism; the development and myriad institutional formations of pan-Africanism in the 20th century; the complexities and internal debates and perspectives of the pan-African movement such as ‘who is an African?’; who has advocated pan-Africanism, why and when; how different movements, forces and concepts of pan-Africanism have emerged in different times, locations and spaces in the diaspora and on the African continent; as well as the nature and objectives of the movement for pan-Africanism. It will conclude by highlighting some key areas for future research.

Early pan-Africanists and factors in the growth of pan-Africanism Pan-Africanism started as a movement initially among African Americans and West Indians, that is, among people of African descent who were living outside of the African continent. African Americans were its driving force from the late 19th century to the end of the Second World War. Since 1945, the movement has been led by continental Africans. Among the early proto-pan-Africanists are male individuals such as: Benito Sylvain, Martin Delany Robinson, Henry McNeal Turner, Paul Cuffee, Marcus Garvey, John Duport, John B. Russwurm, David Walker, Edward W. Blyden, James Africanus Horton, and Robert Campbell. Among some of the early female champions of pan-Africanism were Adelaide Casely-Hayford, Anna H. Jones, Anna Julia Cooper, Fannie Barrier Williams, Mrs Loudin, Ella D. Barrier and others. Magubane (1987, pp. 139–140) expounds that ‘it was characteristic of the proto-Pan-Africanists that they placed their own struggle in [the] diaspora in the larger context of the struggle by African peoples against colonialism and imperialism.’ He contends that during the 18th and 19th centuries, many people of African descent were made to repudiate Africa (1987, pp. 139–140). Not all people of African descent looked proudly at Africa, as many had imbibed the racist Eurocentric view that Africa was a place of inferiority and degradation (Fanon 1961). Consequently the ideology and movement of pan-Africanism was, in its formative beginnings, a movement that aimed to challenge the denigration and malignant perceptions of Africa being a backward continent that people of African descent had been indoctrinated into. Factors that influenced the growth of pan-Africanism and helped crystallise the notion of ‘the African Personality’ included the slave trade, European imperialism, race and race consciousness. The transatlantic slave trade that led to the haemorrhaging of millions of able-bodied African women and men who were put to work in the Americas and the Caribbean laid the basis of industrial capitalism and its wealth. The transatlantic slave trade was supplanted by European imperialism that led to the equally brutal partitioning and occupation of the African continent, symbolised in the 1884–85 Berlin Conference which was attended by the various European powers. Not one African nation was a participant. In parallel, the ideology of pseudo-scientific racism emerged with the growth of the transatlantic slave trade and European imperialism that considered African people to be inferior. During this time Europeans developed a hierarchy of races in which they constituted the superior race and people of African descent occupied the 178

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lowest rung on the evolutionary ladder of civilisational development that came to be known as Social Darwinism. Among the proponents of such views was the German philosopher Friedrich Hegel, who believed Africa and Africans were not part of history and its people were devoid of morality, ethics, religions and political systems. The Haitian Revolution that took place between 1791–1804 gave rise to the first successful slave revolt and the establishment of a black republic in the New World which embodied the pan-Africanist ideal of the achievement of dignity, self-determination as well as racial and economic justice for African people. Similarly, among the consequences of widespread Christian missionary education was the education of an African elite who were responsible for the development of African religious nationalism or ‘Ethiopianism’, especially in South and West Africa. This intellectual revolution led to the establishment of independent African churches that were controlled by Africans and whose doctrines and rituals were in tune with African cultures and traditions. Ethiopianism can be considered to be a variant of pan-Africanism in that it sought to promote the self-determination and dignity of African people via Christianised religious practices and worship that incorporated aspects of African cultural practices in an audacious effort to ‘shirk European cultural domination and control decision-making in the church’ (Kalu 2005, p. 147). It began in West Africa in the 1860s and in South Africa in the 1870s and attained its peak in the 1880s, when the first real breakaway African independent church was founded in South Africa by Nehemiah Tile in 1884.

20th-century developments of pan-Africanism 1900–1945 In the early 20th century five concurrent streams contributed to the rise in pan-African consciousness between 1900 and 1945. Some were more cultural and others more intellectual and overtly political in focus. They were: the rise of Garveyism and the Harlem Renaissance; the first five Pan-African Congresses (PAC) from 1900 to 1945; the activities of the West African Student Union (WASU); the National Congress of British West Africa (NCBWA); and the Negritude movement. While Jamaican Marcus Garvey, along with his first wife, Amy Ashwood Garvey, are credited with establishing the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Harlem, New York in 1917, an obscure figure who facilitated the rise of Garvey’s message was ‘the father of Harlem radicalism’, Hubert Harrison (Perry 2011, p. 5) Harrison was a militant voice in Harlem as well as a contemporary of Garvey. He set up the ‘Liberty League’ organisation in 1917 that, unlike W.E.B. Du Bois’ National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), did not solicit membership or funding from white Americans. The organisation stood for political independence for Africa and advocated both class and race consciousness (Perry 2011, p. 8). Harrison’s severe criticisms of Garvey’s self-aggrandisement and financial mismanagement by August 1920 did not seem to dent Garvey’s growing popularity, despite the fact that Harrison continued to write for Garvey’s newspaper Negro World. At its peak during the 1920s, the Garvey movement ‘boasted approximately 1,120 branches in over 40 countries’ around the world (Martin 1983, p. 59), ‘cutting across political and linguistic barriers’. Among Garvey’s pan-Africanist principles was the belief in self-reliance, and he therefore established the Negro Factory Corporation and a series of black-owned businesses such as the shipping company called the Black Star Line and a black newspaper entitled Negro World. He aimed to instil racial pride in people of African descent, giving speeches in which he coined inspiring slogans such as ‘Up, you mighty race, accomplish what you will’; ‘One God! One aim! 179

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One destiny!’; ‘Africa for the Africans . . . at home and abroad’; ‘A people without knowledge of their past history, origin and cultures is a like a tree without roots’. There is no doubt that Garveyism awakened an identification with Africa among black people scattered around the globe. At the same time as the rise in Garveyite thinking was the rise of a cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance, from around 1918 to the mid-1930s, in which black people in America considered their African roots and connected with the African continent through music, dance, song and literature. James Weldon Johnson, a celebrated African American writer and journalist described the Harlem Renaissance as ‘the flowering of Negro Literature’. Among the many important contributors were Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, both jazz musicians; jazz singers Bessie Smith and Josephine Baker, who was also a famous dancer at the time; the poet Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, and the novelist Langston Hughes. It was a time in which African Americans embraced their black identity; it represented a challenge to the racist stereotypes of the Negro and hence the idea of the ‘New Negro’ was born. There was a belief that art and literature could serve to ‘uplift’ the race (on the significance of the arts, see Rojas Sotelo, this volume). It was a period in which African Americans were politically outraged, as were many Caribbean and black people in Europe, when Ethiopia in the spring of 1935 was invaded by Italy in a wholly unprovoked act of aggression. The pan-African response was reflected in numerous fundraising efforts for weapons and medical supplies, the boycott of Italian-produced goods, newspaper articles condemning Italy and admonishing the League of Nations, and major demonstrations. As one of two countries in Africa that was never colonised by the European powers (the other being Liberia), Ethiopia had a special place in the consciousness of pan-Africanists for also successfully defeating the Italians in the 1896 Battle of Adwa. In Britain, the invasion of Ethiopia gave rise to the International African Friends of Abyssinia (IAFA), formed by the Marxist Trinidadian scholar activist, C.L.R James, and the International African Service Bureau (IASB). The former was set up in the parlour of Amy Ashwood Garvey, the wife of Marcus Garvey in West London. Members of these organisations included: the Trinidadian, George Padmore, the South African novelist, Peter Abrahams, the Gold Coast activist, J.B. Danquah, the Trinidadian cricketer, Learie Constantine, and the Trinidadian journalist, Claudia Jones. Amy Ashwood Garvey was also a member of these organisations and would appear at Speakers Corner in Hyde Park in London, denouncing imperialism in the African colonies and demanding political freedom for black people, as well as condemning the vicious attack on Ethiopia. The WASU, which was established in 1925, also vociferously protested against the violation of Ethiopia’s sovereignty, simultaneously acting as a campaigning platform for predominantly West African students who had arrived in London to study. It set about organising accommodation for African students who were prevented from renting rooms due to the prevailing discriminatory colour bar in the city (Adi 1998), with a student hostel opening in 1933. However, these students – led by the Nigerian lawyer, Ladipo Solanke and the Sierra Leonean, Herbert Bankole-Bright – also became politicised by their colonial experience in the vortex of British imperialism and WASU soon agitated against colonial domination by convening political meetings. Its journal – called ‘WASU’ – also raised the consciousness of African and Caribbean colonial students in Britain by disseminating news about the colonial territories. The WASU also collaborated with the NCBWA that was set up in Accra, Ghana in March 1920 with delegates from the Gold Coast, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and the Gambia. It called for West African unity and sent a delegation to the British colonial office in September 1920 demanding increased representation in the Legislative Assembly of each of the colonial territories, the establishment of a West African court of appeal and a West African university 180

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(Kimble 1963, pp. 386–395). With the death of one of its founders, Joseph Casely-Hayford in 1930, the organisation also died. Another pan-Africanist movement that emerged during the 1930s and particularly among the former French-held territories in Africa, the Caribbean and in Europe, was Negritude. The term was created by the Martinican poet, playwright and politician, Aimé Césaire between 1930 and 1931 in Paris. Negritudists sought to rediscover African values and attitudes through the dissemination of all art forms and cultural media via the journal Présence Africaine that was set up in 1947. Exponents included Leopold Senghor of Senegal, Léon Damas from French Guiana, Paul Niger from Guadeloupe, and the Senegalese philosopher Alioune Diop. In Paris, as in London, there were pan-Africanist organisations such as the Ligue Universelle pour la Défense de la Race Noire, established by Prince Kojo Tavalou Houenou of Dahomey which was key in attacking French colonial assimilationist policies between 1924 and 1936. In 1924 Houenou, who was a colleague of Garvey, attended the 1924 UNIA convention in New York. Far more radical organisations were the Comité de la Défense de la Race Nègre led by Lamine Senghor from Senegal and the Ligue de la Défense de la Race Nègre led by Tiemoho Garon Kouyate from the Sudan.

The Pan-African Congresses Concurrent with the above-mentioned struggles of African people around the world, was the unfolding of the five PACs. The Trinidadian barrister, Henry Sylvester Williams was instrumental in establishing ‘the world’s first Pan-African Association’ in 1897 in London (Hooker 1975, p. 23) which committed itself to securing the civil and political rights of Africans, and to improving the living conditions of oppressed Africans throughout the world as well as develop friendly relations between Africans and the Caucasian races (ibid., p. 23). Williams convened the first Pan-African Conference in 1900, which 30 delegates from the Caribbean, the USA, Canada, Europe and Africa attended. Thompson (1969, p. 22) observes that ‘the aims of the [1900] conference were limited but purposive’. Overall, they were reformist in that they sought to ‘appeal to the missionary and abolitionist tradition of the British people to protect Africans from the depredations of Empire builders’, as well as ‘to bring people of African descent together’. W.E.B. Du Bois was the key organiser of the PACs that took place between 1919 to 1927. His intellect and considerable organisational skills were responsible for keeping alive the panAfrican ideal during these years. The 1919 Congress that took place in Paris sent a commission led by Du Bois to the League of Nations to discuss the status of Africans. It also devised lengthy resolutions calling, inter alia, for the right of Africans to independence, the abolition of slavery and capital punishment in the colonies, and the right to education. The Congress of 1921 met in London, Brussels and Paris and again petitioned the League of Nations for independence for the African colonies and condemned Belgian colonial rule while the 3rd PAC that convened in London and Lisbon repeated earlier resolutions. The 4th PAC met in New York in 1927 and its resolutions were similar to those passed by the 3rd Congress. Between 1927 and 1945 the Pan-African Movement (PAM) descended into a lull period (Thompson 1969, pp. 64–97) in terms of Congresses and the activities of the Garveyite movement. It was revived after the Second World War with the 5th PAC in October 1945, in Manchester, England. The consensus among commentators is that this Congress differed from the earlier ones in several important respects. First, ‘most of the Manchester participants were elected leaders of various mass-constituency organisations or had direct contacts with nascent independence movements’ (Marable 1998, p. 95). Second, the Congress had a greater 181

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participation of Africans from the continent in comparison to earlier Congresses. Individuals such as Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Hastings Banda and Wallace Johnson were later to play a prominent role in the anti-colonial struggles in their respective countries. Finally, the ideology of the Congress was African nationalism, that is, the right to self-determination for all African people. Thereafter, between 1945 and 1958, the PAM retreated into another period of dormancy. It was not until Ghana’s independence in March 1957 that pan-Africanism was revived with the charismatic figure and action of Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah. A year later, he established two conferences in the tradition of the PAC with the strong support of his former mentor, George Padmore, whom Nkrumah had appointed as Minister of African Affairs. The first Conference organised by Padmore was the Conference of Independent African States (CIAS) held in Accra in April 1958, which was attended by the then independent African states – Ghana, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Liberia and Morocco – who discussed common social, political and economic problems and potential solutions (Thompson 1969, p. 129). In December of the same year, an All African Peoples Conference (AAPC) was also held in Accra. It was attended by African liberation movements and leaders such as Patrice Lumumba, Holden Roberto, Frantz Fanon, Kenneth Kaunda and others. Thompson (ibid., p. 130) observes that ‘The significance of the All African People’s Conference can be estimated by considering the effect it had on the Africans in the Congo and in South Africa.’ Nkrumah, during the 1960s, was among the radical African leaders that declared on the eve of Ghana’s independence that ‘the independence of Ghana was meaningless, unless it is linked with the total liberation of the African continent’. Thereafter, Nkrumah devoted considerable financial and practical assistance to African freedom fighters across the African continent. Ghana became a sanctuary for such fighters including the Pan-African Congress of South Africa, and other militants such as the Union des Population du Cameroun (UPC). Nkrumah, Sekou Toure of Guinea and Emperor Haile Selassie were instrumental in the setting up of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) on 25 May 1963. However, beneath the alleged unity of the OAU were acute ideological differences between African countries. The more radical Casablanca bloc (which was formed in May 1961 and comprised Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt), advocated political integration of the African continent as opposed to the gradualist approach that focused on economic cooperation of the Brazzaville and Monrovia group (comprising Liberia, Gabon, Chad, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroun, Nigeria, Congo-Brazzaville and other countries). An uneasy compromise was achieved in order to avoid deadlock with the founding of the OAU. From 1963 to 2002, the OAU and its successor, the African Union (AU), remained the continental body that embodied and articulated pan-Africanism. While the 1960s were a tumultuous decade on the African continent in which 17 African countries attained their political independence, there were also upheavals across the Atlantic Ocean in the USA, where people of African descent were struggling for their civil rights. With the rise of the Nation of Islam in the USA and its charismatic leader, Malcolm X redefined civil rights for people of African descent in America as one of human rights. He also reconnected Africans in America to the African continent. Immediately after his assassination, the younger generation of Africans in America articulated a resurgent radicalism in new movements that emerged. In 1966 in California, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense was born. Led by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, it gave rise to the Black Power Movement that had offshoots in Trinidad, Britain and the rise of black consciousness in South Africa. Such movements represented the continuation and spread of the pan-African idea and were personified

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in the actions and activities of individuals such as Malcolm X, who is believed to have catalysed the birth of the Black Power Movement in the USA; Kwame Ture (formerly Stokely Carmichael), and women activists such as Ericka Huggins, Assata Shakur and Elaine Brown. In South Africa names associated with the founding and development of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) are Steve Biko, Bennie Khoapa, Barney Pityana, Mapetal Mohapi and Mamphela Ramphele. Both the Black Panther Party and the BCM advocated the belief in self-reliance, self-help groups for black communities as well as black pride in African bodies and defence against the repressive actions of the American police state and the white minority apartheid state during the latter part of the 1960s and into the 1970s.

Pan-Africanism redefined in different contexts in Africa and in the diaspora On the African continent during the 1970s, the OAU supported the struggles of the Portuguese African territories for independence. Many have criticised the OAU for its adherence to the non-violation of the colonial borders and non-interference in the affairs of African states which inhibited the action of member states in times of political instability. The OAU failed to recognise the contribution of people of African descent outside the African continent to panAfricanism, in addition to the fact that there were no institutional mechanisms for civil society to engage with this inter-state body. The metamorphosis of the OAU into the AU in South Africa in July 2002 made an attempt to rectify these institutional imperfections. The AU is endorsed with the right to intervene in the internal affairs of its member states in circumstances involving war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. It introduced the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) a year later which seeks to promote conformity in regard to political, economic and corporate governance values, codes and standards, among African countries, while the diaspora has been formally recognised in terms of geographic representation as the Sixth Region. Unlike the OAU, there is a peacekeeping force with military, police and civilian contingents, known as the African Standby Force (ASF) which is under the direction of the AU, and is to be deployed in times of crisis in Africa. The AU also possesses avenues for civil society dialogue to advance peopleoriented policies and programmes within the plethora of its structures and organs, including the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) and the Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC). However, soon after the establishment of the OAU, nationalist sentiments prevailed among African leaders who paid lip-service to the implementation of African unity. Another serious development at the time were the machinations of the Cold War superpowers on the continent which effectively distorted the vision of pan-Africanism. Despite this, during the decades of acute Cold War activity on the African continent, in which the superpowers of the former Soviet Union and America supported various African movements and governments, pan-Africanist sentiment across the globe was expressed in concrete solidarity for the peoples of southern Africa and in the relentless lobbying efforts of African nations via the OAU and the UN that produced hundreds of resolutions and raised critical resources for liberation movements in southern Africa (Reddy 2008; Tarimo and Reuben 2014). African musicians and activists such as Miriam Makeba, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Harry Belafonte, Maya Angelou and many others also worked in artistic contributions for the unity of people of African descent (also see Rojas Sotelo, this volume).

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In 1974 the 6th PAC was held in Tanzania and declared: [T]he philosophical foundation of our development strategy should be based on self-reliance guided by a progressive ideology; inter-African, Caribbean and Third World Co-operation; democratization of international organisation, particularly the financial and monetary institutions, in order to bring about the liberation of our people at home and in the Diaspora. (Campbell 1975, p. 92) The tone of the demands of Africans struggling for pan-Africanism have changed over the decades and at the 6th PAC, Africans were calling for the liberation of South Africa, Namibia, Rhodesia, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau and the Spanish Sahara (now called Western Sahara) and also for the end of the economic enslavement of the African continent. There were some tensions within the OAU as member states were divided over issues such as the occupation of the Western Sahara by both Morocco and Mauritania in 1975. The occupation was condemned by some member states and led to Morocco leaving the OAU in 1984 in protest at the body’s recognition of the Western Sahara (see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2014). After a 33-year absence Morocco rejoined the AU in early 2017. The theme of Africa’s continued economic subjugation by the West was also upheld at the 7th PAC in Kampala, Uganda, in April 1994. It sought to rethink the pan-Africanist project within a changing global context of liberalisation manifested in IMF and World Bank hegemony over African countries. The then general secretary, Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem (1996, pp. 19–20) expressed, ‘the legacy of civil wars, wars of liberation, refugeeism and mass displacement of our peoples in the last decades have really proven that there is no such thing as purely national issues’. Furthermore, he argued, We held the 7th PAC at a time when neo-colonialism was threatening to give way to recolonization. More than ever in the past, Pan Africanism as a counter-force to imperialism is a necessary tool of analysis and organizational format for the whole Pan-African world. (Abdul-Raheem 1996, p. 2) Opposition to imperialism was often responded to with de-stabilisation and assassinations. During the 1980s, as apartheid in South Africa escalated with township unrest, and the white minority regime repressed its neighbours in the creation of a military cordon sanitaire around itself, there were also several assassinations of charismatic radical leaders such as the scholar activist Walter Rodney in 1980, president Maurice Bishop of Grenada in 1983, and the revolutionary leaders Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso and Samora Machel of Mozambique, both in 1987 with the collaboration of imperialist and neocolonial interests. The assassinations deprived pan-Africanism of revolutionary leaders who were committed to the unity of African people and to devoting their countries’ resources to advancing the cause of African unity across the world.

New concepts of global African unity The concept of ‘Afrocentrity’ was coined by Molefe Asante in 1988. He contends that ‘the Afrocentric cultural project is a holistic plan to reconstruct and develop every dimension of the African world from the standpoint of Africa as subject rather than object’ (Asante 1988, p. 105). Others have defined it as ‘a paradigm’ (Mazama 2003, p. 7) in which the social and cultural experience of African people is the fundamental frame of reference (ibid., p. 9) in analysis. Thus, Afrocentricity affects the arts, education, architecture, psychology, science, epistemology, 184

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language, symbolism and religion since it claims to be a philosophical perspective grounded in the interests and realities of African people (ibid.). While ‘Afrocentricity’ derives from Africans in the diaspora, the concept of the ‘African Renaissance’, closely associated with Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, was used in his speech at the United Nations University in April 1998. Mbeki (1998) argues that Africans must establish and maintain systems of good governance and, ultimately, ‘that the victory of the African Renaissance addresses not only the improvement of the conditions of life of the peoples of Africa’ with debt relief being essential to the economic survival of the majority of African countries. Mbeki claims that integral to an African Renaissance is upholding the humanity of African people. Another concept that has gained currency among Africans in the Disapora and continental Africans is that of ‘Global Africa’, a concept popularised by Ali Mazrui during the 1990s. It conveys ‘Africa and people of African ancestry scattered around the world as an evolving system and an evolving community’. Mazrui (2003) also distinguished between ‘Africans of the blood’ and ‘Africans of the soil’. The former are ‘people of Africa and of African ancestry who are black. Africans of the soil are people of the African continent who belong there; they are part of it—they are not immigrants—but they are not part of the Black races.’ Egyptians, Algerians, Tunisians, or Moroccans are represented as ‘Africans of the soil’, whereas Ghanaians, Nigerians or Zambians are Africans of the blood. However, in reality, Africans of sub-Saharan Africa are both of the blood and of the soil. African Americans are Africans of the blood but not of the soil. Arab Africans are Africans of the soil but not of the blood (ibid.). Mazrui’s definition of who is an African is based on the idea of the African diaspora that arose as a result of the involuntary migration of millions of African people through the brutalities of the transatlantic slave trade. They became dispersed around the globe. Consequently, people of African descent share a similar history of exploitation, oppression, struggle and unity in terms of cultural practices and in seeking a future that is free from all forms of oppression. According to Brent Edwards, ‘diaspora marks a simple continuity with Pan-Africanism’ (2001, p. 55). Similarly, Falola and Essien (2014, p. 1) observe, ‘Pan-Africanism and diaspora complement each other’. The authors contend that within the academy there has been ‘the gradual shift from Pan-African discourse to an emphasis on diaspora and reverse migration [which] has created a new pathway for engaging Pan-African ideology for both academic and social levels’ (2014, pp. 1–2, italics in original). They believe that ‘reverse migrations’, that is of Africans in the diaspora, returning to the African continent as well as sending remittances, is the new development of the 21st century (ibid., p. 2; on South–South migration see Crush and Chikanda, this volume). Other academics such as Landsberg and Mckay (n.d, p. 2) give the following definition: The new pan-Africanism is concerned with human security, that is, reducing poverty, social development, including addressing HIV/AIDS, unemployment and illiteracy; ending wars and conflicts; promoting peace building; a new trade regime that is both free and just; promoting human rights and democratic governance; fostering regional integration and cooperation; and seeking a ‘new partnership’ with the outside world.

Recent developments in the Pan-African Movement (PAM) Despite the establishment of a permanent Pan-African Secretariat in Kampala, Uganda after the 7th PAC in 1994, organisational and ideological problems continue to bedevil the PAM. Simultaneous to the evolution of a continental architecture in the formation of the AU that professes to commit itself to African unity, there have also been people-led pan-Africanist initiatives that have exposed long-standing and deep-seated ideological fissures within the PAM. 185

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One of the many issues that engulfed the 7th PAC was the issue of ‘who is an African?’ alongside the issue of the involvement of African governments in the PAM alongside civil society and grassroots organisations. These issues continue to plague the PAM and have been expressed in the question ‘Africanism or Continentalism?’ (Prah 2013). There have been attempts to revive the PAM in the tradition of the Congresses since the 7th PAC of 1994. In January 2014 in Johannesburg, South Africa, an 8th PAC was convened by a group of intellectuals who call themselves ‘Africanists’. The gathering was followed by another meeting in Accra, Ghana in March 2015 by a wholly different group who also claimed to convene an 8th PAC but advocated the continental or geographical unification of the African continent (Yeebo 2015; Foster 2015). The Africanists are opposed to the inclusion of North Africa, which is predominantly populated by people of Arab and Berber ancestry, into the panAfricanist project and believe there is a confusion of African identity with geography. The socalled ‘continentalists’ adopt the vision of Kwame Nkrumah that the unity of Africa should comprise the totality of the existing fifty-four nation-states that comprise the African continent into a Union Government for Africa. Among the myriad challenges confronting the ongoing realisation of pan-Africanism is the need to break with the traditional top-down state-dominated and elite-driven approaches – also reflected in ineffective institutions at national, regional and continental levels – and to create a people-to-people-driven pan-Africanism from the bottom up.

Conclusion In summary, the evolution of pan-Africanism has been a complex unfolding of the struggles connecting African people around the globe against myriad and changing forms of oppression, domination, exploitation and injustice. It might appear that pan-Africanism is a heterogeneous or a chameleon-like concept for its contested definitions and perspectives that have been defined by differing movements, individuals and forces over varied locations and epochs. Yet, it remains an ongoing struggle for freedom, equality, dignity, as well as social, economic, racial and political justice against neoimperialism and neocolonialism in the 21st century. Each generation, depending on its location and material realities, will re-interpret and re-define panAfricanism from its particular standpoint. Therefore, pan-Africanism is an historically evolving concept and movement in one sense, with its vision of the principles of dignity, freedom, liberation, equality and justice for people of African descent remaining in focus for those seeking the fulfilment of pan-Africanist objectives. It is not, therefore, a static concept or movement, but the strategies, tactics and advocates of pan-Africanism employed by those defining themselves as pan-Africanists will remain pragmatic and perhaps inspired by the rich history of predecessors who waged a struggle for pan-Africanism. Future research in the field of pan-Africanism might wish to explore the extent to which pan-African knowledge paradigms and indigenous systems can frame development practice on the African continent distinct from Eurocentric or Western models of development that seek to transform African nation-states into imitations of the West; the task of the diaspora in continuing to shape development policies in Africa in ‘reverse migrations’ (Falola and Essien 2014, pp. 1–2; see Crush and Chikanda, this volume); the role widely spoken African languages (e.g. Kiswahili and Hausa) can play in promoting pan-African unity; the curriculum challenges in devising a pan-African education system across Africa in the light of the seeming divisions between ‘continentalists’ and ‘Africanists’; and what reparations for the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism should entail for people of African descent living in the diaspora and those living on the African continent. 186

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References Abdul-Raheem, T. (ed.), 1996. Pan-Africanism, Politics, Economy and Social Change in the Twenty-First Century. London: Pluto Press. Adi, H., 1998. West Africans in Britain 1900–1960: Nationalism, Pan Africanism and Communism. Romford: Lawrence & Wishart. Asante, M., 1988. Afrocentrity. New Jersey, NJ: Africa World Press, Inc. Campbell, H., 1975. General Statement on Economics. In: Pan-Africanism: The Struggle against Imperialism and Neo-colonialism: Documents of the Sixth Pan-African Congress; With an Assessment by Horace Campbell. Toronto, ON: Afro-Carib Publications. Campbell, H., 1985. Rasta and Resistance. Hertford: Hansib Publishing Ltd. Campbell, M., 1988. The Maroons of Jamaica. New Jersey, NJ: Africa World Press, Inc. Edwards, B.H., 2001. The Uses of Diaspora. Social Text 66(19), 45–73. Esedebe, O.P., 1994. Pan-Africanism: The Idea and Movement, 1776–1991. Washington, DC: Howard University Press. Falola, T. and Essien, K. (eds), 2014. Pan-Africanism and the Politics of African Citizenship and Identity. London: Routledge. Fanon, F., 1961. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., 2014. The Ideal Refugees: Gender, Islam and the Sahrawi Politics of Survival. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Foster, B., 2015. No, Pan-Africanism Doesn’t Need Government [online]. Pambazuka News. Available from: www.pambazuka.net/en/search.php?q=kimani [Accessed 1 November 2015]. Hooker, J.R., 1975. Henry Sylvester Williams: Imperial Pan-Africanist. London: Rex Collins Ltd. Kalu, U.O., 2005. Ethiopianism in African Christianity. In: T. Falola (ed.), The Dark Webs Perspectives on Colonialism in Africa. Carolina: Carolina Academic Press, pp. 137–160. Kimble, D., 1963. The Political History of Ghana 1850–1928. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Landsberg, C. and Mckay, S., n.d. Engaging the New Pan-Africanism: Strategies for Civil Society [online]. Action Aid and OSISA. Available from: www.sarpn.org/documents/d0001537/CSOGuide_pan-africanism_2005.pdf [Accessed 23 June 2016]. Magubane, B., 1987. The Ties that Bind African-American Consciousness of Africa. New Jersey, NJ: Africa World Press, Inc. Marable, M., 1998. Black Leadership. New York: Columbia University Press. Martin, T., 1983. The Pan-African Connection: From Slavery to Garvey and Beyond. Massachusetts, MA: Majority Press. Mazama, A. (ed.), 2003. The Afrocentric Paradigm. New Jersey, NJ: Africa World Press, Inc. Mazrui, A., 2003. Universalism, Global Apartheid, and Justice: Ali A. Mazrui in Dialogue with Fouad Kalouche [online]. Available from: http://them.polylog.org/4/dma-en.htm [Accessed 9 February 2016]. Mbeki, T., 1998. The African Renaissance, South Africa and the World [online]. Available from: http:// archive.unu.edu/unupress/mbeki.html [Accessed 14 October 2015]. Perry, B.J., 2011. Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883–1918. New York: Columbia University Press. Prah, K., 2013. Africanism or Continentalism; Unity of People or Geographical Unity [online]. Available from: www.blunblog.org/2013/06/towards-panafrican-congress-8.html [Accessed 23 June 2016]. Price, R., 1996. Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Reddy, S.E., 2008. The UN and the Struggle for Liberation in South Africa. In: The Road to Democracy in South Africa SADET, Vol. 3, International Solidarity, pp. 141–254. Pretoria: UNISA Press. Robinson, C., 1969. Fighting Maroons of Jamaica. Glasgow: William Collins and Sangster. Tarimo, J.C. and Reuben, N.Z., 2014. Tanzania’s Solidarity with South Africa’s Liberation. In: The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Vol. 5, African Solidarity, pp. 249–276. Pretoria: UNISA Press. Thompson, V.B., 1969. Africa and Unity: The Evolution of Pan-Africanism. London: Longman. Williams, M., 2008. W. E. B. DuBois and Pan-Africanism: A Critical Assessment. Nkrumaist Review, June 2008. Yeebo, Z., 2015. The 8th Pan-African Congress: Between Opportunism and Rejuvenation [online]. Pambazuka News. Available from: www.pambazuka.net/en/category.php/features/95654 [Accessed 28 October 2015].

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Part III

South–South cooperation Reviewing international development

14 Southern leaders, Northern followers? Who has ‘socialised’ whom in international development?1 Emma Mawdsley

Introduction From its inception, the international development regime has been dominated by the ideologies, norms and practices of Northern actors. The corollary of this Northern dominance is the conventional framing and positioning of the South as passive, needy, unruly and/or deviant. ‘North–South’ axes in the institutions, structures and imaginaries of international development have persisted through otherwise profound paradigmatic shifts (Weiss 2009). Ideologies have changed from stateled modernisation to various shades of neoliberal globalisation (Gore 2000; Desai and Kharas 2008; Hart 2010), as have contexts, from the Cold War to the ‘war on terror’, for example (Duffield 2007). Progressive and even radical ideas have been absorbed and co-opted into the mainstream – basic needs, women (later gender), participation and sustainability, and so on (Chambers 1983; Adams 2009; Chant and Beetham 2014; Cornwall and Edwards 2014). But even as the geographies of poverty, wealth and inequality became more variegated over the decades (e.g. Harris 1987), producing new and often more complex development challenges (Rigg 2015), the North–South development binary remained tenacious. Over the last decade, however, the circumstances for the (re)production of the North–South development axis and its contestation and critique have changed very substantially. Horner and Hulme (2017) suggest that, ‘the contemporary global map of development appears increasingly incommensurable with any notion of a clear spatial demarcation between First and Third Worlds, “developed” and “developing”, or rich and poor, countries’ (see also Kanbur and Sumner 2012; Sidaway 2012; Roy and Crane 2015). The changing global geographies of wealth, poverty, inequality and precarity are so profound that mainstream actors – including those that have done the boundary work of development binaries – have had to respond. In 2016, for example, the World Bank declared that it would no longer use the term ‘developing countries’ for low- and middle-income states given the enormous dissimilarities within these categories (Sandhu 2016). While there remain significant average per capita income gaps between high- and middle/ low-income countries (Milanovic 2016), as well as enduring power differentials (Vestergaard and Wade 2014), many commentators now point to a more polycentric development landscape (Kragelund 2015; Fejerskov et al. 2016). 191

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A key set of actors and processes upsetting this long-standing binary are a variety of Southern, Gulf and Eurasian countries. Collectively, they are providers of a growing share of development finance and resources, and of distinctive ideas and approaches; and their presence is increasingly necessary to the credibility and legitimacy of older and newer donor forums and development organisations (Carmody 2011; Cheru and Obi 2010; Chaturvedi et al. 2012; Gonzalez-Vicente 2012; Tang et al. 2015; Constantine et al. 2016; Scoones et al. 2016; Shankland and Gonçalves 2016; Xu et  al. 2016; Amanor and Chichava 2016; Taela 2016). Various collaborations are growing, and there are signs of convergence around particular agendas and modalities between some actors, in certain sites, and around particular interests (e.g. Curtis 2013; Mawdsley 2015; Kragelund 2015). Critically, however, as ‘nontraditional’ partners have grown in visibility and stature, they have managed to retain their ideational autonomy. Notwithstanding elements of convergence, and the variety of relationships that have been cultivated with the (so-called) ‘traditional donors’ who are members of the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (the OECD-DAC, or just DAC),2 and multilateral organisations, Southern partners have resisted wholesale co-option into the structures and norms of the ‘traditional’ development regime. This is despite the early expectations of the DAC and its members that their role would be to ‘socialise’ the rising powers into becoming ‘responsible’ and ‘proper’ donors in the early/mid-2000s, of which more below. Much of the ‘convergence’ analysis in the field of development cooperation takes as its starting point the changes taking place – or not taking place – within and among various Southern development actors. In this chapter I turn this around, and make the case that many Northern donors have moved further ‘South’ than Southern partners have moved ‘North’.3 This argument requires some serious caveats, and the question mark in the title points to caution in at least two registers. The first concerns the dangers of essentialism and gross simplification in using ‘North’ and ‘South’. The diversity and dynamism of both of these categories render them hugely problematic as analytical constructs (Lancaster 2007; Mawdsley 2012). To offer a few obvious examples, Mexico and Turkey are currently more influential partners in global development forums than Chile or Thailand; China prioritises infrastructure within its development portfolio more than Cuba; and the USA is more strongly shaped by competing domestic interests than Norway. China, Korea and Japan all have attributes of ‘Asian donors’, but each one is very differently historically positioned in relation to the DAC and other development actors. The variations within and across the ‘North’ and the ‘South’ are profound, in other words, and multiple points of difference and similarity can be found intersecting across this complex field. Thus, the term ‘Southernisation’ begs the question of ‘which’ South? Does it refer to Brazil, China or Cuba, or for that matter, Indonesia or Senegal? In proposing ‘Southernisation’, what are the implications of taking the state as the unit of analysis: to what extent do Southern states represent or promote development alternatives? What does ‘Southernisation’ suggest, and what does it conceal? The second caveat is that the arguments presented here are thrown into particularly stark relief given the recent context of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs, 2000–2015), and the associated reforms of the ‘aid effectiveness’ and poverty reduction agendas. Notwithstanding important continuities, this period was something of an outlier in international development history. From the 1950s to the mid/late-1990s, Northern aid and development policy was typically more openly oriented to economic (as well as geopolitical) agendas, tied to donor goods and services; and in earlier decades, lax in its attention to environmental standards, democracy and human rights. These are attributes that (rightly or wrongly) are now more strongly associated with

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the South. Hulme and Fukuda-Parr (2009) analyse the late 1990s as a moment of convergence between political agendas, opportunities and agents, which together provided a window through which the MDGs and the poverty reduction agenda emerged. In the following years, politicians, policy advocates and celebrities championed a powerful narrative of (Northern) morality as the ethical impetus for aid and development (Sachs 2005; Gallagher 2009; Richey 2016). Also relevant is the fact that since the 1980s, Northern donors have tended to place growing emphasis on institutions, governance and social programmes and technologies. This has been contrasted both with Southern insistence on non-interference/refusal to impose policy conditionalities (see Aneja in this volume), and their stronger emphasis on the importance of material infrastructures underpinning economic growth. One could argue, therefore, that the Northern donors have been at their most distinctive vis-à-vis Southern partners over the MDG period compared to earlier decades: in some ways, ‘Southernisation’ is a return to the status quo ante for many Northern donors. With these very important caveats in mind, the chapter hopes to avoid essentialist and ahistorical constructions of ‘North/Northern’ and ‘South/Southern’, even as it proposes a broad resolution argument. Specifically, I will examine three areas where there appears to have been a ‘Southernisation’ of international development over the last decade. These are in: (a) discursive framings of a ‘win-win’ ethics of development, insisting that (supposedly) ‘national’ interests are compatible with partner benefits and development effectiveness more broadly; (b) the (re)turn from ‘poverty reduction’ to ‘economic growth’ as the ‘central analytic’ of development; and (c) related to both, the explicit and deepening blurring and blending of development finances and agendas with trade and investment. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the rationales and drivers of the ‘Southernisation’ of development. Before doing so, the next section outlines the early expectations that the DAC donors would and should help ‘socialise’ the emerging Southern partners.

Early expectations of socialising Southern partners As has been well documented, Southern development partnership dates back decades, but with a few exceptions it was largely neglected within scholarly and policy circles. By the early 2000s, however, the traditional centres of the international development regime started to become more aware of the growing activities and impacts of Southern development partners (Manning 2006). Above all, this applied to China, and specifically, to an often reductionist construct of ‘China-Africa’. China was and still is the biggest ‘emerging’ Southern partner, but even so, the disproportionate early share of ‘China-Africa’ analysis and much of its tone appeared to indicate that these partnerships were particularly transgressive of dominant norms and imaginaries (see Hitchens 2008, for example). Northern media and policy commentary was sometimes shaped by uninformed and hostile perspectives on China, proprietorial and neocolonial views of Africa, and uncritical claims to Northern goodwill and expertise (Mawdsley 2008).4 A feature of some of this more hostile debate was the weak differentiation between sectors (e.g. agriculture, minerals, manufacturing), countries (e.g. South Africa, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo), and types of partnership (e.g. investment, trade, technical assistance). The ‘China-Africa’ focus also resulted in a distorted analysis of the broader South–South phenomenon, neglecting (early on) other ‘BRICS’ partners, working within and across Africa, not to mention the dozens of smaller Southern partners. It also often obscured similar involvement and practices by Northern powers in some cases, such as the use of resource-backed loans (Brautigam 2009). This focus ignored other geographies too – many Southern partners had older and now (re-)emerging development histories in South America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific.5

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Scholars and analysts working beyond China-Africa were initially in a distinct minority, which limited awareness of the ways in which ‘China-Africa’ was representative or not of South–South cooperation (SSC). Overall, Southern development partnerships were often poorly understood – many Northern commentators referred to the various flows and activities that comprise the loose, blurred and blended category of ‘development cooperation’ as ‘foreign aid’, and in doing so, fell into an erroneous comparison. Heightening the sense of difference, as noted above, was the cultural script of Northern foreign aid in the heady years of the MDGs and the unfolding Paris agenda on ‘aid effectiveness’. Together they assembled a particularly strong framing of (Northern) aid as a disinterested and fundamentally virtuous transfer of funds and expertise to solve poverty. This obfuscation of the long-standing (and still extant) geopolitical and geoeconomic agendas of foreign aid encouraged attitudes of moral disdain for China’s development principles and approaches (Chan 2013), as well as technical and policy views that the ‘new donors’ would need to be taught how to ‘do development properly’. Politically and economically, the key driver of Northern desires to ‘socialise’ the Southern development partners lay in the increasing concerns about their use of state-backed development finance to considerable competitive effect. There were, of course, more expert and informed early voices, notably Deborah Brautigam (2009), and more informed and aware research-based work began emerging across ‘North’, ‘South’ and its many intersections. However, over these early years, while recognising that any emerging field tends to proceed unevenly and iteratively, the media and policy debates around the ‘rising powers’, and SSC in particular, struggled to find accurate terms, to understand alternative principles of ‘development’, and to de-centre the historical assumptions that shaped North–South development geographies. To be clear, this is not an argument for an uncritical celebration of Southern development partnership, but to observe the importance of reflexive and informed analysis based on rigorous research and evidence: not something always strongly in evidence in the first decade of the millennium. This, then, was the context in the early 2000s for the widespread assumption that the role of the OECD-DAC and its member states would be to attempt to ‘socialise’ the rising non-DAC partners into the proper conduct and principles of donorship. International development was one target for Robert Zoellick’s memorable insistence that, ‘China needs to become a responsible world power’ (Zoellick supported the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, but this appears not to have dented his confidence in discerning what is a ‘responsible world power’; and he was President of the World Bank from 2007 to 2012). Thus, Wissenbach (2010, p. 26) noted, Like in many other policy areas the West’s reflex is not to engage with China as it is, but to ask China to become as we would like it to be. This has paralysed Western China policy and created unnecessary polarisation. For Abdenur and Da Fonseca (2013) this was a project of co-option. The assumption of tutelage is entirely in keeping with the long history of representational regimes of the North and the South, with critical scholars pointing to postcolonial continuities of personnel, imaginaries and institutions in newly established development industries (Kothari 2007). In the following decades, this was expressed through the persistent tropes of Third World lack, deficiencies, perversity and backwardness, which could and should be overcome by emulating (idealised and partial projections of) ‘Northern’ economies, polities and subjectivities.6 The role of the benign donor community was therefore to help provide the material resources, science and knowledge, model for ‘development’, as well as

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the necessary disciplining tools and presence to overcome recalcitrance and ensure compliance. Yet, despite the ‘graduation’ of a number of South-East Asian countries in the 1970s and 1980s (to use the official terminology, which none too subtly exemplifies the trope of children maturing and ‘growing up’), in the early 2000s the international development community initially seemed rather unprepared to deal with the ‘rise of the South’ (UNDP 2013). China and others were becoming powerful economic and political powers, and (potential) challengers of global norms and structures, while often still having very substantial shares of the world’s poor. This has raised a host of tricky issues for national development agencies and multilateral institutions, which were designed to operate around the earlier binaries of developed–developing (Kanbur and Sumner 2012). Although there is still evidence of poorly informed and/or Eurocentric media and policy discussion, knowledge and understanding of SSC has clearly evolved and much improved in the last decade. There is evidence of some ‘South-to-North’ convergence over this time – among some Southern partners, around some issues, at some moments and in some places (Kragelund 2015; Mawdsley 2015). But in contrast to early expectations of socialising the Southern partners and assuming the tutelary mantle, there has also been more of what looks very much like a ‘North-to-South’ direction of travel in several registers. These are discussed below.

Discursive framing In Mawdsley (2012), I formulated a table which set out a simplified – perhaps caricatured – comparison of the dominant narrative differences between Northern foreign aid and Southern development assistance (see Table 14.1). The former, I suggested, was discursively constructed as a sympathetically motivated transfer from richer to poorer countries, based on the superior model, knowledge and expertise of the West. Virtue was derived from the (apparent) charity of the donation or, in the language of gift theory, by (apparently) suspending the obligation to reciprocate. I suggested that SSC, on the other hand, was discursively constructed as an empathetically motivated act of solidarity with other formerly colonised and still subordinated countries, based on shared identities and experience-based knowledge. Gift theory reveals the virtue of this model, which is derived precisely from the insistence on reciprocal benefit, enabling both partners to retain their dignity through exchange (whether of resources, expertise, or votes at the UN). In the language of much SSC, this was ‘win-win’ development, explicit in its claims to mutual benefit. The table was intended to be a heuristic device, and not a hard and fast binary; nor was it meant to offer an explanation of actual motivations and principles, but of important founding and framing ‘myths’.7 Interestingly, and importantly for this chapter, while both sets of discursive claim and their component tropes and vocabularies have persisted, it is possible to trace some revealing shifts. A number of Southern partners appear to be increasingly projecting a much more pragmatic framing, with less reference to the lofty ideals of Southern solidarity (on the history of official SSC principles, see Aneja this volume). For example, Marcondes and Mawdsley (2017, p. 689) note that: After a few months in office, [President] Rousseff told [Foreign Minister] Patriota that she was interested in a results-orientated diplomacy, with more concrete achievements and less ‘symbolism’. This emphasis continued during her second term. Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira (2015–16) stated that the ‘valuable symbolism of [diplomatic] presence could not replace a diplomacy of results—results measured with numbers’.

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Table 14.1  Dominant narrative framings of DAC aid and South–South development cooperation DAC

SSC

Charity Moral obligation to the unfortunate Expertise based on superior knowledge, institutions, science and technology Sympathy for different and distant Others The virtue of suspended obligation, a lack of reciprocity

Opportunity Solidarity with other Third World countries Expertise based on direct experience of pursuing development in poor country circumstances Empathy based on a shared identity and experience The virtue of mutual benefit and recognition of reciprocity

Adapted from Mawdsley (2012)

The focus of this section, however, is on shifts in Northern donor narratives. As noted above, the MDG era was characterised by a particularly strong projection of the moral imperative of poverty reduction and associated improvements in hunger, health, mortality, empowerment and so on. Notwithstanding the realpolitik of aid, the official discourse and dominant public understanding of aid in Northern countries were strongly articulated by politicians, policymakers, celebrities and advocates as that of ‘doing good’ to the ‘less fortunate’ (Gallagher 2009; Brockington 2014; Richey 2016). These discourses were supported and strategically advanced by many NGO campaigns which have sought to cajole Northern publics and politicians into funding and action based on images of desperate need, despair, hunger and hopelessness; and more recently, also of decent, aspirational individuals who just need a hand-up. Dogra (2012) argues that whether NGOs deploy images of despair or dignity, most have done little to educate their giving publics of the structural causes of global inequality.8 Aid can act to conceal and obscure exploitation past and present, while conferring upon donor countries and publics a sense of their generosity, decency and national virility (Kapoor 2008). However, notwithstanding this very strong ‘charity’ discourse, different Northern donors have always variously acknowledged and sometimes actively (although selectively) publicised the ways in which their foreign aid contributions serve ‘national self-interests’. Any one donor has multiple voices – prime ministers and presidents, ministers and politicians, diplomats, civil servants, development agencies and so on. They speak to different audiences – a minister at a policy launch at Chatham House or the United Nations is likely to adjust some tone and reasoning when it comes to a TV breakfast show. Justifying foreign aid budgets in part by articulating national self-interest is the case for some DAC donors more than others – Australia and the USA, for example, have traditionally been more emphatic in justifying their Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) budgets in terms of national interest, compared to, say, Sweden. Even in the heyday of the UK’s insistence on ethical foreign policy under New Labour (1997–2010), for example, politicians included aspects of national self-interest as part of their justification for the ODA budget (Gallagher 2009). Complementary, competing and contradictory rationales for aid budgets and development interventions are a reality (Lancaster 2007). Although the ‘charity’ framing was very strong in most DAC members over the MDG era, it would be a mistake to see the growing insistence on aid acting in the national interest – to which we now turn – as entirely new. Bearing in mind, therefore, that this is not a stark transition but more a change in the balance of narrative threads, I suggest that over the last decade or so there has been a discernible shift in the discursive framing of aid rationalities among most if not all DAC donors. Most – perhaps all – appear to have embraced a more assertive, explicit and openly articulated set of claims about how foreign aid works in ‘the national interest’ (Breman 2011; Mawdsley 2017). This is invariably 196

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finessed as nonetheless being of ‘mutual benefit’ to partner countries (Keijzer and Lundsgaarde 2017). The most recent UK aid strategy paper, for example, published in 2015 by George Osborne and the Treasury in partnership with DFID, is called ‘UK Aid: Tackling Global Challenges in the National Interest’. Northern donors are increasingly adopting a language of development partnership that invokes Southern claims to ‘win-win’ development, including the unapologetic, explicit claim that aid is and should be ‘mutually beneficial’. A number of factors explain the stronger emphasis on the pragmatic benefits of aid to the donor. These include the election of conservative governments in many countries during this period (including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and the UK), and the global financial and Eurozone crises, which have to different extents and in different ways put aid budgets under stronger public scrutiny and pressure. From the (supposed) universality of the Sustainable Development Goals to the growing levels of poverty and precarity in high-income countries, the changing geographies of wealth, poverty and inequality are also contexts for the stronger desire to justify aid in terms of domestic benefits. Such justifications include arguments about soft power, the ‘enlightened self-interest’ behind supporting global public goods, supposed links with national security, and the role of aid in fostering economic opportunity (Mawdsley 2017). Importantly, another reason behind the shift in ‘traditional’ donor narratives lies in the growing sense of competition with Southern development partners, especially the larger ones. Northern donors are keenly aware of the (tempered) welcome extended to Southern partners by recipient governments, and the successful projection (if more complicated reality) of the language of ‘win-win’. Southern partners are actively and openly subsidising commercial trade and investment through technical assistance, diplomacy and various forms of blended finance (explored in more detail below). The paternalism of Northern aid narratives as well as its practices are being challenged by increasingly empowered partner countries, enabled in part by the growing presence of alternative Southern resources, approaches and partnerships. The discernible shift to a stronger assertion of national self-interest (claimed, of course, as mutually beneficial) by Northern donors is the result of a whole series of specific articulations of domestic and international factors. Whatever the particular confluence of drivers for individual donors, Northern donors overall currently sound more like Southern development partners in some of their discursive positioning around aid and international development than the other way around. Whether this strategy will be convincing to domestic audiences or partner countries is another question. In the case of international partners, though, it is important to note that while Northern donors appear to be increasingly mimicking the ‘win-win’ language of Southern partners, they cannot appropriate the Third World-ist history of these claims to solidarity and mutual experience of colonial and postcolonial subordination (on the latter, see Aneja, this volume, and Saney in this volume).

Economic growth strategies Economic growth appears to be an almost unassailable synonym and metric for mainstream international development. GDP remains sovereign as the ever-expanding and elusive horizon and vehicle of ‘development’, notwithstanding the fact that the growth fetish has been tempered within mainstream development in a variety of ways (the human development index, human security, and so on), and profoundly critiqued from ‘without’ (indigenous and peasant activists, post-development theorists, ecofeminists, and now also through ideas around de-growth). Ideological preferences around the respective roles of states, markets and institutions have changed over the decades, but the foundational pillar of economic growth has not in itself been 197

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shaken. That said, as mentioned above, the late 1990s and early 2000s saw the emergence of a distinctive agenda within the (Northern-dominated) international community, elevating poverty reduction to the primary goal of development intervention. In previous eras, the economic benefits of state-led modernisation or market-led neoliberalisation were expected to eventually benefit the wider population, including through a secular decline in poverty rates. Needless to say, the actual outcomes of these approaches have been highly geographically and socially variable. But for all of their differences, what these changing approaches shared was economic growth as the ‘central analytic’ of development, to use Hulme and Fukuda-Parr’s (2009) term. Thus, the consensus that emerged in the late 1990s/early 2000s around the idea that aid and development policy should, first and foremost, be directly aimed at poverty reduction was quite distinctive. Economic growth was viewed as essential to this agenda, but in a novel departure, poverty reduction moved to become the ‘central analytic’. Emblematic of this was the very first MDG, which was to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by 2015. In the early 2000s, Southern states – and famously, the BRICs (later the BRICS) – started to become more visible and influential drivers of the global economy. Their surging domestic production and demand, trade and outward investment, all became the subjects of intense scrutiny and discussion. This ‘rise of the South’ (UNDP 2013) underpinned a significant expansion of development cooperation, often blurred and blended with diplomacy, trade and investment. All Southern partners include technical assistance, humanitarian intervention, social programmes and so on in their development partnerships (on the particularities of humanitarian responses, see both Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Omata, this volume). But most also place a higher emphasis on fostering (supposedly) mutually beneficial economic growth as the primary engine of ‘development’. This has tended to take the form of very substantial investments in roads, ports, information and communications technologies, and energy production and transmission, as well as minerals/oil, agricultural and manufacturing investment, and stimulating trade and market-building. As we have seen above, this is couched within ethical claims to ‘win-win’ development. In this section I suggest that once again, the ‘North’ has become ‘Southernised’ over the last decade. A trend that has been widely recognised by global development commentators and scholars is the (re)turn to economic growth as the dominant development agenda within the ‘traditional’ development community (shared, it should be said, with security9 – although here, too, economic growth, jobs and opportunities are widely seen as part of the answer). It should be clear from the discussion above that this was not an abrupt transition, but a shift in balance – of policy language, in the allocation of funding, and in the ‘buzz’ around particular approaches and initiatives. Again, the causes are complex rather than singular, and each DAC donor is subject to a specific set of contexts and drivers. While competition and collaboration with Southern partners is one such driver (the focus of this section), others include the domestic impacts of the Eurozone (for some) and global financial crisis. The threats and challenges of automation and profound alterations in the world of work, allied to a ‘youth bulge’ in many countries, has pushed and incentivised an emphasis on ‘growth and jobs’. Poverty reduction is certainly still high on the agenda, but the ‘buzz’ is around finding ways to stimulate growth. Although there is much discussion from the UN down about ‘private sector-led growth’, the development industry appears to be willingly embracing the idea that it should use official finances and state activity to subsidise the private sector, as discussed in more detail in the next section. Astonishingly, and highly regressively, the discussion of whether and how growth might translate into sustainable and inclusive ‘development’ appears once again to be largely reliant on neoliberal assumptions of trickle-down processes, although innovations about universal basic incomes could prove revolutionary (or end up as sticking plaster). 198

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This renewed emphasis on the centrality of economic growth promotion as a development strategy for poorer countries is taking several forms. What is particularly interesting for the argument around the ‘Southernisation’ of development, are the changing economic prescriptions and tools that are being mobilised in support of this growth. We will come to ‘development finance’ in the next section, but here note the growing (re)turn to physical infrastructure by Northern donors. While most donors cannot compete with, say, Chinese road contractors for construction tenders, they can provide engineering and managerial expertise, and collaborate in infrastructure-financing packages. The well-known Chinese saying ‘If you want to get rich, first build a road’ appears to have permeated DAC consciousness, and there is evidence that donors are re-balancing their development portfolios (in terms of personnel, funding, projects and programmes) back toward supporting infrastructural development. Northern donors are talking more about the necessity of building infrastructure for development, building up their business consultancy funding and roles, and (as we will see below), allocating a growing share of traditional ODA toward economic growth strategies. Without over-simplifying too much, it would be reasonable to say that in the formation and early years of the MDG period, much of the emphasis and energy of DAC donors lay in the ‘software’ of development – capacity-building, governance and institutions; and in social and economic programmes that focused on individuals and families – health, education, microcredit. But the world around them was changing, with Southern powers especially driving rising commodity prices, emerging markets, and new frontiers of profit-making. At the same time, building roads, ports and other major infrastructural investments became emblematic of Chinese development cooperation in particular, but also for Brazil, India and others. Whatever the respective successes and failures of these different interventions and emphases, if one had to point to a dominant direction of travel, it would be clear that it is the Northern donors who have moved more strongly to embrace Southern approaches and agendas prioritising economic growth, than vice versa.

Explicit blurring and blending of development finances and agendas with trade and investment The argument of this section intersects with the two above. That is, the amplifying notion that foreign aid should openly support national interest on the one hand (albeit in ways assumed to align with recipient benefits), and the growing emphasis on private sector and infrastructure-led economic growth strategies on the other, are discursively and materially threaded through an increasingly explicit blurring and blending of development finances with trade and investment goals. As in previous sections, it would be wrong to see this as a sudden or new phase. Foreign aid has always openly and covertly been used to support trade and investment in various ways – from the illegal deals associated with the UK’s Pergau Dam scandal in Malaysia (Lankester 2013), to the role of official bilateral Development Finance Institutions in stimulating investment in poorer countries, for example. Over the last two decades, there has been a welcome debate about, although only very partial moves toward, ‘policy coherence for development’ in many ‘traditional’ donor states and forums. Here the intention is that the (supposedly) beneficial impacts of aid should not be undone by other policies in other sectors. Rather, foreign aid and development policies should – in theory – be positively supported by other national policies (e.g. procurement, transparency, agricultural protectionism, global supply chains, and so on). So, once again, in suggesting that blurring and blending of sectors, agendas or policies represents a ‘Southernisation’ of development, the issue is one of emphasis and balance, rather than a swerve in policy or complete novelty. 199

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As noted earlier, the OECD-DAC-led aid effectiveness agenda, and UN-led poverty reduction agenda, both sought in some ways to ‘purify’ foreign aid and development. The aid effectiveness agenda relied on a depoliticised vision of reformed donor–donor–recipient relations, through a technocratically rationalist vision of donors harmonising between themselves, aligning with the systems and agendas of recipients, and acting in transparent and accountable ways. The aid effectiveness agenda attempted to respond to critiques of previous decades of aid and development interventions, including the distortion of aid by donors to serve national geostrategic (economic and political) interests. The poverty reduction agenda also sought to reform aid and development regimes by promoting norms and targets that directly centred on the most needy and vulnerable. While neither of these agendas has entirely disappeared, both have been superseded. The aid effectiveness agenda ran into the ground at the 2011 Busan High-Level Forum. Among other things, ‘traditional donors’ were evidently failing to meet requirements to harmonise and align, and the unfolding Eurozone and global financial crises were creating a chillier economic and geopolitical context than that of the confidently expansionary era of the early new millennium. At the same time, Busan was a clear marker of Southern empowerment – China most notably, but other Southern partners too, made it obvious that they would not be swayed by the blandishments of the traditional powers. But if the future of older and newer development cooperation forums (such as the DAC, DCF, GPEDC) looked a little shaky, there was more convergence around the idea of ‘development effectiveness’. As described in the section above, this can be loosely defined as the (re)turn to economic growth as the central analytic in development. This agenda is being built around deepening state-capital formations such as Public Private Partnerships, which leads us to the growing use of ODA to directly serve trade and investment. A founding rationale for the creation of the OECD-DAC in 1960 was to prevent or limit member states from using ‘aid’ as an export credit, and thus ‘distort’ competition with other members. The USA was particularly concerned about former colonial powers using their ‘aid’ to secure ongoing economic preferences in ex-colonies. The OECD-DAC thus sought to promote the voluntary regulation of foreign aid, or Overseas Development Assistance (ODA), as it is more formally known. Over the years, the DAC has attempted to build a distinction and regulate a divide between ODA and other forms of official (commercial-sovereign) financing. The aid effectiveness agenda, codified in the 2005 Paris Declaration, was the latest iteration of this boundary-making, trying to ensure that aid ‘truly’ served developmental purposes. The premise was that one reason for the failure of aid to significantly impact on poverty reduction was that all too often it was distorted by donor economic and geopolitical interests. However, over the last five to ten years, the World Bank, the OECD-DAC and ‘traditional’ donors, have all, in various ways, increasingly turned to the concept and instruments of ‘development finance’. This is a construct that has quite profound implications for the governmentality of aid and development. The move to the idea of ‘development finance’ has three components. The first is the attempt to broaden the definition and legitimate use of ODA. Debates over the definition of ODA and its legitimate allocation have been part and parcel of the DAC since its founding. Paulo and Reisen (2010) demonstrate how soft law over the constitution and use of ODA has been explicitly contested and, just as often, defied by member states. Peer review and other forms of norm- or shame-based regulation have been effective only up to a point. My argument is that this direction of travel could be said to be inspired by, and even mimic, the characteristic approaches of many Southern states to ‘development finance’. Classically, they have made much use of various forms of state-subsidised funding and/or risk-reduction instruments to promote trade and investment abroad. This is enrolled within their definition of 200

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‘development cooperation’, and defended as a mutually beneficial set of flows and outcomes. An example can be found in India’s Lines of Credit (LOC), which are managed by India’s EXIM Bank, and which are framed as a key part of India’s development assistance to poorer countries in the region, Africa and beyond. The Economic Ministry funds the subsidy that reduces their interest rate, meaning that they can be offered at highly competitive rates. In theory, partner countries (and sub- and non-state actors therein) propose specific projects (e.g. port rehabilitation). India provides cheap funding through an LOC, in return for which 70% must be spent on Indian goods and services. Proponents argue that this exemplifies Southern development principles – it is (supposedly) partner-led, mutually beneficial, and does not come with heavy-handed donor conditionalities interfering with sovereign matters. The benefits and problems associated with LOCs can be explored (Saxena 2016), but the point here is that Northern donors have moved from (mostly) criticism to (considerable) emulation of these Southern practices (on India see also Aneja in this volume). For many, these are very positive trends – the Sustainable Development Goals, for example, are predicated on moving beyond aid (the MDG model) to unlocking all sorts of blurred and blended finances. ‘From billions to trillions’ is the call to arms. For others, the danger is that this will simply deepen and accelerate capitalist accumulation, unevenly and unjustly, creatively but destructively, while the development industry does what it always has, which is to normalise, contain and validate these ideas, instruments and outcomes in the name of ‘progress’.

Conclusions In an increasingly polycentric development landscape, complex trends, patterns and directions of movement are evident across actors, sectors, places and modalities. In this chapter I have picked out a (roughly framed) ‘North-to-South’ direction in a number of important registers. This ‘North-to-South’ socialisation stands at odds with complacent expectations about the tutelary role of the North that initially characterised the early new millennium, when the (re)emerging Southern development partners were starting to expand significantly their international development partnerships. In all three examples (ethical framing, poverty/growth, and aid/development finance), the issue is one of a shift in balance, rather than a completely novel departure; and below this very broad resolution, of course, are much more specific interplays which both endorse and complicate this argument. Nonetheless, these trends are certainly taking place, constituting just some of the elements of a post-North/South development geography.

Notes 1 I am grateful to the editors of Asia Pacific Viewpoint, and publishers,Wiley, for allowing me to use material here from a longer paper published by them. Thanks also to the special issue editors, Kearrin Sims and Lisa Law of James Cook University. This paper is available as: Mawdsley, E., 2018. The ‘Southernisation’ of Development? Asia Pacific Viewpoint 59(2), 175–185. 2 The OECD-DAC (originally known as the Development Assistance Group) was founded in 1960. Membership was initially limited to only the richest countries and, until 2010, Japan was the only nonNorthern member. It now has 30 members (including the European Union in its own right). In 2010, South Korea joined Japan as only the second Asian member state. 3 At this point I am going to leave out the Gulf and Eurasian states, as very particular development actors. Some of the analysis that follows could be adapted and debated in the context of these states, but I believe they would need more specific analysis than space allows in this chapter. 4 Other chapters in this volume addressing the role of China in diverse forms of cooperation, especially vis-à-vis Africa, include: Reeves, on the long history of Chinese philanthropy; Waters and Leung, on cooperation in education; and, on agriculture, see Cabral. 201

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5 On South–South cooperation vis-à-vis South America and the Caribbean, for instance, see the chapters in this volume by: Muhr (on regional cooperation frameworks); Muhr and Azevedo (regarding education); Rhiney (regarding agriculture and climate change); Campbell (on cooperation in international security); and Cantor (on cooperation on refugees). 6 On the ongoing significance of such tropes in the context of humanitarianism, see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (this volume) and Carpi (this volume). 7 To my chagrin, I have sometimes seen this reproduced as ‘actual’ differences between Southern and Northern actors, despite explanations in the text that it referred to discourses. The table has stalked me ever since. 8 Exceptions include Oxfam’s campaign on inequality, which insists on the relationality between wealth accumulation at the top and poverty for the majority. Even here, though, explaining to most audiences the mechanisms that bind affluence and austerity is challenging. See: www.oxfam.org.uk/media-centre/ press-releases/2017/01/eight-people-own-same-wealth-as-half-the-world, last accessed 28 January 2018. 9 On South–South cooperation in security, see Campbell, this volume, and Daley, this volume.

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15 South–South approaches to international environmental negotiations The case of climate change Eberhard H. Weber and Andreas Kopf

Introduction Climate change has become one of the most crucial global challenges of the 21st century. It was in the 1960s when discussions about global warming found their way to – at first – small groups of physical scientists. The question then was if global warming could scientifically be proven, and if so, what exactly were its causes, and how could it be prevented from reaching dangerous levels. Once human-made global warming became an accepted paradigm, scientific efforts concentrated on mitigation, on necessary steps to check climate change by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, and to slow down deforestation destroying sinks of carbon dioxide (CO2). The Kyoto Protocol (1997) became the major instrument of the mitigation paradigm. Today’s paradigm acknowledges that mitigation, even if complete and immediate, can no longer prevent climate change. In its latest reports, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlights that climate change is already happening (IPCC 2014). Emphasis has to be given to effective global climate protection, in order to minimise changes to the Earth’s climate and to find ways to adapt to the impacts of climate change. Dangerous climate change poses threats to people’s livelihoods, their health and well-being. The impacts of climate change have the potential to undo decades of the social, economic and environmental development efforts of diverse countries, particularly in the global South. Impacts on macro levels are equally serious: to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, societies have to decarbonise, which is costly and prevents the fossil fuel-rich countries of the global South from using their resources. Those countries of the South that are still struggling to industrialise are easily frustrated when they hear that they should keep their ‘oil in the soil’ and their ‘coal in the hole’ (a metaphor used by Bassey (2010, p. 55) in an anti-colonial sense) and are told to instead use forms of energy that are far more expensive than the fossil fuels they control. Indeed, climate change is much more than a physical phenomenon that alters the composition and state of planet Earth’s atmosphere. In particular, climate change causes costs and damages that exceed the financial, technological, administrative and logistical capacities of many countries of the South. These countries are the most exposed to the impacts of climate

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change, and also the least prepared to deal with them due to the lack of capacities. Many of these countries have historically hardly contributed to human-made climate change, while other countries of the South have become major emitters of greenhouse gases. This chapter examines important discourses about environmental and climate change in the global South over the past 60 years (Moore 2017). It provides a short account of the governance of climate change by tracing major negotiations in this area from the perspective of state and non-state actors from the South, looking at major differences in perceptions and interests between the states and institutions of the global North and the global South. The chapter, in particular, explores the question of how the South constructs environment and climate issues as a function of development and is able to speak with a common voice, even when the South is not only internally diverse but is constantly diversifying. Such an emphasis on the environment and climate as a function of development has helped the South to play an increasingly important role in negotiations about the solution to environmental and climate challenges. As issues diversify and become more complex, initial governance configurations are changing as well. This is also as the South itself becomes more heterogeneous. Today, there are different organisations and ad-hoc assemblages that speak for different sections of the South. At first sight it seems that interests within the South have become incompatible with each other. Looking more closely, however, one can identify processes that might even strengthen South– South cooperation (SSC) in fields that address questions of who has the responsibility to act and who is considered to benefit from the actions of others when it comes to climate change negotiations and governance.

Climate change and development Climate change intensifies the divide between the haves and the have-nots, between rich and poor people and, more importantly from the perspective of this chapter, between rich and poor countries. South–South contributions to climate change negotiations are necessarily embedded in national and international discourses of development, which in turn are reflected in the political economy of the international economic and political system. South–South approaches to environmental and (later) climate change negotiations emerged in the 1960s and 1970s as a tiny, but increasingly important, aspect of the North–South conflict (Najam 2005); the latter was to an extent part of the Cold War and the superpowers’ efforts to encourage countries of the South to join their ideological camp. At the same time, the South worked hard to establish greater economic justice through a New International Economic Order (NIEO) (see also Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Tafira, this volume). Motivations and actions that relate to environmental and climate change remain closely connected to the reasons why, after the Second World War, leaders of newly independent countries were searching for alternative paths between the first (capitalist) and second (socialist) worlds. These paths were distinctly anti-colonial, as former colonies of Asia and Africa worked to retain their just won independence immediately after the Second World War. The issues naturally concentrated on matters of political and economic independence, aiming to create an NIEO that would allow countries of the South to reap the benefits of their resources in fair and equitable ways, but also to overcome disempowerment, marginalisation in decision making and disenfranchisement (Najam 2005). Countries of the South expressed their aspiration for greater cooperation among themselves for the first time in the Bandung conference of 1955, which was an important step to the establishment of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) six years later in Belgrade (also see Aneja, this volume; see Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Tafira, this volume). Environmental concerns did not play any role in the establishment of NAM, and it took at least a decade before such aspects were 206

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taken up. In general, they were absent from the Southern perspectives that led to the creation of the Third World, the NAM and, in 1964, the Group of 77 (G77) established during the first UNCTAD1 conference in Geneva (Gray and Gills 2016). It was in 1964 that 77 developing countries signed a ‘Joint Declaration’ establishing their political forum to discuss and support each other. Over the years, the G77 became the most important organisation of the South, trying to bring to life the principles they had committed themselves to in Bandung (1955) and Belgrade (1961). At UNCTAD I, the G77 appeared as a power bloc when issues of international trade, the unequal nature of the international economy and issues around development were discussed. After the 1960s, G77 activities expanded beyond UNCTAD, with the group becoming the voice of the South in major UN agencies, and in key negotiations and meetings, including events that addressed concern for environmental matters. Today, the G77’s membership has risen to 134 countries (including China as an ‘associate member’), making it the largest intergovernmental organisation of the South within the United Nations. Appearing as a power bloc helped the South to improve their negotiating capacity: decision making is based on consensus leading to huge support once a particular viewpoint has been achieved. However, due to the high diversity/heterogeneity of the G77, decisions often reflect the lowest common denominator. These dynamics are an important feature of discussions vis-à-vis the environment and climate change. Initially, the G77 perceived the protection of the environment either as a luxury of developed, wealthy states or even as a means to keep the South un-developed and non-industrialised. Expectations that countries of the South should undertake considerable efforts to protect their environments and later contribute to the mitigation of climate change were often seen from a neocolonial perspective (Agarwal and Narain 1991; Gupta and Chu 2018). Even in developed countries, environmental degradation was considered to be a necessary side-effect of modernity, something that one had to accept if societies wanted to progress and to prosper. In the South, where living standards were usually much lower than in the industrialised world, the degradation of the physical environment was seen as unavoidable, or even as a prerequisite to development. Development and environmental protection, thus, were perceived as two conflicting concepts that were impossible to reconcile, at least not until development had been achieved and stabilised (Bernauer 2013).

The role of the South in negotiations of the environment and climate change Since the 1970s there has increasingly been recognition that international cooperation is required to resolve environmental challenges. Perspectives on the nexus between the environment and development began to change in the 1970s, albeit timidly. Throughout the decade, significant research expanded on the negative impacts of environmental degradation and (global) environmental change, such as deforestation, water and air pollution and resource depletion, on economic development in the South. As a result, an increasing number of countries in the South began to establish environmental agencies within their ministerial portfolios to raise awareness about the environment, to develop and implement new ideas and legal mechanisms to safeguard the environment, and to ensure compliance with environmental regulations (Williams 1993). At the same time, non-governmental organisations in the South started to put pressure on their governments and the international community to become environmentally and socially more responsible. A large number of social-environmental movements emerged in the South, covering issues closely related to unsustainable resource use, environmental pollution, toxic contamination and its impact on human health and well-being 207

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and various issues around socio-economic development that harmed the environment and (often) marginalised groups in the South (Dwivedi 2001; Guha 1989; Hecht and Cockburn 2010; Obi 2005; Kapoor 2006). A milestone for the awakening of the South in environmental negotiations was 1972 when, in Stockholm, the first major international environmental conference under the aegis of the United Nations took place: the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE). The meeting aimed to encourage and provide guidelines for governments and international organisations to find solutions on how to improve the state of the environment as it related to human concerns. The developed countries aimed to solve the issues of environmental pollution and natural resource depletion, with both of these highlighted by the Club of Rome in The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al. 1972; see also Eastin et al. 2011). In turn, the South, represented by the G77, was pushing toward the adoption of an environmental declaration that aligned with its demands for a just economic order, its aspirations for industrialisation, and for socio-economic development (Williams 1993; Najam 2005). The G77 initially expressed concerns that greater environmental awareness in international decision making would disadvantage the South, stating that Southern states cannot afford the luxury to think and act sustainably (Vihma et al. 2011). At Stockholm, this dilemma became evident: the North looked at environmental challenges from technological perspectives and from the perspective of resource exploitation. Both were unacceptable from a G77 perspective as the South was neither in command of technologies that could help in the reduction of pollution, nor was it able to reduce resource exploitation at the very beginning of their industrialisation processes. They, indeed, hoped to increase their exploitation of resources for the benefit of industrial development. The South feared to lose in Stockholm what they had achieved at the UN level in the 1950s and 1960s: a doctrine of ‘permanent sovereignty over natural resources’. Issues around natural resources also figured prominently in the demand for an NIEO (Anghie 2004). Although the South accepted that there are industrial-induced environmental challenges, the G77 insisted that it could only deal with such challenges after the gap in development levels between the South and North had narrowed. India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi put the G77 view in a nutshell when she stated that ‘poverty is the biggest polluter’ (quoted in McGibboney 2015, p. 515; also see Najam 2005, p. 308). With this statement on the interplay between poverty and environmental pollution and degradation, the G77 justified its view that first there is an urgent need to alleviate poverty as the underlying cause of environmental degradation and pollution. What was needed at this point in time was to improve people’s living standards before they could take care of environmental problems caused by industrialisation and development. The conference agreed on a common declaration and an Action Plan for the Environment. It decided to establish the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) with its headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya making it the first (and until today only) United Nations special agency with its headquarters located within the global South. The Stockholm Declaration specified that industrialised nations shall provide financial and technological support to the South to enable them to develop their economies in an environmentally friendly way. Twenty years after Stockholm, the international community met in Rio de Janeiro for a second UN environmental conference: the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). Participating states adopted common principles and operating guidelines for sustainable development (Agenda 21), which has dominated development discourses on international environmental governance ever since, including the Millennium Development Goals (2000–2015) and the Sustainable Development Goals (2016–2030) (Conca and Dabelko 2014). 208

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During the preparation and final drafting of the Rio Summit, the G77 and China continued to argue that the South could become sustainable only if it could at the same time look after its development needs. To accomplish this goal the North was to provide ‘new and additional’ financial resources to the South (Kohona 1992). The G77 and China stressed that success on the way to sustainability depends on the effective transfer of technology to countries of the South at concessional terms (Khor 2012). The South managed to include improvements into the finance chapter of Agenda 21, which helped to better monitor the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), so that this World Bank-controlled institution could not impose new forms of conditionalities when providing financial support (Khor 2012).

Climate change negotiations and SSC An important document originating from UNCED was the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In Article 2 it aims to mitigate and stabilise ‘greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system’ (United Nations 1992, p. 4; see also Nanda 2018). Additionally, it expresses the need for adaptation2 towards current and future impacts of climate change and the formation of an adaptation fund for vulnerable countries of the global South. In 1995, the first Conference of Parties (COP1) in Berlin agreed on a stringent approach to reduce greenhouse gas emissions supported by G77 and all countries of the AOSIS (on climate change and agriculture in the AOSIS see Rhiney, this volume). This paved the way to the Kyoto Protocol two years later. The Kyoto Protocol required that the 41 countries listed in Annex 1 (including all of the countries of the EU) reduce their joint emissions of greenhouse gases in the commitment period 2008–2012 by at least 5% of their 1990 emissions (Article 3). In contrast, countries not listed in Annex 1 – these were all countries of the South – had no obligation to reduce their emission of greenhouse gases (Tribett et al. 2017). While the countries of the South were not required to reduce their output of greenhouse gases, incentives to do so were institutionalised through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which aimed to support developed countries in managing, and subsequently reducing, excessive emissions. The CDM was criticised for denying the South the right to development, at least the right to development of the sort that global North nations had followed since the onset of the Industrial Revolution: development based on cheap energy provided by fossil fuels. Other important questions that shaped positions about climate change within the South have been how the costs of climate change impacts, as well as mitigation and adaptation, should be distributed among countries. The principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ (CBDR) already introduced in the Stockholm Declaration and later in the UNCED process (Stone 2004) put major responsibilities on the shoulders of developed nations and discharged the South from the obligation to contribute to reduction measures (Page 2008). Even once the emerging countries of the South became major emitters of greenhouse gases, and when they started to announce voluntary, unilateral reductions, they continued to insist that ‘the historical responsibility of developed countries for climate change meant that the latter must make internationally binding commitments for climate action – whatever the emerging powers might voluntarily decide to do in their own national situations’ (Hochstetler and Viola 2012, pp. 768–769). The principle of CBDR is among the most important issues addressing climate change governance. It had already led to the refusal of the United States Senate to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, as important emitters among the South were left unconsidered. The issue then dominated the 209

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15th Conference of Parties (COP15) in Copenhagen (2009), which was supposed to create Kyoto II, introducing the binding reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for the time after 2012, the year when the commitment period of the first Kyoto Protocol ended. Some see COP15 as a complete disaster in climate change governance (for various assessments of COP15 see: Blühdorn 2011; Bodansky 2010; Dimitrov 2010; Farbotko and McGregor 2010; Giddens 2010; Levi 2009; Turner 2010). COP15 did not manage to agree on a binding emission reduction plan and timeline. The Copenhagen Accord, a watered-down three-page document containing voluntary pledges that countries could either commit to or leave, is not even an official COP15 document: the Conference of Parties merely took note of it (Winkler and Beaumont 2010). In turn, representatives of the G77 refused to officially recognise the Accord as a result of the procedural challenges that characterised the way the document was drafted. Depending on the perspectives of the relevant parties and stakeholders, COP15 failed for two major reasons. First, the lack of fair processes (or even the departure from agreed principles of the UNFCCC such as consensus-based decision making), with the lapse in transparent processes and fair and equitable decisions being criticised by many representatives of the South, although not all. And second, the attempt to depart from the CBDR principle to create legally binding emission reductions for all major emitters, developed and developing countries alike. The scientific community in particular felt that this was the only way to ensure a large enough reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to actually prevent dangerous levels of climate change. The EU’s plan, in addition to that of the G77 member states of the AOSIS, to abandon the CBDR principle, conflicted with the other members of the G77, especially the BASIC coalition (Brazil, South Africa, India and China). The BASIC coalition had been forged to coordinate its member countries’ positions at COP15 (Hochstetler 2012). The group agreed to voluntarily reduce their greenhouse gas emissions considerably, but they resisted any attempt to have this put in a legally binding agreement. Their stance was that the North had emitted greenhouse gases for much longer and in much greater quantities than the South; the North had benefited from these emissions in the form of development and resultant high living standards for their respective populations; and leading on from this, the North has much greater financial and technological capacities to contribute to mitigation and adaptation than the South (Bernauer 2013). The US administration was not unhappy when COP15 did not produce any official outcome, as President Obama had expected strong resistance from the Senate. Binding greenhouse gas reduction plans and timelines were, in particular, not what the US administration wanted to bring home from Copenhagen. Already, when the Kyoto Protocol was not ratified, the US Senate had demanded that the South should not have a free ride with regard to greenhouse gas emissions. COP15, thus, symbolises President Obama’s failure to achieve a paradigm shift away from the CBDR principle to an agreement that required action from all major emitters, including those from emerging countries (Parker and Karlsson 2018). The decision on a new greenhouse gas reduction paradigm was postponed to future COP meetings. At COP15, the G77, officially the collective voice of the South, started to differentiate and splinter – at least at first sight. The emergence of a large number of groups composed of countries that were also members of G77, at times supplemented by others, even countries of the North, let it appear that the South had lost its (common) voice. Some groups and coalitions (e.g. AOSIS, and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) have been around for many years, and they have held distinct positions in the negotiations, which refer to their very specific situations. In turn, other South–South coalitions have developed more recently and at times on an ad-hoc basis, disappearing once their main purposes have been served (or not).3 210

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Between COP15 and COP21 in Paris (2015), China’s position to agree to meaningful reductions of its greenhouse gas emissions made an international agreement more likely. China, however, made it clear that a considerable departure from the governance approach of the Kyoto Protocol would be required. China’s willingness to prepare for meaningful reductions in greenhouse gas emissions had largely been due to the country’s increasing technological capabilities in clean, renewable energy, which made it easier to achieve courageous targets. China’s increasing technological capabilities also became an important economic factor making the country a global leader in clean technologies (Stalley 2015; Urpelainen and Van de Graaf 2017; Wang et al. 2017). At COP21, the top-down approach working with binding reduction targets within specified timeframes was replaced by a ‘pledge and review’ governance approach (Hilton and Kerr 2017; Tørstad and Sælen 2017). With this, a distinct paradigm shift emerged from the mitigation philosophy that governed the Kyoto Protocol. COP21 agreed that reduction targets for greenhouse gases should be bottom-up, relying on countries setting Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) to guide national efforts to restrict global warming well below 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C. The Paris Agreement departs from the principle of Annex I and Non-Annex I countries of the Kyoto Protocol, and introduces a mechanism of self-differentiation according to which countries determine their contributions to the reduction of greenhouse gases.

Conclusion While the South over the past 60 years has become more heterogeneous, with Newly Industrialising Countries emerging from its ranks, it has so far maintained its position to gather many behind the banner of the Group of 77 and China. Differences and interests vary a great deal in climate change negotiations, depending on the situation of different groups of countries. A common denominator, however, remains the combination between environmental, and later climate, protection and development. Such a perspective initially made the South hesitant to fully commit to progressive views and actions to protect the environment and the Earth’s climate. Over the years, however, it was recognised that the combination of two global challenges, which culminated in the idea of sustainable development, could be used to the advantage of the South. As latecomers in the industrialisation process, emerging countries of the South were successful in rejecting responsibilities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In the end, even the highly controversial CDM benefited the emerging countries of the South, which attracted the lion’s share of projects under this scheme. An important, although very contested issue is climate change finance, in particular financial support for adaptation efforts. By 2050, circa USD280–500 billion will be needed to cover adaptation and mitigation costs (UNEP 2016). At COP15, developed countries threatened to pull out if private sector participation in climate change finance would not be allowed (Pauw 2017). However, developing countries have expressed concerns in allowing such forms of private finance, especially for adaptation purposes: many fear that private finance will replace public financial commitments. As adaptation funding is more difficult to define than support for mitigation activities, states are also concerned that decisions will be based on the profitability considerations of private banking institutions rather than on the needs of communities threatened by the impacts of climate change (see also Betzold and Weiler 2017; Hall 2017). Most probably, the collective voice of the South will in the future continue to argue that environmental protection can compromise their right to development. Constellations within the South are changing already. This is also true with regard to climate change. Emerging powers 211

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are not only contributing in a significant way to greenhouse gas emissions, they are also technologically advancing and have even become emerging donors of development activities, either through bilateral agreements or through development banks emerging in the South (also see Mawdlsey, this volume). The emerging powers within the G77 and China, irrespective of whether they appear as BASIC, BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), or IBSA (India, Brazil and South Africa) coalitions, can make a difference when it comes to technology transfer or concessional loans or grants to support their weaker brothers and sisters of the South. Of course, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. SSC can vastly benefit Southern actors, if principles of solidarity, collective self-reliance and CBDR are taken seriously (also see Aneja, this volume). This can trigger dynamics so that the South, through the support of its emerging powers, cannot only successfully fight climate change and other environmental challenges, but also succeed in the alleviation of hunger, poverty and other socio-economic challenges.

Notes 1 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, which became the major event through which the G77 tried to achieve an NIEO. 2 The UNFCCC defines adaptation as the process through which societies make themselves better able to cope with an uncertain future. Adapting to climate change entails taking the right measures to reduce the negative effects of climate change (or exploit the positive ones) by making the appropriate adjustments and changes. (UNFCCC 2007, p. 10) 3 A few important examples are: the African Group of Negotiators (AGN; Kirby and O’Mahony 2018), Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, ALBA; Edwards et al. 2017), the Alliance of Small Islands Developing States (AOSIS; Højland and Svendsen 2017; Jinnah 2017; Schwebel 2018), BASIC (Hurrell and Sengupta 2012; Nhamo 2010; Qi 2011), BRICs/BRICS (originally coined in 2001 for Brazil, Russia, India and China; meeting regularly since 2006; in 2010 the group asked South Africa to join; Armijo 2007; Brütsch and Papa 2013; LealArcas 2013), the Independent Association of Latin American and Caribbean Countries (AILAC; Ciplet and Roberts 2017), and OPEC (Barnett 2008; Barnett et al. 2004; Bråten and Golombek 1998).

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16 Climate change and the future of agriculture in the Caribbean Prospects for South–South cooperation Kevon Rhiney

Introduction The Caribbean has come into sharp focus in recent years, owing to the region’s heightened vulnerability to projected climate change impacts, and the unique and special development challenges confronting Caribbean Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Caribbean SIDS share many characteristics with other SIDS globally, that enhances their vulnerability to climate change impacts, including their small geographic size, limited available land space, open economies, narrow resource base and susceptibility to a range of natural disasters and rising sea levels (Palanisamy et al. 2012; Nurse et al. 2014). As such, concerns around the threats climate change poses for the Caribbean are highly significant for SIDS throughout the global South, and have clear and profound implications for South–South cooperation (SSC). Both medium- and long-term changes in the global climate are expected to have significant economic consequences for key sectors in the Caribbean such as tourism and agriculture (Rhiney 2015; Barker 2012; Scott et al. 2012). The Caribbean agriculture sector, in particular, has attracted much attention within the climate change community given its central role in most regional economies and its apparent susceptibility to a range of climate-induced shocks and stresses. Noticeable shifts in traditional rainfall patterns and recent impacts from extreme weather events such as hurricanes and droughts are already inflicting significant economic damage on the region’s agriculture sector (Gamble et  al. 2010; Smith and Rhiney 2015). If this trend should continue, then these climatic changes could severely threaten, if not displace the livelihoods of thousands of farmers across the region. Caribbean farmers’ vulnerability to climate change is further compounded by a long list of pre-existing and historically entrenched structural challenges including their limited use of, and access to, appropriate technologies, poorly developed agricultural extension programmes, high cost of production and insecure land tenure patterns (Barker 2012). For the majority of these farmers, their disproportionately high vulnerability to climate change is a function of wider societal and developmental issues, which require broad-scale policy reformation and targeted intervention geared toward improving their social and economic well-being. Such action has to be grounded in local realities, and tailored to suit particular local contexts. However, given the magnitude of the challenges climate change poses for the region’s future development, and the limited capacity of most regional states to 215

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adequately adapt to the impending changes on their own, it is becoming exceedingly clear that regional cooperation around key developmental issues such as food and nutrition security is absolutely vital for the Caribbean under a changing climate. It is against this backdrop of an increasingly uncertain world characterised by complex and unprecedented global challenges, that climate change takes centre stage as a regional development imperative, especially in the global South. This chapter thus seeks to explore the current and impending challenges faced in achieving agricultural sustainability in the Caribbean within the context of a changing regional climate. Here, I seek to offer more than a descriptive account of the common structural challenges faced within the region’s agriculture sector, but to also provide a critical analysis of the Caribbean’s collective response to the current global climate problem to date, paying particular attention to the associated threats and opportunities for establishing and sustaining strategic SSC around these two very important issues.1 The chapter is organised in several broad sections. First, a brief overview of the regional climate change science literature and the associated impacts and implications for the regional agriculture sector is provided. This is followed by a summation of the regional policy response to climate change to date, framed primarily within the context of the ongoing SIDS agenda. Here, I focus attention on the extent and range of interventions that have taken place in the regional agriculture sector in recent decades, while making the case for the need to foster greater technical cooperation on agriculture. Next, I explore some of the challenges and opportunities for advancing these developmental objectives through the fostering of SSC, followed by a brief discussion of the way forward for the Caribbean.

Caribbean agriculture under a changing climate Current climate records indicate that the planet’s climate has warmed by approximately 1°C above the pre-industrial benchmark, and is on its way to surpassing the 2°C threshold for dangerous global warming well before the end of this century. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report (2014) points out that warming of the Earth’s climate system is now ‘unequivocal’, with it being ‘extremely likely’ that human activities have been the dominant cause of recent climate changes (pp. 4, 13). Aggregate economic and ecosystems damage will certainly accelerate under a warmer global climate; with the risks posed to unique and threatened social and ecological systems increasing at ‘a steepening rate under an additional warming of 1 to 2°C and become high above 3°C, due to the potential for large and irreversible sea level rise from ice sheet loss’ (IPCC 2014). There is consequently widespread agreement regarding the urgent need to stabilise the concentration of greenhouse gases (particularly carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere below dangerous levels (between 450 and 550 parts per million) – a threshold we are fast approaching (Stern 2008). And given recent developments in global geopolitics, exemplified by the withdrawal of the United States of America (one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases) from the Paris Agreement,2 the ability of the global community to curtail future warming well below 2°C now seems highly unlikely (Rogelj et al. 2016). There is, indeed, a growing recognition that some future climate impacts are now inevitable, which has seen an increased emphasis being placed on averting the worst-case scenarios of changed weather patterns and sea level rise. The precise nature and extent of these future impacts has been a source of much contention lately, resulting in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) advocating for a cap of 1.5°C on future global warming (Benjamin and Thomas 2016). This is understandable, given the particular and disproportionate vulnerabilities of small islands to the effects of climate change. The extreme exposure and sensitivity of SIDS to sea level rise, 216

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shifting weather patterns, increased intensity of extreme climate events, and the resultant impacts on their economic and social systems are now well established (Pulwarty et al. 2010; Barnett and O’Neill 2012; Berringer 2012; Palanisamy et al. 2012; Nurse et al. 2014; Rhiney 2015). There is also growing scientific evidence to indicate that current levels of warming have already had observable, and possibly irreversible, impacts on some small island territories, including depletion of warm-water coral reefs, noticeable declines in marine fisheries and food production, and rising sea levels (UNFCCC 2015). This has certainly been the case in the Caribbean, which is recognised as being one of the most vulnerable regions in the world to the impacts of climate change. Historical records for the Caribbean indicate that the region’s climate has changed in significant ways over the recent past (Gamble and Curtis 2008; Taylor et al. 2017). In general, the records suggest the emergence of a new and unfamiliar regional climate, signified by warmer surface temperatures, more variable weather patterns, increases in climate extremes and higher sea levels (Taylor et al. 2017). These trends are expected to continue throughout the course of this century with dire consequences for the region. Model outputs suggest that the region’s mean sea level will continue to increase in line with the global mean, with the upper boundary ranging anywhere between 0.6 to 1.5 metres for the Caribbean Sea by the end of the century (IPCC 2014; Perrette et  al. 2013; Rahmstorf 2007). And while scientists are still uncertain as to whether the region will experience an increase in the frequency of hurricanes and tropical storms, there seems to be some agreement that the intensity of these events will likely increase under a warmer climate. In general, regional model predictions indicate a deepening of this new and emerging climate characterised by a much warmer and drier future regional climate (Taylor et  al. 2017; Campbell et  al. 2011; Gamble 2009), additional increases in regional sea levels (Perrette et al. 2013; Simpson et al. 2009) and an increase in the frequency of high magnitude Atlantic hurricanes and tropical storms (Bender et al. 2010). The consequences of these climate-induced changes for Caribbean agriculture as a whole are immense, with profound implications for the future viability of the sector. This is largely a function of the way food systems are generally organised in the Caribbean, which renders many commonly grown food crops susceptible to periodic impacts from climate extremes. The majority of cropping schemes in the Caribbean are unirrigated and are characterised by open-field, labour-intensive, smallholder production systems (Rhiney 2015; Barker 2012; Klak et al. 2011; Gamble et al. 2010; Timms 2008). The open nature of these production systems makes them highly dependent on weather and climate. As such, any sustained mediumto long-term changes in temperature and rainfall are expected to have an adverse effect on agricultural production across the region, including a general decline in crop yield and quality and a heightened risk of crop failure. As ambient temperatures increase with climate change, the productivity of many regionally grown crops could become compromised due to enhanced heat and water stress as well as the introduction of new pests and diseases (Rhiney et al. 2017; Eitzinger et al. 2015, 2013). Studies have also shown that cropping systems across the Caribbean are being increasingly subjected to pronounced variations in rainfall. Since most crop cycles in the Caribbean span all or part of the traditional rainy season (May–November), even the slightest of shifts in traditional rainfall patterns could have dire consequences for the agriculture sector (Rankine et al. 2014). This is instructive given current climate model projections that indicate an overall drying trend for the region as well as a marked reduction in rainfall during the traditional rainy seasons, punctuated by increasing inter-seasonal and inter-annual variability (Hall et al. 2013; Taylor et al. 2012). Similarly, the prospects of a future characterised by more extreme weather events and rising sea levels does not augur well for the regional agriculture sector. Rising sea levels enhance the 217

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risk of coastal flooding, biodiversity loss, saltwater intrusion and the disappearance of valuable coastal lands due to increased inundation and shoreline erosion (Cashman et al. 2010; Pulwarty et al. 2010; Scott et al. 2012). Likewise, future changes in either the intensity or frequency of extreme weather events such as droughts and hurricanes, will have a pronounced regional impact on available freshwater resources and agricultural production (Nurse et  al. 2014). Hurricanes represent one of the greatest climatic risks to the Caribbean, as illustrated by the devastation left in the wake of the active 2017 hurricane season. It is projected that by 2100 average hurricane damage in the Caribbean could increase by as much as 77% (Acevedo Mejia 2016; Bertinelli et  al. 2016), which is likely to have severe consequences for local farming communities and the overall viability of regional economies. By and large, these trends point to a worrying and precarious future for Caribbean agriculture, the socio-economic implications of which are farreaching as scores of rural households and communities across the region rely heavily on the sector as a source of employment and livelihood. These trends have been made worse over the years by the inability of the international community to agree to common solutions in tackling this worsening global climate problem.

Regional policy responses and the climate change agenda The aforementioned realities have formed part of the basis of the region’s recent policy responses to the current global climate problem. The past two decades have seen a significant shift in the Caribbean’s development agenda, with climate change becoming the focal point of regional policy and planning (Bishop and Payne 2012). Regional states’ adoption of the Barbados Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of SIDS (BPoA) in 1994, represents one of the earliest forms of coordinated South–South policy response to the threats posed by global climate change. The BPoA outlined a strategy for addressing the socioeconomic and environmental vulnerabilities facing island states, which singled out climate change and sea level rise as priority areas of concern requiring urgent attention. Since then, several major policies and programmes have been put in place at the regional level to promote collaboration on climate change-related issues, as well as to inform, fund and support mitigation and adaptation efforts across the Caribbean. Part of this thrust resulted in the establishment of the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) in February 2002, with its headquarters based in Belize. The Centre is the official repository and clearing house for regional climate change data, and is mandated to provide climate change-related policy advice and guidelines to the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). The Centre thus functions as the lead technical agency in coordinating and supporting national strategies within CARICOM related to climate change adaptation and mitigation, and plays a prominent role in advancing the region’s interests at the global level. The CCCCC is just one of several organisations working on climate change issues in the region. The Caribbean Development Bank and the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH) also play a pivotal regional role in supporting adaptation and mitigation initiatives. There is also a host of other regional and international organisations that work on a range of country-specific projects related either directly or indirectly to climate change. It is not surprising that agriculture has been placed on the top of the regional climate change agenda, given its importance to the Caribbean and its demonstrated vulnerability to climateinduced impacts. At the regional policy level, the sector’s vulnerability to climate change is primarily addressed in the Regional Food and Nutrition Security Policy (RFNSP). The RFNSP purports a regional approach to food and nutrition security that will enable CARICOM member states to benefit from economic externalities ‘that they would be unable to access acting in 218

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isolation, and at a lower cost than they would otherwise face’ (CARICOM 2010, p. 4). Some of the measures proposed under the policy include: the creation of a regional information system that can provide early warning for socio-economic and environmental shocks, investment in modern technologies such as protected agriculture and renewable energy, integrating climate information in traditional farm management practices, setting up agricultural insurance schemes to safeguard against natural disasters, and the establishment of emergency reserve stocks of food, seeds and other plant genetic materials. The policy also calls for periodic assessment and revision of action plans and for interventions to be adapted to the circumstances in each member state. The policy complements the Regional Framework for Achieving Development Resilient to Climate Change, which was approved in 2009. The framework is intended to provide a blueprint for regional cooperation on all climate change-related issues in the Caribbean, and is supported by an Implementation Plan that specifically outlines the region’s strategic approach for addressing climate change up to 2021 (CCCCC 2011). A key objective of the framework is to promote the implementation of specific adaptation measures to address key vulnerabilities in the region, coupled with actions designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through decreasing dependence on fossil fuel and shifting toward renewable sources of energy, especially in the agriculture and transport sectors. There have also been several regional projects over the past two decades, mostly aimed at promoting technical and financial cooperation around climate change-related issues in the Caribbean. Several of these projects were supported with funds from the Global Environmental Facility (GEF),3 each lasting three to four years on average. These initiatives largely involved a series of country-level pilot projects geared toward enhancing the region’s capacity to identify climate change-related risks through ongoing monitoring of the region’s climate and sea levels, public education and outreach, and the continued downscaling of global climate models (CCCCC 2013). In general, these projects have centred on addressing biodiversity loss and land degradation issues along coastal and near-coastal areas, with activities ranging from the basin-wide installation of automated sea level and climate monitoring systems to coral reef monitoring and the economic valuation of coastal and marine resources throughout the Caribbean. The last few years have seen a mushrooming of overlapping multilateral and bilateral initiatives supporting a wide range of adaptation activities throughout the Caribbean; with a growing emphasis on financing sustainable adaptation schemes that can potentially be scaled-up and replicated across the region. The Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR)4 has been particularly instrumental in funding adaptation efforts targeted at the agriculture sector. The PPCR is a multimillion-dollar initiative set up under the Strategic Climate Fund (SCF) to aid developing countries in integrating critical climate change considerations into their core development policy and planning processes. The Caribbean regional track of the PPCR – initiated in 2009, is one of two pilot regions participating in the global PPCR programme. The Caribbean pilot is two-pronged, consisting of two closely aligned and complementary tracks: (1) country-based investments in six pilot countries – Haiti, Jamaica, Dominica, Grenada, St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines; and (2) a regional track supported by key partner entities aimed at providing vital climate risk data and information so that countries can incorporate climate resilience into their national climate change strategies and financing mechanisms. To date, the PPCR has funded a number of country-level initiatives aimed at identifying investment opportunities that can build resilience in the agricultural industry in participating countries. Pilot activities range from the construction of small-scale soil and water conservation infrastructure to setting up community-based early warning systems in targeted watersheds threatened by recurrent flooding. In the case of Haiti and Jamaica, the project is also supporting a number of research efforts aimed at identifying climate-resilient 219

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crop varieties and cropping systems. Studies based on improving downscaled future climate projections for the region in support of adaptation planning and decision making at the national and sectoral levels, have also formed a major part of the project. Despite the progress made to date, significant asymmetries still exist across the region in terms of knowledge and technical capacity. Inadequate policy coordination and the lack of adequate human and institutional capacity have made it particularly difficult for many regional states to sustain adaptation efforts beyond the lifespan of these various projects (see Bishop and Payne 2012). Added to this, the sector is still very much susceptible to a wide range of natural and market-related shocks. There is also an urgent need to foster and strengthen technical cooperation on agriculture, particularly in vital areas such as plant genetics and crop breeding, disaster management and transboundary plant pests and diseases. This is particularly relevant given the disproportional vulnerability of the majority of small island and low-lying states in the Caribbean.

Prospects for advancing SSC on agriculture and climate change Recent events, including the 2006–2008 global food price crisis and the growing regional recognition of the threats posed by climate change, have underscored the importance of advancing technical cooperation on agriculture. Presently, there has been a lot of focus on removing barriers to intra-regional trade, promoting agribusiness and strengthening priority value chains, particularly for certain root and tuber crops (especially cassava and sweet potatoes) and herbs and spices. The first objective is based on a recognised need to implement counter-measures that can effectively discourage member states from using non-conforming sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) regulations and import licensing controls to block food and agricultural commodities produced within CARICOM from entering their domestic markets. The second pertains to growing calls for the transformation of the regional agriculture sector through the promotion of an agribusiness approach that could potentially enhance sectoral linkages with other industries such as tourism and extend the sector’s reach beyond the confines of the farm and into factories, restaurants and hotels. The third represents a renewed focus on integrating agricultural production with processing, marketing and other downstream activities that can translate into commercially viable agribusiness ventures. Integral to all of these is the creation of a regional information system that will facilitate greater access to sector-specific information by producers and policy makers. With regard to climate change, the region has made some significant strides in recent years in placing it on the development agenda. For agriculture, the creation of the RFNSP in 2010 represented one of the first official attempts by regional heads of government to craft a strategic response for the region’s agriculture sector that included measures aimed at addressing climate change-related issues. The policy was supported by the Regional Framework for Achieving Development Resilient to Climate Change. The framework was approved in 2009 and sets out key modes of technical cooperation on all matters related to climate change in the Caribbean (CCCCC 2011). Over the past decade, there have been several significant attempts at the regional level geared toward building resilience in the agriculture sector. These efforts have, however, been limited partly due to pre-existing institutional and resource challenges, and a general lack of technical know-how regarding how to successfully implement appropriate climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies. These are manifested in the form of inadequate policy coordination among CARICOM member states that has prevented some of these countries from successfully implementing and sustaining past climate change efforts (Bishop and Payne 2012). In general terms, the majority of regional states demonstrate a limited adaptive capacity, and possess relatively 220

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little research and technical experience with regard to climate change and food security issues. There is still a great deal of scope for building resilience in the regional agricultural industry. Technical support is needed in vital areas such as crop breeding and genetics, plant disease and pest management, agricultural extension, risk financing and climate services, to name a few. The usual top-down practice by the international donor and development communities to pair the region with Latin America also presents a challenge, as in most cases, emphasis is placed on larger countries in Central and South America, at the expense of countries in the Caribbean. While there are several major agricultural research institutions set up to provide scientific and technical support to both Latin America and the Caribbean, the latter is often sidelined due to its smaller size and geopolitical influence. In fact, investments in climate change research and innovations in the Caribbean region are substantially dwarfed by those of its Central and South American neighbours (Nakhooda et  al. 2011). Additionally, the bulk of climate change activities being pursued throughout the region are aid- and donordriven, which does not necessarily augur well in terms of future agricultural sustainability. This problem is further compounded as the Caribbean is now being increasingly regarded by the international donor community as a middle-income region based on GDP per capita figures. A direct consequence of this is that it is becoming increasingly difficult for regional states to gain access to concessional funding and other international development resources, which has implications for the continued financing and sustenance of regional adaptation efforts. It is therefore imperative that the regional community seek to widen its resource mobilisation efforts to establish and strengthen technical cooperation with new development partners where possible. Tapping into new and existing South–South mechanisms provides one clear opportunity for furthering and deepening regional efforts around climate change and agricultural sustainability issues. For one thing, there are tremendous benefits to be gained from fostering strategic partnerships through bilateral or multilateral agreements with other developing regions such as the Pacific, that share common interests and concerns with those of the Caribbean. There are already a number of recent initiatives that are providing a basis for this. For instance, the IntraACP Agricultural Policy Program has brought together representatives from the Caribbean and the Pacific and has facilitated the exchange of ideas and lessons learned between producers, agribusiness owners, experts and decision makers from both regions. There have also been a number of instances of formal and informal cooperation between Latin American and Caribbean countries that offer some degree of consideration for agriculture and climate change issues. For instance, the CARICOM-Brazil Technical Cooperation Agreement (formalised in 2010) addresses 16 areas of cooperation including agriculture, health, disaster management, trade and investment, energy and climate change. The CARICOM-Chile cooperation, which entered into force in 1997, provide for technical assistance in a number of areas including trade and investment, modernisation of the regional agricultural industry, disaster management, energy conservation, disease control and science and education. Similar arrangements have existed between Colombia and Mexico since 1990. Even at the sub-regional level, there is scope for greater technical cooperation around agriculture and climate change with countries such as Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Cuba has been particularly successful in devising strategies aimed at reducing the vulnerability of its agriculture sector to future climate change impacts. In recent years, Cuba has been instrumental in providing advisory support in climate analysis in the region. The PRECISCaribbean initiative is one example of this. The initiative was based on a collaboration initiated in 2003 between regional climate scientists and institutions located in Barbados, Belize, Cuba and Jamaica, and was aimed at producing the needed future downscaled climate change 221

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scenarios to assist the region in its adaptation and mitigation efforts (Taylor et al. 2007, 2012; Campbell et  al. 2011). So far, the challenge with these sub-regional initiatives has been a shortage of financial resources. Given the challenges with resource mobilisation, efforts like these can be sustained and improved through the establishment of triangular cooperation involving technical assistance from a Southern country such as Cuba, alongside financial assistance from a traditional donor country or international development partner organisation. Supporting exchange programmes between agencies and universities within the region could also provide a cost-effective solution for facilitating knowledge transfer and technical cooperation in vital areas. There are also a few examples of SSC on agriculture and climate change through organisations such as the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) and the AOSIS. The ACS was established in 1994 with the aim of strengthening regional integration and cooperation around issues related to disaster risk reduction, trade and investment, sustainable tourism, transport and the preservation and conservation of the Caribbean Sea. The ACS comprises 25 member states and 11 associate members, and includes several countries in Central and South America. The Association was explicitly set up to serve as a mechanism for consultation, cooperation and concerted action for its member countries. The Association’s work in disaster risk reduction serves as a good example of how Caribbean states have benefited from South–South relations. The ACS Directorate has played a major role in fostering cooperation among organisations responsible for disaster planning and relief in the region. The Association has also been involved in several projects aimed at advancing natural disaster prevention efforts in the region. One example is the Strengthening Hydro-meteorological Operations and Services in Caribbean SIDS project (SHOCS), which was aimed at enhancing the Caribbean’s capacity to respond to and manage risks related to severe weather and hydro-meteorological hazards. On the other hand, the AOSIS is an intergovernmental body comprising a membership of 44 low-lying coastal and small island countries. Since its inception in 1990, the Alliance has become one of the main mechanisms through which small island states from around the world have been working together to address issues of common concern, especially their vulnerability to global climate change (Heidari and Pearce 2016). The AOSIS primarily serves as an ad hoc negotiation and lobbying platform for SIDS within the United Nations system and thus functions on the basis of consultation and consensus.

Concluding remarks The threats posed by climate change to agricultural production in the Caribbean are, by all accounts, enormous and unprecedented. Given the important role agriculture plays in the region, it is not surprising that the sector’s vulnerability to future climate change impacts has now taken centre stage – from both a regional development and a policy standpoint. Recent events have demonstrated how susceptible the region’s agriculture sector is to climate-induced hazards. The combined effects of hurricanes, droughts and floods in recent years have inflicted millions of dollars’ worth of damages to the farming sector and have resulted in the disruption and dislocation of thousands of agrarian-based livelihoods throughout the Caribbean. What is clear is that, on their own, individual regional states are incapable of addressing many of these impending challenges, due in part to pre-existing institutional and resource constraints, and a general lack of technical experience. Given the enormity of the threats posed, and the unique development challenges faced by the majority of Caribbean states, there is a genuine need for an approach to climate change adaptation that is sustainable, cost-effective and based on mutual cooperation. Forging strategic and mutually beneficial partnerships that can take advantage of the wide and diverse range of 222

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actors that now constitute the international development community (including those from the global South), is therefore seen as a necessary step in advancing current and future adaptation efforts in the region. In the case of agriculture, there is a clear need for greater technical cooperation in vital areas such as plant genetics research and pest and disease management. While aid and development support from developed country sources continue to feature highly in the regional development landscape, there is now a noticeable rise and interest in South–South development cooperation. The chapter has highlighted a number of examples of existing technical cooperation on agriculture and climate change-related issues between the Caribbean Community and other regions in and of the global South. It is clear from these examples that SSC can take on several different forms including bilateral, regional, sub-regional and interregional arrangements. These collaborations are not limited to trade and investment, but are increasingly involving technology transfers, training, expert and student exchanges and other forms of in-kind contributions, global advocacy and strategic partnerships. While these examples indicate that significant strides are being made by countries in the global South to collaborate around a number of key development areas, there still remains a great deal of scope for extending and deepening South–South relations, especially around agriculture and climate change issues. For instance, promoting greater and active participation from public and private sector actors, academia and non-governmental organisations, will be crucial to enhancing the capacity of regional states to absorb and adapt needed technology and skills to meet their food security and climate change adaptation needs. Likewise, the continued support and strengthening of organisations such as AOSIS and ACS, will be vital to strengthening the voice and bargaining power of regional states at the global level. Most importantly, these mechanisms cannot exist within a vacuum. In order for these initiatives to effect significant change, there needs to be adequate financing, sustained political support and accountability at all levels as well as a critical cadre of leaders in the global South who share a similar global vision and commitment to SSC (Gosovic 2016; Nayyar 2016).

Notes 1 This chapter can also be fruitfully read alongside Weber and Kopf (in this volume). 2 The Paris Agreement (also known as the Paris Climate Accord) aims to respond to the current global climate change threat by limiting global temperature rise this century well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5°C. The agreement was negotiated by representatives of 196 parties at the 21st Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris, and was later adopted by consensus in December 2015. As of November 2017, 195 UNFCCC members have signed the agreement, and 170 have become party to it. 3 The GEF was established in October 1991 and now serves as a financial mechanism for the UNFCCC and four other major international environmental conventions. The facility comprises a partnership of 18 agencies including several United Nations agencies, multilateral development banks and international NGOs. The GEF Trust Fund is administered by the World Bank with donations from 39 countries. Since its inception, GEF has provided over US$17 billion in grants and has financed more than 4,000 projects in 170 member countries. Developing countries and countries with economies in transition are the primary recipients of GEF funds. See www.thegef.org/partners/countries-participants [Accessed 15 March 2017]. 4 The PPCR is one of four programmes financed under the Climate Investment Fund (CIF), and is geared toward assisting developing countries to integrate climate change concerns into their development plans. The CIF Trust Funds were initiated in September 2008 with the support of 14 donor countries from the global North. The World Bank serves as Trustee for the CIF, and provides funding support through its various programmes to recipient countries. Funds are disbursed and managed via grants and concessional loans in partnership with several multilateral development banks. See www.climateinvestmentfunds.org/ about/finances [Accessed 13 March 2017]. 223

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References Acevedo Mejia, S., 2016. Gone With the Wind: Estimating Hurricane and Climate Change Costs in the Caribbean (Working Paper No. 16/199 No. WPIEA2016199). International Monetary Fund. Available from: www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2016/12/31/Gone-with-the-Wind-Estimating-Hurricaneand-Climate-Change-Costs-in-the-Caribbean-44333 [Accessed 10 March 2017]. Barker, D., 2012. Caribbean Agriculture in a Period of Global Change: Vulnerabilities and Opportunities. Caribbean Studies 40(2), 41–61. Barnett, J. and O’Neill, S.J., 2012. Islands, Resettlement and Adaptation. Nature Climate Change 2, 8–10. Bender, M.A., Knutson, T.R., Tuleya, R.E., Sirutis, J.J., Vecchi, G.A., Garner, S.T., and Held, I.M., 2010. Modeled Impact of Anthropogenic Warming on the Frequency of Intense Atlantic Hurricanes. Science 327(5964), 454–458. Benjamin, L. and Thomas, A., 2016. 1.5°C to Stay Alive? AOSIS and the Long Term Temperature Goal in the Paris Agreement. International Union for Conservation of Nature Academy of Environmental Law (IUCNAEL) E-Journal, 7, 122–129. Berringer, A.C.S., 2012. Climate Change and Emigration: Comparing ‘Sinking Islands’ and Jamaica. Miradas en Movimiento. Special Issue: Naturally Immigrants (January), 106–120. Bertinelli, L., Mohan, P., and Strobl, E., 2016. Hurricane Damage Risk Assessment in the Caribbean: An Analysis Using Synthetic Hurricane Events and Nightlight Imagery. Ecological Economics 124, 135–144. Bishop, M.L. and Payne, A., 2012. Climate Change and the Future of Caribbean Development. The Journal of Development Studies 48(10), 1536–1553. Campbell, J., Taylor, M.A., Stephenson, T.S., Watson, R.A., and White, F.S. 2011. Future Climate of the Caribbean from a Regional Climate Model. International Journal of Climatology 31(12), 1866–1878. Caribbean Community (CARICOM), 2010. CARICOM Regional Food and Nutrition Security Policy. Available from: www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/righttofood/documents/project_m/caricom/CAR ICOMRegionalFoodandNutritionSecurityPolicy-5october2010.pdf[Accessed 10 March 2017]. Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC), 2011. Regional Framework for Achieving Development Resilient to Climate Change: Implementation Plan Executive Summary. Belmopan, Belize, Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre. Available from: www.widecast.org/Resources/Docs/ CCCCC_2009_Climate_Change_and_the_Caribbean_2009-2015.pdf [Accessed 9 September 2017]. Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC), 2013. Mainstreaming and adaptation to climate change (MACC) [online] Available from: www.caribbeanclimate.bz/closed-projects/20042007-mainstreaming-adaptation-to-climate-change-macc.html [Accessed 10 March 2017]. Cashman, A.L., Nurse, L., and Charlery, J., 2010. Climate Change in the Caribbean: The Water Management Implications. The Journal of Environment and Development 19(1), 42–67. Eitzinger, A., Laderach, P., Gordon, G., and Bruni, M., 2013. Crop Suitability and Climate Change in Jamaica: Impacts on Farmers and the Supply Chain to the Hotel Industry. Caribbean Geography 8(1), 20–38. Eitzinger, A., Rhiney, K., Farrell, A., Carmona, S., van Loosen, I., and Taylor, M., 2015. Jamaica: Assessing the Impact of Climate on Cocoa and Tomato. CIAT Policy Brief No. 28. Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT), Cali, Colombia. Gamble, D.W., 2009. Caribbean Vulnerability: Development of an Appropriate Climatic Framework. In: D.F.M. McGregor, D. Dodman, and D. Barker (eds), Global Change and Caribbean Vulnerability: Environment, Economy and Society at Risk? Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, pp. 22–46. Gamble, D.W. and Curtis, S., 2008. Caribbean Precipitation: Review, Model, and Prospect. Progress in Physical Geography 32(3), 265–276. Gamble, D., Campbell, D., Allen, T., Barker, D., Curtis, S., McGregor, D., and Popke, J., 2010. Climate Change, Drought, and Jamaican Agriculture: Local Knowledge and the Climate Record. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 100(4), 880–893. Gosovic, B., 2016. The Resurgence of South-South Cooperation. Third World Quarterly 37(4), 733–743. Hall, T.C., Sealy, A.M., Stephenson, T.S., Kuusunoki, S., Taylor, M., Chen, A., and Kitoh, A., 2013. Future Climate of the Caribbean from a Super-high Resolution Atmospheric General Circulation Model. Theoretical and Applied Climatology 113(1–2), 271–287. Heidari, N. and Pearce, J.M., 2016. A Review of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Liabilities as the Value of Renewable Energy for Mitigating Lawsuits for Climate Change Related Damages. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 55(March), 899–908. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2014. Climate Change 2014 Synthesis Report: Summary for Policymakers. In T.F. Stocker et al. (eds), Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. 224

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Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Klak, T., Wiley, J., Mullaney, E., Peteru, S., Regan, S., and Merilus, J., 2011. Inclusive Neoliberalism?: Perspectives from Eastern Caribbean Farmers. Progress in Development Studies 11(1), 33–61. Nakhooda, S., Caravani, A., Wenzel, S., and Schalatek, L., 2011. Climate Finance Fundamentals: The Evolving Global Climate Finance Architecture (Brief 2). Heinrich Boll Stiftung and the Overseas Development Institute. Nayyar, D., 2016. BRICS, Developing Countries and Global Governance. Third World Quarterly 37(4), 575–591. Nurse, L.A. et al. 2014. Small islands. In: V.R. Barros et al. (eds), Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability Part B: Regional Aspects Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1613–1654. Palanisamy, H., Becker, M., Meyssignac, B., Henry, O., and Cazenave, A., 2012. Regional Sea Level Change and Variability in the Caribbean Sea since 1950. Journal of Geodetic Science 2(2), 125–133. Perrette, M., Landerer, F., Riva, R., Frieler, K., and Meinshausen, M., 2013. A Scaling Approach to Project Regional Sea Level Rise and its Uncertainties. Earth System Dynamics 4, 11–29. Pulwarty, R.S., Nurse, L.A., and Trotz, U.O., 2010. Caribbean Islands in a Changing Climate. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 52(6), 16–27. Rahmstorf, S., 2007. A Semi-Empirical Approach to Projecting Future Sea-Level Rise. Science 315(5810): 368–370. Rankine, D.R., Cohen, J.E., Taylor, M.A., Coy, A.D., Simpson, L.A., Stephenson, T.and Lawrence, J.L., 2014. Parameterizing the FAO AquaCrop Model for Rainfed and Irrigated Field-Grown Sweet Potato. Agronomy Journal 107(1), 375–387. Rhiney, K., 2015. Geographies of Caribbean Vulnerability in a Changing Climate: Issues and Trends. Geography Compass 9(3), 97–114. Rhiney, K., Eitzinger, A., Farrell, A.D., and Taylor, M.A., 2017. Assessing the Vulnerability of Caribbean Farmers to Climate Change Impacts: A Comparative Study of Cocoa Farmers in Jamaica and Trinidad. In: E. Thomas-Hope (ed.), Climate Change and Food Security: Africa and the Caribbean. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 59–69. Rogelj, J., den Elzen, M., Höhne, N., and Meinshausen, M., 2016. Paris Agreement Climate Proposals Need a Boost to Keep Warming Well Below 2 °C. Nature 534(7609), 631–639. Scott, D., Simpson, M.C., and Sim, R. 2012. The Vulnerability of Caribbean Coastal Tourism to Scenarios of Climate Change Related Sea Level Rise. Journal of Sustainable Tourism 20(6), 883–898. Simpson, M.C., Scott, D., New, M., Sim, R., Smith, D., Harrison, M., et  al., 2009. An Overview of Modeling Climate Change Impacts in the Caribbean Region with Contribution from the Pacific Islands. Barbados, West Indies: United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Smith, R. and Rhiney, K., 2015. Climate Change, Vulnerability, Land and Livelihoods: The Case of the Black Caribs in Northeastern St. Vincent. Geoforum 73(1), 22–31. Stern, N., 2008. The Economics of Climate Change. American Economic Review 98(2), 1–37. Taylor, M.A., Centello-Artola, A., Charlery, J., Forrajero, I., Bezanilla, A., Campbell, A., et al. 2007. Glimpses of the Future: A Briefing from the PRECIS Caribbean Climate Change Project. Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre, Belmopan, Belize [online]. Available from: http://caribbeanclimate.bz/download. php [Accessed 11 February 2017]. Taylor, M.A., Jones, J.J., and Stephenson, T.S., 2017. Climate Change and the Caribbean: Trends and Implications. In E. Thomas-Hope (ed.), Climate Change and Food Security: Africa and the Caribbean. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 31–55. Taylor, M.A., Stephenson, T.S., Chen, A.A., and Stephenson, K.A., 2012. Climate Change and the Caribbean: Review and Response. Caribbean Studies 40(2), 169–200. Timms, B.F. 2008. Development Theory and Domestic Agriculture in the Caribbean: Recurring Crises and Missed Opportunities. Caribbean Geography 15(2), 101–117. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 2015. Report of the Structured Expert Dialogue on the 2013–2015 Review (UN Doc. FCCC/SB/2015/INF.1, 4 May 2015). Available from: https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/sb/eng/inf01.pdf [Accessed 9 September 2017].

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17 South–South relations in African agriculture Hybrid modalities of cooperation and development perspectives from Brazil and China Lídia Cabral

Introduction African agriculture has been the stage for some noteworthy South–South cooperation (SSC) initiatives in recent years (Brautigam 2009; Cheru and Modi 2013; Scoones et  al. 2016). These include technical cooperation programmes such as China’s Agricultural Technology Demonstration Centres (ATDCs) and collaborative research and training projects led by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), a world-renowned agricultural research institution that has highlighted the suitability of Brazilian technology across the tropics. SSC has also included policy advocacy by state and non-state actors. For example, the Brazilian government has offered to replicate in Africa some of its public policies targeting the family farming sector (Patriota and Pierri 2013); in turn, Brazilian non-state actors have worked with their peers in Africa to contest the promotion in SSC of a model of large-scale commodity production for export markets, while demanding alternative forms of cooperation that would strengthen food sovereignty and agroecology (Cabral 2016; Shankland and Gonçalves 2016). There have also been commercial operations with a solidarity (in the sense of aid giving with development objectives) element, such as the selling of agricultural machinery on concessional terms by Brazil, India and South Korea, thereby sponsoring state-led mechanisation programmes in Africa (Cabral et al. 2016; Diao et al. 2014). Furthermore, private investments in agri-food productive activity by farmers, individual entrepreneurs and corporations from Brazil, China and India, have often been promoted through the SSC channel (Cheru and Modi 2013; Scoones et al. 2016). Agricultural SSC in Africa has, therefore, materialised through a wide range of modalities – some clearly extending beyond the notion of an unreciprocated ‘gift’ that typically underpins development assistance – with differences between aid, trade and investment fading (Mawdsley 2012a, 2012b). SSC narratives have typically stressed reciprocity of cooperation relations and given legitimacy to a ‘win-win’ approach where both sides presumably benefit (see Urvashi, this volume; Omata, this volume). Yet, interpretations of ‘win-win’ vary across 226

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SSC providers. Whereas for China ‘win-win’ has an intrinsically commercial connotation, for Brazil the emphasis is put on the (symbolism of) horizontality of relations ‘among equals’ (Amorim 2010, p. 231). Irrespective of these differences, the contrast with the established aid system, rooted in the colonial legacy and reproducing unequal international relations, is central to the South–South identity and its symbolic claims (Mawdsley 2012a). Some argue, however, that SSC conceals a new form of imperialism and scramble for resources in Africa (Moyo et al. 2012) and that SSC-sponsored investments and technology transfers operate within the dominant framework of global agribusiness and capital accumulation (Amanor and Chichava 2016). Others emphasise the emergence of a postcolonial order and deconstruction of the Western development paradigm, albeit with unpredictable consequences (Six 2009). More enthusiastic and hopeful views highlight opportunities for mutual learning within the global South (Constantine et al. 2016; Mayaki 2010). In this chapter, I illustrate why neither the predatory advances, nor the construction of an alternative development paradigm, or indeed mutual learning, are carried out smoothly. The SSC experiences of Brazil and China in African agriculture explored here shed light on the intersection of competing interests and development perspectives that question the notion of a singular cooperation strategy by these particular SSC provider countries.1 My analysis draws significantly on the findings of the research project ‘China and Brazil in African Agriculture’ (Scoones et al. 2013, 2016). The approach followed by the research combined a political economy angle (mindful of the actors, actor-networks and interests mobilised into the SSC realm) with a discourse-analytical perspective that interrogated the role of narrative storylines or discursive framings in the construction and reproduction of SSC. It also considered the influence of domestic contexts (of China and Brazil) where resources, technology and ideas about SSC originate. It drew on the history of domestic actors, policy, institutional set-ups and power relations to understand the interests at stake and the genesis of SSC narratives of cooperation, development, horizontality and ‘win-win’ processes and outcomes. Furthermore, it traced the movement of actors, technologies, models and narratives across diverse spaces and examined how these departed from one context (China or Brazil), with its particular history, geopolitical imperatives, and domestic politics, and arrived in other contexts (across the African continent) where encounters and negotiations occured. In what follows, I discuss distinctive features of SSC as observed in relation to Brazilian and Chinese agricultural engagements in Ghana, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. I illustrate the wide-ranging initiatives that constitute SSC and that blur the divide between aid giving and business. I highlight hybridity in Brazil’s and China’s flagship SSC programmes, as well as the significance of state–business intersections that are not always part of purposely crafted alliances. I unveil the contested nature of SSC by noting that policies, technologies and development models channelled through SSC originate from diverse and disputed experiences. I also draw attention to the encounters of knowledge and politics in SSC and some unforeseen developments. In the chapter’s concluding section, I challenge the idea of a monolithic Brazil or China by emphasising the diversity of engagements from each of these two countries in African agriculture. I also stress the shift in the symbolic regime underpinning cooperation relations, in that SSC has helped in challenging a predominant view about charity as a virtue, replacing it with an emphasis on self-interest and mutual gain as a less condescending and more emancipatory approach to guide cooperation relations. And I finally underline the significance of contexts on either side of South– South relations and of the multiple spaces of creation, negotiation and transformation of SSC. 227

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South–South cooperation beyond aid Agricultural SSC in the African context comprises a medley of initiatives that go beyond aid conventionally framed (if not practised) as unidirectional and charitable giving. Instead, reciprocity and mutual benefit are at the core of South–South relations, which not only entail giving away technology and skills but also forging business deals and building alliances. The scope for SSC is, indeed, quite ample in the definition by the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC n.d., p. 1): South-South cooperation is a broad framework for collaboration among countries of the South in the political, economic, social, cultural, environmental and technical domains. (. . .) Developing countries share knowledge, skills, expertise and resources to meet their development goals through concerted efforts. Recent developments in South-South cooperation have taken the form of increased volume of South-South trade, South-South flows of foreign direct investment, movements towards regional integration, technology transfers, sharing of solutions and experts, and other forms of exchanges. Certainly, Brazil and China’s footmarks in African agriculture illustrate the range of interactions that have taken place under the broad frame of SSC. Our research in Ghana, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe mapped an array of initiatives, a selection of which is summarised in Table 17.1. SSC initiatives listed in Table 17.1 include skills transfer, training and adaptive research projects, such as those spearheaded by Embrapa in Mozambique (Cabral et al. 2013; Fingermann 2014) or China’s flagship Agricultural Technology Demonstration Centres (ATDCs) (Xu et al. 2016). They also include policy dialogue at the level of national state administration on issues such as bioenergy and ethanol blending in Ethiopia, and public policies targeting family farmers, such as the case of Brazil’s More Food International (MFI) programme in Ghana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. ProSAVANA, launched in 2011 to replicate in the Mozambican savannah the claimed successful transformation of the Brazilian Cerrado2 (Hosono and Hongo 2012; The Economist 2010), has combined adaptive research and training with policy dialogue and mobilisation of investment toward the Nacala corridor.3 There are also private investments in farming and animal husbandry by Brazilian and Chinese farmers and investors, many of which have been mediated by high level diplomacy. For example, the Ethio-China business relationship is guided by the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and regular reciprocal state visits (Alemu and Scoones 2013). Investors are a highly heterogeneous category, particularly on the Chinese side. Investors from China include stateowned enterprises, such as Hubei Lianfeng, running the ATDC in Mozambique (Chichava et al. 2013); they also include private companies such as the China-Africa Cotton company with outgrower schemes and cotton mills across Africa (Gu et al. 2016); and they include individual entrepreneurs acting privately, such as small-scale individual farmers operating in local horticulture value chains in Ghana and Ethiopia and selling to locally established Chinese construction companies, supermarkets or even the Chinese Embassy (Cook et al. 2016). Although most of these engagements have been directly or indirectly sponsored by the Brazilian or the Chinese government, either through financial or diplomatic support of some kind, in one instance the South–South interaction has occurred in opposition to a governmental SSC programme. This is the case of the campaign against ProSAVANA, which mobilised civil society organisations from Brazil and Mozambique against the threat of land grabbing in the Nacala corridor, while simultaneously exposing the flaws of the Cerrado transformation in Brazil (Clements and Fernandes 2013; Shankland and Gonçalves 2016). 228

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Table 17.1  Selection of Brazilian and Chinese agricultural initiatives in Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe Brazil •• Policy dialogue on Brazil’s experience in bio-energy, focused specifically on sugar and ethanol production •• Brazilian ethanol company to set up sugar factory Ghana •• Embrapa representation •• More Food International (MFI) programme combining export credit, policy dialogue and technical assistance •• Private investment in rice production Mozambique •• ProSAVANA •• MFI programme •• Embrapa-led adaptive research and training with counterpart public research organisation (Plataforma and horticultures-focused ProAlimentos) •• Joint Brazilian and Mozambican civil society organisations mobilisation and campaigning in opposition to ProSAVANA Zimbabwe •• MFI programme Ethiopia

China •• Gianxi ATDC •• Agricultural Technical and Vocation Education Training programme •• Small individual farmers in horticulture and pig farming •• Agrodealers and Zhejiang Xin’an Chemical Industrial Group •• Small individual farmers in local horticulture value chains •• Umbeluzi ATDC •• Xai-Xai rice farm and agroprocessing by Chinese private firm Wanbao Grain and Oil Investment limited

•• •• •• ••

Gwebi ATDC Tianze Tobacco and outgrowers scheme High-tech estates cotton investment Sino-Zimbabwe cotton: mills and outgrowers

Sources: based on Scoones et al. (2016, 2013)

Hybrid cooperation relations Several of these South–South initiatives take on a hybrid form as they combine technical assistance, policy influence, trade and business facilitation, reflecting the blurring of boundaries between aid and business in SSC (Mawdsley 2012a). The ATDCs and MFI are evident illustrations of this bundling of motives that is indeed of essence to the framing of SSC (UNOSSC n.d.). The ATDCs are not simply spaces for providing training, experimenting and sharing agronomic skills with local counterparts, but they also serve as marketing windows for displaying Chinese seeds (such as hybrid rice varieties) and machinery. Indeed, Xu et al. (2016) argue that the prospect of creating a market for Chinese technology has been a key thrust for the ATDCs, at least from the perspective of business actors who have been brought into SSC by the Chinese government to run the centres and make them financially viable. Brazil’s MFI programme is another example of the blending of modalities in SSC. MFI was established to support small-scale farmers’ mechanisation through a combination of a concessional loan to fund the acquisition of farming machinery with policy dialogue and technical inputs centred on public policies targeting the small-scale farming sector. Although Brazilian SSC policy underlines 229

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the principle of ‘no conditionality’ (Abreu 2013), the machinery procured through the programme is produced in Brazil and the programme operates, therefore, as a channel for opening markets for Brazilian manufacturers in Africa (Cabral et al. 2016). In some cases the aid-business blending is left concealed. The business motivations behind the ProSAVANA cooperation have always been evident and have indeed been explicitly recognised in the framing of an investment fund, Fundo Nacala, which was set up to attract investors to the Nacala corridor – ProSAVANA as a technical cooperation initiative was regarded as an ‘institutional package’ to reduce the risk of investment in the region (Senatore and Matos 2012, p. 58). Yet, the aid-business nexus of ProSAVANA has been firmly denied by the government of Brazil, especially after the outbreak of civil society protests accusing the programme of promoting land grabbing and dispossession of Mozambican rural communities (UNAC 2012). The denial of ProSAVANA’s business drive reflected the seriousness of the accusations at a time of heated resistance against land grabbing across Africa (Borras and Franco 2012; Cotula 2013). Yet, it is revealing of the Brazilian government’s equivocal stance vis-à-vis the mutual benefit principle. Contrary to China, which blatantly recognises the self-interested nature of its ‘going out’ policy,4 Brazil’s narratives of solidarity and moral obligation have been central to the framing of its Southern identity, particularly toward Africa (Cabral 2016).5

State–business intersections The hybridity of SSC arises from the state–business connections that have been a distinctive feature of Chinese and Brazilian engagements in African agriculture. Both countries have largely advanced an ‘entrepreneurial state model’ where business is steered by the state (Scoones et al. 2016, p. 7), although not necessarily fully controlled by it. However, the nature of these connections is varied and there is no homogeneous or unitary model of state–business relations in SSC (Gu et al. 2016). For both China and Brazil, South–South engagements in African agriculture have mobilised a plurality of state and business players. In the case of China specifically, businesses comprise a range of types within the public–private spectrum. Publicly funded ATDCs have been run by either private or state-owned Chinese companies. These come from different provinces in China which have had varying experiences with party state envelopment (Gu et al. 2016) that have produced distinct understandings about SSC priorities, either focused on profit making for Chinese businesses, or centred on supporting China’s diplomacy, or concerned with helping African farmers increase their productivity (Xu et al. 2016). The plurality of interests at stake compromises any unitary or singular strategy for agricultural engagements. Instead, there is an intersection of SSC agendas and practices. One should, therefore, not regard initiatives like the ATDCs or MFI simply as instruments of self-interested profit making – it is not just about selling Chinese or Brazilian technology in the vast African market. Such an interpretation would disregard the multifaceted interactions that take place. For instance, Chinese ATDCs and training courses are also about China’s soft power and influence, as vehicles of transferring a ‘technocratic rationality’ centred on the success of China’s state-driven agricultural modernisation (Tugendhat and Alemu 2016; Xu et al. 2016). As for MFI, this programme started as a politically motivated initiative aimed to counterbalance the predominant focus on Brazil’s large-scale farming model of the Cerrado (that programmes such as ProSAVANA helped nurture), by offering a family farming-centred alternative supported by a coalition of likeminded left-leaning actors (Cabral et al. 2016). The intersection between businesses and the state and their agendas has not happened without tensions. These have been particularly noticeable in the Brazilian case. For example, the MFI bias toward supplying large-scale farming machinery such as tractors undermined the small-scale 230

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and family farming-focused narrative of the programme and led to the fragmentation of MFI into two seemingly separate initiatives, one focused on hardware sales and the other on policy influence (Cabral 2016). Also, the advancement of business interests linked to ProSAVANA undermined the faction of Brazilian diplomacy concerned with promoting Southern solidarity via-à-vis Africa. This is likely to have played a role in the eventual disbanding of Brazilian cooperation from the Nacala corridor.6

Contested models of agricultural development Unsurprisingly, the many Brazilian and Chinese actors involved in South–South agricultural relations have carried with them multiple and contrasting experiences and visions of agricultural development, rooted in their countries’ historical trajectories. The Chinese government’s policy has sponsored modernisation and productivity enhancements in large mechanised farms alongside support to the peasant and smallholder sector that ensured political stability in the countryside (Scoones et al. 2016). Similarly, in Brazil at least two distinct trajectories overlapped over time – large-scale agribusiness and small-scale peasant and family farming, each supported by one of two agricultural ministries. Yet, unlike in China and rather than controlled by a one-party state system, the coexistence of distinct trajectories has always sparked tensions and reflected the heterogeneous nature of Brazil’s coalition-politics, where different parties with distinct ideologies and political agendas have opportunistically come together to form a viable government. The more than 20 Brazilian organisations involved in technical cooperation in agriculture across Africa (Cabral et al. 2013) inevitably replicate a plurality of visions of agricultural development that is rooted in Brazil’s diversified landscape and is channelled by a government responding to distinct, and at times irreconcilable, imperatives. Hence for Brazil, plurality means antagonism, as indicated by the binary family farming vs agribusiness, often referred to as political dualism, which pervades agricultural politics and governance (Patriota and Pierri 2013; Pierri 2013). Although Brazilian diplomats mediating SSC at the highest level have portrayed the diversity of solutions as a rich menu of options from which African governments could choose, Brazilian actors operating at the frontline of cooperation reproduce the tensions they experience back home. Hence, the Ministry of Agrarian Development (MDA) that initiated MFI, regarded SSC as a political agenda centred on promoting the family farming-based development trajectory (as opposed to agribusiness expansion) that was at the core of its own political identity (Cabral et al. 2016). In turn, for technicians from Embrapa, agricultural cooperation was about transferring Brazil’s technology and skills and, depending on the part of the organisation involved in the specific project,7 these could favour large-scale specialised modern farming or, at the other extreme, agroecological practices and diversified farming systems (Cabral 2016; Fingermann 2014). For China, competition between distinct agricultural models is, unsurprisingly, never explicitly vocalised as in the Brazilian case. Yet, it is also noticeable in the diversity of engagements experienced by Chinese companies running the ATDCs, which seems to depend significantly on the companies’ regional origins – different provinces in China have experienced market liberalisation in distinct ways and this shapes the vision of agriculture the companies replicate abroad: Some project a high-modernist vision of mechanized agriculture, while others ally more with a vision of the commercial peasant smallholder. It all depends on the company that is involved, as each can latch on to different elements of the conflicted and sometimes ambiguous policy narrative about Chinese agricultural development domestically. (Scoones et al. 2016, p. 5) 231

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Whether the inherent differences and contradictions within the Brazilian and Chinese portfolios are noticeable at the receiving end is not always clear. The Mozambican government seemed unaware of the dualism politics underpinning MFI (Cabral et al. 2016) and ATDC’s local counterparts have shown perplexity about the Chinese ways of operating. Yet, the lack of coherence on the provider side does not seem to be a concern for receiving governments keen to cherry-pick the elements that suit them best, drawing on a long experience of handling aid and the now expanded room-for-manoeuvre in aid negotiation and management created by SSC (Kragelund 2008). Whether African governments’ engagements with SSC have produced developmental outcomes depends on the domestic political economy and histories of engaging with international aid (Amanor and Chichava 2016). Mozambique and Zimbabwe, for example, share borders but offer quite distinct settings for agricultural SSC. Zimbabwe’s land reform, which resulted in the withdrawal of Western capital and aid, made way for new political and business relations across the South (Scoones et al. 2016). While these have opened up opportunities for an expanding farming sector, they have also nurtured corrupt patronage politics. In Mozambique, Brazil and China arrived at a context heavily populated by the aid industry and high aid-dependency. In this case, the government’s enlarged room-for-manoeuvre created by greater donor competition has somewhat favoured its dominant elite politics, noticeable in the Chinese rice farm in Xai-Xai (Amanor and Chichava 2016) or in the plans for Brazilian investments in Nacala (Cabral 2016). Yet, an emergent (largely Northern aid-funded) civil society has set obstacles to policies and private investments supporting narrow forms of accumulation in the countryside (Shankland and Gonçalves 2016).

Encounters and unforeseen developments Contested models of agricultural development and cooperation originating from particular contexts (countries, provinces and complex institutional structures), and carried over by multiple Brazilian and Chinese actors, arrive at destinations where they meet other contexts, across the hugely diverse African continent. Different identities, political economies and knowledge systems encounter one another, either at the highest level of governmental dialogue or at the frontline of SSC project implementation. These South–South encounters entail translation, interpretation and negotiation of what SSC and development are about. They are not entirely different from those experienced by traditional donors throughout the history of aid (Mosse 2011). In the Chinese ATDCs, technology choices were often non-consensual. In Tanzania, for example, Chinese technicians’ commitment to rice productivity enhancement was not aligned with the local cultural value and uses of rice. Therefore, rather than the highly productive hybrid varieties offered by the Chinese, Tanzanians valued fragrance (quality over quantity) as the crop was used by the middle-class and for special occasions (Xu et  al. 2016). While Tanzanian technicians resisted the technology on offer, Chinese technicians remained committed to their beliefs and hoped that with time and persistence they would eventually have their way (ibid.). Inevitably, some unforeseen developments occur. MFI’s initial family farming political advocacy and counter-hegemonic stance on the agrarian transition got lost in translation and, instead, Brazilian tractors of questionable convenience for small farmers were procured and some ended up in the controversial Nacala corridor (Cabral et al. 2016). Yet, large-scale Brazilian land investments in the corridor failed to materialise and ProSAVANA’s most obvious outcome has been the activation of transnational agrarian and environmental civil society linkages and the maturation of civil society activism and policy engagement in Mozambique (Shankland and Gonçalves 2016). 232

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The growing number of small-scale business activities in the agri-food sector by Chinese migrants could also be regarded as an unforeseen development of Chinese SSC and ‘going out’ policy. These migrants arrive in Africa through a number of roots and often with no support from the Chinese state (Cook et al. 2016; on South–South migration see Crush and Chikanda, this volume). Yet, connections with state-sponsored SSC activities do occasionally emerge, such as when products generated by agronomic experiments at the Umbeluzi ATDC in Mozambique are channelled to Chinese supermarkets and restaurants in Maputo serving an expanding Chinese population (Chichava et al. 2013); or when individual Chinese entrepreneurs, acting independently, supply Chinese embassies and construction companies (Cook et al. 2016). In turn, some SSC encounters have had repercussions back in Brazil and China, revealing a two-way flow. The contestation of ProSAVANA in Mozambique has enlarged the policy debate on cooperation in Brazil (Cabral and Leite 2015). And tobacco growing by Chinese companies in Zimbabwe has helped their operations back in China through the involvement of Zimbabwean experts (Scoones et al. 2016). Having claimed to offer an alternative model of development cooperation, South–South actors such as China and Brazil have experienced the complexities of aid relations and development, much like many other donor countries throughout the history of aid in Africa. A continuous observation of SSC practices and how they respond to experience, mature and change is required to dig deeper on their essential features (as well as diversity) and to discuss the forms of SSC that can play a distinctive role in African countries’ development, beyond global politics rhetoric.

Conclusion As demonstrated in this chapter with reference to South–South relations in African agriculture, there are no unified Brazilian or Chinese models of cooperation but a collage of initiatives under the broad banner of SSC. Diversity notwithstanding, there is a distinctive state–business mingling in SSC that is contributing to the shift in the symbolic regime of aid from the virtues of charity, compassion and moral obligation toward an emphasis on self-interest as a way of establishing less condescending and more emancipatory cooperation relations. And yet, beyond the symbolism of SSC, the possibility for emancipatory cooperation relations to flourish depends on the distribution and dynamics of power between and within countries. Power balances and imbalances not only pertain to the two sides of the cooperation relation, framed at the level of nation-states (e.g. China-vs-Zimbabwe or Brazil-vs-Mozambique). They are also shaped by what happens within each (non-monolithic) cooperating side – for example, how Brazilian actors and interests relate to one another, whose agenda gets support and why; or how African governments manage the new aid environment and the interests they serve by picking particular solutions from the menu on offer (e.g. tractors over smaller-scale and more affordable technology for small farmers). These dynamics of power can only be adequately captured by considering the domestic contexts and histories of development on either side of the South– South affair, being those of Brazil, China, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique or Zimbabwe. The significance of the context (of origin and of destination) – as places of productive construction of actors, agendas and narratives – challenges the possibility of linear transfer of policy, technology and development ideals. Instead, reinterpretations and unforeseen developments are inevitable. And these include repercussions back to the point of origin. Over the last decade, the international development system has gone through considerable changes and SSC has contributed to questioning some well-rooted principles about aid giving, 233

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including the replacement of the charitable, unreciprocated gift with the mutual benefit ethos. Future research should continue tracking SSC practices of individual countries and assess how they evolve at origin and destination, in their discourse, drivers and impact. Time will tell whether SSC, or particular interpretations of it, will indeed establish an alternative and distinctive mode of cooperation and what type of development it will help to promote. In the era of sustainable development as the UN-endorsed global standard, how can SSC, with its business-minded and modernising thrusts, best contribute to delivering on objectives such as ecological sustainability and social justice? Or will SSC eventually drive a redefinition of the global standard?

Notes 1 This chapter draws on research conducted with support from the UK Economic and Social Research Council under the Rising Powers and Interdependent Futures programme (grant ES/J013420/1; see www.future-agricultures.org/research/cbaa). Research was undertaken by a multi-country team of 25 researchers who conducted work between 2012 and 2015 in Brazil, China, Ghana, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. The overview of Brazil and China in African agriculture offered by this chapter would not have been possible without the collaborative effort of this diverse team of researchers. 2 The successful transformation of the Brazilian Cerrado, once referred to by The Economist as ‘the miracle of the Cerrado’ (The Economist 2010) is a salient narrative in Brazil’s agricultural cooperation. The narrative emphasises the role played by technological innovation led by Embrapa, particularly the adaptation of soybean to tropical climates (until then soybean was grown in cool, temperate climates). It also highlights the transformation of the Cerrado from a barren land into Brazil’s breadbasket, becoming a world-leading region in the production of agricultural export commodities.The success narrative conceals, however, the negative implications of this transformation for local ecosystems and land and wealth distribution. 3 The Nacala corridor is an area of strategic significance in Mozambique due to its transport infrastructure and farming potential. 4 China’s ‘going out’ strategy is about encouraging overseas investment to meet the challenges of overcapacity in production within China and support the process of industrial adjustment (Gu et al. 2016). The government stimulates overseas investment through financial support and information dissemination. 5 This may now be set to change as the government of President Michel Temer, who took office in 2016, has announced a shift in foreign policy back toward traditional allies in the Northern hemisphere (MRE 2016). It has also signalled that it is not interested in SSC and will engage with Africa with a pragmatic business-minded agenda. 6 Other factors played a role too, not least the civil society protest, the economic downturn in Brazil and growing political instability in Mozambique (Cabral 2016). 7 Although Embrapa is often associated with the large-scale and mechanised monocrop farm dominant in the Cerrado, it has grown, since its creation in 1972, into a massive organisation of 47 specialised research units covering an array of farming systems and methods. More than a dozen of these units have been involved in SSC projects.

References 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. Alemu, D. and Scoones, I., 2013. Negotiating New Relationships: How the Ethiopian State Is Involving China and Brazil in Agriculture and Rural Development. IDS Bulletin 44(4), 91–100. 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. Amorim, C., 2010. Brazilian Foreign Policy under President Lula (2003–2010): An Overview. Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 53 (Special Edition), 214–240. Borras, S.M. and Franco, J.C., 2012. Global Land Grabbing and Trajectories of Agrarian Change: A Preliminary Analysis. Journal of Agrarian Change 12(1), 34–59. Brautigam, D., 2009. The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 234

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Cabral, L., 2016. Priests, Technicians and Traders: Actors, Interests and Discursive Politics in Brazil’s Agricultural Development Cooperation Programmes with Mozambique. PhD Thesis. University of Sussex, Brighton. Cabral, L. and Leite, I., 2015. ProSAVANA and the Expanding Scope of Accountability in Brazil’s Development Cooperation. Global Policy 6(4), 435–445. Cabral, L., Favareto, A., Mukwereza, L., and Amanor, K., 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., Shankland, A., Favareto, A., and Costa Vaz, A., 2013. Brazil-Africa Agricultural Cooperation Encounters: Drivers, Narratives and Imaginaries of Africa and Development. IDS Bulletin 44(4), 53–68. Cheru, F. and Modi, R., 2013. Agricultural Development and Food Security in Africa: The Impact of Chinese, Indian and Brazilian Investments. London: Zed Books. Chichava, S., Duran, J., Cabral, L., Shankland, A., Buckley, L., Lixia, T., and Yue, Z., 2013. Brazil and China in Mozambican Agriculture: Emerging Insights from the Field. IDS Bulletin 44(4), 101–115. Clements, E. and Fernandes, B.M., 2013. Land Grabbing, Agribusiness and the Peasantry in Brazil and Mozambique. Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy 2(1), 41–69. Constantine,J.,Bloom,G.,andShankland,A.,2016.BuildingMutualLearningbetweentheRisingPowers.EvidenceReport 202, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies. Available from: https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/ bitstream/handle/123456789/12184/ER202_BuildingMutualLearningbetweentheRisingPowers.pdf;jsessi onid=022E69D62E80FB63C27C583FEE44A953?sequence=1 [Accessed 15 February 2016]. Cook, S., Lu, J., Tugendhat, H., and Alemu, D., 2016. Chinese Migrants in Africa: Facts and Fictions from the Agri-Food Sector in Ethiopia and Ghana. World Development 81, 61–70. Cotula, L., 2013. The Great African Land Grab? Agricultural Investments and the Global Food System. London: Zed Books. Diao, X., Cossar, F., Houssou, N., and Kolavalli, S., 2014. Mechanization in Ghana: Emerging Demand, and the Search for Alternative Supply Models. Food Policy 48(October), 168–181. Fingermann, N., 2014. A Cooperação Trilateral Brasileira em Moçambique. Um estudo de caso comparado: o ProALIMENTOS e o ProSAVANA. São Paulo: Escola de Administração de Empresa de São Paulo, Fundação Getúlio Vargas. Gu, J., Zhang, C., Vaz, A., and Mukwereza, L., 2016. Chinese State Capitalism? Rethinking the Role of the State and Business in Chinese Development Cooperation in Africa. World Development 81, 24–34. Hosono, A. and Hongo, Y., 2012. Cerrado Agriculture: A Model of Sustainable and Inclusive Development. Tokyo: JICA Research Institute. Kragelund, P., 2008. The Return of Non-DAC Donors to Africa: New Prospects for African Development? Development Policy Review 26(5), 555–584. Mawdsley, E., 2012a. From Recipients to Donors: Emerging Powers and the Changing Development Landscape. London: Zed Books. Mawdsley, E., 2012b. The Changing Geographies of Foreign Aid and Development Cooperation: Contributions from Gift Theory. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 37(2), 256–272. Mayaki, I.A., 2010. South-South Mutual Learning: A Priority for National Capacity Development in Africa [online]. New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). Available from: www.nepad.org/content/SouthSouth-mutual-learning-priority-national-capacity-development-africa [Accessed 15 February 2017]. Mosse, D., 2011. Adventures in Aidland the Anthropology of Professionals in International Development. New York: Berghahn Books. Moyo, S., Yeros, P., and Jha, P., 2012. Imperialism and Primitive Accumulation: Notes on the New Scramble for Africa. Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy 1(2), 181–203. MRE, 2016. Discurso do ministro José Serra por ocasião da cerimônia de transmissão do cargo de ministro de estado das Relações Exteriores – Brasília, 18 de maio de 2016 [online]. Ministério das Relações Exteriores. Available from: www.itamaraty.gov.br/pt-BR/discursos-artigos-e-entrevistas/ministro-das-relacoesexteriores-discursos/14038-discurso-do-ministro-jose-serra-por-ocasiao-da-cerimonia-de-transmissaodo-cargo-de-ministro-de-estado-das-relacoes-exteriores-brasilia-18-de-maio-de-2016 [Accessed 14 February 2017]. Patriota, T.C. and Pierri, F.M., 2013, Brazil’s Cooperation in African Agricultural Development and Food Security. In: F. Cheru and R. Modi (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. Scoones, I., Amanor, K., Favareto, A., and Qi, G., 2016. A New Politics of Development Cooperation? Chinese and Brazilian Engagements in African Agriculture. World Development 81, 1–12. 235

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Scoones, I., Cabral, L., and Tugendhat, H., 2013. New Development Encounters: China and Brazil in African Agriculture. IDS Bulletin 44(4), 1–19. Senatore, G. and Matos, M., 2012. Agricutural Investment in Africa: Brazilian Expertise to Promote Sustainable Agriculture Investments (PowerPoint presentation), Dakar. Available from: http://g15.org/wp-content/ uploads/2014/04/Agricultural-Investment-in-Africa.-Brazilian-Expertise-to-Promote-SustainableAgriculture-Investments.pptx [Accessed 30 July 30 2015]. Shankland, A. and Gonçalves, E., 2016. Imagining Agricultural Development in South–South Cooperation: The Contestation and Transformation of ProSAVANA. World Development 81, 35–46. Six, C., 2009. The Rise of Postcolonial States as Donors: A Challenge to the Development Paradigm? Third World Quarterly 30(6), 1103–1121. The Economist, 2010. Brazilian Agriculture: The Miracle of the Cerrado [online]. Available from: www. economist.com/node/16886442 [Accessed 14 February 2013]. Tugendhat, H. and Alemu, D., 2016. Chinese Agricultural Training Courses for African Officials: Between Power and Partnerships. World Development 81, 71–81. UNAC, 2012. Land Grabbing for Agribusiness in Mozambique: UNAC Statement on the ProSavana Programme [online]. União Nacional de Camponeses Moçambique, Available from: https://viacampesina.org/ en/land-grabbing-for-agribusiness-on-mozambique-unac-statement-on-the-prosavana-programme/ [Accessed 9 September 2017]. UNOSSC, n.d., What Is South-South Cooperation? [online]. United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation. Available from: http://unossc1.undp.org/sscexpo/content/ssc/about/what_is_ssc.htm [Accessed 2 September 2017]. Xu, X., Li, X., Qi, G., Tang, L., and Mukwereza, L., 2016. Science, Technology, and the Politics of Knowledge: The Case of China’s Agricultural Technology Demonstration Centers in Africa. World Development 81, 82–91.

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Part IV

South–South cooperation in displacement, security and peace

18 Southern-led responses to displacement Modes of South–South cooperation? Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh

Introduction Global displacement is primarily a process that takes place within and across diverse territories of the global South,1 with circa 84–86 per cent of all refugees living in ‘developing countries’,2 typically in states neighbouring their countries of origin (UNHCR 2018). Moreover, 25% of all refugees – in 2017 approximately 4 million people – reside in the world’s least developed countries (ibid.). In turn, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) recorded that in 2016 alone, over 31.1 million people were newly displaced within their own country (becoming ‘internally displaced persons’, IDPs) due to conflict, violence and disasters; again, the vast majority of IDPs remain within the countries of the global South. With displacement primarily being a ‘Southern’ and (in the case of international displacement) ‘South–South’ phenomenon and dynamic, it is equally the case that diverse Southern actors have historically responded to displacement. States and regional organisations have developed dynamic national and regional legal frameworks to protect refugees and IDPs. These include the Organisation of African Unity’s 1969 Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa (see Omata this volume) and the 1984 Cartagena Declaration on Refugees (see Cantor this volume), and the world’s first ‘international’ convention on internal displacement, which was drafted by the African Union and entered into force in 2009 (the African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa). States and regional organisations have also funded, implemented and coordinated emergency responses to disasters, and have taken the lead on supporting mid- to long-term capacity-building and postdisaster reconstruction activities within and outside of their own regions. These range from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) securing permission3 from the Myanmar government to coordinate the delivery of relief to 2.4 million people affected by the category 4 cyclone that hit Myanmar in 2008 (Marr 2010; also Cook 2010), to Venezuela, Brazil and Cuba rapidly providing essential medical personnel and supplies, and financing and delivering material and technical assistance following the 2010 Haitian earthquake (see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015a, p. 16). In turn, contemporary state-led responses to disasters themselves are often part of a longer history of Southern-led responses to displacement and modes of South–South cooperation. In September 2017, for instance, 750 Cuban health workers were deployed across the Caribbean after Hurricanes Irma and Jose ravaged the region (Khan 2017), working alongside local doctors 239

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who had themselves been educated free of charge in Havana’s Latin American School of Medicine. That school was established by Castro in 1998 (after Hurricane Mitch killed over 30,000 people across Central America and displaced more than 106,000 in Guatemala alone that year) with the official aim of helping Caribbean and Central American states develop sustainable models of national- and local-level response to disasters (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015a, p. 19). In addition to these highly institutionalised, state-led modes of response and capacity-building, non-state groups including local communities are first responders in processes of disaster- and conflict-induced displacement (Ager et al. 2015). Indeed, since the outbreak of the conflict in Syria in 2011, commentators have argued that civil society groups – rather than states or regional bodies – are the most significant actors supporting refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey (i.e. IRIN 2012; Gatten and Alabaster 2012). For instance, members of Syrian civil society have funded and delivered aid to Syrian IDPs and to refugees from Syria in neighbouring countries (Svoboda and Pantuliano 2015; Carpi and Fiddian-Qasmiyeh forthcoming), faith-based communities have provided shelter, food and spiritual support to refugees seeking sanctuary in Lebanon and Jordan (El-Nakib and Ager 2015; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Pacitto 2016), and protracted Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have provided assistance to ‘new’ refugees fleeing Syria, including Palestinians, Iraqis, Kurds and Syrians displaced from that country (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015b, 2016a). However, in spite of the existence of historical and contemporary examples from across the global South, Southern-led responses to displacement have typically been rendered invisible, and largely un-acknowledged by (Northern- and Northern-based) academics, policy-makers and practitioners, with sustained academic engagement only arising relatively recently (e.g. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015a; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Pacitto 2016; Sezgin and Dijkzeul 2016). This absence of literature examining the nature, modes of operation and implications of Southernled responses to displacement is especially notable given the extensive body of literature on South–South cooperation that has been published in the broad area of development studies since the 1990s (e.g. Mytelka 1994; Sridharan 1998; Woods 2008; Mawdsley 2012, this volume; this volume, passim). In that field, the ‘emergence’, ‘rise’ or ‘(re)discovery’ of Southern states as key development actors has been paralleled by extensive academic research into (and critiques of ) alternative forms of development, alternatives to development and a potential paradigm shift to post-development (e.g. Rahnema and Bawtree 1997; Pieterse 1998; Escobar 2000; Six 2009). Instead of an expansion of literature in the broad field of humanitarian studies, however, the mainstream assumption that has long been held, reproduced, and constituted by academics, policy-makers and practitioners (in and from the global North and increasingly by some Southern states) is that crises of displacement in the South require ‘humanitarian’ programmes and policies funded, developed and implemented by ‘the international humanitarian system’. The latter is composed inter alia by UN agencies, International NGOs, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent movement, and rich donor states.4 In turn, when Southern actors’ responses to displacement have been analysed – including a plethora of studies into the activities of Islamic faith-based organisations post-9/11, and of ‘non-traditional’ donor states which are not members of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC), such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and Kuwait – Northern academics and policy observers have often implicitly or explicitly delegitimised such responses. This has often taken place through the application of securitisation frameworks which position these responses as potential or actual threats to national and international security (Harmer and Cotterell 2009; Barakat and Zyck 2010; Binder et  al. 2010; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Pacitto 2016). Indeed, Northern analysts have often expressed concerns that Southern responses are motivated by ideological and faith-based priorities and are intrinsically incompatible with the core ‘international’ 240

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humanitarian principles, including in particular the principles of impartiality, neutrality and independence (see Ferris 2011; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2011; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Ager 2013; Ager et  al. 2015; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Pacitto 2016; also see Reeves in this volume on Chinese philanthropy). In this chapter I thus start by briefly examining the extent to which Southern-led responses have been marginalised from view by Northern analysts, policy-makers and practitioners, or, indeed delegitimised as not truly ‘being’ worthy of being identified as ‘humanitarian’ responses at all. I then turn to highlighting the heterogeneity of Southern-led responses to different forms of displacement that have been developed and implemented across the global South. In so doing, I examine both the multiplicity of state-led responses undertaken within an institutional framework of South–South cooperation (SSC) and community-based responses which are less clearly related to the official principles of SSC. Noting the extent to which Southern actors have often resisted, rejected and developed alternatives to the hegemonic aid regime, I then examine why, and with what effect, specific Southern actors have at times been actively mobilised by ‘international humanitarian community’. In particular, I focus on the proposed incorporation of Southern national- and regional-level actors into the international system, as part of the (post-2016) ‘localisation of aid agenda’, while community- and neighbourhood-level responses – including those developed by refugees themselves – continue to be marginalised from view. By focusing on both formal and informal, and state- and community-led responses in relation to the localisation of aid agenda, I argue that exploring diverse principles of South–South cooperation (SCC) – rather than promoting the incorporation of specific Southern actors into the ‘international humanitarian system’ – offers a critical opportunity for studies of and responses to displacement. I conclude by highlighting the need, first, for further research into the diverse modalities, spatialities, directionalities, relationalities and conceptualisations of Southern-led responses to displacement; and, second, of continuing to trace, resist and challenge the diverse structural barriers that prevent the development of meaningful responses that meet individual and collective needs and rights around the world.

Situating Southern-led responses to displacement Southern-led responses to displacement have long been overshadowed in academic and policy literature by the widely held assumption that ‘humanitarian’ responses to displacement have historically been developed and funded by Northern members of the ‘international humanitarian community’ and implemented in the global South. In part, the failure to acknowledge Southern-led responses to displacement ‘as’ a form of humanitarian response is related to the assertion that ‘modern humanitarianism’s origins are located in Western history and Christian thought’ (Barnett and Weiss 2008, p. 7, emphasis added; also see Fassin 2011, p. 1). Indeed, throughout the 2000s, numerous studies have examined the history, evolution and nature of ‘humanitarianism’, typically tracing its birth and origins to Europe and the Enlightenment period (i.e. Barnett and Weiss 2011; Wilson and Brown 2011; Barnett and Stein 2012). Against this backdrop it is perhaps unsurprising to note that the ‘humanitarian’ epithet has traditionally been reserved for members of the (normative, Northern-led) ‘international humanitarian community’, while the roles played by ‘Others’ throughout history and around the world have been erased from view (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Pacitto 2016). On the one hand, academics and practitioners are increasingly recognising the existence of a multitude of humanitarianisms in the plural, including ‘humanitarianisms of Europe, of Africa, of the global, and of the local’ (Kennedy 2004: xv). And yet, on the other hand, responses not borne of the Northern-dominated and highly institutionalised international regime have remained largely neglected in academia (see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Pacitto 2016). In essence, 241

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unless forms of capacity and action emanating from the South have been expressed in the form of Northern-style institutions or in other ‘recognisable’ ways, they have often been willingly ignored or marginalised by outsiders (Juma and Suhrke 2002, p. 8), often being rejected a priori as illegitimate courses of action that are not worthy of being identified ‘as’ humanitarian (also see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Pacitto 2016). Indeed, in spite of an increasing interest in ‘non-traditional’ high-GDP state donors and ‘non-traditional’ humanitarian actors – especially since national and global financial crises have applied pressure to ‘traditional’ donors – Davey notes that ‘there is a fear [among Northern humanitarians and formal institutions] that “non-Western” groups may not subscribe to the principles underpinning the formal system, and may have a misguided understanding of what it is to be “humanitarian”’ (2012, p. 2, emphasis added). This raises the question of the standard (as a set of principles and as a hegemonic framework) against which Southern-led responses are evaluated, and often denominated as misunderstanding or misapplying. It also leads us to interrogate whose perspectives should be centralised when considering whether, and why specific Southern-led responses are or are not labelled as ‘forms of humanitarianism’, and by whom.

Beyond critiquing North–South humanitarianism One of the main critiques of the contemporary humanitarian regime is that ‘humanitarianism’ is perceived as a ‘Northern-driven and Northern-controlled enterprise’ (Donini et al. 2004, p. 190) and is identified as a contemporary manifestation of colonial imperatives. In this regard, hegemonic humanitarianism (as ideology and as practice) – embodied by the ‘international humanitarian regime’, guided by ‘international humanitarian principles’ and implemented by ‘international’ humanitarian agencies – is identified as justifying the continuation of Northernled interventions that reproduce rather than transcend or disrupt neocolonial forms of control over, and appropriation and exploitation of, the South (Chimni 2000; Duffield 2007, 2013). In effect, the ‘international humanitarian community’ has constantly been re-constituted as ‘responding’ to the needs of the South (which is depicted as being unable to respond to the needs of those based in and across the South) and, in so doing, embodying and enforcing a particular, intrinsically hierarchical, mode of North–South relations. Critics resist Northern-led interventions which have long been justified through neocolonial ‘white savior narratives’ and paternalistic protection scenarios which position actors from ‘the North’ as having the moral and political imperative to help ‘them’ (Southerners), ‘over there’ (in the South) (e.g. see Abu-Lughod 2002; Rajaram 2002; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2014; see Carpi this volume). For instance, Northern interventions – whether through aid programmes or military invasions – have often been justified as being a moral imperative for Northern actors to ‘save brown women from brown men’ (Spivak 1993, p. 93), reproducing ‘them’ and ‘there’ as inherently violent, oppressive and oppressed people and spaces while ‘we’ and ‘here’ are positioned as democratic, free and empowered (see Abu-Lughod 2002; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2014). However, critiques of the dynamics, implications and outcomes of diverse forms of Northernled humanitarian assistance and protection must also be paralleled – and indeed preceded – by acknowledging the extent to which actors from across the South have, throughout history and across geographies, developed a multiplicity of responses to displacement on different scales. As such, rather than further restating the extensive criticisms of Northern-led humanitarianism that have been explored elsewhere (including in Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015a; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Pacitto 2016), in the remainder of this chapter I focus on diverse modes of engagement by and between actors of the global South, while, where appropriate, considering their position in relation to a diversity of communities, modes, and principles of response (all in the plural). 242

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In so doing, I do not aim to compare and contrast Southern-led responses to those led by members of the hegemonic humanitarian regime, a process that positions Southern responses negatively, as ‘non-Northern’ responses which are ‘different’ from Northern responses which are, in turn, re-inscribed as ‘the norm’. In this sense, recognising the existence of diverse Southern-led strategies and responses ensures that we do not reproduce the oppositional and colonialist formulations that are inherent in much post-development literature; the latter frequently maintains, rather than disrupts, the notion that power originates from and operates through a unidirectional and intentional historical entity, that is ‘the West’ or ‘the North’ (Brigg 2002). Instead, acknowledging the historical and ongoing significance of different forms of Southern-led responses to displacement – including those framed as modes of SSC – enables us to (re)inscribe and critically examine, rather than continue erasing Others from the multifaceted history of humanitarian action writ large (also see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Pacitto 2016). While resisting the tendency to reconstitute the power of ‘the North’ in determining the contours of the analysis, it is nonetheless important to recognise that many Southern-led responses are purposefully positioned as alternatives and challenges to hegemonic, Northern-led systems. Many Southern actors purposefully, and politically, frame their modes of response as an institutionalised form of SSC, and often explicitly justify their mode of engagement as aiming to directly challenge and overcome structural inequalities and forms of violence imposed by actors and systems from the global North. Southern- and Northern-led responses, as noted by Aneja (this volume), ‘can thus be said to exist and evolve in a mutually constitutive relationship’, rather than in isolation from one another. While this is especially the case with regard to institutionalised, state-led and regionally led responses, it is simultaneously important to acknowledge that many responses developed by actors from the South – including local communities and locally based organisations – take place independently from the aims and positions of either Southern or Northern states or state-led institutions. I thus start from the premise that responses to displacement are diverse and implemented by a multiplicity of state and non-state actors from across the global South, including actors that variously work with,5 independently of, or explicitly against, ‘the’ hegemonic Northern-led humanitarian system. In some instances, including less institutionalised and more informal ones, the principles of SSC are not formally invoked, and it might thus be appropriate to examine these responses outside and beyond the framework of either Northern-led humanitarian or modes of SSC. This includes analysing them through reference to the conceptual frames mobilised and centralised by diverse Southern stakeholders themselves (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015a). In particular, in this chapter I engage both with state-led responses framed through an institutional model of SSC and its concomitant principles –including solidarity, self-sufficiency and mutual interest – and community-based and other forms of non-state initiatives that might be less clearly related to the official principles of SSC. In so doing, I neither aim to reify nor idealise state, communal or individual level of responses, nor to forcibly interpellate them ‘as’ forms of South–South relations. Rather, I intend to highlight the extent to which responses, assistance, solidarity and capacity-building processes in situations of displacement can take place through a diversity of directionalities and modalities.

State-led Southern responses to displacement: resisting ‘the humanitarian’? If ‘the international humanitarian system’ has often withheld the label ‘humanitarian’ from actors or actions from the South, it is equally worth stating that many members of the 243

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Group of 77 (G77) – ‘the largest intergovernmental organisation of developing countries in the United Nations’6 – purposefully refrain from using terms such as ‘humanitarian assistance’ or ‘aid donor’, as this vocabulary is intimately related to the Northern-led regime (see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015a). Southern states’ purposive distancing from mainstream/ hegemonic terminology is one way of discursively affirming the unique approach taken by Southern actors, and is paralleled by recurrent references in official state and organisational statements to the underlying principles that motivate and frame SSC: mutual benefit, solidarity, reciprocity, the absence of political conditionalities, and non-interference in the national sovereignty of other states (see Aneja, this volume). Importantly, the principles of the G77 are closely linked to those of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), including NAM’s established aim of developing both national and collective self-reliance, to enable Southern states to operate and thrive outside of Northern states’ economic, political and ideological spheres of influence (ibid.). Among other things, these underlying principles appear to clearly differentiate SSC from the ‘traditional’ Northern-led model of assistance, while simultaneously highlighting the roots of the discourses of solidarity, equitable partnerships and self-sufficiency that emerge in many examples of both state and non-state Southern-led responses to displacement (see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Pacitto 2016). In this framework, North–South relations are conceptualised as hierarchical ones characterised by vertical impositions, while SSC is conceptualised as a horizontal relationship, where state interlocutors work to advance mutual interests and complement one another’s abilities and resources (see Aneja, this volume; on whether states can advance mutual interests in responses to displacement, see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015a and Omata, this volume). Far from suggesting that all Southern states, or even all states which are members of the Group of 77 adhere to or enact7 a unified model of ‘South–South Cooperation’, it is of course essential to highlight the diversity of positions that are officially held by states from different parts of the global South, and the relative significance that different principles of SSC might hold in different regions. While regional depictions, in turn, risk hiding internal heterogeneity, Fiori (2013, p. 5) proposes the following broad regional frames of reference: In South East Asia, neutrality and impartiality have been seen as secondary to the principle of non-interference. In China, where the notion of the state as guarantor of the welfare of its people is grounded in Confucian tradition, the independence of humanitarian agencies from governments is not considered to be necessary, desirable, or possible.8 And in Latin America, support for those affected by conflict, extreme poverty and disaster has often been guided by a solidarity that precludes neutrality and impartiality. It is of course worth reasserting that, while many Southern states and regional organisations have purposefully distanced themselves from the label, and the very ‘system’ of humanitarianism, it is equally the case that many of the principles of SSC are perceived by the adherents and defenders of the core ‘international humanitarian principles’, as being inherently incompatible with ‘humanitarianism’. From a mainstream conceptualisation of humanitarianism which positions ‘politics [as] a moral pollutant’ (Barnett and Weiss 2008, p. 4) – even when this position is itself debated9 – the centrality of different forms of politics in Southern actors’ modes of response have historically been invoked to justify, or require, their exclusion from the ‘history’ and ‘present’ of humanitarianism. This is the case both for those states that have explicitly aligned themselves with and invoked discourses of SSC, and those state and non-state actors which have not done so. 244

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Differential modes of SSC in disasters and conflict/displacement10 The joint, horizontal South–South principles of engaging in bi-lateral and multi-lateral cooperation between states in order to meet states’ needs (as opposed to the needs of individuals or communities) and of non-interference to protect national sovereignty, also have a practical implication in terms of the forms of assistance that Southern states will or will not offer in ‘humanitarian’ scenarios. In essence, while SSC on national and regional levels has been extensively implemented in contexts of development to promote economic and material benefits (see Omata this volume; Aneja, this volume) and also in contexts of ‘disaster relief’, it is the role of SSC in situations of conflict-induced displacement that has remained less visible and more under-researched. Here, Southern-led disaster response can be understood as a means of providing assistance to a disaster-affected state to strengthen that state’s ability to offer assistance to its own citizens on its own territory after a ‘natural disaster’. In contrast, delivering assistance in conflict and displacement situations in which the state is either involved as a belligerent party or has demonstrated little or no political will to offer protection to its population, could be understood as a breach of the South–South principles of respect for national sovereignty and non-interference when such involvement does not take place at the explicit behest of the state itself. This distinction between the scenarios in which Southern states might feel it is appropriate or inappropriate to become involved has led to extensive criticisms by academics, policy-makers and practitioners alike: by prioritising state sovereignty and the principle of non-intervention, such states effectively fail to denounce human rights violations committed by other states, including war crimes and crimes against humanity (see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Pacitto 2016). Although analysing such dynamics is beyond the scope of this chapter, it must be noted that these criticisms parallel the equally extensive debates regarding the moral dilemmas faced by International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs). Hence, while the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) has historically held the position that not denouncing human rights violations is necessary to ensure its ongoing access to populations in need of assistance, other organisations such as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Amnesty International have centralised the moral imperative of witnessing and denouncing such violations, even if it leads to the expulsion of its staff. In MSF’s case, this has included making public statements announcing their withdrawal from crisis situations to avoid being seen as being complicit in upholding structural forms of violence (MSF 2017). I include this brief aside here as a means of acknowledging that when Southern responses are critiqued as not ‘truly’ being humanitarian because they are linked to political or ideological aims and objectives, or because they fail to denounce human rights violations, these critiques must be situated within the context of extensive criticisms that Northern-led responses are themselves typically tied to diverse forms of conditionalities which are intimately related to political and ideological priorities.11 In spite of the state-to-state nature of institutional modes of SSC, and the principle of noninterference which has historically prevented (or justified a lack of) a critique of widespread human rights violations in other Southern states, another key ‘Southern’ principle is of central significance here: an anti-colonial commitment to support the right to the self-determination of peoples, and the commitment to promote national and communal self-sufficiency independent of/from externally (Northern-provided) aid. Hence, as explored in Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (2015a), from the 1960s to the mid-2010s this commitment led the Libyan and Cuban states to offer different forms of support to non-state interlocutors, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguiat el-Hamra and Rio de Oro (Polisario Front) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and its constituent factions as, respectively, the ‘legitimate representatives’ of the displaced and dispossessed Sahrawi and Palestinian peoples. While Cuba’s and Libya’s ideological 245

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positions and priorities are distinct (broadly reflecting internationalist and pan-Arabist paradigms, respectively – see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015a), both states expressed their solidarity for these liberation movements and their respective refugee populations, and politics was consequently a central feature of the development and implementation of these states’ models of SSC with non-state anti-colonial actors. In this context, offering free educational opportunities to Sahrawi refugee children and youth and to Palestinian refugee youth was historically justified by the Cuban and Libyan states, and by the Polisario and PLO, as providing the means to maximise refugees’ self-sufficiency and the foundations to establish and eventually run the independent nation-states of Western Sahara and Palestine (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2010, 2011b, 2015a). Far from upholding an absolute commitment to non-interference, these positions have directly involved not only critiquing but offering different forms of support that directly challenge the territorial claims of other members of the G77 and the NAM, including Morocco. However, while the centrality of politics and ideology in Cuba’s and Libya’s responses have led many external analysts to question whether such state-led responses can ever ‘truly’ be considered to be ‘humanitarian’, a more central concern acknowledged toward the end of this chapter is the extent to which refugee participants themselves conceptualise and describe these initiatives as political, ideological and/or humanitarian in nature (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015a).

Parallel systems, cooperation and cooptation While many Southern state and non-state actors have resisted, rejected, and developed alternatives to the hegemonic aid regime, it is equally the case that many others have actively engaged with Northern institutions, organisations and programmes, and have often aimed to become part of the ‘international’ development and humanitarian system. Furthermore, in spite of Northern-led interrogations of, or rejection of, Southern-led responses, it is equally the case that Northern actors have long depended upon Southern-based NGOs, national organisations and states as implementing partners, or as ‘Southern’ wings of international agencies. In the following section I examine Southern-led responses to displacement in relation to, and indeed contra, the post-2016 ‘localisation of aid agenda’, which I argue offers an example of the instrumentalisation and co-optation of Southern actors into the ‘international regime’.

Southern-led responses and/contra the localisation of aid agenda The localisation of aid agenda – advanced in particular since the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) – has been grounded upon an official recognition that a plurality of actors respond to different forms of displacement. Indeed, the 2015 World Disasters Report documented the increased tendency for international actors to support nationally led strategies for disasters worldwide, and following the 2016 WHS, the international community officially committed to support ‘local’ responses by changing its mode of operation and the funding of response mechanisms (even if this shift is largely itself a response to the various financial and political crises that have led to pressures on European and North American states’ aid budgets). This includes the increasing trend to promote national and regional aspects of disaster management, perhaps especially, although not exclusively, in contexts of trans-boundary and regional disasters (Hollis 2017). Such regionally based response mechanisms, including the UN’s Syria Regional Refugee Resilience Plan (the ‘3RP’) I have discussed elsewhere (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2019, forthcoming), centralise the importance of mainstreaming support for local municipalities and institutions into programming activities to maximise positive outcomes and experiences among both refugee 246

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and host communities in conflict-affected areas. Indeed, the existing evidence confirms that regional-, national- and municipal-level actions and coordination are key to disaster response (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2016b). However, evidence also confirms that, repeatedly, appropriate levels of funding and localised modes of partnership do not result from official assertions and commitments by the UN and (Northern) donor states. Furthermore, the very process of enhancing the roles of, and institutionalising ‘Southern actors’ within the context of ‘the localisation of aid’ itself requires careful analysis. In effect, we must remain concerned about the instrumentalisation of Southern actors and the extent to which the localisation agenda might be a way for Northern states to shift resources, and responsibilities, onto Southern actors, or to simply withdraw from international responsibilities without sharing the promised funding and resources (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015a). Indeed, there is a major paradox inherent in the localisation of aid agenda, in that it aims to ‘support’ specific ‘local’ (read ‘Southern state and regional’) responses precisely by institutionalising them within the broader paradigm and parameters established by the ‘international system’. In this context, we can view the localisation of aid agenda as promoting a particular form of North–South relations, in which Northern states are increasingly mobilising Southern actors to ‘share the burden’ (precisely through ‘keeping the burden in the South’) in undertaking assistance and protection activities (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015a). The mainstreaming of support for Southern-led initiatives by UN agencies and Northern states is especially paradoxical when situated within the context of SSC: as outlined above, the latter was purposefully developed as a necessary means to overcome the exploitative nature of North–South relations, and has historically been associated with the NAM, and anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles (FiddianQasmiyeh 2015a; see Aneja this volume; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Daley this volume). As such, I argue that a focus on Southern-led responses must transcend identifying and offering (certain forms of) support to specific actors from the global South (here, Southern states and regional organisations). Instead, it invites us to consider what role diverse modes of SSC might play in terms of responding to disasters, and what role the principles of SSC might have in reconceptualising existing, and formulating new or hybrid forms of response, including responses that challenge structural inequalities. It is this relationality between diverse actors between and across the global South, at all scales, levels and directionalities, and the divergent principles, motivations and modes of action, which remain to be explored in detail. Importantly, while SSC has been officially perceived as being central to development and responses to disasters, as outlined above, SSC has also often been perceived – in principle – to be incompatible with developing Southern-led responses to conflicts and conflict-induced displacement. This is, among other things, due to the South–South principles of non-interference and respecting state sovereignty outlined above, but also due to international organisations’ assumptions that SSC can only take place when ‘time’ is available, with Southern-led responses to humanitarian situations excluded almost a priori. This is clearly reflected in the following quotation from a senior UNDP employee interviewed by Omata and cited in his chapter in this volume: Making South–South initiatives requires a long-term vision and strategic planning. Before making a deal, it involves numerous negotiations between involved actors and UNDP . . . I know UNHCR staff need to respond quickly to emergencies to save people’s life. These emergencies usually emerge in an unpredictable way. Such situations are not conducive to the modalities of South–South partnerships. As such, while UNDP has an established track record of promoting South–South cooperation in the context of development,12 it has often been assumed by and about UNHCR and other 247

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humanitarian agencies that SSC is incompatible with ‘humanitarian’ work because SSC requires long-term planning, while UNHCR needs to operate from one hour to the next. Of course, we know this is not the case overall, and diverse Southern actors – regional organisations, states, sub-national actors, communities and individuals – have historically played key roles in responding to diverse forms of disasters, including conflict-induced displacement. Indeed, the potential to further explore the roles of SSC in existing, new and emerging displacement situations is highly significant precisely because conflict and displacement-related ‘crises’ are often predicted or even ‘announced’ weeks, months, years in advance, and also precisely because displacement is increasingly protracted in nature. UNHCR is indeed making (very slow) headway into institutionalising modes of SSC, for instance through their promotion of the ‘solidarity resettlement scheme’ between the Middle East and specific solidary Latin American countries (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015a; cf. Cantor this volume). As such, specific modes of state–state cooperation under the framework of South–South cooperation and its underlying principle of ‘solidarity’ are being explored, and actively supported, by international organisations such as the UN Refugee Agency. However, while particular actors are being actively supported in this way by the international community, there is also a need to continue recognising the extent to which diverse forward-looking initiatives have been developed under the remit of SSC by actors that have purposefully disengaged from, or aim to challenge, the international system. Such initiatives have not only historically existed around the world, but also have significant legacies that still echo to date. For instance, long before Castro established the above-mentioned Latin American School of Medicine, from the 1970s to the mid-2010s Cuba offered secondary- and tertiary-level education to refugee youth including Palestinians and Sahrawi refugees via an international scholarship system (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015a); this has meant that many Cubaneducated Syrian and Palestinian refugee doctors and surgeons have been providing medical assistance to people displaced within and from Syria since the outbreak of conflict in that country in 2011, through what I conceptualise as forms of refugee–refugee humanitarianism (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2016a). Indeed, a further critique of the localisation framework is that although national and regional responses are often equated with ‘localised responses’ that can be captured and supported by the international system, there is also a need to move toward a localisation agenda that is even more ‘local’ in nature: focusing on individuals, communities and neighbourhoods, alongside other national and sub-national actors, not just as ‘experiencing’ and being affected by disasters, but also as responding to these in different ways (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2017, 2019). In effect, while Egeland claimed in 2011 that the growth in civil society movements in Southern societies ‘is probably the single most important trend in global efforts to combat poverty and conflict’ (2011, p. xxi), localised responses have throughout history been led by individuals and communities, whether organised or labelled as ‘civil society movements’ or not. In addition to acknowledging the extent to which diverse actors from across both the global North and the global South have developed different forms of response to disasters throughout history, it is thus equally essential to consider the question of the plurality of ‘communities of response’ from a multi-scalar and multi-stakeholder perspective. In this regard, research is increasingly acknowledging the significance both of examining the roles played by different actors – including individual, household, community, and sub-national and national actors, regional organisations and international organisations – and of exploring the nature of relationships that exist within, between and across these different responders across all scales (micro, meso and macro), and as processes that change across time and space.

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Geographies and scales of response: roles and relationships The case of refugee-led responses to displacement noted above can thus be examined through the framework of ‘locally provided aid’, but also as one of myriad ‘Southern-led’ responses. In this regard I would like to highlight the importance of focusing on the relationships and interactions that exist between different groups of refugees in a diversity of spaces and, indeed, of complementing a focus on what I refer to as ‘refugee–refugee relationality’ (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2016c) with a focus on relationships between heterogeneous members of different groups of refugees and different groups of hosts.13 These relationships are especially significant in light of what I refer to as the overlapping nature of displacement. While a great deal of academic and policy attention has been given to urban and protracted displacement, very little research has been conducted into the nature and implications of overlapping displacements, including with regard to the relationship between refugees and local communities. I use the term ‘overlapping’ to refer to two spatio-temporal dynamics. First, refugees and IDPs have often both personally and collectively experienced secondary and tertiary displacement. This is the case of thousands of Sahrawi and Palestinian refugees who left their refugee camp homes in Algeria and Lebanon, respectively, to study or work in Libya before being displaced by the outbreak of conflict there in 2011, and of Palestinian and Iraqi refugees who had originally sought safety in Syria only to be displaced once more by the conflict there (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2012, 2015b). Second, refugees are increasingly experiencing overlapping displacement in the sense that they often physically share spaces with other displaced people. For example, Turkey hosts refugees from over 35 countries of origin, Lebanon from 17 countries, Kenya 16, Jordan 14, Chad 12 and both Ethiopia and Pakistan 11 (Crawford et al. 2015). The implication of these intersecting processes is that refugees share spaces for long periods of time both with local host communities, and with other displaced people themselves; this means that refugee groups often become members of the communities that subsequently offer protection and support to other groups of displaced people. What I refer to as the process of overlapping displacement precisely indicates not only that people continue to experience ongoing forms of vulnerability and precariousness, but also the extent to which, for many people, the ‘new norm’ (if not the ‘new normal’) might be to be displaced or affected by crisis again and again, either individually or as families and members of communities that have experienced displacement on more than one occasion, or as people who remain displaced and then become ‘hosts’ to newly displaced people. A contemporary example is that of Palestinian refugees in Baddawi refugee camp in North Lebanon, who have resided in the camp since the 1950s and who have ‘hosted’ refugees arriving from Syria since 2011.14 These refugees include not only displaced Syrians but also Palestinian and Iraqi refugees who had been living in Syria at the outbreak of the conflict and who have found themselves refugees once more (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2012). In the context of Baddawi, Palestinians are both refugees and hosts, and urban camps are spaces that are shared between not only different generations of refugees but also refugees of different nationalities and countries of origin. Furthermore, this is also not the first time that Baddawi camp and its refugee inhabitants have welcomed ‘new’ refugees, as Baddawi also hosted over 15,000 ‘new’ Palestinian refugees who were internally displaced from nearby Nahr el-Bared refugee camp when that camp was destroyed during fighting in 2007. With an estimated 10,000 refugees from Nahr el-Bared still residing in Baddawi camp, these ‘internally-displaced-refugees-hosted-by-refugees’ have become part of the established Baddawi community hosting ‘newly’ displaced refugees from Syria (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015b; also see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Qasmiyeh 2016/2018).

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Such processes of overlapping displacement and shared spaces indicate the importance of examining refugee–refugee relationality, requiring that research, policies and practices transcend and critique the implications of the assumption that citizen-host communities are ‘affected’ by refugees, or that ‘citizens’ ‘support’ or ‘reject’ displaced people. Instead, it is essential to carefully examine the relationships that exist, emerge and change over time and space between different groups of people who have been directly and indirectly affected by and involved in complex emergencies and disasters, including protracted displacement. Highlighting the relational nature of displacement, and destabilising the assumption that refugees are hosted by citizens, is evidently not to idealise the encounters that characterise refugee–refugee encounters, since these are also often framed by power imbalances and processes of exclusion and overt hostility between members of new and established refugee communities. However, rather than viewing these tensions as inevitable, I offer this reflection to argue that certain ‘international’ and ‘national’ policies and programmes may activate resentment and insecurity among hosts, and there is an increased need to fulfil the above-mentioned commitment to implement programmes that aim to support both refugees and host communities (as is ostensibly at the core of the 3RP – see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2019, forthcoming). In the context of overlapping displacement and refugeeshosting-refugees, these tensions might be the result of the uneven development and implementation of programmes for different ‘generations’ of refugees and for refugees according to their country of origin. This is acutely visible in Baddawi, whose established residents have received limited assistance from the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) since the 1950s, while new arrivals from Syria have the potential to receive support from an expanding range of inter/national organisations, including UNHCR (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2016d). Within the context of SSC, local-level responses to displacement from Syria, including those developed by refugees themselves, are not formally articulated through reference to the SSC principles of mutual assistance or reciprocity, and yet these non-state responses are intimately related to other principles that intersect with those discourses on different levels: notions of ‘refugee–refugee solidarity’, a sense of reciprocity between people who have historically been displaced, and a range of faith-based principles (see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015b, 2016a). For others, a commitment to fill the gaps not left by, but in fact created by Northern states and institutions, is articulated through a combination of political, ideological and faith-based rhetoric. These forms of communal self-sufficiency are ultimately unsustainable in situations of acute precarity, and yet they are an essential component of the strategies that people develop and negotiate both to stay alive and to try to live meaningful lives in displacement.

Conclusion As I have noted throughout this chapter, there are different ways of imagining and implementing responses to disasters, including models based on principles of SSC and horizontal learning that can provide longer-term responses to emerging and protracted displacement scenarios. By highlighting a series of examples that are officially or informally framed as modes of SSC, it has not been my intention to idealise such responses (for critiques, see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015b). Instead, I have aimed to exemplify, first, the extent to which diverse actors are, and have long been, involved in responding to disasters, and second, the extent to which their underlying principles, aims and objectives might differ from, and challenge, those of the more mainstream members of ‘the international humanitarian system’. While global North actors might continue to reject many of these interventions for being political and ideological rather than categorising these as modes of ‘humanitarian’ assistance – Cuba, for instance, has often been depicted as engaging in ideologically motivated forms of 250

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‘disaster diplomacy’15 – one key question that remains to be explored further is how people affected by displacement themselves experience, enact, respond to and conceptualise these different processes and modes of response. This is essential since people do not merely ‘experience’ or ‘respond’ to displacement, but are also everyday theorists who conceptualise, negotiate and resist different modes of action and inaction.16 For instance, throughout my research with Sahrawi and Palestinian refugees who studied in Cuba in the 1990s and 2000s before returning to work in their home-camps in Algeria and Lebanon respectively, Cuban-educated graduates repeatedly referred to the scholarship programme through reference to a combination of ‘ideology’, ‘politics’, ‘humanitarianism’ and ‘human values’ (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015a). Ultimately, they maintained that Cuba’s programme for refugees is ‘humanitarian’ in nature, but they offered different perspectives regarding the balance between these different dimensions, implicitly, and at times explicitly, noting the ways in which these overlap or are in tension.17 In this chapter I have proposed the value of analysing historical and contemporary forms of South–South cooperation on diverse scales (rather than an instrumentalisation of Southern actors via the ‘localisation of aid’ agenda), and of critically engaging with the principles of SSC. Here, I would suggest that the framework of SSC could be a useful lens through which to examine responses to displacement since forms of SSC, from their birth, have blurred and/or combined rather than inscribed institutional and programmatic distinctions between long- and short-term responses, with the very term ‘cooperation’ having the potential to encompass both development and humanitarian initiatives (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015a, 2019, forthcoming). In turn, South–South actions and South– South principles have distinctive spatialities, directionalities, and imperatives of response, including particular attention to developing modes of challenging and redressing structural inequalities which ultimately ‘create’ – or at least magnify – vulnerabilities to and in diverse disasters. Highlighting these potentialities is not a matter of idealising them. Rather, it is a means of proposing that further research is required to first, better understand how different actors, on different scales and levels, experience, perceive and conceptualise how, why and with what effect different forms of response are implemented by Southern actors (including in the in/ formal context of SSC), and, second, to trace, resist and challenge the diverse structural barriers that prevent the development of meaningful responses that meet individual and collective needs and rights around the world.

Notes 1 On South–South migration more broadly, see Crush and Chikanda this volume. 2 This percentage is estimated by the UNHCR, but neither the UNHCR’s absolute ‘refugee figures’, nor the percentage of refugees within the ‘developing world’, include the almost 6 million Palestinian refugees who do not fall under UNHCR’s remit, but rather under that of ‘the other’ refugee agency: the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). UNRWA operates in the main Palestinian host countries and territories (Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Gaza and the West Bank), all of which are ‘in the global South’. The percentage of refugees remaining in what the UNHCR denominates ‘developing countries and regions’ increases to circa 90% once we include all refugees irrespective of their place of origin or institutional mandate. 3 On Myanmar’s refusal to allow ‘Western’ organisations to provide such assistance, see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Pacitto (2016). 4 While other conceptualisations exist, these are the key entities that are typically associated with ‘the international humanitarian community’ (e.g. see Telford and Cosgrave 2007). 5 In other cases, as explored below, Southern actors might wish to join ‘the international humanitarian community’, highlighting another dimension of a ‘mutually constitutive’ framework through which Southern actors aim to become part of, or are variously incorporated into Northern frameworks. 251

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6 The Group of 77 – originally established in 1964 by 77 ‘developing countries’ at the first conference of the UN Conference on Trade and Development, and which, by 2017, had over 134 member states – ‘provides the means for the countries of the South to articulate and promote their collective economic interests and enhance their joint negotiating capacity on all major international economic issues within the United Nations system, and promote South–South cooperation for development’. Available at www.g77.org/doc/ [last accessed 8 March 2018, emphasis added]. 7 It is beyond the scope of this chapter to trace the extent to which states do or do not uphold these principles in practice – however, as noted by Aneja (this volume), the ‘divergence between principles and practice has in some way amplified the importance of the principles, as a performative device that helps obscure sources of competition within the South, while reinforcing the project of a distinct Southern identity and purpose’. On the political benefits of mobilising the discourse of SSC and NAM principles, also see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Pacitto (2016). 8 On the particularities of China’s historical approach to philanthropy, see Reeves (this volume). 9 There are many who critique the assertion that humanitarianism should, and can be separated from politics. Furthermore, as I have argued elsewhere, claims of impartial, apolitical universality in the international principles institutionalised by the ICRC, can equally be interpreted and understood to be partial, politicised neo-imperialism (see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015a). In effect, Pacitto and I have argued elsewhere that politics pervades humanitarianism, and not just humanitarianism in the sense of the practices carried out by ‘humanitarian’ organisations; it is interwoven within the fibres of the epithet itself. It is this lexical politics that has for so long footnoted Other actors and Other modes of action in the study of humanitarianism (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Pacitto 2016). 10 This section builds upon Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (2015a, chapter 2). 11 Indeed, a European diplomat I interviewed in Beirut in April 2017 (as part of my AHRC-ESRC-funded research examining local and international responses to displacement from Syria - AH/P005438/1) noted that his state’s aid programmes in Syria and neighbouring countries are intimately related to his state’s foreign policy priorities: his state actively prioritises and supports aid programmes within rebel-held areas in Syria and anti-regime/opposition Syrian civil society organisations in Lebanon and Turkey. He frankly acknowledged that European responses to the Syrian crisis are neither ‘impartial’ nor ‘neutral’. He subsequently recognised that the international community’s partiality regarding the Syrian conflict requires a broad-scale re-evaluation of the position of these ‘principles’ in Northern-led humanitarian action in contexts of conflict-induced displacement. While he effectively situated the birth of what we can refer to as a ‘crisis of international humanitarian principles’ within the context of European responses to the Syrian conflict, the position of politics and ideology within ‘humanitarian’ responses has been debated, contested and challenged for decades. 12 Between 1974–2004 UNDP was home to the ‘Special Unit for Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries’; in 2014 this was renamed the ‘Special Unit for South–South Cooperation of the United Nations Development Programme’. 13 Here and throughout this chapter I draw on my ongoing research projects: Refugee Hosts (www. refugeehosts.org), funded by the AHRC-ESRC (Grant Number AH/P005438/1) and the Southern Responses project (www.southernresponses.org, which has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (Grant Agreement No. 715582). 14 Long before the outbreak of the 2011 conflict in Syria, Baddawi camp, like towns, cities and camps across Lebanon, had a long history of hosting (primarily male) migrant workers from Syria. Since 2011, the demography of people from Syria living in Lebanon has expanded to also include women and children. 15 For a critical discussion of ‘disaster diplomacy’, see Kelman (2007). 16 On the relationship between viewing refugees and stateless people who ‘experience’ displacement and lack of legal protection, and as people who conceptualise their own situation and that of others, see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (2016a). 17 Rather than describing the programme as humanitarian per se, my interviewees offered remarkably similar humanitarian ‘qualifiers’, describing Cuba’s scholarship programme as having ‘a humanitarian component’, ‘a humanitarian dimension’, a ‘humanitarian aspect’, and ‘humanitarian ingredients’; other interviewees argued that it is ‘a mainly humanitarian system’, which ‘carr[ies] humanitarian elements’, and ‘shares its humanitarian message in spite of the [US] embargo [against Cuba]’. For an analysis of this scholarship programme through the application of tempo-spatial, multiscalar, and intersectionalist analyses, see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (2015a). 252

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References Abu-Lughod, L., 2002. Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others. American Anthropologist 104(3), 783–790. Ager, J., Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., and Ager, A., 2015. Local Faith Communities and the Promotion of Resilience in Contexts of Humanitarian Crisis. Journal of Refugee Studies 28(2), pp. 202–221. Barakat, S. and Zyck, S., 2010. Gulf State Assistance to Conflict-affected Environments. The Kuwait Programme on Development, Governance and Globalisation in the Gulf States. Barnett, M., 2011. Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism. New York: Cornell University Press. Barnett, M. and Stein, J. (eds), 2012. Sacred Aid: Faith and Humanitarianism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barnett, M. and Weiss, T., 2008. Humanitarianism: A Brief History of the Present. In: M. Barnett and T. Weiss (eds), Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics. New York: Cornell University Press, pp. 1–48. Barnett, M. and Weiss, T., 2011. Humanitarianism Contested: Where Angels Fear to Tread. Oxford: Routledge. Binder, A., Meier, C., and Steets, J., 2010. Humanitarian Assistance: Truly Universal? A Mapping Study of Non-Western Donors. GPPi Research Paper Series, 12, pp. 1–41. Brigg, M., 2002. Post-development, Foucault and the Colonisation Metaphor. Third World Quarterly 23(3), pp. 421–436. Carpi, E. and Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., 2019 (forthcoming). Keeping the Faith? Examining the Roles of Faith and Secularism in ‘Syrian Diaspora Organisations’ in Lebanon. In: Dennis Dijkzeul and Margit Fauser (eds), Diaspora Organizations in International Affairs. Oxford: Routledge. Chimni, B.S., 2000. Globalisation, Humanitarianism & the Erosion of Refugee Protection. RSC WP No. 3. Cook, A., 2010. Positions of Responsibility: A Comparison of ASEAN and EU Approaches towards Myanmar. International Politics 47(3–4), pp. 433–449. Crawford, N. et al., 2015. Protracted Displacement: Uncertain Paths to Self-reliance in Exile. London: ODI/ HPG. Davey, E., 2012. New Players through Old Lenses: Why History Matters in Engaging Southern Actors. HPG Policy Brief, 48. Donini, A., Minear, L., and Walker, P., 2004. The Future of Humanitarian Action. Disasters 28(2), pp. 190–204. Duffield, M., 2007, 2013. Development, Security and Unending War: Governing the World of Peoples. 1st and 2nd editions. Cambridge: Polity. Egeland, J., 2011. Foreword: Humanitarianism in the Crossfire. In: M. Barnett and T. Weiss (eds), Humanitarianism Contested: Where Angels Fear to Tread. Oxford: Routledge, pp. xvii–xx. El-Nakib, S. and Ager, A., 2015. Local Faith Community and Related Civil Society Engagement in Humanitarian Response with Syrian Refugees in Irbid, Jordan. Report to the Henry Luce Foundation, April 2015. Escobar, A., 2000. Beyond the Search for a Paradigm? Post-Development and Beyond. Development, 43(4), 11–14. Fassin, D., 2011. Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ferris, E., 2011. Faith and Humanitarianism: It’s Complicated. Journal of Refugee Studies 24(3), pp. 606–625. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., 2010. Education, Migration and Internationalism: Situating Muslim Middle Eastern and North African Students in Cuba. Journal of North African Studies 15(2), 137–155. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., 2011. Faith-based Humanitarianism in Contexts of Forced Displacement. Special Issue of the Journal of Refugee Studies 24(3), pp. 429–439. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., 2012. Invisible Refugees and/or Overlapping Refugeedom? Protecting Sahrawis and Palestinians Displaced by the 2011 Libyan Uprising. International Journal of Refugee Law, 24(2), 263–293. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., 2014. Transnational Abductions and Transnational Jurisdictions? The Politics of ‘Protecting’ Female Muslim Refugees in Spain. Gender, Place and Culture 21(2), 174–194. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., 2015a. South–South Educational Migration, Humanitarianism and Development: Views from Cuba, North Africa and the Middle East. Oxford: Routledge. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., 2015b. Refugees Helping Refugees: How a Palestinian Camp in Lebanon is Welcoming Syrians. The Conversation, 4 November 2015. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., 2016a. Repressentations of Displacement in the Middle East. Public Culture 28(3), 457–473. 253

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Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., 2016b. Promoting the Successful Integration of Refugees/Forcibly Displaced People in Situations of Protracted Forced Displacement. Commissioned DfID Rapid Review, UK Department for International Development, March 2016. On file with the author. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., 2016c. Refugee-Refugee Relations in Contexts of Overlapping Displacement. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. Available at: www.ijurr.org/spotlight-on-over view/spotlight-urban-refugee-crisis/refugee-refugee-relations-contexts-overlapping-displacement/ [Accessed 20 September 2018]. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., 2016d. Palestinian and Syrian Refugees in Lebanon: Sharing Space, Electricity and the Sky. Refugee History, 21 December 2016. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., 2017. Representations of Displacement: Introducing the Series. Refugee Hosts, 1 September 2017. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., 2019 (forthcoming). Disaster Studies: Looking Forward. Disasters. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. and Ager, A., 2013. Local Faith Communities and the Promotion of Resilience in Humanitarian Situations. RSC/JLI Working Paper 90. Oxford: Refugee Studies Centre. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. and Pacitto, J., 2016. Writing the Other into Humanitarianism: A Conversation between ‘South–South’ and ‘Faith-based’ Humanitarianisms. In: Z. Sezgin and D. Dijkzeul (eds), The New Humanitarianisms in International Practice: Emerging Actors and Contested Principles. Oxford: Routledge. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. and Qasmiyeh, Y.M., 2016/2018. Refugee Neighbours and Hospitality: Exploring the Complexities of Refugee-refugee Humanitarianism. The Critique, 5 January 2016. Reposted on Refugee Hosts on 20 March 2018 [online]. Available from https://refugeehosts.org/2018/03/20/refu gee-neighbours-hostipitality/ [last accessed 19 June 2018]. Fiori, J.E.M., 2013. The Discourse of Western Humanitarianism. Institut de Relations Internationales et Stratégiques, 2013, available at: www.iris-france.org/docs/kfm_docs/docs/obs_questions_humani taires/ENG-JulianoEM-Fiori-october2013.pdf [Accessed 18 September 2018]. Gatten, E. and Alabaster, O., 2012. Refugee Influx Prompts Solo Relief Work. The Daily Star Lebanon, 27 July 2012. Harmer, A. and Cotterell, L., 2009. Diversity in Donorship: The Changing Landscape of Official Humanitarian Aid. HPG Research Report. Hollis, S., 2017. Bridging International Relations and Disaster Studies: The Case of Disaster–conflict Scholarship. Disasters 42(1), 19–40. IRIN, 2012. Jordan: Civil Society at Heart of Syrian Refugee Response. 11 April 2012. Juma, M. and Suhrke, A. (eds), 2002. Eroding Local Capacity: International Humanitarian Action in Africa. Uppsala: Nordika Afrika Institutet. Kelman, I., 2007. Hurricane Katrina Disaster Diplomacy. Disasters 31(3), pp. 288–309. Kennedy, D., 2004. The Dark Sides of Virtue: Reassessing International Humanitarianism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Khan, S., 2017. Irma: Cuba Sends Hundreds of Doctors to Caribbean Islands Devastated by Hurricane. The Independent, 9 September 2017. Marr, S., 2010. Compassion in Action: The Story of the ASEAN-led Coordination in Myanmar. Jakarta: ASEAN. Mawdsley, E., 2012. From Recipients to Donors: The Emerging Powers and the Changing Development Landscape. London: Zed Books. MSF, 2017. No Easy Answers: A Set of MSF Case Studies Asks Hard Questions about Some of our Choices in Earlier Times of Crisis. Doctors Without Borders, available at: www.doctorswithoutborders.ca/ article/no-easy-answers-set-msf-case-studies-asks-hard-questions-about-some-our-choices-earlier [Accessed 18 September 2018]. Mytelka, L. (ed.), 1994. South-South Cooperation in a Global Perspective. Paris: OECD publication. Pieterse, J., 1998. My Paradigm or Yours? Alternative Development, Post-Development, Reflexive Development. Development and Change 29, 343–373. Rahnema, M. and Bawtree, V. (eds), 1997. The Post-Development Reader. New York: Zed Books. Rajaram, P., 2002. Humanitarianism and Representations of the Refugee. Journal of Refugee Studies 15(3), pp. 247–264. Sezgin, Z. and Dijkzeul, D. (eds), 2016. The New Humanitarianisms in International Practice: Emerging Actors and Contested Principles. Oxford: Routledge. Six, C., 2009. The Rise of Postcolonial States as Donors: A Challenge to the Development Paradigm? Third World Quarterly 30(6), 1103–1121. Spivak, G.C., 1993. Can the Subaltern Speak? In: P. Williams and L. Chrisman (eds), Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, pp. 66–111. 254

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Sridharan, K., 1998. G-15 and South-South Cooperation: Promise and Performance. Third World Quarterly 19(3), 357–374. Svoboda, E. and Pantuliano, S., 2015. International and Local/Diaspora Actors in the Syria Response: A Diverging Set of Systems? HPG Working Paper, March 2015. Telford, J. and Cosgrave, J., 2007. The International Humanitarian System and the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunamis. Disasters 31(1), pp. 1–28. UNHCR, 2018. UNHCR Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2017. Geneva: UNHCR. Wilson, R. and Brown, R. (eds), 2011. Humanitarianism and Suffering: The Mobilization of Empathy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Woods, N., 2008. Whose Aid? Whose Influence? China, Emerging Donors and the Silent Revolution in Development Assistance. International Affairs 84(6), pp. 1205–1221.

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19 China, ‘state-centric’ humanitarianism, and the International Committee of the Red Cross A historical background Caroline Reeves

Introduction: China and the fundamental humanitarian principle of ‘independence’ During the past 20 years, China’s skyrocketing potential as a charitable donor has begun to attract attention from the international community. By 2016, China’s GDP had soared to become second only to that of the United States (Wikipedia 2017),1 with China’s new billionaires outnumbering American billionaires (BBC News 2016). Consequently, China’s ‘emerging donor’2 profile has heightened exponentially, encouraging organisations ranging from American hospitals and world-class universities to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to seek insight into how to lure China’s new wealth into their donation pool. Yet members of the global North attempting to include China in the world community of giving do so overwhelmed by anxiety and suspicion. Uninformed about China’s traditions of giving, distrustful of Chinese motives when China does give, these aspirants look at China and see danger attached to the money they want so badly.3 In the China case, one of the primary sources of distrust among the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) countries (also known as ‘traditional donors’) (OECD 2018) is China’s insistence on a state-centric approach to aid. Here, I use the term to mean that international aid is given on a government-to-government basis, and that China sees national governments as the most important and appropriate source of aid and social welfare provision for developing countries, including its own (Hirono 2013, p. 206). Many of China’s critics opine that state involvement in charitable or humanitarian work – rather than the global North’s recently preferred mode of ‘non-governmental’ giving (Harvey 2009, p. 1) – is inherently flawed, leading to the intrusion of politics into the ideationally sacrosanct realm of humanitarian action, a sphere that should be marked by purer motives such as altruism (also see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, this volume).4 Countries like China are ‘rogue aid providers [who] couldn’t care less about the long-term well-being of the population of the countries they “aid”’ (ostensibly including their own), who are instead ‘motivated by a desire to further their own national interests, advance an ideological agenda, or sometimes line their own 256

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pockets’ (Naim 2009). Yet even some of the most vituperative critics of China do recognise that these charges can be directed at almost all national and international aid programmes, at least historically; that indeed, ‘China is not the first country to rely on aid as a tool to advance its interests’ (Naim 2009)5; and that even tainted giving has saved lives, despite its ‘toxicity’.6 Yet this distrust of the state and the stain of state-centric giving remain.7 Suspicion of state involvement in relief provision seems to be enshrined in the Seven Fundamental Principles of the International Committee of the Red Cross, of which the first four are considered the most fundamental: Humanity, Neutrality, Impartiality, and Independence (IFRC n.d.). Associated with the founder of the Red Cross organisation Henri Dunant, formulated by 1921 and proclaimed in their present incarnation in 1965, these principles are considered by many to be the sine qua non of post-Second World War humanitarianism and have become the credo of many international humanitarian organisations across the global North (Gordon and Donini 2015). Since 1921, these principles have also included the claim of ‘universality’. Yet as Miwa Hirono and Jacinta O’Hagan (2012, p. 6) have articulated, ‘The question, however, is whether such principles as [these] . . . are [actually] viewed as essential by all humanitarian actors irrespective of their varying socio-cultural backgrounds’. Offering a case study from Chinese history, this chapter unpacks the formulation of ‘neutrality, impartiality and independence’ in humanitarian action, focusing on the third principle of ‘independence’, the principle most relevant to the relationship between states and humanitarian actors.8 The principle reads, The [Red Cross] Movement is Independent. The National Societies, whilst auxiliaries in the humanitarian services of their governments and subject to the laws of their respective countries, must always maintain their autonomy so that they may be able at all times to act in accordance with the principles of the Movement. (Slim 2015, p. 252) Highlighting the early years of the Red Cross Society of China, a national-level, indigenous Chinese Red Cross organisation with international ties formed in 1904, this chapter delves into the history of state–civic collaborative aid in China and gives historical and geographical depth to current debates on what constitutes good humanitarian practice. Based on an analysis of extensive empirical data, this chapter argues that the current trend of criticising significant state involvement in humanitarian efforts is myopic, particularly in the Chinese case, given both the variety of the world’s charitable traditions as well as the global North’s own recent history of encouraging state involvement in relief provision (Harvey 2009, p. 1). As the Chinese story shows, models of ‘correct’ humanitarian practice are not only geographically but also temporally contingent. In other words, humanitarian ideas vary over time and space, and evolve even in idealised organisations such as the ICRC. That being said, China’s current statist position on aid provision is not a new construction of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), but is historically grounded in a much longer tradition of Chinese attitudes toward the provision of social welfare.9 By dismissing China’s insistence on the central role of the state in humanitarian action, we stymie constructive engagement with one of the world’s most important emerging donors and deny equality to world players with different cultural and philosophic backgrounds. Presenting historical examples of Chinese and ICRC state-centric humanitarianism in China throughout the early 20th century, I undermine assumptions of a universal, immutable understanding of what global giving should be. These lessons of history can improve the contemporary discourse on legitimate expressions of global humanitarianism. 257

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Philanthropy during early 20th-century China By the turn of the 20th century, China’s tradition of philanthropy was well established. If Alexis de Tocqueville had inadvertently arrived in China during the early 19th century, in a reversal of Christopher Columbus’s mistake, he would have found a society as vibrant with associational activity as his beloved United States (de Tocqueville 1988, pp. 513–517). Despite misconceptions that China’s involvement in charitable activity did not begin until Christian missionaries brought the idea to China, China boasted an ethos of charitable giving and on-the-ground mutual-aid societies to mitigate disasters long before the birth of Christ (today often considered the originator of caritas) (Zhang and Zhang 2014, p. 83). By the 5th century ce, voluntary associations composed of common people were formed to pool resources in the face of crises, and by the Sung dynasty (960–1279 ce) China’s gentry were deeply involved in charitable giving (Smith 2009, pp. 4, 49; Scogin 1978). During the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), China’s intellectual elite, a Confucian-trained oligarchy connected intellectually and practically to government service, appropriated the idea of popular voluntary associations and ‘resituated [them] in . . . an elite milieu’ (Smith 2009, p. 50), raising charitable activity to a defining marker of social identity. Charitable work was thus deeply engrained in Chinese society at all levels, from the poorest to the richest of the land. Importantly, charitable activity by China’s elite was encouraged by and reinforced the imperial government. In fact, China’s Confucian gentry were often considered intercessors for the government when the government could not act, providing what Max Weber has termed informal ‘liturgical governance’ (Weber 1978, pp. 1022–25),10 where ‘local elites were called upon to perform important public services on the state’s behalf, at their own expense’ (Mann 1987, pp. 12–13). Distribution of food, clothing and medicines, as well as special societies to bury the dead, care for widows and orphans, and provide lifesaving services all became parts of the Chinese charitable landscape. These social welfare services were ideally provided by the government, but it was clearly understood that if the state were unable to provide these benefits, its Confucian-trained intermediaries would serve as stand-ins (Will 1990, 1991; Li 2007). Confucianism itself dictated that it was the purview of the state to provide disaster relief. Government officials, the Chinese intelligentsia, and commoners all widely subscribed to this dictum. State responsibility for providing aid came from a deeper cosmological sense of the ‘interdependence of human and heavenly roles in disaster causation’ (Edgerton-Tarpley 2012, p. 4), where the occurrence of ‘natural disaster’ was attributed to an interaction between humans, Heaven and natural forces, rather than to nature alone. This combination of moral meteorology and state responsibility for related human unrest had been established by the Confucian philosopher Mencius (372–289 bce) during the 3rd century bce. [Mencius] insisted that a benevolent ruler could not get away with blaming the starvation of the people on a poor harvest, and was responsible for storing grain during times of plenty and distributing it during times of dearth. Blaming poor harvests for bringing starvation to the people, taught Mencius, was no less wrongheaded than ‘killing a man by running him through, while saying all the time, “It is none of my doing. It is the fault of the weapon”’. (Lau 1970, I.A.52) The understanding of state responsibility for both natural disasters and for disaster relief provision was well articulated and popularly entrenched by China’s late imperial period (1368–1911). Public officials, including the emperor himself, were seen as parental figures of the Han people, implicated in caring for their well-being. These ‘Father-and-Mother Officials’ (fumu guan) were 258

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a sort of cosmological in loco parentis mitigating between a judgmental Heaven and a vulnerable populace. This equation between social welfare provision and the state has proven to be one of the most enduring facets of China’s philanthropic habitus, prevailing through periods of weak states (the Republican period, 1911–1927), strong states (the Nationalist era, 1927–1937; the PRC, 1949–present), and even states fundamentally opposed to traditional cosmologies (the Maoist state, 1949–1976). Although Maoism explicitly rejected the Confucian basis for social welfare provision by the state, it did reaffirm the state’s responsibility for providing for its people, adopting Sun Yatsen’s Three Principles of the People: populism, people’s government, and livelihood for the people.

The founding of the Red Cross Society of China At the start of the 20th century, China’s natural and political landscapes were in flux. Natural disasters – floods, droughts, famines and other catastrophes – occurred with alarming frequency. The situation was exacerbated by endless rounds of civil violence as China’s peasants and leaders experimented with alternatives to the ancient dynastic system, reinforcing ideas that the stability of nature and of the government were intertwined. With the volatile domestic situation came escalating external threats as imperialism and geopolitics encroached on China. Poverty, increased mortality, political instability and social conflict became the norm for many Chinese people, more than 90% of whom were rural peasants. From the turn of the 20th century, these trends weighed heavily on the minds of China’s elite, who – although buffered from the actual suffering caused by these situations – wanted better for China domestically and in the world comity. As the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) declined, China’s social actors fulfilled their duty to the crumbling dynasty and to their follow humans. Rooted in the tradition of state-sanctioned, community-based social welfare action (Rankin 1986; Edgerton-Tarpley 2008), China’s concerned elite developed new modes of philanthropy as civic actors. Tied to government patronage, the organisations they founded were non-governmental by necessity and yet profoundly imbricated in the world of Confucian officialdom. Although working with considerable autonomy, the principals of these new groups consulted with relevant government agencies on an ad hoc basis, and sought and received the blessing of diverse governments for their impressive successes,11 often understanding their role in relief provision as part of a communitarian whole, including a state too weak to perform its rightful duties. In 1904, in response to a blockade of Chinese territory during the Russo-Japanese War, a prominent Shanghai tea-merchant, moderniser, and government official who had studied international law at Cambridge University (Tiao 1911) formed a Chinese Red Cross Society to help Chinese caught in the war zone. From the start, founder Shen Dunhe and his colleagues worked hand in glove with the government to realise this civic-led humanitarian initiative. Early on, Shen contacted the Foreign Ministry (Waijiaobu) to consult with Russian and Japanese ministers about issuing passports to Red Cross workers in the war zone. The Ministry of Commerce (Shangbu) served as a link between the Qing government and the Society.12 Weak as it was, the Qing government provided what services it could to the Society, depending on its elites to perform on its behalf when it was too politically precarious to step in itself. With services donated by the government’s railway authorities and telegraph administration, philanthropists from Shanghai travelled to the war zones and communicated with other aid providers, facilitating relief efforts and drumming up local Chinese patronage to aid victims and refugees.13 New technologies helped spread the word about the new Red Cross organisation and improved its effectiveness across the country.14 259

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The Qing government sanctioned all this activity, providing aid when and where it could. Notably it did not intervene in the Society’s direction or management.15 As the Society became more established, by-laws were adopted that institutionalised this relationship, allowing for the Society to accept the support of central and local governments when needed, but at the same time proclaiming the Society’s autonomy.16 The assumption of shared goals and complementary behaviour between government and the Society was implicit. The new Red Cross Society raised well over half a million Shanghai taels of silver through public subscription drives in 1904–1905, an excess of 120,000 taels beyond what it actually spent (Shanghai International Red Cross News Bulletin 1938). Donations poured in from Chinese, foreigners, overseas Chinese, and from other charitable organisations anxious to help. The majority of the funds came from Chinese themselves. Domestic donations ranged from anonymous contributions as small as $1.00 (about .73 Shanghai tael) to one personal donation of 100,000 taels ($175,000) from the Qing empress dowager.17 In spite of the bankrupt coffers of the imperial treasury, the Red Cross was able to accomplish much in its quasi-official capacity. These donations translated into aid for hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people. By the close of the Russo-Japanese War, the new Red Cross group evacuated over 130,000 refugees from Manchuria and coordinated more than 20 relief centres and hospitals. The final tally amounted to aid for more than a quarter of a million people. Medical relief, soup kitchens, travel assistance, clothing distribution and transient shelters were provided to the affected populations. After the war, there were still funds left over to continue building the organisation. The balance of the initial fund drive was applied to starting a Red Cross medical school and building a Red Cross hospital in Shanghai (Zhang 2004, p. 155). The activities of the Society continued throughout the entire Republican period (1911–1937), expanding in reach and sophistication, caring for Chinese across the entire country in war and disaster, working with governments as they emerged, and working despite them as they fell.

The Chinese Red Cross as an international actor Although formed as a civic organisation, the Red Cross Society of China served as a representative of the government at home and abroad, a situation that worked both for the state and for the private individuals involved with the Society. Recognition as a Red Cross member nation was important for any state, and acknowledgement of a national Red Cross Society by the ICRC was (and remains) ‘a standard early sign of Statehood’ (Best 1980, p. 345) conferring powerful international legitimacy on the sponsoring government. Emerging and embattled state powers looked to the Red Cross organisation to bolster their reputations domestically and internationally. Across Asia, the clout of the Red Cross organisation was widely recognised, and its stamp of approval highly sought after. The creation of the Red Cross Society of China was part of this efflorescence of Red Cross Societies blooming internationally during the early 20th century. The international cachet of having a national Red Cross Society was clear to the governments ruling China during this period, as it was to other states under siege by Western imperialism (Reeves 2005). The Qing dynasty had seen the formation of a national Red Cross Society primarily in terms of a diplomatic initiative, designed to boost China’s image in the international community and improve its army by updating its medical auxiliary.18 Individuals such as Shen Dunhe, who actually created a working, effective Society, saw the Red Cross mission as a mandate both to enhance China’s international stature and to improve domestic social welfare along traditional lines. This confluence of goals meant that while the Society operated during its first decades as an autonomous organisation, it did so with the explicit cooperation of the government. 260

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Contemporary Qing officials themselves recognised this affinity. The government-sponsored Xinzheng (New Policy) Reforms (1901–1911) were already creating an atmosphere of innovation, experimentation and increased efficiency in social administration which resonated with this initiative.19 In late March 1904, the Chinese minister to the United States, Liang Chen, contacted the Qing throne to encourage official recognition of the Chinese Red Cross Society. Liang stressed the prestige that would accrue to the dynasty by sponsoring such a benevolent group. He also made the point that this kind of quasi-private initiative would be a way to minimise the burden of war relief on the national treasury, especially if Red Cross branches could be integrated into already functioning charitable organisations known as shantang.20 This kind of government–civic partnership had been attempted in the 1870s when the government partnered with private interests to jumpstart industrialisation in China (the guandu-shangban – government supervision and merchant management – system21). The Qing court responded favourably. Through its new Society, China became a full international participant in the Red Cross movement. In 1904, the Qing adhered to the international Geneva Convention (Bulletin International des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge 1904, p. 190).22 In 1912, China’s Red Cross was officially recognised by the ICRC in Switzerland and became a full-fledged member (Bulletin International des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge 1912, pp. 8–9). The new Chinese Red Cross Society engaged in an active organisational life overseas, in many ways representing China abroad – despite not being a governmental organisation.23 The Society donated significant funds to Red Cross disaster relief in other countries, such as after earthquakes in San Francisco in 1906, in Kagoshima in 1914, and in Tokyo and Yokohama in 1923. In 1919, the Society put forward $20,000 to repatriate Chinese workers who were stranded in Germany and Austria-Hungary after the First World War. In turn, China’s Red Cross was also a recipient of international Red Cross aid (Central Committee of the Red Cross Society 1924, pp. 20, 25–26). Much as the Society’s activities in the national arena, these international dealings were neither dictated nor directed by China’s national government. Nonetheless, the convergence between China’s diverse governments’ desires to be recognised as world players and the prestige afforded by being part of the international Red Cross movement meant that the succession of governments in early 20th-century China continued to back China’s new Red Cross organisation. The success of China’s Red Cross could be measured not only by the international recognition it commanded, but also by its national growth. By 1924 it boasted over 40,000 members and 286 chapters (Central Committee of the Red Cross Society 1924, p. 55; Nanjing Daxue Chubanshe 1993, p. 155) and by 1934, almost 120,000 members and 500 chapters, operating even in remote areas of the country (Zhang 2004, pp. 269, 279). These members and chapters meant people and money to help the victims of the all but constant civil war occurring across China during this period and the ability to mobilise refuge, food, clothing, and medical care for the many victims in an already viciously poor, war-torn country. Despite the political flux of the period, Society leaders persistently courted and included government leaders – presidents, vice-presidents, ministers – as honorary office holders in their Red Cross organisation. Lesser or former officials were solicited for more active roles. The connection between the country’s social welfare and the state – even failing states – was still salient. Photographic portraits of government officials were highlighted in Chinese Red Cross periodicals, graphically documenting the importance of this relationship. In 1913, the Society produced a number of publications, all featuring cameo portraits of government dignitaries: for example, of Yuan Shikai and Li Yuanhong, president and vice-president of the new Republic, respectively, who served as honorary president and vice-president of the Society. Their images on the periodicals’ frontispieces convey official endorsement of the Red Cross group and a continuation of the symbiotic relationship between the government and the civic group started 261

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in the Qing. Throughout the first decades of the Society’s functioning, this photographic – and organisational – trend prevailed. The 1924 Twentieth Anniversary Commemorative Volume of the Chinese Red Cross Society included an entire section of photographic portraits dominated by cameos of government officers (Reeves 2015, pp. 123–128). Government officials continued to serve as honorary officers of the Society throughout its early history (a practice that was not unique to China; in the US, the president of the country has served as honorary president of the American Red Cross since Woodrow Wilson took the position in 1913).

A new statism comes to China The duality of the state–society relationship, always blurred in the China case, became further complicated during the late 1920s as the independence of peripheral elites rubbed up against the emerging centralising impetus of the Nationalist Guomindang (GMD) state (1927–1949 on mainland China). Setting the ball in motion for one of the most complete state-societal takeovers in history under the Chinese Communists, the GMD state began to assert explicit bureaucratic control over local civic organisations soon after its formal assumption of power in 1927. No longer comfortable sharing power based on a tacit concurrence of priorities as previous governments had been, the state now decided to consolidate its position by assuming tasks that had formerly been farmed out to China’s elite. With the Japanese takeover of Chinese territory and disruption of communications in the early 1930s, the new Nationalist Chinese government also realised the need to reassert its legitimacy, seriously damaged by its betrayal of the Communists and its weakness in the face of the Japanese onslaught. One way it sought to do so was to assume the time-honoured mantle of ‘Father and Mother of the People’ by taking charge of the Chinese people’s social welfare. Accordingly, the GMD became more interested in becoming involved with the Red Cross Society, whose national and international clout also made it an important asset to be included in the new state ‘corporation’.24 The Red Cross’s usefulness in war situations and its public acclaim might have convinced the Nationalists of the critical importance of subsuming the Red Cross group into its administration. For example, during the Shanghai Incident of 1932 when the Japanese bombed Shanghai (a precursor to the full-blown Asia Pacific War), the Red Cross mobilised 5,000 volunteers and organised 24 first-aid stations, 45 medical units, and almost a dozen IDP camps to save an estimated 17,000 victims (Tsao 1936, p. 57).25 Their actions were widely covered in the local and national press.26 Although the Red Cross Society of China had always worked with the ruling government (or governments, in a period when China was often under split rule) and with the understanding that it was acting in many senses on behalf of the government, the Society also always operated with a high degree of autonomy, particularly given the mutuality of goals. In 1933, however, the GMD began to take over control of the group’s leadership. Suddenly the Society changed its by-laws to allow the Ministry of the Interior and the Foreign Ministry to make regulations for the Society, and simultaneously added an organisational layer to its administration: ‘Government Affairs’.27 The Society now needed to register all its activities with the Ministry of the Interior and to petition the ministry for approval for many of its operations.28 On 24–28 September 1934, the Red Cross Society held a General Assembly,29 its normal democratic form of governance. Over 250 delegates from the branch Societies were there. This time, however, so were representatives from the Nationalist GMD government, some of them armed. At this meeting, according to General Secretary Tsao (Cao), the Society was completely ‘reorganiz[ed] under the auspices of the national government’ (Tsao 1936, pp. 59–63). From that meeting on, the Society’s autonomy was a thing of the past. 262

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The ICRC comes to China This government arrogation of power did not happen in a vacuum. The interwar period saw an efflorescence of statist ideology around the world and a growing appreciation for the statist paradigm, even by the ICRC itself (as well as in China, where Chiang Kaishek was an early fan of Hitler and fascism) (Kirby 1984). Throughout the 1930s, the ICRC urged national Red Cross Societies to affiliate more closely with their countries’ military and government. In fact, in the early 1930s, the ICRC sent representatives to China to meet with principals of the national Red Cross Society of China and of the Nationalist government to encourage increased state involvement in the organisation. This move was not unique to China. Taking place before the Second World War, the statist model had not yet been discredited by Japanese and Nazi abuses, and the fascist model was seen as widely desirable. Although by 1921 the principle of ‘political, religious, and economic Independence’ was incorporated into the ICRC’s statutes on humanitarian practice (IFRC, slide 4), the interpretation of that principle at that time was clearly different from how it is understood today. The late scholar John F. Hutchinson (1996, p. 350) has argued: With the advent of the new warfare [around the First World War period], the great powers . . . began to understand what a useful role . . . [national Red Cross] societies could play as mediators of the values of militarism and as promoters of what might be called a ‘discourse of sacrifice’ that drew the entire population into voluntary support for war. This potential of Red Cross Societies to serve as quasi-state military medical and relief organisations became increasingly attractive to those in international positions of power – including representatives of the ICRC. In fact, as Hutchinson 1996 has pointed out, there was a certain inevitability of national Societies being taken over as an arm of the state’s military. This transformation occurred in the USA in the early part of the 20th century (when the American Red Cross was reconfigured on the Japanese model), and had been the case with the Japanese Red Cross Society from its inception (Hutchinson 1996; Irwin 2013).30 After the Japanese invasion of Manchuria (1931), on the eve of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937) and the Asia Pacific War (1941–1945), the ICRC sent a representative to China to bring China into line with what it saw as the best practices of world humanitarianism. Its model was clearly based on the operations of the Japanese Red Cross Society, the preeminent Red Cross organisation in the world at the time, a leader in international humanitarian law, a wealthy donor to the international organisation, and a model of state-centric humanitarian action.31 Secretary of the ICRC Sidney Brown visited China twice in the early 1930s32 to advise the Chinese on ICRC policies and to report back to Geneva about what he found. During his visit to China, Brown pressed repeatedly for a tighter relationship between the national society and the Nationalist government. In his confidential report back to Switzerland, Brown wrote, ‘I insisted – perhaps too strongly? – on the traditional role of national Red Cross Societies as voluntary aid auxiliaries to army medical services’,33 and notes that he gave former Chinese Red Cross managing director Dr B.Y. Wong (Wang Peiyuan) explicit instructions to pursue this agenda with the government. Brown also included similar exhortations in his written report to the Chinese Committee: However important the peace time program of a national Red Cross Society may become . . . It is most important to emphasize that the principle object of the Chinese Red Cross is to act as a Voluntary Aid Organisation to the army medical services in war time. (Brown 1935b) 263

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(It is unclear if Brown realised the irony of his statement, since the Chinese Red Cross Society had been formed in war, and had had to deal with war relief almost constantly since its founding.) Brown was clearly cognisant of the Society’s earlier autonomy of governance and felt that the situation needed to be rectified. One way that Brown felt he could encourage this tightening of ties with the state was through personnel changes. During his visit and in his reports Brown paid particular attention to the leadership of the Chinese Society. Although the group had previously elected their leaders at their General Assemblies through a representative voting process, Brown felt that staffing choice was of paramount importance in strengthening the bond between the Chinese government and the Chinese Red Cross organisation. He therefore forcefully advocated for creating a leadership with links to the national government rather than a leadership blessed with humanitarian, administrative or medical credentials (Brown 1935b, pp. 4–5). Meeting with C.T. Wang (Wang Zhengting), the new president of the Red Cross of China, Brown describes this former minister of foreign affairs, responsible for negotiating the revocation of the unequal treaties and extraterritoriality as ‘influential, well listened to, and very close to the Generalissimo [Chiang Kaishek] and his clique’. Brown (1935a, n.p.) dubs Wang the ‘ideal president for the Chinese Red Cross at this moment which needs the protection of the government legally and financially’. Brown (1935a, n.p.) also introduces the new vice-president of the organisation, Monsieur Doo [Du Yuesheng,] a former Gangster Chief of Shanghai, a sort of Chinese Al Capone, who has become very rich but has kept the appearance of a Coolie. He claims to be well versed in social welfare activities, and that he is involved in a large number of charitable works of all sorts. There is no doubt that M. Doo is an excellent acquisition for the Chinese Red Cross! As Brown was sending this report, Du Yuesheng had been and still was the head of an illegal drug empire, a business he purportedly used the Red Cross network to expand.34 A close crony of the GMD leadership, he also passed muster with Brown. Brown (1935a) goes on to note that C.T. Wang had appointed former diplomat Y.S. Tsao (Cao Yunxiang) as executive director of China’s Red Cross Society, a man who ‘is of inestimable worth at the present moment, [because he is] a childhood friend of Mme Chiang Kai-shek, who is tout-a-fait the first lady and who fills posts with her protégés’. These kudos came despite the fact that Tsao (in Brown’s own words) ‘had never heard of the Red Cross before December 1934’ (1935a, n.p.). Brown’s implication is that these men’s worth to the Red Cross was their link to the national government – not their humanitarian or administrative or medical skills. The principal issue for Brown was to strengthen the ties between the Chinese state and the Chinese Red Cross organisation. Thus despite the seeming timelessness and immutability of the ‘Dunantist principles’ of the ICRC, we can see that the interpretation and application of these principles have indeed changed over time. ‘Neutrality – Impartiality – Independence’ were practised quite differently by ICRC delegates sent to spread the Red Cross movement around the world in the early 1930s. Sydney Brown’s encouragement – even insistence – that the previously autonomous Chinese Red Cross Society enhance and strengthen its ties to the extremely partisan and controversial Nationalist government (which had recently massacred Chinese communists in the streets in cold blood and was still in open war against them), regardless of the integrity of its officials seems to controvert the Red Cross principle of independence as we experience it today. Acting on behalf of the ICRC, Sydney Brown encouraged behaviours that now, in the 21st century, we see as clearly at odds with what we understand as the very basics of the Red Cross credo. 264

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Conclusion: toward a more universal ‘universalism’ The three examples of state-centric aid provision that I have detailed in this chapter – the fledgling Red Cross Society of China working autonomously but very much as a right arm of the state; the GMD state insisting on control of a previously very autonomous Chinese Red Cross organisation; and an ICRC encouraging increased state penetration of the national Red Cross Society of China – show that (1) state involvement does not necessarily mean a sinister political hijacking of humanitarianism and (2) the origins of state involvement in humanitarian aid in China not only preceded fascism, Leninism, and Maoism, but also, while initiated by the Chinese, was also pushed hard by Westerners in the International Red Cross organisation. In the 21st century, as China’s potential to participate in global humanitarianism grows, China’s current ‘state-centric’ approach to the humanitarian enterprise is still considered suspect. However, China boasts a philanthropic tradition that goes back more than 1,000 years, and international humanitarian involvement stretching back over 100 years, independent of the Christian or Enlightenment North (also see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, this volume). These traditions have emerged in cooperation with the state, rather than in opposition to it. Their legitimacy and efficacy are no less valuable than Western traditions or conceptions of philanthropy, humanitarianism and compassion, and Chinese impulses toward humanitarianism should not a priori be considered suspect. To develop a truly global notion of humanitarianism, then, we need first to understand and then to embrace this Asian tradition of philanthropy, to appreciate how even Western notions of humanitarianism can vary through time and space, and to try to incorporate those ideas into our ‘universalist’ principles. As Pichamon Yeophantong has observed, ‘Humanitarianism is not static, nor monolithic. It has evolved and it is influenced by a variety of historical and political factors’ (cited in Hirono and O’Hagan 2012, p. 8). This statement must be understood to include even Dunantist humanitarianism before we can begin to incorporate much needed adjustments into our practices of humanitarianism. Especially when we contemplate the recent attraction of the statist model even in the still NGO-obsessed global North, Chinese state-centric humanitarianism should not be viewed as yet another manifestation of an evil empire’s nefarious machinations. Historically and culturally contingent, suspicion of the state’s role in the humanitarian enterprise is not an immutable, insurmountable tenet of humanitarianism. The history of China’s involvement with international humanitarianism offers insights into how the global humanitarian community can become more universal. This history is not to say that there might not be some political machinations going on in some GONGOs (government-organised non-governmental organisations) or state-administered aid programmes, but this history does suggest that there are many Chinese people (and other peoples of the global South) motivated by genuine humanitarian impulses, and that it is possible for state involvement in humanitarian aid in China to put humanitarian goals first. Thus we cannot label all Chinese aid initiatives as necessarily corrupt (also see Cabral, this volume); rather, we are faced in the global South with the same complex task we have with Northern aid organisations: the imperative to examine each individual organisation’s and initiative’s goals, structure, finances, and history to determine whether they are genuinely furthering humanitarian goals. If the international community – particularly the international humanitarian community – is to maintain its claim to openness and universal legitimacy (based on the universality of the imperative to relieve suffering) (Slim 2015, p. 34) as well as to access the monies it seeks from China and other non-traditional donors, this group is going to have to learn to work with China, the other BRIICS (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China, and South Africa), and other emerging donors, a step that necessitates a deeper understanding of the traditions and imperatives of those countries’ giving. A better understanding of their histories and our own will facilitate that task. 265

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Notes 1 2016 IMF estimated figure. 2 Many observers note that the term ‘emerging’ ignores a longer history of international charitable involvement on the part of a number of countries, particularly China. Quadir (2013, p. 323) makes this point. 3 Naim’s short article ‘Rogue Aid’ (2009) puts it most bluntly. The phenomenon is also pointed out in Binder and Conrad (2009) and in Woods (2008) who note that ‘China is at the forefront of this new anxiety’ (p. 1206). See also Hirono (2013, p. 204). 4 Barnett and Weiss (2008, pp. 11–12) discuss the myth of altruism. 5 Naim even points the finger at America. 6 Naim’s word. 7 The United Nations Development Program’s 2013 Human Development Report, ‘The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World’, tries to be more open to these countries, dancing around distaste for the model of state-centrism by coining a new term for states like China – ‘developmental states’, which they take great pains to demonstrate are not necessarily authoritarian states (Malik 2013). Despite the prominence of China in the report, there is no Chinese national included in the list of authors or consultants with the exception of two fact checkers noted in the acknowledgements, and China was not visited during preparation of the report (ibid., p. 4). 8 There is some confusion over which principle is most applicable when discussing state-centred humanitarianism. Hirono (2013) suggests ‘neutrality’, whereas in discussions with ICRC staff, I have understood the most relevant principle to be ‘independence’ (Daudin 2012). 9 Deng and Zhao (2014, p. 97) agrees but does not acknowledge the pre-socialist history of governmentlinked social welfare initiatives. 10 Mann develops this idea (1987, particularly Chapter 2). 11 Scholars have recently begun to explore a range of charitable organisations from the late Qing and Republican era, many with religious components (e.g. Edgerton-Tarpley 2008; DuBois 2015; Fuller 2013; among others). 12 Fang, 1984, 2:40. 13 Shenbao July 29, 30, 1904; Beijing zazhi 3 (1904): 32–37; Red Cross Society Articles of Association, Shanghai 1912; Chinese Red Cross Society Central Committee Articles of Association, Shanghai 1922. 14 See Stapleton (2014, pp. 120–137) for more on the importance of the marriage of technology and philanthropy. 15 This hands-off period is broken when the Qing takes over the Red Cross and renames it the Da Qing Hongshizihui briefly (1907–1909) before the 1911 Xinhai Revolution, but by that time the Qing is so weakened that most independent operations continue regardless of the name-change, including working for both sides as a neutral organisation during the Revolution itself. 16 Red Cross Society Articles of Association 1922: Article 15 of Section 5 states, ‘The Society may accept the support from the Central Government as well as local governments’; further on, Article 65 extends the option to Society chapters, saying,‘In times of war, local branch offices may receive support and subsidies from the Head Office [of the Red Cross] and from local authorities.’ 17 US Legation at Peking Document 1621, 30 May 1904; imperial edict dated 24 May 1904. The tael was worth about $1.75 in 1904 US dollars. This money might have been a personal donation or from the Qing fisc, but either way, its implication was imperial sanction. 18 For a discussion of this process, see Reeves (2005, pp. 64–93). 19 See Duara (1995, pp. 160–167) for a recent discussion of these reforms. 20 This memorial is reprinted in Dongfang Zazhi (December 1904, p. 417), and Lishi Dangan (1984, 2:40). Some consider Liang a founder of the Chinese Red Cross Society; see Lo’s article on Liang Chen for a discussion of Liang’s role in founding the Chinese Red Cross Society (Shen 1984, pp. 674–676).This push reminds me of US President Bush’s January 2001 White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. 21 Ko (2016) reviews the literature on guandu-shangban enterprises. See particularly pp. 29–30. 22 For documents on China’s participation in the early Geneva Conventions, see the Academia Sinica’s Waiwubu Archives, section 02-21, Baohehui, Hongshizihui (The Hague Conventions and Red Cross Society), Academia Sinica, Nangang, Taiwan. There is much confusion over the actual date of China’s adherence to this Convention and to the Geneva Convention of 1906. 23 This quasi-official nature of Red Cross Societies abroad was not unique to China. The situation with the American Red Cross is the subject of Reeves (2016). 266

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24 On the timing of the assertion of state corporatism, I agree more with Brian Martin’s assessment (1996, p. 161) than with Joseph Fewsmith (1985, pp. 159–166), who locates the critical moment in 1929 with the imposition of the new laws regulating associational activity. 25 Dahui Tekan, dashiji section, 67–69 (Central Committee of the Red Cross Society 1924). Also Shanghai Evening Post, 8 March 1932 ‘Many Hospitals Treat Wounded:Various Organizations and Volunteers Aid Red Cross Work’ puts the number at 41 hospitals and four displaced people’s centres, but of course this is early in the crisis. The 1934 report on the Chinese Red Cross notes that 200 members of the Shanghai Medical Association and ‘300 volunteers (boyscout detachments and students)’ worked with the Red Cross. It also reports that 42 of 54 emergency hospitals set up in the International Settlement and French Concession were organised by the Red Cross Society. This report is based on de Gielgud (1934, p. 6). 26 See Shanghai Evening Post, mentioned above, and Shenbao, which covered the Red Cross activities every day from 30 January 1932 through 15 March 1932 in multiple articles per day (Chi 2011, vol. 3, pp. 576–628). 27 Zhonghua Hongshizihui Zhengqiuhuiyuan dahui tekan, 1933 chart. 28 Ibid. 29 For a general account of the decisions made at this meeting, see Gu (1994, p. 53) and Tsao (1936, 59–63). 30 In 1900,The Japanese Red Cross had the largest membership of any national Red Cross Society in the world. 31 Reeves (2011) discusses the Japanese Red Cross model; see also Käser (2016, particularly pp. 3 and 12). 32 Although the Japanese denied a state of war, the ICRC did refer to the period 1931–1933 as war. Rainer Baudendistel (2006, pp. 18–19). Baudendistel (2006, p. xv) also reveals biographical information about Brown unavailable elsewhere, such as his dismissal from the ICRC in 1936 because of his humanitarian activism and his homosexuality. 33 ‘Report [to the ICRC] from Mr. Sidney H. Brown on his Stay in China from 17 December 1934 to 15 January 1935’ (translated from the French), 18 January 1935, delivered to the International Committee of the Red Cross, pp. 4–5. ICRC Archives 00/14. This report is quite different from the one presented to the Chinese Red Cross. This assessment is echoed in much more disparaging tones in the new managing director Y.S. Tsao’s article (Tsao 1936). 34 Martin (1996) gives more detail about Du. Another interesting source on Du Yuesheng is W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood (1939, p. 161), who met Du in Du’s capacity as Red Cross vice president.

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20 South–South cooperation in international organisations Its conceptualisation and implementation within UNDP and UNHCR Naohiko Omata

Introduction This chapter explores how South–South cooperation (SSC) has been conceptualised in international organisations and implemented through their assistance activities. South–South partnerships now occupy a central seat in the policy arena of international organisations. Indeed, with the United Nations General Assembly having emphasised the potential of Southern actors as ‘the agents of change’, many international organisations have been increasingly promoting and mainstreaming SSC as an ‘innovative and adaptable solution’ to address common challenges facing the global South. Notwithstanding the extensive advocacy and promotion of South–South initiatives within and across international agencies, there is a paucity of research that systematically investigates the concept and implementation of SSC within these organisations. Among a number of international organisations, this chapter focuses on two United Nations agencies: the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Through a comparative study of the UN’s ‘development’ and ‘refugee’ agencies, the chapter argues that the applicability of SSC differs among UN organisations depending on their institutional mandates and throws critical light on the extensive promotion of SSC among international organisations. This chapter draws on a review of existing literature including policy documents regarding SSC, and on a range of semi-structured interviews with (former and current) senior staff members of UNHCR and UNDP, including the United Nations Office for South–South Cooperation (UNOSCC), which were conducted between December 2016 and February 2017. The latter is hosted within UNDP and serves as the substantive secretariat of the UN General Assembly on South–South cooperation and works to promote SSC across all UN agencies. In addition, the chapter is informed by my own experiences of working with both UNDP and UNHCR as an employee or consultant. This chapter consists of the following sections. First, I survey the literature and policy documents on SSC and provide an overview of its history, concept and modality among UN agencies. Next, drawing upon studies of UNDP and UNHCR, I explore how the idea of 270

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SSC has been conceptualised and operationalised in practice within these two UN agencies with contrasting mandates. Finally, I present some key implications of SSC in the context of UN agencies and conclude with ways forward by addressing potential research agendas for the future.

SSC in the UN system: history, concept and modality Historical overview The emergence of SSC in the UN system dates back several decades. In 1964, the theme of economic cooperation among developing countries drew attention and resulted in the establishment of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Ten years later, a broad framework for collaboration among Southern states was formally recognised by the United Nations, and in 1974, the UN General Assembly endorsed the establishment of a special unit within UNDP to promote technical cooperation among developing countries. The milestone for the promotion of SSC came in 1978 with the United Nations Conference on Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries, which was held in Buenos Aires (UNDP 2011).1 At this conference, the UN General Assembly adopted the Buenos Aires Plan of Action for Promoting and Implementing Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries (BAPA), which calls upon the UN family to act as promoters and catalysts of technical cooperation among developing countries. The UN General Assembly also created a Unit for South-South Cooperation2 within UNDP to promote South–South trade and collaboration within the UN system and set up the strategic aims and global framework for SSC (ibid.). This approach has been updated with the 2009 Nairobi Outcome Document, highlighting the need to reinvigorate the UN system by further promoting SSC through mainstreaming it in all agencies. Since the adaptation of the 1978 BAPA, most UN agencies have been mandated to lend thematic and sectoral support in their respective areas of competence. For example, UNCTAD provides support in the area of South–South trade and investment; the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in food security and agriculture; the World Health Organization (WHO) in health; and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in industrialisation (UNDP 2009).

The concept of SSC Within the UN, SCC is defined as: a process whereby two or more developing countries pursue their individual and/or shared national capacity development objectives through exchanges of knowledge, skills, resources and technical know-how, and through regional and interregional collective actions . . . for their mutual benefit within and across regions. (High-level Committee on South–South Cooperation 2012a) This UN definition identifies pursuit of ‘mutual benefit’ as the central element in the formation of SSC (Task Team on South–South Cooperation 2011). The emphasis on mutual benefit cannot be separated from articulations of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles in the post-Second World War period (Modi 2011). The promotion of SSC was then conceptualised as a way of pursuing common economic interests and trade as part of efforts to advance 271

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economic independence from former colonial powers, thereby overcoming the exploitative nature of North–South relations (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015 and this volume; Mishra 2016; Aneja, this volume). Hence, today, SSC is largely perceived as an instrument for propelling development and economic growth in the UN regime. This is why South–South partnerships are typically characterised by international organisations as an embodiment of solidarity, self-determination and self-reliance among developing countries. For instance, at the 2009 High-level UN Conference on South–South Cooperation in Nairobi, the UN General Assembly reaffirmed its view of SSC as ‘a manifestation of solidarity among Southern states’ that aim to contribute to their well-being and their national and collective self-reliance. Also, in the other document, the UN system has highlighted the importance of ‘horizontal partnership’ based on equity in South–South collaboration (Task Team on South–South Cooperation 2011).

Modalities of SSC Because of this historical and ideological origin, SSC is different from official assistance from the North to the South (Modi 2011), and implementation modalities of SSC also differ from traditional aid between donors and recipients. As highlighted in the BAPA, SSC is essentially a form of technical cooperation, which is broadly understood as the provision of education or training to recipient countries. Therefore, modalities of SSC typically involve knowledge sharing, technology transfer, as well as exchange of skills, experiences and best practices (UN System Task Team 2013; UNDP 2016a). In terms of the implementation of South–South initiatives, the documents produced by UN organisations place a particular emphasis on respect for national sovereignty and non-interference in domestic issues (UNCTAD 2010; UNDP 2016a). In turn, in its 2013 Human Development Report, UNDP highlights that the implementation of SSC needs to adhere to the principle of sovereignty and should not result in undermining the collective welfare and the well-being of other countries (UNDP 2013a). Meanwhile, the report also warns that over-emphasising the primacy of sovereignty and non-interference in internal agendas can lead to a risk of cross-border rivalries and zero-sum thinking among Southern stakeholders.

SSC in the UN Development Agency The suitability of SSC for UNDP’s work Founded in 1965, UNDP is the largest UN agency, working in approximately 170 countries with over 5,000 staff members worldwide. As the UN development agency, its core mandate is to support developing countries to create and nourish policies, partnering abilities, and institutional capacities in order to achieve sustainable development. Given its broad organisational mandate, UNDP’s thematic coverage is extensive, encompassing poverty reduction, private sector development, climate change, crisis prevention, gender equality, disaster relief, democratic governance and peacebuilding. In recent years, the increasing relevance and importance of SSC has been stressed within the UN system (High-level Committee on South–South Cooperation 2012a; UN General Assembly 2014). While a number of UN agencies aim to promote SSC, UNDP recognises itself as a leading organisation implementing such forms of cooperation. According to its organisational website, in 2015 UNDP reported 689 programmes across 132 countries that have utilised 272

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SSC, covering more than 15% of the UNDP’s total programmes. Additionally, nearly one-fifth of UNDP country offices worldwide reported that SSC has been substantially and systematically utilised to achieve development results. The concept of SSC is well suited to UNDP’s mandate. As described above, SSC is predominantly conceptualised as a ‘development tool’ in the UN system (for critiques of such an instrumentalised approach, see Muhr, this volume, and Muhr and Azevedo, this volume). UNDP explicitly situates SSC as one of its key strategic pillars. In its Strategic Plan 2014–2017, the organisation states: ‘UNDP proposes to make South–South a core way of working in its programmes and operations at the global, regional and country levels’ (UNDP 2013b). Within UNDP, SSC is mainstreamed in most sectors, including economic growth, knowledge management, private sector development, gender, and energy and environment (UNDP 2011). The increased organisational commitment to South–South collaboration culminated in the publication of the 2013 Human Development Report entitled The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World (UNDP 2013a). Identification of mutual benefit – a key element in the formulation of South–South initiatives – is particularly relevant to some of UNDP’s key thematic areas, such as poverty reduction and private sector development. A senior UNDP employee who consolidated several South–South partnerships commented in our interview: The idea of South–South cooperation is quite natural to our organisational activities. Originally, South–South collaboration emanated from pursuit of common economic benefits and trade between developing states. Trading activities and private sector development are both UNDP’s thematic mandates. In these areas, it is relatively straightforward to identify mutual benefits between involved Southern countries. In line with this approach, in 2016, UNOSSC published a report compilation of ‘good practices’ in SSC. Several examples of these good practices are trade in food, energy and agricultural crops between Southern states, in which UNDP had an important facilitation role (UNOSSC 2016).

Promoting South–South initiatives as a catalyst The concept of SSC is operationalised within UNDP through a range of modalities. In line with its organisational mandates, UNDP has positioned itself as a knowledge broker and partnership facilitator when Southern countries work together to find solutions to common development challenges (UN General Assembly 2014). In one of the key strategic documents on SSC, UNDP states its ‘value position’ vis-à-vis South–South initiatives as follows (UNDP 2016b): The rich experience gathered by developing countries and the growth of South-South cooperation have converged to create a historic opportunity . . . Success in tapping this opportunity will not be automatic. It will require the active involvement of institutions with global reach and operations. Those best positioned will need to combine deep knowledge of local experiences and institutions with the ability to bring promising ideas, solutions and achievements to a larger audience and, where there is mutual interest, help reach agreement, take practical action and evaluate results. These requirements are a good fit with the institutional profile of UNDP. In the absence of a universal or regional match-making platform, brokering between demand and supply is one of the most important added values that the UN agencies can provide to 273

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developing countries engaged in SSC. In our interview, one UNDP staff member described the coordinating role of UNDP in formulating South–South collaboration: In South–South cooperation, UNDP works as a catalyst. We work in many different countries including middle-income and high-income countries such as China, Mexico, Brazil, and India, and have extensive information networks. Also, we cover a range of thematic areas. With all of these institutional assets, we are best positioned to make a ‘deal’ between different countries across regions. The catalytic role of UNDP in SSC resonates with my own experiences at UNDP in Ghana where I was involved in formulating a number of South–South partnerships. One of them was technical knowledge transfer in the fishery industry between South Korea and Ghana. The offer of supply came to UNDP’s Ghana office from the South Korean government through UNDP South Korea and the South Korean embassy in Ghana. In some major port cities in Ghana, South Korean fishery business had a clear presence. The Ghanaian government had considerable interest in strengthening fishery as part of private sector development through acquiring expertise and know-how from the advanced South Korean fishery industry. Meanwhile, the government of the Republic of Korea had a strong interest in building its reputation as a provider of technical aid, and was also seeking a tacit benefit of expanding fishery rights in Ghana. With visible and clear benefits for both recipient and provider sides, making a ‘win-win’ situation was relatively straightforward. In addition to this example, during my work with UNDP between 2005 and 2007, I organised several capacity-building initiatives for West African states. These activities took the form of study visits and tours, workshops, training courses and sharing technical expertise in the areas of private sector development. In a broad sense, all of these initiatives were viewed as SSC as they took place between Southern states such as Ghana, Malaysia, Republic of Korea, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Liberia. While promoting South–South collaboration, I remained uncertain about the impact of these initiatives in which I was involved, given the lack of specific evaluation systems at the time. Through a series of recent interviews with staff members of UNDP and UNOSCC, I discovered that adequate monitoring and evaluation criteria for SSC is still absent, despite widespread promotion and advocacy by UNDP. One senior UNOSSC employee frankly admitted: This [the lack of evaluation criteria] is a long unresolved issue for us. It is clear that traditional types of monitoring and evaluation in UNDP do not work well with South–South cooperation because it is a different modality of support. But it is not easy to measure or quantify impacts of South–South cooperation. This is a future homework for us. The absence of a systematic and measurable evaluation system, however, does not necessarily diminish the importance of South–South initiatives within UNDP. As indicated above, the values of promoting collaboration among Southern countries go beyond the achievement of tangible and quantifiable outcomes upon which many forms of traditional development aid tend to focus. Referred to as ‘horizontal partnership’, SSC represents an innovative form of international aid based on equity and aims to unleash the potential of Southern actors from entrenched North–South relationships. Coupled with an increasing presence of powerful Southern states such as China, Brazil and India in the development arena, SSC is widely promoted in the UN Development Agency as an effective complement to traditional development assistance (UNDP 2016b). 274

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SSC in the UN Refugee Agency ‘Mutual benefits’ for refugee protection? Refugees are people who cross international borders in order to flee their country of origin due to conflict, violence and persecution. The UN refugee agency – UNHCR – was created after the Second World War to serve two core purposes: (1) to ensure protection of refugees and (2) to find a solution to their plight. In contrast to UNDP, UNHCR has a low profile amid the extensive promotion of SSC in the UN system. The most recent UNHCR’s Strategic Directions 2017–2021 made literally no references to SSC or any similar thinking. A former UNHCR staff member who worked for the organisation for more than three decades was perplexed when I requested an interview with him about SSC in UNHCR: Well, I am not very familiar with South–South cooperation. As far as I understand, it is a development concept, which is not really the scope of UNHCR. Within UNHCR, we have no policy or definition of South–South cooperation. I believe that most UNHCR staff never even thought about it [South–South cooperation] in their work. Indeed, SSC is still largely seen as a development agenda among UN agencies. In the report which has compiled ‘good practices’ in SSC, UNOSCC specifically focuses on ‘sustainable development’ with no mention of either ‘UNHCR’ or ‘refugees’, an indicator that these issues fall conceptually outside of current thinking around South–South collaboration.3 As explained above, ‘mutual benefit’ is a key underpinning of SSC. Nevertheless, mutual benefit is hard to conceptualise in refugee assistance. Instead, as one UNHCR staff said to me, ‘mutual benefit in development is equivalent to burden sharing in refugee protection’. As is widely known, refugee-hosting countries and UNHCR typically conceptualise refugees as a ‘burden’ (Gottwald 2014). The Preamble to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention states: ‘The grant of asylum may place unduly heavy burdens on certain countries.’ Notwithstanding the absence of convincing evidence (FiddianQasmiyeh et al. 2011), the prevailing notion is that the arrival of refugees can strain resources in a host state and even create unrest and a security threat to their host and region (Colson 2004; Daley 2013; Kagan 2012). Crucially, the predominant portion of the responsibilities to protect refugees rests with the global South. According to UNHCR, at the end of 2016, 84% of world’s 15 million refugees resided in the developing South, with 28% of them being hosted in the least developed countries (UNHCR 2017a). Countries that share borders with refugee-generating states habitually receive large numbers of refugees fleeing their country of origin or habitual residence because most refugees are not able to seek asylum further afield. Meanwhile, Northern states reject the majority of those who seek asylum in their territories and have made very little contribution to relieving pressure on refugee-hosting countries (Hollifield 2007; Bull 2011). Thus, many of the protection responsibilities for refugees fall on Southern countries, despite most of these states lacking the resources to support these refugees (UNHCR 2017b). Given the negative perceptions attached to refugees and the unfair distribution of the protection responsibilities, it has become increasingly difficult for UNHCR to persuade states to host refugees, and efforts to foster cooperation have rarely been successful in the South (Loescher 2014). Instead, Southern states are more likely to attempt to shift responsibility for refugees to other countries. This, in turn, means that refugee-hosting turns out to be a ‘zero-sum game’ between refugee-hosting states in the South. Far from matching demand and 275

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supply as in trade or commercial transactions, the UN refugee agency has become involved in monitoring states’ border control practices to ensure that refugees are not forced back to their country of origin against their will. In response, states have often attempted to exclude or limit UNHCR’s presence, and have increasingly devised their own responses to refugees in recent years (Loescher 2014). In the context of refugee assistance, solidarity – an ideological underpinning of SSC – finds less space than in development aid (for exceptions, including Latin American and Caribbean states’ approaches to refugee assistance, see Cantor, this volume, and Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, this volume). Drawing upon his many years of experience with Southern governments hosting a large number of refugees, a senior UNHCR officer gave me his personal view of why SSC is not promoted within UNHCR: You said South–South cooperation is based on mutual benefits. But what are those in refugee assistance? I cannot think of a situation that involved states find common interests. I know that many Southern states are angry with the current structure of unfair burden sharing. The North has been putting refugees in the developing region and makes little contribution. In my view, UNHCR should first demand the North to bear a fair distribution of burden before asking other developing countries to cooperate each other to support refugees. I don’t think South–South cooperation is a useful concept for UNHCR.

Challenges of implementing South–South initiatives in UNHCR The modalities of South–South initiatives seem less relevant to UNHCR’s core mandates of providing protection and a solution for refugees. As already described above, in the absence of identifiable common benefits, coupled with negative perceptions attached to refugees, ‘matching demand and supply’ makes little sense for UNHCR. While technical support such as exchange of knowledge and sharing best practices between Southern states can be useful, they do not – from UNHCR’s perspective – directly contribute to refugee protection and search for a solution for refugees. Furthermore, a UNDP senior employee suspected that the reactive mode of humanitarian agencies makes it hard for the UN refugee agency to employ SSC in their operations: Making South–South initiatives requires a long-term vision and strategic planning. Before making a deal, it involves numerous negotiations between involved actors and UNDP . . . I know UNHCR staff need to respond quickly to emergencies to save people’s life. These emergencies usually emerge in an unpredictable way. Such situations are not conducive to the modalities of South–South partnerships. However, this is not to say that such cooperation and negotiation do not exist in refugee assistance. As the definition indicates, South–South alliances can also be implemented at a regional level. UNHCR’s support for the formulation of the Cartagena framework in Latin America and the Caribbean is a pertinent illustration of regional South–South approaches in refugee assistance (see Cantor, this volume). Some concrete forms of cooperation relating to refugee issues have originated from this framework; for instance, the ‘solidarity resettlement programme’ emerged in 2004 in light of the Colombian refugee crisis, with the overarching objective to transform Latin America into the largest and most promising emerging resettlement area in the world (De Andrade 2014; Jubilut and Carneiro 2011; also see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, this volume). Notably, the idea has been already translated into practice in Argentina, Brazil, 276

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Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. While many Northern states have implemented refugee policies designed to deflect refugees from entering the developed North, Latin American states have fostered a sense of regional solidarity and responsibility sharing in the area of refugee protection within the developing South (Harley 2014). While the example of refugee resettlement in Latin American highlights the potential for South–South initiatives to strengthen refugee protection, UNHCR’s promotion of regional ‘solutions’ for refugees in other parts of the global South should be viewed with caution. For example, in West Africa, UNHCR has actively sought the sub-regional integration of refugees as citizens of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) member countries. However, ECOWAS is not a refugee-protecting body but rather a regional confederation of 15 West African states, which was founded to promote economic integration and trade activities across the region. Nonetheless, UNHCR had been focusing on the ECOWAS’s existing treaty not only as an instrument of regional economic integration but also as an ‘innovative regional solution’ for protracted refugees in West Africa (Fresia 2014; Boulton 2009). While these regional integration schemes can be viewed as a form of SSC, the promotion of such approaches can be used by the North as another technique of keeping ‘the burden’ of refugees in the South.4

Implications and discussion Despite the mainstreaming of SSC in the UN system, the comparison of UNDP and UNHCR elucidates noticeable differences in the degree to which they incorporate South–South initiatives into their organisational strategies and programmes. The findings in this chapter lead to the following implications and discussion points regarding SSC and international organisations. First, the comparative analysis of the cases above indicates that the institutional mandate and nature of the work determine the extent to which SSC is adoptable and/or relevant among different UN agencies. As demonstrated above, the most fundamental element of South–South alliances is the pursuit of ‘mutual benefits’. In the areas of private sector development, trade and poverty reduction, which are all UNDP’s thematic topics, benefits are usually visible and concrete for involved states, thereby making it easy to formulate a ‘win-win’ situation. In the context of refugee protection, however, mutual benefits often do not exist (or at least they are invisible) in that refugees are seen as a ‘burden’ and hosting them is believed to produce negative impacts on a host state.5 Three decades ago, Iida wrote: ‘countries in the Global South are united in economic and trade issues but not necessarily in other areas such as human rights and security where reciprocity is difficult to be formulated’ (Iida 1988). His observation is still largely applicable to the current situation of refugee protection in the South. Second, modalities matter in operationalising the idea of SSC in the activities and programmes of UN agencies. As noted above, UNDP focuses on building the capacity of developing countries in a wide range of thematic areas. Modalities of South–South collaboration such as exchange or sharing of knowledge, best practices and technology are suited to promote and achieve the objective of capacity development. On the other hand, while capacity building is part of UNHCR’s work, the essential task for UNHCR remains as working with states to provide protection and solutions to millions of refugees worldwide. A UNHCR staff member informed me in an interview: ‘We will not be evaluated by the number of capacity building initiatives we organized. We need to solve refugee situations.’ In addition, the formulation of South–South deals requires long-term planning, which is perceived to be not suited to agencies that operate in emergency contexts that often unfold in unpredictable ways (for a critique of this line of argumentation, see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2018). 277

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Third, the analysis above raises an important question: to what extent is SSC an effective approach for UNHCR in the current situation of forced displacement? During interviews with UNHCR staff members, most expressed their suspicion about the value of such cooperation in refugee protection and echoed that UNHCR should not pursue it given the lack of responsibility of the North for refugee problems. As discussed above, the international refugee regime has been characterised by a North–South power asymmetry, and Northern countries have increasingly focused on policies aimed at containing refugees in their region of origin (Betts and Loescher 2011). Under such a circumstance, drawing more commitment from the South could potentially exacerbate the already unfair distribution of ‘burden’ (or responsibility) between the South and North. There are indeed critiques against the promotion of ‘regional solutions’ such as an ECOWAS integration model that leaves more responsibility on the shoulders of Southern states, thereby further deflecting responsibilities away from the North (Slaughter and Crisp 2009; Omata 2016). Fourth, however, while UNHCR staff members generally see less relevance of SSC for their work than UNDP officials, that perception should not lead them to underestimate the potential of South–South alliances. As discussed above, Latin America’s steps toward refugee assistance, aligned with the principles of regional solidarity, represent an important case study for examining the adaptability of South–South concepts in refugee protection. Also, in terms of modalities, since the average duration of refugees’ exile is now more than two decades, refugee assistance needs to be built on a longer vision and to support programmes that give more space to incorporate South–South approaches that are usually formed through long-term negotiation among key stakeholders (see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2019, forthcoming). UNHCR and other international organisations should rigorously assess the impact of these South–South cooperative models on refugees’ rights and welfare, while simultaneously seeking strategies to increase the degree of commitment and responsibility from Northern actors. Finally, UNDP’s extensive promotion and advocacy of SSC deserves careful scrutiny. One of the frequent critiques is the increasing presence of comparatively rich and powerful Southern states such as Brazil, China and India in the current practice of South–South development cooperation, which is facilitated by UNDP. UNDP has recently made strategic partnership agreements with Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa and Turkey (UN General Assembly 2014; High-level Committee on South–South Cooperation 2012b). In UNDP-led cooperation initiatives, these middle-income countries are major providers of technical assistance to other developing states. This, in turn, raises a question to UNDP: to what extent is the current practice of SSC different from traditional North–South aid and in which ways is it meeting the original aim of overcoming the exploitative nature of North–South relations? Some critiques claim that the current SSC might be leading to creation of ‘South within the South’ (Ladd 2010) and marginalising the least developed countries in the name of South–South partnerships (Malhatra 2010).

Ways forward This chapter has examined how SSC has been understood and implemented within international organisations by comparing two UN agencies with contrasting mandates: UNDP and UNHCR. Notwithstanding the extensive promotion of South–South initiatives in the UN system, this study reveals that the adaptability of the concept and modality of such collaboration is not universal among UN organisations due to different mandates and operational contexts. This, in turn, sheds light on the limitations and risks of over-emphasising the value of SSC in certain domains of the UN agencies, as illustrated with the example of refugee protection by UNHCR. 278

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This research has aimed to be a preliminary attempt to provide a systematic approach to understanding the relationship between South–South collaboration and international organisations. Certainly, this is not intended to be an exhaustive study; rather, my objective has been to identify potential future research agendas for academics, practitioners and policy-makers to fill empirical and analytical lacunae around this topic. An obvious next step is to complete more case study-based research vis-à-vis different types of international organisations to substantiate the observations and findings presented in this chapter. In particular, it would be revealing to investigate how South–South alliances have been perceived and employed in other agencies working in the areas of humanitarian support and migration, such as the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and the International Organization for Migration. UNDP also has an important responsibility to support further investigation in this field. As mentioned above, the organisation needs to develop systematic assessment criteria tailored to the mission of SSC. In current practice, while many UNDP-led collaborative projects between Southern states are considered ‘achievements’, we really do not know whether these initiatives have produced positive outcomes for promoting development. In particular, given the increasing presence of emerging and non-traditional Southern donors including China, India and Russia, it necessitates scrutiny to understand to what extent the current practice and concept of SSC are driven by the underlying principles of South–South movements. For UNHCR, South–South collaboration is largely a foreign concept. However, the current daunting magnitude of forced displacement necessitates more innovative and united approaches for refugee assistance. As discussed above, new approaches are emerging that are based on collaboration between Southern countries aiming to improve the protection and well-being of refugees. These approaches might offer useful insights into the construction of an innovative model of support that is formulated on collaboration among states, both in the South and North, and international organisations for refugee protection.

Notes 1 Although further research is required to discern precisely who the original architects of this initiative were within UNDP, a comprehensive review of the documents and my interviews with the head of UNOSCC and a second staff member suggest that the UN member states were the central drivers of this Buenos Aires Conference. The member states requested that the UNDP Administrator provide substantive and organisational support to convene this high-level meeting and the administrator in turn set up the secretariat body for the conference. This secretariat of the Buenos Aires Conference in UNDP later became the Unit for South-South cooperation. 2 Initially, it was named the Special Unit for Technical and Development Cooperation but it was changed to the Special Unit for South-South Cooperation in 2004. The establishment of this Unit was necessary to coordinate activities on South–South cooperation across different organisations, to provide support to the General Assembly, and to implement its policy decisions (UNDP 2009). 3 Throughout this 136-page document, there was no mention of ‘humanitarianism’ at all, and UNOSCC mentions ‘humanitarian assistance’ only twice very briefly; these references are not addressed in the context of ‘good practice’ but rather to highlight some funding that had been given as humanitarian assistance from Chile. For an analysis of South–South humanitarianism, see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, this volume, and Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015. 4 In addition to these examples, the 1969 Organization of African Unity’s Refugee Convention and the 2009 Kampala Convention of the African Union can be viewed as a type of ‘South–South framework’ at a sub-regional level because they aim to promote the rights of refugees and IDPs within and across Africa. On Southern-led responses to displacement, see Cantor, this volume (on the context of Latin America) and Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, this volume (on the Caribbean and Middle East). 5 The exception to this is of course when a state hosts refugees to bolster their ideological or political positioning, such as when anti-communist countries hosted refugees fleeing communist countries. 279

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References Betts, A., and Loescher, G., 2011. Refugees in International Relations. In: A. Betts and G. Loescher (eds), Refugees in International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–27. Boulton, A., 2009. Local Integration in West Africa. Forced Migration Review 33, 32–34. Bull, H., 2011. Foreword. In: A. Betts and G. Loescher (eds), Refugees in International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. vii–xiii. Colson, E., 2004. Displacement. In: D. Nugent and J. Vincent (eds), A Companion to the Anthropology of Politics. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 107–120. Daley, P., 2013. Refugees, IDPs and Citizenship Rights: The Perils of Humanitarianism in the African Great Lakes Region. Third World Quarterly 34(5), 893–912. De Andrade, J.H.F., 2014. Forced Migration in South America. In: E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh et al. (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 651–663. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., 2015. South–South Educational Migration, Humanitarianism and Development. Oxford and New York: Routledge. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., 2019. Disasters Study: Looking Forward. Disasters (forthcoming). Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., et al., 2011. Study on the Impacts and Costs of Forced Displacement: State of the Art Literature Review. Oxford: Refugee Studies Centre. Fresia, M., 2014. Forced Migration in West Africa. In: E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh et  al. (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 541–553. Gottwald, M., 2014. Burden Sharing and Refugee Protection. In: E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh et al. (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 525–540. Harley, T., 2014. Regional Cooperation and Refugee Protection in Latin America: A ‘South-South’ Approach. International Journal of Refugee Law 26(1), 22–47. High-level Committee on South-South Cooperation, 2012a. Framework of Operational Guidelines on United Nations Support to South-South and Triangular Cooperation. SSC/17/3, New York. High-level Committee on South-South Cooperation, 2012b. Consideration of Reports of the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme. SSC/17/2, New York. Hollifield, J., 2007. Emerging Migration State. In: A. Portes and J. DeWind (eds), Rethinking Migration: New Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 62–89. Iida, K., 1988. Third World Solidarity: The Group of 77 in the UN General Assembly. International Organizations 42(2), 375–395. Jubilut, L.L. and Carneiro, W.P., 2011. Resettlement in Solidarity: A New Regional Approach towards a More Humane Durable Solution. Refugee Survey Quarterly 30(3), 63–86. Kagan, M., 2012. The UN ‘Surrogate State’ and the Foundation of Refugee Policy in the Middle East. Scholarly Works, Paper 781. Las Vegas: University of Nevada. Ladd, P., 2010. Between a Rock and a Hard Place: LDCs in a G-20 World. In: R. Roy and A. Melissa (eds), South-South Cooperation: The Same Old Game or a New Paradigm? New York: International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth, pp. 5–6. Loescher, G., 2014. UNHCR and Forced Migration. In: E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, et al. (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 215–226. Malhatra, K., 2010. South-South Cooperation: Potential Benefits for the Least Developed Countries. In: R. Roy and A. Melissa (eds), South-South Cooperation: The Same Old Game or a New Paradigm? New York: International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth, pp. 7–9. Mishra, A., 2016. The Need for South-South Cooperation [online]. International Policy Digest. Available from: https://intpolicydigest.org/2016/05/23/the-need-for-South–South-cooperation/ [Accessed 28 February 2018]. Modi, R., 2011. Introduction. In: R. Modi (ed.), South-South Cooperation: Africa on the Centre Edge. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1–18. Omata, N., 2016. Forgotten People: Former Liberian Refugees in Ghana. Forced Migration Review 52, 10–12. Slaughter, A. and Crisp, J., 2009. A Surrogate State? The Role of UNHCR in Protracted Refugee Situations. Research Paper No. 168. New Issues in Refugee Research. Geneva: UNHCR. Task Team on South-South Cooperation, 2011. Unlocking the Potential of South-South Cooperation. OECD, Paris. UNCTAD, 2010. South-South Cooperation: Africa and the New Forms of Development Partnership. New York: United Nations Publication. 280

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UNDP, 2009. South Report: Perspectives on South-South Cooperation for Development. Special Unit for SouthSouth Cooperation. New York: UNDP. UNDP, 2011. Mapping Multilateral Support to South-South Cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean: Towards Collaborative Approaches. Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean. New York: UNDP. UNDP, 2013a. The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World. New York: UNDP. UNDP, 2013b. Changing with the World UNDP Strategic Plan 2014–17. New York: UNDP. UNDP, 2016a. Scaling-up South-South Cooperation for Sustainable Development. Bureau for Policy and Programme Support. New York: UNDP. UNDP, 2016b. Accelerating Sustainable Development: South-South and Triangular Cooperation to Achieve the SDGs. New York: UNDP. UN General Assembly, 2014. State of South-South cooperation. A/69/153, New York. UNHCR, 2017a. Global Trends Forced Displacement 2016. Geneva: UNHCR. UNHCR, 2017b. UNHCR’s Strategic Directions 2017–2021. Geneva: UNHCR. UNOSSC, 2016. Good Practices in South-South and Triangular Cooperation for Sustainable Development. New York: UNOSSC. UN System Task Team on the Post-2015 UN Development Agenda, 2013. A Renewed Global Partnership for Development. New York: UN System Task Team.

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21 Cooperation on refugees in Latin America and the Caribbean The ‘Cartagena process’ and South–South approaches David James Cantor

Introduction Humanitarian cooperation on refugees1 in Latin America and the Caribbean assumes many forms.2 Yet perhaps the most influential is the Cartagena framework, which is adopted and regularly refined by the governments of this region.3 Originating with the 1984 Cartagena Declaration on Refugees,4 these governments have met on each ten-year anniversary to review the new challenges facing refugees in the region and to define a common framework of principles, plans and programmes in response. These regional frameworks, and the process behind their adoption, produce an overarching common vision and roadmap that promote and harmonise the action of signatory states for the benefit of refugees in this part of the world. The Cartagena framework results from a process that in itself engages substantive cooperation among a wide range of states in the global South. Both the framework and the long-standing, structured, state-based and multilateral process from which it results (and which it in turn sustains) are pertinent to the study of South–South approaches since they represent an unparalleled example of regional state-based humanitarian cooperation in the refugee field. After describing how this framework was historically and conceptually developed through the ‘Cartagena process’, this chapter outlines distinctive components of this unique model of humanitarian cooperation on refugees. Even so, while the Cartagena framework and process offer a highly visible example of interstate cooperation on refugees, its contribution to our understanding of South–South approaches is not without complexities. These are outlined in the final part of the chapter in relation to two main points. First, the fact that the Cartagena framework speaks explicitly of South–South approaches leads us to reflect on the precise formulation and its implications in this context. Second, a more careful analysis of participation in the Cartagena process suggests the need to fully acknowledge the role of other intersecting forms of cooperation alongside the South–South mode.

Cartagena framework: genesis and process The Cartagena process began during the 1980s against the backdrop of relatively limited exposure among Latin American governments to the effects of major refugee crises, including 282

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the Second World War. Since its inception, though, this process has come to act as the major conduit through which Latin American governments have developed frameworks to express and orient their shared approach to humanitarian cooperation in the refugee field. By tracing the elaboration of the Cartagena framework, as the prime example of inter-state cooperation on refugee protection in Latin America and the Caribbean since the 1980s, we gain a window onto how the process both reflects and promotes dynamics of cooperation among participating states.

Early Latin American engagement with ‘refugees’ Latin American states were relative latecomers to the international regime created for refugees in the aftermath of the Second World War. The cornerstones of this regime were, and remain, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its later 1967 Protocol.5 However, initially, most Latin American states declined to adhere to the Convention and Protocol. Rather, they saw the Second World War mass movements of ‘refugees’ as a European problem with little relevance to their experience of small-scale movements of political asylees in Central and South America (Cantor 2013). As such, they continued to rely on the regional and constitutional law framework of political asylum and not refugee law.6 This outlook and panorama began to shift dramatically only in the 1970s and 1980s as the Cold War took hold in Latin America. The dictatorships of the 1970s, such as those in the Southern Cone,7 provoked the flight or exiling of many people to other countries in Latin America, and pushed a first wave of ratifications of the Convention and Protocol by Latin American states. A second wave of ratifications of the global refugee framework then took place as the en masse displacement of persons due to intense political violence and conflicts surged in Central America in the 1980s (Cantor 2013). For the first time, the Cold War exposed governments in Latin America to significant humanitarian and political challenges related to ‘refugees’. This represented a baptism by fire for these latecomers. However, in tandem, from the 1980s, these governments began to develop a parallel Latin American framework for refugees. This has built on the global framework, which it is designed to complement, by creating additional elements pertinent to the ‘local’ context.8 Eschewing their earlier suspicion of the relevance of the ‘refugee’ concept to circumstances in Latin America, these developments still simultaneously evidence the contention among those states that the particularities of this region require certain additional elements. Efforts by governments to promote a regional approach began to consolidate around the 1984 Cartagena Declaration, the genesis of the Cartagena process.

Evolution of the Cartagena framework The 1984 Cartagena Declaration represents one of the earliest articulations of a Latin American regional approach to refugees.9 It was adopted by ten states taking part in the Colloquium that led to its drafting and which presented conclusions that ‘should receive adequate attention in the search for solutions to the grave problems raised by the present massive flows of refugees in Central America, Mexico and Panama’.10 Yet, those conclusions, and the commitments on refugee issues in the Contadura Act on Peace and Cooperation that it also endorses, largely invite adherence by participating states of origin and asylum to global refugee protection norms.11 As such, the content of this South–South cooperation (SSC) is thus mostly oriented toward respect for global norms. 283

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One conclusion with a more strongly ‘local’ flavour concerns the refugee definition. Thus, referring specifically to the ‘experience gained from massive flows of refugees in the Central American area’, Conclusion 3 of the Declaration recommends that participating states adopt a new refugee definition that reflects these circumstances, in addition to that in the global Convention.12 The expanded refugee definition of the 1984 Cartagena Declaration has subsequently been incorporated into the national law of many Latin American states.13 Despite some criticism of how it is applied (e.g. Reed-Hurtado 2013), this expanded definition represents a concrete example of SSC among Latin American states that has had a continuing impact on the protection of refugees in this region up to the present day (cf. Omata, this volume). Based in part on cooperation promoted by the Cartagena Declaration, an International Conference on Central American Refugees (CIREFCA) took place in 1989. This facilitated cooperation on refugees among participating Latin American states and led to the Declaration and Concerted Plan of Action in favour of Central American Refugees, Returnees and Displaced Persons (CIREFCA 1989). Implementation of this plan by the governments concerned contributed to resolving the Western hemisphere’s most serious regional refugee crisis (see Mathew and Harley 2016; Betts 2009). Replicating the Cartagena Declaration,14 it also directed attention not only to refugees and returnees but also to internally displaced persons (IDPs), a novel approach at a time when the view of IDPs as a legitimate international concern remained disputed by states.15 These relatively successful processes undertaken by affected states for humanitarian cooperation on Central American refugees and IDPs offered a basis for promoting cooperation among other states in Latin America and the Caribbean (Fischel de Andrade 2014). In 1994, a ten-year commemoration of the Cartagena Declaration brought together a larger number of Latin American states to endorse the new San José Declaration on Refugees and Displaced Persons.16 This stresses the need for harmonisation, coordination and cooperation to protect and seek humanitarian solutions for refugees and IDPs in the region.17 However, by this time, there was no major refugee crisis to bring a practical focus to the San José Declaration. As such, the impact of its principled exhortations lay instead in promoting the vision of a regional approach to refugees. Thus, the substantive provisions of the 1994 San José Declaration begin by recognising the role of the 1984 Cartagena Declaration in addressing Central American refugee flows and stressing the utility of the earlier Declaration for pursuing solutions not only to pending problems but also to ‘new challenges posed by uprootedness in Latin America and the Caribbean’.18 The 1994 Declaration reiterates ‘in particular, the value of the [expanded] refugee definition contained in the Cartagena Declaration’, as well as pertinent guides to its interpretation.19 This is followed by rather abstract doctrinal pronouncements on a wide range of concerns,20 which equally seek to promote a legally harmonised humanitarian approach to refugee and displacement problems in the region (see Fischel de Andrade 1998). By the 20th anniversary of the Cartagena Declaration in 2004, the vision of a regional approach to refugees was substantially more consolidated, at least among Latin American states.21 The ensuing 2004 Mexico Declaration and Plan of Action (MDPA) to Strengthen the International Protection of Refugees in Latin America represents a significant advance in promoting a specifically Latin America approach,22 even as its practical relevance was underlined by the contemporary Colombian displacement crisis. Moreover, the MDPA goes beyond abstract exhortation of the need for cooperation and specifies several practical actions and programmes that will take forward this new regional cooperation in relation to refugees by participating Latin American states. Although IDPs are mentioned briefly in the Declaration, the plan of actions addresses only refugees. The 2004 MDPA outlines three ‘durable solutions’ programmes as a response to two contemporary priority situations in the region that required urgent support: growing numbers of urban 284

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refugees; and large numbers of Colombians living in the border areas of neighbouring countries and in need of international protection (Chapter 3). Thus, the ‘solidarity cities’ programme promotes self-sufficient and local integration for urban refugees. The ‘borders of solidarity’ programme promotes a humanitarian response to Colombians living in border areas. The ‘solidarity resettlement’ programme is envisaged as a tool to mitigate the humanitarian situation in countries of the region hosting a large number of Latin American refugees, referring implicitly to Colombians. These regional durable solutions programmes, conceived by the MDPA as a form of ‘international cooperation, in keeping with the principles of solidarity and responsibility-sharing’, continue to this day.23 In 2014, the Cartagena process continued with the Brazil Declaration and Plan of Action (BDPA) (see UNHCR/ACNUR 2014).24 This sustains the project of a regional approach to structural components of refugee protection begun in the 2004 MDPA by proposing a targeted set of capacity-building programmes across the following areas: international protection of refugees and asylum-seekers; comprehensive, complementary and sustainable solutions; statelessness; and regional cooperation (BDPA, Chapters 2, 3, 6 and 7). In tandem, it proposes programmes taken on a ‘solidarity’ basis for two sub-regions that present distinct refugee protection challenges, i.e. Northern Triangle of Central America (NTCA)25 and the Caribbean (Chapters 4 and 5). The year after its adoption (2015), a first implementation meeting between states was held and another was planned for 2017.26 The two 2014 BDPA chapters concerning specified sub-regions each give ‘solidarity’ a different emphasis. In the Caribbean, the focus is on building up the capacity of asylum systems and promoting dialogue to develop a regional consultative mechanism for managing mixed migration, especially the protection of persons at sea (Chapter 5). For the NTCA, the focus is on strengthening national protection measures for IDPs in countries of origin and also actions to promote ‘dignified and safe transit’ of persons fleeing these countries, especially in border areas (Chapter 4).27 Subsequently, this has also contributed to the establishment of action-oriented new forums that further develop sub-regional cooperation between states for each situation: the Caribbean Migration Consultations for the Caribbean; and the San José process for the NTCA, which involves states of origin, transit and destination.28

Impact on inter-state cooperation Since the 1980s, the Cartagena process has succeeded in articulating among states in Latin America – and, more recently, in the Caribbean – a distinctive regional framework for responding to the humanitarian challenges of refugees, IDPs and, more recently, stateless persons. This process – an ongoing series of colloquia and consultations – has thus promoted cooperation on a continuing basis among states. This makes the framework both an outcome of cooperation in the refugee field among Latin American and Caribbean states and a channel for perpetuating such cooperation. In this way, the underlying process simultaneously reflects and promotes the inherent potential for ongoing humanitarian cooperation on a multilateral regional basis among the participating states. The content of the Cartagena framework, though, generates a range of much more specific forms of humanitarian cooperation between the participating states. Thus, for refugees,29 the Cartagena framework has helped to integrate Latin American states on similar terms into global refugee policy currents by incorporating global standards and approaches into its regional declarations and action plans. At the same time, the Cartagena process has created new approaches and principles – such as the expanded refugee definition – that ground a distinctive regional approach to refugee protection. Overall, whether in the implementation of global elements or in the adoption of a specific regional approach, the process promotes cooperation through a harmonised regional vision and standards. 285

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At the same time, the Cartagena process has generally accompanied a shared conceptual approach with a firm pragmatic emphasis on common programmes. For specific refugee crisis situations, it has often been able to develop a common sub-regional approach based on the principal humanitarian concerns of the refugees (e.g. Central America, Colombia, NTCA, Caribbean). In tandem, thematic regional programmes promoted by the Cartagena process serve to underwrite other forms of cooperation between the participating states. Thus, the parameters for ‘solidarity’-durable solution programmes promote not only a commonality of approach by participating states but also networks of interconnected national projects (as in the case of ‘solidarity cities’) and special forms of bilateral cooperation (as for ‘solidarity resettlement’) among those states. Overall, the Cartagena process has thus stimulated significant forms of inter-state cooperation on refugees in Latin America.

Cartagena process: a model for cooperation in the global South? The Cartagena framework has been central to promoting the development of a regional approach to refugee protection among participating Latin American and Caribbean states. In this regard, the range of contributions to emerge from the Cartagena process surpasses that of all other regional or inter-state coordination or cooperation mechanisms on refugees in Latin America. However, the singularity of this process is notable even when compared with processes of inter-state cooperation on refugee matters in other parts of the world. What then are the distinctive features that are joined together in the Cartagena process to make it such a unique model for humanitarian cooperation on refugee issues among countries in the global South?

Independent structure One of the most distinctive structural features of the Cartagena process is that it is a multilateral mechanism located outside any established international forum. Of course, Latin American states have access to international organisations of a regional or sub-regional character that are seized of refugee issues among a range of other political concerns. The annual debate and resolution on refugees by the Organization of American States (OAS) General Assembly up to 2014 is but one pertinent example (see OAS 2014, Resolution 2839). By contrast, the Cartagena process transcends these political and politicised forums – each with its own distinctive reach and agenda – to instead carve out an independent space dedicated solely to promoting a Latin American response to the humanitarian concerns of refugees. Despite its independent character, the Cartagena process has attained a degree of permanence and stability that is rarely seen in other such processes, at least in the refugee field. In Latin America, other independent processes have tended to be short in timescale and one-off and discrete in character (see, for example, UNHCR 2010). Beyond Latin America, it is notable that even the cooperation behind the famed 1989 Comprehensive Plan of Action produced only a one-off agreement that was then implemented by the parties over a longer period of time.30 By contrast, the Cartagena process remains an ongoing independent process with welldefined agreement and implementation points more than 30 years after its genesis with the 1984 Cartagena Declaration.

Progressive development Despite the incorporation of innovative legal elements in the ensuing framework,31 the Cartagena process retains an important degree of inbuilt flexibility that has allowed it to develop 286

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new programmes and other forms of cooperation to address new refugee challenges as they have emerged. In this respect, it is distinct from regional refugee responses such as the set-instone international law framework of the 1969 Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa.32 The Cartagena process, by contrast, offers states the opportunity to meet every ten years to reassess the relevant refugee challenges in the region at that point in time and how to respond to them. This periodicity seems to coincide with the emergence of major new refugee crises in this region every ten years or so.33 This level of flexibility in the Cartagena process also facilitates a degree of progressive development of the framework over time in order to address an impressively wide range of themes pertinent to refugees that simultaneously builds on the foundations of earlier declarations. On the one hand, this layered approach has allowed the Cartagena process to reinforce and refine key messages of the Latin American approach, for example the concept of regional solidarity expressed through the resettlement programmes (for further analysis, see Jubilut and Pereira Carneiro 2011). On the other hand, this has allowed participants to address potential procedural and substantive weaknesses earlier in the process, for example by adding a plan of action from 2004 onwards to implement the common regional vision advanced in the declarations. This has also involved a gradual geographical expansion of the Cartagena process. From the initial narrow Central American focus, it has grown to include the wider range of Latin American states and now also the Caribbean in its expanding regional vision. The participating states now encompass all countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, straddling sometimes stark political divides between these governments. Indeed, albeit as an observer, even Cuba attended the Cartagena+30 process that drafted the 2014 BDPA. Because some more recent refugee flows to Latin America also impact on Caribbean countries, this expansion has allowed understanding and action at regional and sub-regional levels to be developed between Latin American and Caribbean states, respectively.

Substantive humanitarian content The Cartagena process, as well as the substantive content of the framework that it has produced, are squarely ‘regional’ in character. They focus on Latin American countries although, since the 1994 San José Declaration, the process has also included the participation of Caribbean states, with specific provision made in the 2014 BDPA. A regional approach to refugee situations is not unique to the Cartagena process. However, from the 2004 MDPA onwards, the frameworks adopted have also expressly made reference to the concept of SSC (see below for analysis on this point). At root, the approach of the Cartagena process is resolutely humanitarian. This is not to say that state concern with border controls or managing wider migration flows has never influenced the selection of subject matter by the Cartagena process, or the terms in which it is addressed by the declarations or action plans. However, in comparison with many other forums for state cooperation on refugees, such as the Intergovernmental Consultations on Migration, Asylum and Refugees (IGC) (Oelgemöller 2017), the emphasis in the Cartagena process lies squarely on promoting humanitarian cooperation in the regional response to refugees. This is evident from the substantive content of the framework of principles, action plans and discrete programmes developed by the process. The framework resulting from the Cartagena process stimulates coordinated and harmonised national action through a dual approach to regional integration. On the one hand, it develops novel approaches that reinforce a vision of cooperation within the region based on its specific ‘local’ considerations. On the other hand, it forges a connection between participating states based 287

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on their collective mode of incorporation as a region in the global refugee regime, i.e. it provides a blueprint for implementing global protection policy in this region. As such, the Cartagena framework shows that SSC in this field can revolve as much around implementing global norms as generating new visions or forms of humanitarian action derived from ‘local’ circumstances. In much of the resulting framework, it is in fact difficult to differentiate between the local and the global. Take, for instance, the key Cartagena concept of ‘solidarity’, which has specific Latin American connotations linked to the common regional heritage of a generous tradition of asylum. However, its application in the framework is always linked to global concepts, usually derived from the global North, as in its application to durable solutions for refugees. At least in the refugee context, this suggests that the content of any SSC is likely to have links to wider extra-regional concepts, including those derived from forms of cooperation in the global North.

Conclusions Even such a broad-brush account begins to illustrate how the combination of this wide range of pertinent features gives the Cartagena process a unique and distinctive character among other inter-state processes of humanitarian cooperation on refugees. This indicates that the Cartagena process is indeed an intriguing and unique model for humanitarian cooperation among states in the global South. While the process has served to generate and sustain cooperation at the inter-state level, further research could usefully provide a more detailed account through time of the relationships between individual states in relation to this process. This includes not only the different interests and accommodations reached within the negotiation of the framework but also the ways in which this framework has been implemented – whether singly or jointly – by participating states at the level of national or sub-national practice.34

Complexities in the analysis The Cartagena process in Latin America and the Caribbean has generated substantial impact in this region and also represents a unique model of inter-state humanitarian cooperation in the refugee field. It thus appears to support the apparently self-evident value of South–South humanitarian cooperation. However, more careful analysis of both the framework and the process suggests that their South–South character is actually less clear cut than might appear at first view. Rather, other parallel features can be discerned that point toward the need for a more nuanced explanation of the character and development of this regional form of cooperation on refugees.

Character of the framework One of the attractions of studying the Cartagena process as an example of SSC is that its two most recently adopted declarations – the 2004 MDPA and the 2014 BDPA – expressly refer to this concept. Indeed, some of the scholarship in this field argues that the 2004 MDPA in particular develops a South–South approach to cooperation that is based on the recognition of the regional nature of refugee problems by participating Latin American states (see Harley 2014). The fact that the 2014 BDPA also refers explicitly to SSC on refugees would appear to strengthen this reading of the South–South character of this process and the adopted frameworks overall. However, careful analysis of references to SSC in these two instruments points to difficulties in demonstrating that the participating states view either the process or frameworks as based on SSC. In the 2004 MDPA, the concept is absent from the list of orienting principles in the Declaration and appears only in the chapter of the Plan concerning ‘durable solutions’: 288

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The preparatory process reiterated the need for international cooperation, in keeping with the principles of solidarity and responsibility-sharing, as a means to achieve effective durable solutions, as well as to disseminate best practices in the area of durable solutions in the region, promoting south-south cooperation and the creative approach of the 1984 Cartagena Declaration on Refugees.35 In other words, in the MDPA, international cooperation to achieve solutions appears to be conceived as rooted principally in considerations of ‘solidarity’ and ‘responsibility-sharing’ rather than South–South approaches per se. SSC is instead framed as a by-product of these primary forms of cooperation (or perhaps of just the dissemination of best practices) in the area of durable solutions. This suggests a need for caution about overstating the extent to which the MDPA is based on SSC. A narrower role in the Cartagena process for the SSC concept is also supported by the way in which it appears in the 2014 BDPA. Here, again, it does not figure among the orienting principles rehearsed in the Declaration but rather under particular programmes in two chapters of the Plan. The first mention appears in the ‘international protection’ chapter as a possible component of any ‘quality asylum’ programmes, i.e. (m) Strengthen institutional capacities and the education and training of officials in order to maintain quality asylum systems through improved inter-agency coordination, the identification of additional human and financial resources, and implementation of regional training and twinning programmes through South-South cooperation.36 The second mention occurs in the NTCA sub-region chapter under the ‘prevention’ programme to strengthen national protection in countries of origin. After rehearsing actions to implement this objective, the BDPA adds: The importance of promoting South-South and triangular cooperation schemes for the implementation of this programme, based on best practices and experiences of other countries of the region, is recognized.37 Taken together, the more limited scope of the concept in the 2014 BDPA becomes clear. SSC is not an orienting concept for the BDPA as a whole, or even for particular chapters. Nor is it mandatory. Rather, it is used to describe a potential form of cooperation to be developed in a targeted fashion for implementing relevant components of selected programmes. Overall, this analysis suggests that the states participating in the Cartagena process view the concept of SSC in relatively narrow terms and as relevant only to a limited number of discrete areas of action. If correct, then this implies that those states do not self-identify as engaged in SSC through the Cartagena process, nor is this process itself a form of SSC. This suggests that the basis for the cooperation developed and promoted through the Cartagena process is not the fact that they are Southern states. Rather than evidencing a South–South approach as the general basis for humanitarian cooperation, the common thread that underpins this cooperative process should instead be sought in other concepts or approaches. On a preliminary analysis, these processes seem to coalesce and self-identify around the concept of ‘region’ as the common thread that binds together the vision of the distinct participating states. Yet, within the Cartagena framework, ‘region’ is not necessarily a neat concept. First, it is limited to the Latin American and Caribbean governments who adopt the framework. Second, even if the origins and orientation of much of the framework are essentially 289

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Latin American, the increased participation in more recent years of Caribbean states means that the region cannot be precisely defined as Latin America. By way of conclusion, this might be read simply as confirming the potential (conceptual) ‘messiness’ of such large and complex multilateral processes in practice.

Character of the process The literature on SSC largely privileges the objectively South–South character of such approaches, downplaying the importance of the self-identification point. Presumably, whether the relevant schemes or processes self-identify in terms of SSC does not matter if, in practice, they pursue or achieve this end. After all, this field of study is concerned with demonstrating the value and dynamics of humanitarian cooperation among global South actors, including states in the global South. However, in doing so, we must take care not to overextend an analysis that emphasises the Southern features of these processes to the detriment of other equally important features that do not so easily fit within the concept of Southern. The fact that states participate in the Cartagena process should allow us to characterise these principal actors in terms of their North/South positioning in a relatively straightforward way, as they are clearly tied to particular countries. Thus far, the analysis has assumed that the states participating in the Cartagena process are global South actors, thus giving the interlocution between them its South–South character. However, as the literature recognises, the North/ South distinction can be slippery (see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Pacitto 2015; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Daley in this volume). Even so, in purely geographical terms, Mexico is part of the global North and so too, arguably, might be the countries of Central America and the Caribbean. Moreover, although they do not formally adopt the frameworks, Northern states have taken part in the process as observers or funders.38 Even if the term South is understood in a more relational geo-political sense, as has been suggested in some of the literature (e.g. McEwan 2009), a number of powerful Latin American countries involved in the Cartagena process could (and do) lay claim to being ‘Northern’ states in some contexts, even as they might self-identify as ‘Southern’ in others (on Brazil, see FiddianQasmiyeh and Pacitto 2015). Potentially, this would include such countries as Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica and Mexico. Indeed, these states are some of the key players within the Cartagena process, an acknowledgement reflected in part by the fact that many of them have assumed the honour of hosting a ten-yearly meeting. In other words, regardless of how the North/South distinction is framed, a key feature of the Cartagena process since its genesis has been that it has been based on the participation of both Northern and Southern states. The important point here is that attempts to view the Cartagena process through the lens of South–South approaches should not obscure the important role played not only by Southern states but also by such relatively powerful ‘Northern’ states as Mexico. Rather, for a more nuanced account of cooperation in this context, we need to shift the focus of future analysis to considering the consequences of the different interests, profiles and influence of states involved in these processes. Focusing analysis on these more fine-grained features, and thus where and why such states might self-identify the cooperation as South–South, rather than on the fact that the states are, or might be, Southern, will allow a more complete account of the process of cooperation behind this framework to be developed. Moreover, despite the fact that the participating states are the most visible actors in developing the resulting framework, a close examination of the process itself reveals that a range of other actors have played important roles within the Cartagena process. Although the frameworks are agreed and adopted in the name of the participating governments, a wide range of 290

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other actors – including refugee community organisations, civil society and non-governmental organisations, academic bodies and international agencies – participate actively and enthusiastically in these processes. To give but a recent example, alongside the 30 Latin American and Caribbean states that took part in the process leading to the adoption of the 2014 BDPA, over 100 non-governmental organisations and international agencies also participated in some substantive form in the preceding process. To take just non-governmental actors as an example, this involvement has been more than merely tangential. Indeed, it includes feeding directly into the substantive discussions to make important contributions on the frameworks, organising consultative meetings, disseminating the frameworks and monitoring their implementation.39 However, alongside the South–South character of many of these cooperative activities, the North also has a role. Thus, even among organisations with a presence on the ground in Latin America, some have their head offices in the global North or have staff from the global North. The NGO Asylum Access is just one such example. In other cases, as with the author, who contributed to the 2014 BDPA process, both individual and organisation are from the global North. Among non-governmental actors, then, the Cartagena process involves a much wider set of interactions than just those with a strictly South–South character. However, the clearest example of the involvement of powerful external actors is that of the office of the UNHCR, a ‘global’ actor that has an absolutely essential role in the Cartagena process. Indeed, UNHCR is the main motor behind the process and has played a key role in proposing or instigating many of the ‘local’ innovations in the frameworks, as well as driving the process forward through its key role in organising and facilitating the process. Indeed, it is unlikely that the process would have continued to the present without UNHCR. While UNHCR has offices in (and staff from) many of the participating countries, and thus acts in the South, it is not a Southern actor as such. This illustrates perfectly how even in these highly regionalised processes, South–South interactions exist alongside, and are closely intertwined with, other kinds of interactions (also see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, this volume). It is important, then, that a focus on SSC in such processes does not obscure these other dynamics or the role of powerful ‘global’ actors such as UNHCR.

Conclusions This study contributes to the literature on South–South approaches by showing how the Cartagena framework, in which a large number of Southern states are involved, represents a distinctive model of humanitarian cooperation on refugees. The framework, and the process behind it, bring together a number of important elements that have contributed to making it one of the longest-running and most successful exemplars of such regional cooperation in the world. This has likely been aided by the comparatively late arrival of Latin American and Caribbean states to exposure to major refugee problems and engagement with the global refugee regime. On the face of it, then, the Cartagena process is an instructive Latin American and Caribbean case study of inter-state processes of humanitarian cooperation for students of the South–South approaches. At the same time, the study has shown that these large multilateral processes of cooperation between governments can be ‘messy’. As such, we need to ensure that our focus on the South– South elements of such processes does not overextend this analysis by ignoring other integrating concepts such as ‘region’ nor inadvertently obscure other important sets of relations between the interlocutors. For future studies in the field, this implies, first, promoting debate about the relative utility of concepts of ‘South–South’ cooperation and ‘regional’ cooperation, and the connections 291

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between the two (see Muhr, this volume). Second, it requires shifting the focus to considering the consequences of the different interests, profiles and influence of states and other actors involved in these processes, rather than treating them as ‘Southern’. This includes recognising the role of ‘Northern’ states and other actors through time, not only as contributing to such processes but also learning and borrowing from them.

Notes 1 This chapter can helpfully be read alongside Omata, this volume, and Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, this volume. 2 Multilateral mechanisms include the wider Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC), which serves as a forum for those states to coordinate at the UN on issues such as refugees. At a sub-regional level, inter-state cooperation mechanisms on refugees also exist, such as the heads of refugee commission meeting mechanism in the Common Market of the South (Mercado Común del Sur – Mercosur). A range of non-governmental organisation (NGO) cooperation mechanisms exist, such as the Regional Network of Civil Society Organisations for Migrations (Red Regional de Organizaciones Civiles para las Migraciones – RROCM). 3 Latin America is usually understood as encompassing Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama (as countries of North and Central America), Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela (as countries of South America) and Cuba and the Dominican Republic (in the Caribbean). Other countries and territories making up the Caribbean are Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Puerto Rico, Saint Barthélemy, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands and the Virgin Islands. 4 The text of the Declaration can be found in UNHCR (1984, pp. 332–339). For a broader analysis of the scope and influence of the Cartagena Declaration, see Franco and Santistevan de Noriega (2005). 5 Statute of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, annexed to UN General Assembly (1950), Resolution 428 (V) (14 December 1950); Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (adopted 28 July 1951, entered into force 22 April 1954) 189 UNTS 137 (Refugee Convention); Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees (adopted 16 December 1966, entered into force 4 October 1967) 606 UNTS 267 (Protocol). 6 The institution of asylum is well-established in international law and refers to the protection conceded by a state on its territory (territorial asylum) or elsewhere (e.g. diplomatic asylum) to a non-national who seeks it against the acts or jurisdiction of another state. Refugees often benefit from asylum under the terms of the Refugee Convention and Protocol or other refugee instruments. The law of political asylum, which predates refugee law, provides a distinct basis for protection that is rooted in the discretion of the state to concede asylum on political grounds. This state practice was regulated in Latin America by regional conventions such as the Montevideo Treaty on Political Asylum and Refuge (adopted 4 August 1939); reprinted in Hudson (1949). See further Gil-Bazo and Nogueira (2013). 7 The Southern Cone countries of South America are Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. 8 An African regional refugee convention was concluded in the 1960s that was designed to complement the Refugee Convention by providing additional elements relevant to addressing refugee problems in that continent (Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa (adopted 10 September 1969, entered into force 20 June 1974) 1001 UNTA 45). See further the chapter by Omata, this volume. 9 The conceptual groundwork for this declaration was laid in events such as the 1981 Tlatelolco Colloquium (for the proceedings, see UNHCR 1982) and built, inter alia, on the African regional approach developed in the African Refugee Convention (see Cantor and Trimiño 2014). A separate initiative was the drafting in the mid-1960s of an American Convention on Refugees under the auspices of the Organization of American States.This was eventually abandoned with the negotiation and adoption of the 1967 Protocol, which was seen to obviate the need for a separate refugee convention applicable in the Americas. 10 Cartagena Declaration, section IV. 11 These include conclusions promoting the adoption of national laws to facilitate the application of the Convention and Protocol, and the ratification of those international instruments, as well as those reaffirming the importance of international principles such as non-refoulement, the non-political nature of 292

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13 14

15 16 17

18 19 20 21 22 23 24

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asylum, family reunification.The refugee law principle of non-refoulement is expressed in provisions such as Article 33(1) of the Refugee Convention and is usually understood as forbidding the expulsion or return in any manner whatsoever of a refugee to a territory where she maintains a well-founded fear of persecution. This includes as refugees ‘persons who have fled their country because their lives, safety or freedom have been threatened by generalized violence, foreign aggression, internal conflicts, massive violation of human rights or other circumstances which have seriously disturbed public order’. For interpretation of this provision, see Cantor and Trimiño (2014). Fifteen Latin American states have adopted an expanded refugee definition based on the Cartagena Declaration into their national laws. Conclusion 9 of the Cartagena Declaration expresses concern at the situation of displaced persons within their own countries and ‘calls on national authorities and competent international organizations to offer protection and assistance to those persons and to help relieve the hardship which many of them face’. Wider interest among states in IDPs as a specific category of vulnerable person emerged during the early 1990s (see Kalin 2014). The text of the San José Declaration can be found in UNHCR 1995, pp. 415–428. For instance, the conclusions of the San José Declaration encourage governments to promote the harmonious application of the law and the progressive harmonisation of rules, criteria and procedures, and to seek humanitarian solutions within a coordinated framework and increase region-wide cooperation in admitting refugee groups. San José Declaration, Conclusion 1. Ibid., Conclusion 2. These range from addressing the causes of forced mass exodus (Conclusion 8) to respect for the human rights of persons migrating for economic reasons (Conclusion 10). Caribbean states and their refugee concerns are absent from this gathering in 2004. The text of the Mexico Declaration and Plan of Action can be found in UNHCR 2005, pp. 385–400. On the principle of ‘solidarity’ in South–South cooperation, see below, and Aneja, this volume. The full title of the Brazil Declaration adds ‘A Framework for Cooperation and Regional Solidarity to Strengthen the International Protection of Refugees, Displaced and Stateless Persons in Latin America and the Caribbean’.The full title of the Brazil Plan of Action adds ‘A Common Roadmap to Strengthen Protection and Promote Sustainable Solutions for Refugees, Displaced and Stateless Persons in Latin America and the Caribbean within a Framework of Cooperation and Solidarity’. The NTCA countries are El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The first inter-state implementation meeting was held at the International Institute for Humanitarian Law in San Remo, Italy, in March 2015. A Human Rights Observatory on Displacement located within SICA is a proposal in this chapter that seems to have fallen by the wayside subsequently. The first meeting, a High Level Round Table entitled ‘Call to Action: Protection Needs in the Northern Triangle of Central America’, resulted in the adoption of the 2016 San José Action Statement (UNHCR 2016). The more modest impact on the approach to IDPs and stateless persons likely reflects the fact that these issues are less susceptible to a negotiated regional response, being issues that are seen as principally within the domestic jurisdiction of states of origin. On the CPA, see Mathew and Harley (2016) and Betts (2009). Such as the expanded refugee definition promoted by the Cartagena Declaration. Note, though, that African countries have been apparently more disposed to developing regional treaty law on IDPs than states in the Americas. See the Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa (African Union 2009) (entered into force 6 December 2012). However, this tendency could be disrupted by the crisis emerging in Venezuela in 2017, the timing of which also tests whether the Cartagena process will prove an appropriate mechanism for fostering a regional response. For instance, in contrast to other authors cited in this chapter – e.g. Harley (2014), Jubilut and Pereira Carneio (2011) – it has been suggested by de Menezes (2016) that the success of such processes in Latin America has been principally at the level of discourse and dialogue rather than in their implementation in practice. 2004 MDPA, chapter 1, emphasis added. 293

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36 2014 BDPA, chapter 2, emphasis added. 37 Ibid., chapter 4, emphasis added. 38 For example, delegations including from the United States of America, the European Union and Spain participated as observers in the consultations for the 2014 BDPA (See UNHCR 2015). 39 This is acknowledged in the final paragraph of the BPDA Declaration. The follow-up by NGOs in the region has taken various forms including through a ‘High Level Round Table – A Latin American Response to the Global Refugee Crisis: From Promises to Action’ organised by Asylum Access and held in Cartagena, Colombia in November 2016.

References African Union, 2009. African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa (‘Kampala Convention’), 22 October 2009. Available from: www.refworld.org/docid/4ae572d82. html [Accessed 24 February 2018]. Betts, A., 2009. Protection by Persuasion: International Cooperation in the Refugee Regime. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Cantor, D.J., 2013. European Influence on Asylum Practices in Latin America: Accelerated Procedures in Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Venezuela. In: H. Lambert, J. McAdam, and M. Fullerton, M. (eds), The Global Reach of European Refugee Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 71–98. Cantor, D.J. and Trimiño, D., 2014. A Simple Solution to War Refugees? The Latin American Expanded Refugee Definition and its Relationship to IHL. In: D.J. Cantor and J.F. Durieux (eds), Refuge from Inhumanity? Refugee Protection and the Laws of War. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, pp. 204–224. de Menezes, F.L., 2016. Utopia or Reality: Regional Cooperation in Latin America to Enhance the Protection of Refugees. Refugee Survey Quarterly 35(4), 122–141. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., 2015. South-South Educational Migration, Humanitarianism and Development: Views from the Caribbean, North Africa and the Middle East. Oxford: Routledge. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. and Pacitto, J., 2015. Writing the Other into Humanitarianism: A Conversation between ‘South-South’ and ‘Faith-based’ Humanitarianisms. In: Z. Sezgin and D. Dijkzeul (eds), The New Humanitarianisms in International Practice: Emerging Actors and Contested Principles. Oxford: Routledge, pp. 282–300. Fischel de Andrade, J., 1998. Regional Policy Approaches and Harmonization: A Latin American Perspective. International Journal of Refugee Law 10(3), 389–409. Fischel de Andrade, J., 2014. Forced Migration in South America. In: E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, G. Loescher, K. Long, and N. Sigona (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Forced Migration and Refugee Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 651–664. Franco, L. and Santistevan de Noriega, J., 2005. La contribución del proceso de Cartagena al desarrollo del derecho internacional de refugiados en América Latina. In: UNHCR (ed.), Memoria del Vigésimo Aniversario de la Declaración de Cartagena sobre los Refugiados (1984–2004). San José: Editorama, pp. 81–138. Gil-Bazo, M. and Nogueira, M.B.B., 2013. Asylum in the Practice of Latin American and African States. UNHCR New Issues in Refugee Research, Research Paper 249. Harley, T., 2014. Regional Cooperation and Refugee Protection in Latin America: A ‘South-South’ Approach. International Journal of Refugee Law 26(1), 22–57. Hudson, M.O. (ed.), 1949. International Legislation Vol. 8 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Washington D.C. 404. International Conference on Central American Refugees (CIREFCA), 1989. Declaration and Concerted Plan of Action in Favour of Central American Refugees, Returnees and Displaced Persons. Refugee Survey Quarterly 8(4), 84–98. Jubilut, L.L. and Pereira Carneiro, W., 2011. Resettlement in Solidarity: A New Regional Approach towards a More Humane Durable Solution. Refugee Survey Quarterly 30(3), 63–86. Kalin, W., 2014. Internal Displacement. In E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, G. Loescher, K. Long, and N. Sigona (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 163–175. Mathew, P. and Harley, T., 2016. Refugees, Regionalism and Responsibility. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. McEwan, C., 2009. Postcolonialism and Development. Abingdon: Routledge. Oelgemöller, C., 2017. The Evolution of Migration Management in the Global North. London: Routledge.

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Organisation of American States (OAS), 2014. General Assembly 3–5 June 2014. Available from: www.oas. org/en/sla/docs/ag06712e04.pdf [Accessed 24 February 2018]. Reed-Hurtado, M., 2013. The Cartagena Declaration on Refugees and the Protection of People Fleeing Armed Conflict and Other Situations of Violence in Latin America. UNHCR Legal and Protection Policy Research Series. UNHCR (ed.), 1984. La Protección internacional de los refugiados en América Central, México y Panamá: Problemas jurídicos y humanitarios – Memorias del Coloquio en Cartagena de Indias 1983. UNHCR/Centro Regional de Estudios del Tercer Mundo/UNAC. UNHCR (ed.), 1995. Memoria del Coloquio: 10 Años de la Declaración de Cartagena sobre Refugiados, San José, 5–7 Diciembre 1994. San José: IIDH/UNHCR. UNHCR (ed.), 2005. Memoria del Vigésimo Aniversario de la Declaración de Cartagena sobre los Refugiados (1984–2004). Mexico City: Editorama. UNHCR, 2010. Brasilia Declaration on the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons in the Americas, 11 November 2010. Available from: www.refworld.org/docid/4cdd44582.html [accessed 24 February 2018]. UNHCR (ed.), 2015. Memorias del trigésimo aniversario de la Declaración de Cartagena sobre los refugiados. Quito: UNHCR. UNHCR, 2016. San Jose Action Statement, 7 July 2016. Available from: http://acnur.org/t3/fileadmin/ scripts/doc.php?file=t3/fileadmin/Documentos/BDL/2016/1069 [Accessed 24 February 2018]. UNHCR/ACNUR, 2014. Brazil Declaration and Plan of Action: A Framework for Cooperation and Regional Solidarity to Strengthen the International Protection of Refugees, Displaced and Stateless Persons in Latin America and the Caribbean. 3 December 2014. Available from: www.acnur.org/fileadmin/scripts/doc. php?file=fileadmin/Documentos/BDL/2014/9865 [Accessed 24 February 2018]. UNHCR (ed.), 1982. Asilo y Protección Internacional de Refugiados en América Latina. Mexico City: UNAM.

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22 The ‘need to be there’ North–South encounters and imaginations in the humanitarian economy Estella Carpi

Introduction This chapter explores North–South encounters and mutual imaginations within humanitarian economies, a term I use to refer to the organised systems of assistance provision that address people affected by war and rely on their own repertory of values and norms. Based on the research I conducted in northern Lebanon (Akkar) and Beirut’s southern suburbs (Dahiye1) between 2011 and 2013, it advances a critical reflection on the tension that exists between the philanthropic spirit of the humanitarian system as it is implemented in the ‘global South’ (Butt 2002) and local and refugee responses to what I call ‘Southism’. The Southist intent of the Northern humanitarian system to care for, rescue, upgrade and assist Southern settings2 – which, as I will discuss later, partially transcends physical geographies – combines personal affection with necessity, and collective compassion with professional aspirations. In this sense, I use the notion of Southism in a way that resonates with the ‘monumentalisation of the margins’ (Spivak 1999, p. 170), which crystallises needs and areas of need in the global South while powerfully acknowledging the good intentionality of humanitarian workers. As such, I propose Southism both as a concept and a mode of analysis that indicates a structural relationship between different sets of providers and beneficiaries, rather than a mere act of assisting the South with a philanthropic spirit. Specifically, Southism, as a mode of analysis, is underpinned by a preconception of the South as disempowered and incapable, while cementing the ‘global South’ as the key symbolic capital of Northern empowerment, accountability and capability. To some extent, I think of Southism as a peculiar configuration of Orientalism (Said 1978). By departing from Said’s theory – which aimed to capture the history and character of Western attitudes, ideologies and imaginations toward the East – and by further problematising West–East/North–South political geographies, I draw on Southism to enhance our understandings of the power differences that underpin and characterise relationships between providers and recipients. In an effort to expand longstanding debates on the paternalistic compassionism of humanitarianism (Arendt 1994; Barnett 2011), as will be evident, I refer to the humanitarian way of dealing with otherness. As such, I argue that Southism does not merely make the global South, or Southern elements in the North, its special place – as Said does with the Orient – but it is, rather, employed by Northern and Southern actors to reassert, solidify and legitimise the Northern humanitarian presence and actions. 296

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I am, of course, far from the first researcher to advance considerations on the hegemonic culture of aid provision and the diverse responses of beneficiaries to such hegemony. Nevertheless, a close analysis of how such North–South relations and imaginations are reproduced in the specific context of these two Lebanese settings opens up further avenues of inquiry – as well as concerns – into hard-to-die humanitarian hierarchies. The humanitarian approaches to thinking about and assisting the needy that I discuss here have to do with disparate sides of the world. The global humanitarian lifestyle I aim to explore is about social class, economic status and the freedom to move inside vulnerable areas and opt for educational and professional migration. From a conceptual perspective, this analysis strives toward a geography-free interpretation of Southism. While passports and nationalities still prove their efficaciousness in times of risk, my interpretation focuses on the identification of comfort zones, which protect lifeworlds, ease and privilege across passports. The hegemonic culture that underpins the ‘NGOisation’ of postcolonial settings (Ferguson 1994; Fischer 1997; Schuller 2012) is a discourse theory that, on the one hand, can sometimes be adopted regardless of the geographic context of its primary subjects; and, on the other, can unearth the organisational and individual ethics of international and local practitioners in approaching Southern settings affected by crisis. This conceptual, geography-free approach is functional to contextually articulate the ‘too-easy West-and-the-rest polarisations sometimes rampant in colonial and postcolonial discourse studies’, which rather end up legitimating by reversal the (both Northern and Southern) colonial attitude itself (Spivak 1999, p. 39). In other words, from an exclusively conceptual perspective, when I talk of humanitarian Southism there can be no ‘outside’. Nonetheless, my analysis limits itself to showing some of the moral and material implications of Southism. After all, the feelings, intentions and aspirations that often underlie the humanitarian career (Malkki 2015) make such Southism a matter that cannot be straightforwardly addressed in the short term. More specifically, what I have chosen to label as ‘humanitarian Southism’ is an analytical framework that makes it possible to investigate humanitarian actors’ tendency to believe that, whenever a new emergency breaks out, Lebanon – like other ‘fragile states’ (Fayyad 2008) – would collapse without their help. Within the framework of my field research in Dahiye and the villages of Akkar, it is possible to analyse the behavioural pattern of the international humanitarian apparatus, in which both local and international practitioners work. The chapter draws on in-depth interviews and extensive participant observation carried out between September 2011 and November 2013 in Beirut’s Dahiye area – namely, the districts of Borj al-Barajneh, Choueifat, Haret Hreik, al-Ghobeiry, ash-Shiyyah, al-Mreije and Hadath – and the Akkar villages of al-‘Abdeh, Bebnin, al-Bahsa, Bellanet al-Hisa, Wadi Khaled, and the town of Halba. In Dahiye I interviewed 17 Shiite families and 25 individuals. I also conducted interviews with 68 practitioners working in non-governmental organisations (NGOs)3 which, in the aftermath of the Israel–Lebanon 2006 war, had collaborated with representatives of the Lebanese Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, and with Dahiye’s municipalities. In Akkar, I interviewed 43 humanitarian practitioners working in NGOs and UN agencies,4 and 140 Syrian individuals who had relocated from Syria to different villages in North Lebanon. I selected my research interlocutors on a day-to-day basis, and I resorted to chain sampling (also known as ‘snowballing’) to recruit interviewees: in essence, my first participants suggested the names of acquaintances to help me identify new interviewees. I used to meet with them in informally organised settings, especially in private houses and local cafés. Despite my fluency in the local dialect and my compliance with the local behavioural culture, I embodied the international community to the eyes of my interlocutors in two main ways: as an 297

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international researcher looking at crisis in Dahiye, and as an activist ethnographer in Akkar, where I engaged in self-started acts of aid provision, and I volunteered in a Syrian committee assisting refugee newcomers. Using the discursive strategy of Southism, in this chapter I intend to discuss the encounters and the imaginations that characterise the Lebanese humanitarian economy. While encounters indicate material human processes that can promptly be evidenced, imaginations refer to collective discourses and perceptions, which, implying rational thinking and theorisation, for the sake of an accurate epistemology, still need to be differentiated from encounters. Therefore, encounters and imaginations cut across the everyday realities of both refugees and aid providers. I first unfold North–South actual encounters by adopting two analytical categories: The ‘epistemic failure’ of humanitarian workers who lack fine-grained knowledge of the targeted area, including the local language, customs and history; and the ‘material discrimination’ within the humanitarian organisation of labour, which sets pay-scales, individual safety measures and professional accountability in different ways based on the nationality of its members of staff. The chapter then proceeds to examine the mutual imaginations of beneficiaries and providers within the humanitarian economy, by primarily tackling three themes. First, ‘humanitarian tourism’, which is locally generalised as the international approach par excellence to areas of contemporary Lebanon that are exposed to cyclical outbursts of violence. Second, humanitarianism’s ‘politics of blame’, that burdens the local society with the ‘structural sin’ (Bhaskar 2000) of preventing successful foreign interventions. Third, the Southern moral and political expectations placed on the global North, which are here translated into the way in which Syrian refugees imagine the so-called international community and its actions. This chapter addresses these articulated North–South dynamics, which shape and are shaped by the humanitarian economy.

North–South humanitarian encounters The concept of Southism that I seek to advance in this chapter tends to embrace various segments of the international community and Lebanon’s globalised middle class, who are increasingly employed in humanitarian organisations due to the governmental imperative of enhancing local employment in the response to domestic and regional crises. In the wake of neoliberal ‘job creation’ (Hanieh 2015, p. 133) and with the increasing professionalisation of humanitarian assistance provision, both local and international NGO workers typically move from one organisation to another with high frequency, changing tasks inside the same organisation or moving across regions, either within Lebanon or elsewhere. These factors render nationality an important variant as long as it is able to problematise humanitarian recruitment policies and professional ethics. Indeed, it goes without saying that, through a process of NGOisation and professionalisation of philanthropy – as some scholars have already noticed (Mac Ginty and Hamieh 2010; Mercer and Green 2013) – local humanitarian workers also develop a hegemonic culture with respect to the ‘needy’. This, therefore, becomes a culturally nuanced habitus of hegemonic provision, a habitus that is composed of a shared sense of epistemic superiority: knowing more about domestic vulnerability and systematic solutions than ordinary citizens or than the crisis-affected people themselves. It is also composed of moral self-legitimisation, in assisting and voicing those individuals who, allegedly, can only be assisted and be given a voice (Arendt 1958; Agamben 1998; Pandolfi 2000). Moreover, in this framework, material privileges and epistemic authority tacitly grant professional accountability, knowledge and prestige to international staff members (also see FiddianQasmiyeh in this volume). The latter’s ‘resource-hungry lifestyle’ (Spivak 1999, p. 6) has been defined as ‘socially light and materially heavy’ (Redfield 2012, p. 360), that is, scarcely engaged 298

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with local history’s legacies and relationships, but demanding a substantial return for their mission while living more uncomfortably than they could, or even somehow endangering their lives. Hence, to a certain measure, social and material gravity (Redfield 2012) further vary by nationality. I keep these important considerations in mind while I turn to discuss the specificities of how epistemic failure and material discrimination play out on the ground.

Epistemic failure Epistemic failure implies a lack of, or insufficient, local knowledge, that is the language, customs and history of the area of intervention. Scholars and practitioners have long noticed that, most of the time, epistemic accountability is exclusively attributed to international humanitarian actors (Anderson 1999; Polman 2011; Redfield 2012; Mercer and Green 2013), while aid recipients simply allow the former to gain understanding but cannot explain things themselves. Also, during my personal field experience in Lebanon, humanitarian providers often suggested that I should never have trusted the words of local beneficiaries if I had wanted to conduct rigorous scientific research in the field. This dynamic is reminiscent of the Arendtian binary of biographic and biological lives, according to which the world would become divided up into voiceless victims on the one hand and people who can witness, narrate, and better explain the lives of such victims on the other (Arendt 1958). By this token, an international practitioner5 who had worked in a Beirut war-affected zone in the summer of 2006 affirmed: Local NGOs in Lebanon are all family run and tribal-like, whereas we don’t have clan ties with anyone, and therefore the internationals are the only ones who have the ability to become accountable among people without having to bargain something for something else. Nevertheless, my field research shows that NGO and UN workers were highly dissatisfied with a lack of institutional coordination and consequent overlapping projects. Self-criticism was not missing in their accounts, which conveyed how bad coordination actually was largely due to their own scarce knowledge of the context of intervention, having no possibilities of acquiring it while carrying out their daily tasks (which already require extra working hours). The high turnover of staff, moreover, leads to relying on inexperienced staff over the course of time. Likewise, my fieldwork indicates that most local and international practitioners were scarcely aware of the previous projects that had been conducted by their own organisation, and about funding sources and policies, domestic and international regulations, and local customs. INGOs and UN agencies usually justify the lack of contextual knowledge with the request for technical skilfulness that is universally applicable regardless of local specificities. The frequently observed lack of contextual knowledge among international humanitarian environments is, rather, valued as a guarantee of moral detachment and impartiality in contexts of conflict (Prendergast 1996). In addition to the technocratic criteria of recruitment, a reason behind such an epistemic failure is surely physical distance. In this regard, an international practitioner6 working for an NGO in an Akkar town contended in our interview that: ‘We all work in the same building: INGOs and UN agencies. I mean . . . it looks like an ivory tower: We’re totally out of people’s reach.’ Even though humanitarian workers in Lebanon generally do not lead an in-compound life7 – unlike countries such as Afghanistan, Nigeria and South Sudan – humanitarian lifeworlds are still protected and preserved through softer forms of ‘physical bunkerisation’ (Duffield 2015, p. S85), which, in turn, hamper the development of contextual knowledge. 299

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Material discrimination The second type of encounter that I illustrate here is material discrimination. Material discrimination sets pay-scales, individual safety measures, and capacities to move, specifically according to the nationality of humanitarian staff members. This leads to the internal reproduction of hierarchical relationships – identifiable as North and South – within the humanitarian economy. In the interviews I conducted in Dahiye and Akkar, regional humanitarian workers – mostly Lebanese locals or people coming from other Arab countries – often highlighted the disadvantageous pay-scales that they were doomed to receive at work, even when possessing more than one passport, or being dual citizens of both a Northern and a Southern country. According to the interviews, the policies of some NGOs institutionalise material discrimination by allocating payments to cover the rent of international staff members only. Generally, neither regional nor local staff affirmed they had their rent paid by their employer, and only few of them affirmed that they benefited from a small house allowance. While NGOs tended to exclusively deploy local staff in the field for security reasons – a policy, moreover, that sometimes exposes them to actual risk – their mobility remained limited, and their privileged lifestyle poorly protected and unguaranteed. Locals, unlike international workers, affirmed they could move with difficulty from one organisation to another, in an environment where professional mobility, as already stated, is highly rewarded. Another example for this stunted local mobility is provided by the possibility of being evacuated in times of actual crisis or global risk, as proved in September 2013 when there were indications that the United States might intervene in Syria to topple the Assad regime: I remember that Beirut was emptied in two days. NGO branches across the country had been shut down, NGO international staff were all called to Beirut to be ready to be evacuated if needed. In the meantime, local staff had to return to and remain in their unsafe lifeworlds. Geopolitical uncertainty was able to mark an uncomfortable line between Northerners and Southerners within the humanitarian economy. Dahiye’s internally displaced people and refugees significantly expressed their resentment toward local professionals, who are allowed easy access to international (resourceful) networks and who had come to represent the only ‘local good governance’ foreign governments aspire to work with (Mercer and Green 2013, p. 113). This exacerbated the moral divide across local and refugee social classes. Furthermore, Lebanese regulations allowing the employment of only a fixed and small number of Lebanon’s Palestinian refugees and Syrian nationals in the local staff of humanitarian organisations ended up ethnicising such a class divide.

Humanitarian imaginations I now adopt ‘humanitarian Southism’ as a framework of analysis to explore the mutual imaginations that providers and humanitarian workers produce within the humanitarian economy. First, I will disclose a form of local disaffection, which I call ‘humanitarian tourism’. Second, I will examine the humanitarian politics of blame on local structures and cultural mentality. Third, I will unfold the refugee discourse around the ‘betrayal’ of the international community, which stands in contrast to the humanitarian-claimed ‘need to be there’. Indeed, the humanitarian actors operating in several of Akkar’s villages used to stress their idea of being necessary in the particular area. They considered their intervention to be self-legitimised by their supposedly neutral and impartial intervention. An international NGO employee8 working in an Akkar village expressed the need to be there as follows:

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We have to be there, since local people, particularly if affiliated with other religious groups, won’t do anything for other communities. There would simply be a huge void in the places in which we’re currently intervening. Moreover, social services here are corrupt and weak . . . We cannot really change what historically has been the cancer of this region. This statement supports the conviction that if those positions were not covered by an allegedly impartial Western practitioner, they would never be taken by a large number of local – or, more broadly, Middle Eastern – humanitarians, who certainly would not want to challenge their system of values and beliefs by taking part in such a social endeavour. In some cases, international NGO workers were specifically referring to the idea that a Christian Lebanese national would not feel safe or at ease working among Sunni Syrians who have more sizeably relocated to the Sunni villages in Akkar. Thus, most of the NGO and UN workers I interviewed spoke in terms of ‘Churchillian responsibility’ (Spivak 2004) – that is, the self-legitimated right to intervene, vested as a moral duty toward the assisted – rather than their own right to work there; therefore, they rarely recognised how their job was simply a way to earn a living, and, at times, even earning it with several additional privileges. I will now proceed to discuss the specificities of the local imaginations around humanitarian tourism in Beirut’s Dahiye, the politics of blame of the humanitarian system, and the discourse which voices the expectations of Syrian refugees toward the international community in Akkar’s villages, which also constitutes a peculiar politics of blame.

Humanitarian tourism With the hindsight of in-depth interviews and participant observation in Dahiye from 2011 to 2013, locally displaced people who benefited from humanitarian assistance at the time of the Israel–Lebanon war of July 2006 pointed to the international humanitarian system’s ‘touristic’ approach by describing the international humanitarian worker as ‘aber sabil: a ‘passer-by’. Likewise, local NGOs9 highlighted the ‘humanitarian scandal’ that occurred when the UNDP and some staff from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) left Lebanon because it was believed that Israel would destroy Hezbollah within three days. Beyond the distress caused by war itself, this perception among the locals of multiple forms of ‘humanitarian tourism’ increased the sense of uncertainty in Dahiye. My fieldwork showed how Dahiye’s war-affected population had grown to mistrust, and hold different levels of hostility toward, the ‘international community’ (al-mujtama‘ ad-duwali), who had allegedly rushed over to rescue them in 2006 in the wake of the Israeli air strikes. A press release in the Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar10 reported that tonnes of emergency relief tools due to be supplied by the UNHCR – including mattresses and aid kits – were burned by the agency before they could be distributed, as they had been spoiled because of inadequate protection while in storage. The ‘fire episode’ was compared to the ‘smell of corruption’ (raihat al-fasad) at the Lebanese government’s High Relief Commission and the utter unreliability of the UN staff who, from a local perspective, did not actually care about people’s safety. The widespread local perception of dealing with opportunistic war tourists, which I observed, speaks to the historical framework of the Beirut southern peripheries. Dahiye has long had an image of urban wreckage and massive destruction, deprivation and misery. The area suffers from external stereotyping and neglect (Harb 1995, 2006; Deeb 2006) and has nearly always drawn the interest of outsiders during times of emergency and displacement. Social responsiveness to a ‘touristic’ international humanitarian industry in 2006 seemed to

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lead locals to show greater entitlement in claiming that particular territory as theirs during both war and peacetime. This action clearly counters the international aid industry’s temporary exploitation of war-affected areas. ‘Westerners are all tourists, even if they’ve spent 30 years in this country’, said the leader of a prominent local NGO.11 ‘We’ve instead been taking care of Lebanon since 1976, the beginning of the civil war!’ The endemic mistrust toward the international aid industry was similarly expressed by a local resident12 from ash-Shiyyah, who told me: ‘Nothing dies if it comes from the inside. Corruption and exploitation increase because of the presence of foreigners here.’ In response, international humanitarian workers imagined local society in Lebanon as an unchangeable and reified realm. Thinking about local immutability in a way that exists independently from the actual effects of humanitarian work, international humanitarians tended to portray the local factors as inherently failing and weak. This mistrust of international workers and the broader anti-Northern imaginary came to a head during the July 2006 war after being encoded in the social ethics of the major Lebanese Shiite party Hezbollah, the de facto ruler of the majority of Dahiye’s municipalities. The UN and the US government were often mentioned as ‘the real criminals’ and ‘the people who have always lied’,13 while Al Jazeera14 was denounced as a Southern medium cowardly complying with Northern politics. Likewise, Al-Akhbar journalist Rajana Hammiye15 expressed contempt about the ephemerality of the UN’s commitment to dealing with Dahiye’s tragedy as follows: ‘Their visit lasted just for fifty minutes with the leaders of all municipalities.’ Owing to the locally defined INGO voyeuristic and touristic approach to the psychological grievances of war-stricken populations, local residents seemed to relate to Northern-funded reconstruction with resentment and suspicion, despite the official rhetoric boasting an unprecedented level and mode of North–South collaboration.16 The local perception of the fleeting nature of international humanitarian assistance stands in stark contrast to the local way of facing misadventure with a spirit of positivistic normalcy. The affected people’s identification with and belonging to their territory also emphasise that Northern interference was unwelcome, and recalls how thin the line sometimes is between perceived occupation and what is just called assistance,17 in spite of the benefits it might bring. The fact that Dahiye was the birthplace of many social workers was meaningful as a way to uphold local pride in the postwar reconstruction and humanitarian efforts. In this regard, a local social worker18 in postwar Dahiye stated the following: The majority of the staff here has grown up in the neighbourhood. I’m a child of this district myself (ana bint al-manta’a). We personally know our beneficiaries; we recognise their faces in the street. That is something a foreign NGO can’t do. Similarly, a governmental social worker19 observed: ‘Most of the people who sought shelter in this office during the July war were all acquaintances or already our beneficiaries.’ In turn, a member20 of the Choueifat Council in Dahiye mentioned the moral importance of social work precisely if one was born and bred in the area: ‘In this municipality, in fact, we’re all local members.’ The same attitude of pride and heroism in remaining and providing services for members of their own community was also expressed by the deputy mayor of al-Ghobeiry’s municipality21 in Dahiye, who supports the common spirit of assistance and territorial belonging of all the members of the Union of Dahiye’s Municipalities (Ittihad al-baladiyyat fy’d-Dahiye al- Janubiyye). These accounts point to the local configuration of Northern-led interventions, which frames humanitarianism as an ephemeral and opportunistic routine business.

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The politics of blame While conducting research in Akkar’s villages, it became apparent that INGOs frequently adopted the rhetoric of the ‘politics of blame’ (Antze and Lambek 1996, p. xxii) to explain why projects were not succeeding: they blamed donors, local cultural mentality and structures, or evil warlords. Most of the international humanitarian workers I interviewed believed that their programmes were not responsible for deepening the divisions between emergency areas and chronically marginalised spaces. In this scenario, where no one seems to have the capacity to change things, the providers disengage from the consequences of humanitarian assistance – although self-legitimised by the very humanitarian reason (Duffield 2001; Fassin 2012) of doing good unconditionally. Humanitarian workers, by adopting this politics of blame, often reciprocated people’s mistrust toward them, a dynamic that gradually pushes the former to walk away from their own obligations to extend their outreach and properly tailor their projects to the local context. In this vein, humanitarian workers related several episodes in which their beneficiaries tended to lie because of their greed. For instance, a humanitarian worker living in an Akkar village affirmed:22 Beneficiaries always say that nothing is provided to them, or also that we are corrupt. They don’t understand when we simply lack the resources to implement a project properly . . . Don’t believe them when they tell you this; they’d go on and on to complain about anything on Earth. Some of them speak in the name of greed, not grievance. The corrupt central state and the confessional structure of Lebanese society – where parliamentary seats and governmental roles are allocated on a religious community basis – were usually blamed to justify the aid apparatus’s shortcomings. Such a politics of blame was functionally adopted to respond to the Akkar environment, where the distribution of aid to Syrian refugee newcomers antagonised the long-neglected Lebanese among whom they live at present. This point harks back to the aid industry’s ‘culture of justification’ (Terry 2002, p. 229) when facing failure. As mentioned earlier, practitioners’ ‘humanitarian Southism’ certainly does not come without an element of self-criticism but deepens practitioners’ scepticism about the humanitarian practice itself. Many practitioner interviewees in the Akkar villages expressed scepticism about the positive results of the projects they were working on, including in terms of practical changes, long-term sustainability, territorial development and organisational approaches to the areas of intervention. Notwithstanding such self-criticism, which counters the epistemic failure explained above, humanitarian workers tended to make a rigorous distinction between their personal scepticism about the material results of their work, and their good intentions, as though the latter could almost ‘redeem’ them from having approached or assessed the territories of intervention inappropriately. The humanitarian politics of blame that I have illustrated thus far, to a certain extent, conveys the moral solipsism of humanitarian action in the everyday life of Akkar’s villages, while also suggesting that the origin of technical failure is largely situated in the provision-reception ‘moral economy’ of humanitarianism (Fassin 2005, p. 365).

Syrian refugees and the international community Between 2011 and 2013, in the Akkar villages, Syrian refugeehood seemed to become a synonym for international abandonment. This refugee discourse is a revealing form of geopolitical 303

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imagination in response to Southism. The continuation of the Syrian conflict was, at that stage, largely attributed to the inaction of the international actors – here international politicians – who, as the majority of the refugees I interviewed pointed out, had intervened in Iraq and Libya. Most of the Syrian refugees I interviewed highlighted that aid providers tended to misinterpret the Syrian conflict and expressed their concerns that the aid industry would soon turn into a reconciliation industry that misrepresents their cultural values and social system. This suggests that some of the refugees were already formulating their thinking on how the post-emergency reconciliation would deal with the Syrian political crisis (on diverse Southern approaches to conflict and reconciliation see Daley, this volume). In this vein, the humanitarian presence was locally perceived as a for-profit enterprise trying to attract as much funding as possible, in which humanist values become market gains of reconstruction and relief projects (Potvin 2013, p. 8). Until early 2013, 95% of the refugee interviewees mentioned ‘revolution’ (thawra) to refer to the events in Syria, as mostly coming from the political opposition majority areas. Hence, Syrian refugee women and men used to vent their frustration over the Western media’s depiction of the Syrian conflict as a ‘civil war’ (harb ahliyye) when it was mainly militias that were fighting each other. The media narratives, therefore, played a large role in the refugee discourse around the international community in Lebanon. A Syrian refugee23 originally from ar-Raqqa and based in Bebnin at the time of our interview, showed how the warring parts – the government, its allies, and the variegated opposition – were often incorrectly represented as having the same means. Similarly, another Syrian refugee from Afamia24 voiced his rejection of the same dominant Northern narratives by stating that Syrians were not buying weapons for the purpose of fighting each other, but rather of liberating the country. In all of this, humanitarian organisations were increasingly portraying the conflict as a religiously motivated one, and some aid recipients were resentful of the way in which they were dealt with. From the refugees’ perspective, aid providers should instead be able to distinguish between root and proximate causes of conflict (Anderson 1999, p. 70) when addressing refugees’ problems and designing projects. By this token, a Syrian refugee,25 originally from the countryside of Deir ez-Zor, said he feels unrepresented when he watches the news on TV, and he expressed a sense of being betrayed by the international community. ‘Betrayal’ is a term that I often heard in the refugees’ campsites to refer to a part of the Syrian population that remained loyal to the regime and, above all, to the international community, ‘with whom we’ll also need to reconcile’, as noted by a Syrian refugee woman26 in an Akkar village. In this sense, the ‘international community’s betrayal’ (khianet al-mujtama‘ ad-duwali) in Akkar consists of the decision to remain politically detached from the Syrian events while parading humanitarian support. Another Syrian refugee woman,27 from Homs, similarly argued: ‘The West and a part of Syrian society have betrayed [us]; that’s the only reason why we’re still dying everywhere.’ The moral indictment that I recorded among refugees whom I encountered in northern Lebanon over the years was primarily directed against the ‘international community’, which I also represented to their eyes in my capacity as an academic researcher. The distance between the territory of intervention and the territory in which decisions are made and where discussions take place, due to the Northern origin of humanitarian orthodoxy, cannot but reproduce North–South power relationships and imaginaries (also see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, this volume). In the same vein, in the eyes of the refugees, Islamophobia was the Northern lens to read the refugee South, which led the international community to misrepresent the Syrian conflict. For instance, a Syrian refugee man28 said that the international community fears abstract forms of Islam and draws an arbitrary line between an extremist, ‘terrorist’ Islam, and a ‘moderate’ Islam that could be acceptable to the West: ‘The international community believes that we need to learn from the outside what humanity (insaniye) and reconciliation 304

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(musalaha) mean.’ He therefore expressed his frustration that the international community limited itself to providing aid, which epitomises their ‘modern conscience given an alibi’ (Rieff 2002, p. 96). The humanitarian operations were in fact viewed as a surrogate for the international community’s political inaction: such a moderate form of support was theorised as a way of compensating for not having taken a clear stance in the Syrian conflict and not having supported the popular uprising. This assistential but apolitical form of Southism was locally rejected through the contestation of the international community’s inaction.

The Southist ‘need to be there’ By way of conclusion, there is a complex and changing interspace between locals and internationals, which, in discussing Southism, still marks the importance of passports and nationality. As discussed above, foreign aid providers in Dahiye and Akkar often stressed their ‘need to be there’, thus suggesting that locals would be unable to do what the international actors do because locals would not be able to replace internationals in areas where they would not feel politically – and religiously – comfortable. The words of an international humanitarian worker29 in al-Qobaiyat (Akkar) postulate a Lebanon that, without international aid providers, would face even greater hardships: ‘Local people don’t want to work in places that don’t territorialise their own community, and, as a result, wouldn’t act in neutral ways when facing issues that should be dealt with in a merely “humane” way.’ The implicit way of rendering ‘humane’ synonymous with ‘neutral’ and ‘apolitical’, and the perspective of feeling politically impartial and materially necessary for the South, were not exclusive to internationals. Similarly, the international humanitarian workers interviewed believed that without external ‘therapeutic intervention’ (Pupavac 2004), social changes would engender higher levels of domestic violence and instability. From this perspective, the only alleviation of daily grievance in the addressed territories is predominantly owed to international humanitarian operations. Such a logical implication does not seem to take into account that any external intervention, even if ‘humanitarian’, tends to reduce territorial and historical self-esteem to a certain extent (Harb 2006) and triggers the inner feeling that suffering can only be alleviated from the outside. The widespread belief that humanitarian neutrality is solidly tied up in the official legitimacy of international interventionism – and that the international aid providers are deemed mostly capable of upholding such neutrality – contribute to the North–South imaginary that the local is inherently weak and needs to be managed from the outside and therapeuticised. Against this backdrop, Southerners, in response to provision, reconfigure humanitarian presence and action in terms of political solidarity. With the double risk of diluting and unlearning ‘the Souths’ in a stigmatised single ‘North’, scholars have generally identified a monolithic humanitarian ‘common culture’ as a mere expression of ‘the humanitarian international’ (Sen 1981). Nevertheless, I have argued that Southism should be de-geographicised as a more complex discourse instrument, since local providers increasingly adopt the role of trustworthy partners for foreign aid providers, temporarily blurring separation lines that re-emerge as highly significant in times of actual risk. International humanitarian workers usually cooperate with locals to secure indigenous guidance and localise their work.30 In addition, there is a deliberate form of cooperation with local partners to make visible the external effort to respect local specificities and desires, as if such cooperation could ever be a guarantee for overarching neutrality, transparency and professional honesty. However, as shown, local participation is not necessarily a guarantee for ‘subaltern’ knowledge (Spivak 1999). We therefore need a flexible geography of Southism, which disappears when irrelevant and re-emerges when able to unfold the ad hoc performative roles of nationality. 305

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In the framework of the humanitarian economy, Northerners currently approach Southerners in two different ways: the first encounter involves the effort to realise a concerted ‘need to help’ which can merge Northern and Southern standards and models of care; the second encounter involves the implementation of this need through a gradual disengagement from responsibility and donorship (Slaughter and Crisp 2009). I have also sought to illustrate the ways in which the South projects onto the North its own interpretation of humanitarian provision as an integral part of political solidarity and solutions, which have so far been deemed as insufficient or lacking in both the case of the July 2006 war and the Syrian political crisis ongoing since 2011. In this sense, the humanitarian economy is an inter-relational realm where passports simultaneously hold partial and contextual relevance. This chapter has tried to unfold this relevance in a bid to examine North–South encounters and imaginations and to problematise a range of ethnic and political geographies. The discursive strategy of Southism has here helped to capture the humanitarian lifeworlds and their (actual and imagined) encounters with local and refugee thinking and attitudes.

Notes 1 Throughout this chapter I have opted to transliterate Arabic terms and names as spoken in the Lebanese dialect. 2 On Northern- and Southern-led humanitarianisms, see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (2015 and in this volume), and www.southernresponses.org (funded by the EU Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, Grant Agreement No. 715582). 3 Among these 68, there were 23 working for faith-based organisations (FBOs) and 45 for secular NGOs; 38 for international NGOs (INGOs) and 30 for local NGOs. 4 Among the 43, 17 were working for local and Arab Gulf FBOs, 20 for secular INGOs and 6 for different UN agencies. 5 Interview conducted with the representative of an international NGO, Beirut, 9 November 2011. 6 Interview conducted in al-Qobaiyat, northern Lebanon, on 30 November 2012. 7 An exception is made for the UN staff living in Naqura (Lebanese southern border town), where the UN Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) headquarters are located. 8 Interview conducted in al-Qobaiyat, northern Lebanon, on 9 December 2012. 9 Interview conducted in Wata al-Mossaitbeh, Beirut, on 11 October 2011. 10 Tha’ir Ghandour, al-Akhbar, 13 September 2006. 11 Interview conducted in Wata al-Mossaitbeh, Beirut, on 11 October 2011. 12 Interview conducted in ash-Shiyyah, Beirut, on 3 February 2012. 13 Conversation with a local resident held in Haret Hreik, Beirut, on 24 November 2011. 14 It is worth noting that Al Jazeera, at the time of the July 2006 war, was clearly allied with Lebanon and not with Israel. However, people in Dahiye used to refer to the channel by highlighting its current political attitude: its opposition to Hezbollah and the Axis of Resistance and its support of the Muslim Brotherhood, which became indisputable after the regime change in Egypt. 15 This is a daily Lebanese newspaper generally oriented toward the political March 8 coalition led by Hezbollah. The specific article is dated 6 September 2012, Arabic edition. 16 Hezbollah’s members also embraced this rhetoric to publicly justify international intervention. Interview conducted with the Deputy Mayor of Haret Hreik, Beirut, on 20 October 2011. 17 French scholar Didier Fassin explained this concept in a speech he delivered at the School of Social Sciences, Institute for Advanced Studies in Paris (26 April 2012). 18 Interview conducted with the Municipality of ash-Shiyyah, Beirut, on 28 October 2011. 19 Interview conducted with Naziha Dakroub, Manager of the Social Development Center, Office of the Ministry of Social Affairs, ash-Shiyyah, Beirut, on 30 October 2011. 20 Interview conducted in Choueifat, Beirut, on 27 November 2012. 21 Interview conducted in al-Ghobeiry, Beirut, on 26 November 2012. 22 Interview conducted in Halba, northern Lebanon, on 28 November 2012. 23 Interview conducted in Bebnin, northern Lebanon, on 28 January 28 2013. 24 Interview conducted in al-‘Abdeh, northern Lebanon, on 29 September 2012. 306

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25 26 27 28 29 30

Interview conducted in Halba, northern Lebanon, on 28 January 2013. Interview conducted in al-Bahsa, northern Lebanon, on 28 January 2013. Interview conducted in al-Bahsa, northern Lebanon, on 2 December 2012. Interview conducted in al-‘Abdeh, northern Lebanon, on 28 January 2013. Interview conducted at UNHCR branch, Qobaiyat, northern Lebanon, on December 12, 2012. Interview conducted with an international humanitarian worker in Forn ash-Shebbak, Beirut, on October 13, 2011.

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23 Security cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean Threats, institutions and challenges Yonique Campbell

Introduction Security cooperation is an important component of the modern political praxis of the heterogeneous Latin America and Caribbean region. It has been deployed both discursively and practically to respond to old threats as well new and emerging security developments in international, regional and national spaces (Battaglino 2012; Hurrell 1998). Security cooperation in the region has been intentional, grounded in anti-imperial ideology, but also reactive – a response to changes in the global post-Cold War arena (Dominguez 1998; Shaw and Swatuk 1994; Tulchin 2014). The security of the state, underpinned by realist assumptions of anarchy and balance of power, has historically been the dominant security paradigm in Latin America (Herz 2010). The history of inter-state conflict and US hegemony in the region during the Cold War supported this approach and helped to foster an expectedly strong emphasis on sovereignty. There is also a strong state survival security narrative in the small island developing states (SIDS) of the Caribbean, owing to their small size (Byron 2012; Girvan 2012; Lewis 1976). The strong emphasis on sovereignty and the survival of the state narrative are being complemented by an unprecedented, although challenging, thrust toward regional cooperation and collective security. The global South, as a whole, has shown an aggressive desire to shape the nature of global politics and change the scale of asymmetrical power relations, which significantly affect their security relations and realities (Khanna 2009; Tulchin 2014; Woods 2008). There are a number of overlapping factors that have prompted Latin American and Caribbean states toward greater levels of security cooperation and an ‘incipient’ form of security governance (Hurrell 1998; Oelsner 2009). These include the quest for greater autonomy (Fawcett 2005), the need to respond to transnational organised crime and violent non-state actors (Arias and Goldstein 2010); the leadership ambitions of Brazil, described as a Second World (middling) country (Kenkel 2010; Khanna 2008); and the US’s so-called ‘light footprint approach’. The presence of the US as a hegemonic force in hemispheric politics, and the ambitions of Brazil to replace the US through its role as a ‘consensual hegemony’ (Burges 2008) have served as an impetus for expanding regional security cooperation (Carranza 2003; Steves 2001). Mercosur (Southern Common Market) and UNASUR (Union of South American Nations) were established by Brazil to aid in this process (Tussie 2009). As a member of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) 309

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group, Brazil’s ‘development programmes are guided by its foreign policy objectives, which aim to consolidate its international image as a Southern nation willing to play a greater role in global peace, security and justice’ (Quadir 2013, p. 333). Similarly, the creation of ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America), another mechanism for security cooperation, by the former president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, is a deliberate attempt to counter US hegemony in the region, using oil and a strong anti-US narrative. In order to meet the objectives of security cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean, complex sets of bilateral, multilateral, regional and sub-regional institutions have been developed and various declarations have been made at different forums and summits. Invariably, the question that arises is whether these mechanisms of security cooperation can deliver on their promise to bring about a more secure region. This raises two other questions: what are the most pertinent and recent challenges that have accompanied the process of strengthening South–South security cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean? And how best might these challenges be addressed? Still, another question relates to whether such cooperation can correct the asymmetrical power relations in a region that has historically been affected by the politics and hegemonic presence of the US. Despite the gains made, many difficulties have accompanied processes of security cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean. Security cooperation has been seriously affected by a strong sense of national sovereignty writ large (Dominguez 2007; Shaw 2004; Vasciannie 1997), differences in approaches to dealing with shared threats (Diamint 2011), marginalisation of vulnerable, indigenous groups, lack of political legitimacy at the national levels, and tension between conservative and liberal political leaders. A Latin America and Caribbeanwide security community must also contend with the absence of similarity in societal structures, culture and political systems (Malamud 2010; Varas 1992). Extra-regional ambitions, the growing trend toward using triangular cooperation, and the decline of ALBA led by Venezuela, have certainly affected the push toward reducing the power of the US in regional security. This chapter is divided into four sections. In the first section, I situate Latin America and the Caribbean in relation to the discourses and practices of global security, and global politics more generally. In the next section, I look more specifically at the threats and discourses that regional security institutions must address. I then examine the mechanisms through which South–South cooperation (SSC) is realised and the challenges that constrain the engineering of deeper forms of security cooperation across the entire Latin American and Caribbean space. The final section interrogates the extent to which SSC has affected North–South relations and the exercise of power within the region. It also considers the new foreign policy dispensation of the US and the effects this might have on security relations in the region.

Situating Latin America and the Caribbean The spatial, political and historical reality of countries in any region is bound to have a formidable influence on how state and violent non-state actors use and interpret violence, and the way in which security threats are constituted and addressed. The political economies of the region have been significantly shaped by slavery and colonialism and the democratising projects and hegemonic ambitions of various Anglo-Saxon countries (Lowenthal 1991; Whitehead 1992). Whitehead (1992) argues that ‘Latin America countries were in the vanguard of international liberalism when they repudiated monarchism, aristocracy and slavery in the past century, and at least in theory their governments have long rested on the principle of popular sovereignty’ (p. 147). With a wide array of languages, culture and racial influences, Latin America and the Caribbean is by no means a homogeneous space and their respective political experiences and histories have been quite different (Varas 1992). Most Latin American countries had authoritarian regimes 310

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until the 1980s when their experience with democracy began (O’Donnell 1999). The political experience of the Commonwealth Caribbean countries is different as they continued with the colonial, inherited Westminster Whitehall model of democracy, through a strong two-party system, when they became independent in the 1960s. The other non-self-governing territories in the Caribbean are not sovereign and their political systems reflect retention of constitutional relationships with their respective ‘metropoles’ (Clegg 2015). When situating Latin America and the Caribbean in relation to global security, there are three important periods that must be considered: the current period where terrorism and threats from non-state actors have emerged as major global security concerns (Kaldor 2012; Strindberg 2015; Feinberg 2016); the period before this one, emphasising the US’s ‘War on Drugs’ (Blackwell 2015; Carpenter 2003); and the Cold War period. The bipolar world created by the Cold War pushed Latin America and the Caribbean into the ambit of global security as US fears of Soviet influence in the region grew (Shaw and Swatuk 1994). (In)security in the region arguably reached its peak when the US intervened in a number of countries in the region, including Guatemala in 1954, Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1998. Following the end of the Cold War, what have been termed ‘new wars’ emerged and the emphasis shifted largely to non-traditional threats commonly referred to as human security threats (Kaldor 2012). Kaldor argues that new wars ‘involve a blurring of the line between war (usually defined as violence between states or organised political groups for political motives), organised crime (violence undertaken by private individuals for private purposes, usually financial gains) and large-scale violation of human rights (violence undertaken by states or politically organised groups against individuals) (ibid., p. 2). The war on drugs – although considerably overtaken by concerns with terrorism – is still a significant part of the global security agenda. In this regard, Latin America and the Caribbean, major producers and transporters of drugs, are crucial to any attempt to curtail its impact both regionally and globally (Horwitz 2010; Griffith 1997).

Security cooperation for what? Security discourses and threats in Latin America and the Caribbean While the security discourse is not identical across the entire Latin American region, there are enough similarities in countries in South and Central America and the Caribbean to allow for a discussion of a regional security discourse. Moreover, the task of deciding what the regional security priorities are in such a diverse and fragmented region has never been a simple one (Byron 2012; Griffith 2004; Trinkunas 2013). That security is, itself, a contested concept – as reflected especially in the debates that have emerged in the post-Cold War period to challenge statist definitions – is a factor that has led to what is regarded by Tickner (2003) as a ‘hybrid’ security narrative in the region. This hybrid form combines dependency theory, realism and interdependency. Oelsner (2009) contends that three major areas were securitised in Latin America’s Southern cone: democratic and civil-military relations; the centralisation of traditional security issues; and the focus on new security threats that accompanied the end of the Cold War. Hurrell (1998) makes the point, too, that ‘since the end of the Cold War, regional order and security have increasingly come to be defined in terms of the collective defence of democracy and the promotion of a liberal economic reform and regional integration’ (p. 530). Human security, which attempts to centralise the individual and personal threats to security, has also emerged as a tangential concern in regional bodies. Although human security threats pose serious risks to democracy (Pattnayak and Gustafson 2006), it has been overshadowed by new transnational threats such as organised crime and drug trafficking (Campbell 2014) – threats that have been framed through the lens of realism and state sovereignty (Griffith 1997). 311

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Consequently, regional security discourses, though varied, have all positioned the state at the centre of the security discourse. Concerns with state security, sovereignty, geopolitics and territorial integrity have ensured that realism and military threats remain dominant in discourses on security, both nationally and regionally. National security ‘is still the core concept expressing the continued vision that the security of the state is at the centre of the debate and that military capacity is the ultimate guarantor of security in an anarchic system’ (Herz 2010, p. 601). One of the significant consequences of this is that it is regionalism – emphasising formal and statedriven processes – rather than regionalisation – which focuses more broadly on informal political exchanges involving a wider array of actors (Börzel and Risse 2016) – that has been dominant in sub-regional and hemispheric discourses, despite the complex web of security threats and actors in the region (on regionalism and regionalisation, also see Muhr in this volume). Another consequence is the marginalisation of discourses around individual and citizen security (Campbell and Clarke 2017). Critically, too, an important component of the statist, national security discourse in the region is the identification of Latin America as a ‘zone of peace’. This is a misleading nomenclature if the definition of peace is freed from a purely realist view of state stability that denotes it as negative peace: the absence of inter-state wars between or among states (Kacowicz 1998).

‘New’ security threats Transnational crime (which includes the drug trade, gang violence and organised crime) is a major security threat in Latin America and the Caribbean – 30% of crimes in the region is attributed to organised crime and gangs (United Nations Office on Drug and Crime 2013). Jamaica and Central American countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have some of the highest murder rates in the world. Maras (transnational gangs), as they are called in Central America, such as MS-13, M-18 in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico; the Clansman and One Order gangs in the case of Jamaica; and the Zetas in Mexico have had a significant influence on crime and insecurity in the region (Harriott 2000; Koonings and Kruijt 2004; Mateo 2011). Although they pose broadly similar security and democratic challenges, violent non-state actors such as gangs and guerrilla groups emerged in response to different political, historical and social conditions in the region. These conditions and experiences have also been marginalised as states construct a narrative that privileges existential threats to the state and quick-fix, populist solutions (Campbell 2014). In Jamaica, they emerged in garrison communities and were tied to the major political parties (Sives 2010; Stone 1980). In Central America, pandillas (local gangs) are products of the 1990s post-conflict environment, which led to grave insecurities and heightened precarity among demobilised combatants while the mara (transnational gangs) emerged among Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles (Bruneau et al. 2011; Mateo 2011; Rodgers and Muggah 2009). In the case of Colombia, gangs emerged from former paramilitary groups and in conjunction with the drug trade, while guerrilla groups such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) emerged out of armed conflict and the internecine La Violencia (Karl 2017). Gangs have not only contributed to high levels of violence, but they have been at the core of the organised crime and drug problem in the region. Colombia and Mexico are major producers of drugs while the Caribbean and Central America are mainly transhipment points (Griffith 1997; Haughton 2011). Given its long history of military coups and authoritarian regimes, political instability and state repression have also been securitised in a number of Latin America countries. For example, Paraguay in 2012, Honduras in 2009, Haiti in 2004 and Venezuela in 2002 all experienced military coups and hence challenges to political and democratic stability. These occurrences suggest 312

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that democracy and civil-military relations exist in a fragile state. Civil unrest and tendencies toward strong governmental power to suppress protests support the argument that the security of individuals and their communities can be threatened by the disciplinary power of the state and its institutions (Loader and Walker 2007). Notwithstanding, the security of individuals remains a neglected and peripheral issue and attempts to securitise or move individual security into the realm of high politics have at best been symbolic and ad hoc. As a result of their precarity and insecurity, many ‘non-citizens’ are opting out of state citizenship in countries like Brazil and Jamaica and are turning to informal sources of authority that involve the threat or use of violence (Campbell 2015; Campbell and Clarke 2017; Holston 2008). These are countries where organised crime is pervasive and where the police use repressive, undemocratic measures to suppress crime. Terrorism has been treated as a security threat in some parts of the region, mainly because of proximity to the US (Griffith 2004), significance to American interests, narco-terrorism in the Andes and the link between organised crime and terrorism (Laqueur 1999). There is also a real danger that Muslims in Trinidad could become securitised and stigmatised because of the reported recruitment of foreign fighters who have travelled to Syria (Trinidad Express 2017). The Citizenship by Investment Programme (CIP)1 in the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) has also been framed as a ‘national security concern’.2 The threat to cybersecurity, another 21st-century challenge and one of the downsides to the digital revolution, is a fairly new threat to the region. Using 49 indicators, the 2016 Cybersecurity Report carried out by the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Inter-American Development Bank, which examines Latin America and the Caribbean, found that ‘several countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are vulnerable to potentially devastating cyberattacks. Four out of five countries do not have cybersecurity strategies or critical infrastructure protection plans’ (p. ix). Disasters and other risks associated with climate change and geographical location are not new (SELA 2010), but they have been newly constituted as security threats, with the military and police expected to play an increasing role in responding to these vulnerabilities.

Security cooperation: institutions, legitimacy and deficits Institutional frameworks and hemispheric failures Security cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean is pursued and sometimes realised through a complex set of institutional arrangements ranging from hemispheric institutions, regional and sub-regional bodies, bilateral agreements; defence boards; defence cooperation agreements, regional intelligence committees, summits; agreements with law enforcement agencies and mutual legal assistance treaties. The OAS, the dominant hemispheric institution, is central to the governance of security cooperation, setting the security agenda and seeking to regulate the conduct of states in the region.3 While the OAS is a hemispheric institution for inter-American security cooperation (Shaw et al. 2011), the overwhelming majority of its members are in Latin America and the Caribbean, and it has been used, with serious challenges, as a forum for security cooperation among Latin American and Caribbean countries (Arceneaux and Pion-Berlin 2007; Shaw 2004). Disagreements between Latin America and the Caribbean and the US over what security threats should be prioritised and how state conduct should be regulated have always been a challenge. The legitimacy of the InterAmerican System was severely challenged when it failed to address the Malvinas/Falkland dispute and the 1980s Central American conflict (Loveman 2006). The US intervention in 313

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Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989 inevitably led to criticisms that the OAS was merely a political piñata that functioned in the interest of the United States, calling into question the legitimacy of the OAS as a mechanism for security cooperation. Similar accusations were made by Venezuelan President Maduro, in the standoff between the OAS and Venezuela over Maduro’s rejection of a recall referendum in 2016 and the social and political crisis that this triggered in Venezuela. Most of the mechanisms put in place to give practical expression to the aims of the OAS – such as the Inter-American Defense Board (IADB), the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission – are not always positively appraised by Latin American countries (Diamint 2011). The Drug Abuse Control Commission, for instance, has been criticised for favouring a US strategy that is based on prohibition rather than prevention (Horwitz 2010). The organisation has tried to reimagine its approach to security cooperation by placing more emphasis on human rights and the creation of the OAS Secretariat for Multi-Dimensional Security and the Ministerial Meetings on Public Security. In spite of these new organisational structures, the OAS has not been able to ensure adequate cooperation. In the light of its manifold failures, Shaw (2004) argues that the OAS has not lived up to the expectation of being a truly effective multilateral institution, although it addressed inter-state conflicts between Venezuela and Guyana in 1997, Honduras and Nicaragua in 2001, Belize and Guatemala in 2003 and Colombia and Ecuador in 2003. It is clear that many countries in the region have an ambivalent or, in the case of Venezuela and Bolivia, an openly antagonistic attitude toward the OAS. The OAS with all its Cold War baggage remains an important institution but is not regarded as the harbinger of a new order of regional security cooperation.

Beyond the OAS: In search of South–South security cooperation and a security community The United States’ power in the region is being balanced and in some instances curtailed by the establishment of sub-regional and regional organisations, such as ALBA, UNASUR and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), which engage in regional security management and exclude the US (Weiffen et  al. 2013). These organisations were established to counter the power of the US in the region, to strengthen the formal mechanisms for true SSC and to compete with the OAS (Battaglino 2012). The decline of ALBA, with the passing of Chavez and the Venezuelan economic crisis which started in 2014 – spawned by the decline in oil prices – has slowed down the overt and forceful mission of countering the ideological and practical influence of the US in the region. Despite competition from Colombia and Argentina, and its failure to secure broad-based regional support for its bid for a permanent seat on the Security Council of the UN, Brazil – operating through UNASUR and Mercosur – has been acting as a counter-hegemonic force in the region and a major player in matters related to defence and security cooperation (Battaglino 2012). Critically too, by bringing together the entire Latin America and Caribbean region, the establishment of CELAC, which replaced the Rio Group (previously the Contadora Group, formed to address military conflicts in Central America), is an extremely important milestone. By excluding the US, CELAC is regarded as a viable alternative to the OAS and a major force for increased security relations in the entire Latin American and Caribbean region. While regional and sub-regional bodies such as UNASUR, Mercosur, ALBA, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the Andean Community, and the Rio Group have all contributed to the emergence of a ‘nascent security community’ (Byron 2012; Hurrell 1998; Oelsner 2009), there is a deficit, resulting from weak implementation capacity, the use of old institutional 314

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designs to advance new ideas (Kacowicz and Press-Barnathan 2016), failure in some instances to give authority to formal coordination mechanisms, differences in ideology, and security interests and priorities (Trinkunas 2013; Tulchin and Espach 2000), and competition for power in the international space. Moreover, using what can be seen as institutional segmentation (Malamud and Gardini 2012), these institutions have, in many instances, replicated some of the same OAS organisational structures, with the primary differences being a commitment to horizontal structures, rather than vertical ones and principles of non-intervention, complementarity and solidarity (Muhr 2016). Despite these challenges, arguments that there is some semblance of a security community in the region suggest partial success of security cooperation mechanisms. Oelsner (2009) argues that while regional security governance is weak in Mercosur for instance, security consensus and institutional structures are contributing to a shared normativity. This new normativity, she argues, coincides with the emergence of new security threats since 9/11, preceded by a period where traditional issues and the use of force dominated. This ‘shared normativity’ might be true for defence and the production of a ‘common strategic culture and norms to govern conflict resolution’ (Chipman and Smith 2009, p. 78), but a lacuna remains in the institutionalisation of norms around individual security and consensus about the role of the US in the region. For example, Venezuela and Colombia, two of the critical regional security players, have had major disagreements over Plan Colombia and Colombia’s embrace of the US and its decision to grant the US access to a number of its military facilities (Chipman and Smith 2009). In the case of CARICOM, Byron (2012) argues that a serious security governance framework started to emerge in CARICOM in 2001, with the development of the Regional Task Force on Crime and Security, but this has not been very effective owing to a lack of coordination with other regional bodies and the difficulties associated with differing interests and priorities. CARICOM also developed the Implementing Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS) in 2006, which reports to the Council of Ministers and National Law Enforcement. The Joint Regional Communications System and the Regional Fusion Centre were also established as part of this implementation mechanism. CARICOM calls IMPACS ‘the nerve centre of the region’s new multilateral crime and security management architecture, specifically designed to administer a collective response to the Crime and Security priorities of Member States’ (CARICOM n.d.). Notwithstanding, the activities of these agencies are not well coordinated and most countries tend to retain national approaches and to focus on national priorities. As a result CARICOM has not been able to properly implement an effective region-wide security system. Moreover, the older Regional Security system which emerged in the aftermath of the Grenada revolution of 1979 has not sufficiently reinvented itself to meet the demands of a 21st-century security system and has not successfully pushed CARICOM toward becoming an effective security community. The establishment of a successful regional security architecture will be dependent on the embeddedness of shared norms and successful implementation practices becoming a more critical component of security relations. Regional cooperation must also move beyond the state and engage with a wider array of actors and issues, including peace and the management of violence (Tavares 2014). Human (in)security is an important security challenge for the region, and displacement as a result of crime and violence is becoming a serious issue in Latin America (Cantor and Serna 2016). UNASUR’s Council on Public Security, Justice and Coordination of Actions against Transnational Organized Crime (established in 2012) and Mercosur’s (2009) Institute of Public Policies in Human Rights are steps in the right direction, but they need to occupy a more central place in regional security practices. 315

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Conclusion and the way forward South–South security cooperation has certainly played a role in reducing the number of interstate conflicts in Latin America and the Caribbean, and some of the new institutional arrangements and confidence-building measures in South and Central America have produced positive outcomes. Despite the deepening of security cooperation and steps toward establishing a security community in Latin America and the Caribbean, many challenges remain. The obvious one is that security is still a significant development problem for the region. Violent crime is alarmingly high and regional security cooperation has not ruptured the conditions that have driven this high level of violence. Organised crime and the drug trade continue to pose a security risk to the region as gangs engage in organised crime and collude with corrupt state officials, controlling vulnerable spaces and marginalised populations. Financial and cybercrime are also becoming serious security problems for the region and will require new and innovative solutions. Even in the face of new security threats and this idea of multi-dimensional security, there is still a heavy reliance not just on old security institutions but also on old security cooperation techniques such as military and intelligence cooperation, which are still at the very core of regional security cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean. In this regard, the export of the Colombian model across the region has also raised questions about the formidability of security cooperation and the continuing influence of the US in the region. In the areas of human security and people-centred initiatives, the process has been much slower. In many instances, the police force still functions as a repressive force that acts to defend states’ survival and national security with very little appreciation for the inextricably intertwined relationship between national security, regional security and human security. In some cases, the military and the police also act in accordance with the state’s wish to repress communities, silence political dissent and reduce political opposition to ruling parties. Security relations must move beyond practices and discourses of regionalism toward a greater focus on regionalisation and governance. This will ensure a wider array of actors, capabilities, resources and solutions to the problem of security in the region. The state-centric paradigm has not resolved the security problem in the region, and it is very unlikely that deeper security cooperation among states in Latin America and the Caribbean will produce socially desirable and politically determined outcomes without meaningfully (re)engaging private and non-state actors, at the regional and sub-regional levels. Triangular and bilateral relations and the poor economic performance of many countries in the region will ensure that the US continues to exercise influence over security priorities and programmes. Extra-regional cooperation with other countries in the South, Brazil’s membership in the BRICS group and the rise of the South globally will continue to mediate the power of the US while increasing the confidence of Latin American and Caribbean countries to build more resilient institutions for security cooperation. The foreign policy dispensation of the US under the presidency of Donald Trump, as well as the new anti-globalisation movements, will undoubtedly provide new impetus for regional security cooperation and a moment for regional introspection and the forging of new imaginative capacities and solutions.

Notes 1 This is an economic strategy that allows investors to gain citizenship status in the region and, by extension, visa-free access to most countries in the world. 2 St Vincent and the Grenadines has expressed fear that selling passports to the wealthy, some of whom are from the Middle East, should be seen as ‘a national security concern’. 3 The central aim of the OAS, according to Article 1 of its Charter, is to achieve for its members ‘an order of peace and justice, to promote their solidarity, to strengthen their collaboration, and to defend their sovereignty, their territorial integrity, and their independence’. 316

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Haughton, S., 2011. Drugged Out: Globalisation and Jamaica’s Resilience to Drug Trafficking. Lanham: University Press of America. Herz, M., 2010. Concepts of National Security in South America. International Peacekeeping 5(17), 598–612. Holston, J., 2008. Insurgent Citizenship: Dysfunction of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Horwitz, B., 2010. The Role of the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD): Confronting the Problem of Drug Abuse in the Caribbean. Latin American Politics and Society 52(2), 139–165. Hurrell, A., 1998. An Emerging Security Community in South America. In: E. Adler and M. Barnette (eds), Security Communities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 228–264. Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) and The Organization of American States, 2016. Cybersecurity: Are We Ready in Latin America and the Caribbean? 2016 Cybersecurity Report. Kacowicz, A., 1998. Zones of Peace in the Third World: South America and West Africa in Comparative Perspective. New York: State University of New York. Kacowicz, A. and Press-Barnathan, G., 2016. Regional Security Governance. In: T. Börzel and T. Risse (eds), Oxford Handbook of Comparative Regionalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 297–322. Kaldor, M., 2012. New and Old Wars. Cambridge: Polity Press. Karl, R., 2017. Forgotten Peace Reform, Violence, and the Making of Contemporary Colombia. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kenkel, M., 2010. South America’s Emerging Power: Brazil as Peacekeeper. International Peacekeeping 17(5), 644–661. Khanna, P., 2008. The Second World: How Emerging Powers Are Redefining Global Competition in the 21st Century. New York: Random House. Koonings, K. and Kruijt, D. (eds), 2004. Armed Actors: Organized Violence and State Failure in Latin America. London: Zed. Laqueur, W. (1999). The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction. New York: Oxford University Press. Lewis, V.A., 1976. Size, Self-Determination and International Relation: The Caribbean. University of the West Indies: ISER. Loader, I. and Walker, N., 2007. Civilizing Security. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Loveman, B., 2006. Addicted to Failure: US Security Policy in Latin America and the Andean Region. Rowman & Littlefield. Lowenthal, A., 1991. Exporting Democracy: The United States and Latin America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Malamud, A., 2010. Latin American Regionalism and EU Studies. Journal of European Integration 32(6), 637–657. Malamud, A. and Gardini, G., 2012. Has Regionalism Peaked? The Latin American Quagmire and its Lessons: The International Spectator. Italian Journal of International Affairs 47(1), 116–133. Mateo, J., 2011. Street Gangs of Honduras. In: L. Bruneau, L. Dammert, and E. Skinner (eds), Maras: Gang Violence and Security in Central America. Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 87–103. Muhr, T., 2016. Beyond ‘BRICS’: Ten Theses on South–South Cooperation. Third World Quarterly 37(4), 630–648. O’Donnell, G., 1999. Counterpoints: Selected Essays on Authoritarianism and Democratization. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Oelsner, A., 2009. Consensus and Governance in Mercosur: The Evolution of the South American Security Agenda. Security Dialogue 40(2), 192–212. Pattnayak, S. and Gustafson, L., 2006. National and Human Security Issues in Latin America and the Caribbean: Democracies at Risk. Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press. 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. Rodgers, D. and Muggah, R., 2009. Gangs as Non-state Armed Groups: The Central American Case. Contemporary Security Policy 30(2), 301–317. SELA (Latin America and Caribbean Economic System), 2010. Final Report of Meeting on the Institutional Design Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction in Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and Africa. 13–14 December 2010, Panama City: Panama. Shaw, C., 2004. Cooperation, Conflict and Consensus in the OAS. New York: Palgrave. 318

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Shaw, T. and Swatuk, L. (eds), 1994. The South at the End of the Twentieth Century: Rethinking the Political Economy of Foreign Policy in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. London: Macmillan. Shaw, T., Mace, G., and Cooper, A., 2011. Inter-American Cooperation at a Crossroads. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Sives, A., 2010. Elections, Violence and the Democratic Process in Jamaica, 1944–2007. Kingston and Miami: Ian Randle Publishers. Steves, F., 2001. Regional Integration and Democratic Consolidation in the Southern Cone of Latin America. Democratization 8(3), 75–100. Stone, C., 1980. Democracy and Clientelism in Jamaica. London: Transaction Publishers. Strindberg, A., 2015. Terrorism and Beyond: A 21st Century Perspective. London: Routledge. Tavares, R., 2014. Security in South America: The Role of States and Regional Organizations. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. The Trinidad Express, 2017. My Daughter Went to Syria: 13 Relatives in All . . . Rio Claro Imam Tells Al Jazeera. The Trinidad Express, 19 May. Available from: http://www.trinidadexpress.com/20170519/ news/my-daughter-went-to-syria-13-relatives-in-all [Accessed 17 November 2017]. Tickner, A.B., 2003. Hearing Latin American Voices in IR. International Studies Perspectives 4(4), 325–350. Trinkunas, H., 2013. Reordering Regional Security in Latin America. Journal of International Affairs 66(2), 83–99. Tulchin, J., 2014. Latin America in International Politics: Challenging US Hegemony. London: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Tulchin, J. and Espach, R. (eds), 2000. Security in the Caribbean Basin: The Challenge of Regional Cooperation. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Tussie, D., 2009. Latin America: Contrasting Motivations for Regional Projects. Review of International Studies, 35, 169–188. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2013. Global Study on Homicide: Trends, Contexts, Data. Vienna: UNODC. Varas, A., 1992. From Coercion to Partnership: A New Paradigm for Security Cooperation in the Western Hemisphere? In: J. Hartlyn, L. Schoultz, and A. Varas (eds), The United States and Latin America in the 1990s: Beyond the Cold War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, pp. 46–63. Vasciannie, S., 1997. Political and Policy Aspects of the Jamaica/United States Shiprider Negotiations. Caribbean Quarterly 43(3), 34–53. Weiffen, B., Wehner, L., and Nolte, D., 2013. Overlapping Security Institutions in Latin America: The Case of the OAS and UNASUR. International Area Studies Review 16, 370–389. Whitehead, L., 1992. The Alternatives to Liberal Democracy: A Latin American Perspective. Political Studies 40, 146–159. Woods, N., 2008. Whose aid? Whose Influence? China, Emerging Donors and the Silent Revolution in Development Assistance. International Affairs 84(6), 1–8.

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24 Toward South–South peace-building Patricia Daley

Introduction Since the ending of the Cold War, international organisations, such as the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and the European Union (EU), have been pivotal in promoting peace negotiations in many parts of the world where conflict has ensued. During the 1990s, there were numerous civil wars on the African continent and violent uprisings in parts of Latin America. In spite of this, activists and critical scholars in the global South have long advocated more peaceful ways of living and have sought to devise alternatives to the liberal peace (Hansen 1987). In the 1940s, Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent action offered an alternative route to militarised conflict resolution. However, the most prominent pro-peace strategy was adopted by Asian and African countries at the meeting at Bandung in Indonesia in 1955 (Prashad 2007). The strategy was never implemented, but enabled people and states in the global South, as part of the Non-Aligned Movement, to imagine during the Cold War an alternative vision of peace and stability. The aim of this chapter is to examine the arguments for South–South peace-making and peace-building and to address the growing academic and policy critiques of the liberal peace promoted by the international community based in the global North. Using Africa as a case study, the chapter examines how African states have attempted to resolve conflicts regionally and explores those lessons from the African experience of peace-making that have been universalised. The questions guiding this analysis are: historically, how did the peace that Southern critics want differ from that promoted by hegemonic powers in the global North? What has constrained people in the global South from taking a leading role in the peace process in their regions? What examples exist of South–South cooperation (SSC) with regard to peace-making? And, as the critique of the liberal peace has grown in academic and policy circles, what is the potential for the emergence of a Southern concept of peace within or outside of liberal international institutions?

The arguments for South–South peace-making It is now accepted that interpretations of what constitutes peace vary historically, culturally and geographically (Megoran et al. 2015). Clearly, how peace is understood in specific sites matters 320

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for long-term stability. In the late 1960s, Johan Galtung recognised that the ending of violence did not necessarily result in a peace that was sustainable and of benefit to all. Galtung (1969) divided peace into negative and positive peace based on the absence of violence and the quest for social justice. In devising an extended concept of peace, he defines peace as ‘not only a matter of control and reduction of the overt use of violence’, but involving structural changes that tackle social injustices, and equates to development (Galtung 1969, p. 183). At the international level, normative peace is informed by the philosophy of political realism, which underlies how states in the global North see their relationship with other states. Jill Steans (1998, pp. 106–107) points out that in classical realist thought the concept of peace was essentially ‘negative peace’, as peace and security were seen as attainable by ‘shifting alliances which preserved a balance of power among states’. Hegemonic states, predominantly from the global North, have managed global security, despite attempts by states from the global South, using the UN, to influence policy. Contemporary approaches to international peace-keeping are informed by neo-realist thought. Since the Second World War, the United Nations has established international norms governing the establishment of peace and stability, which, in practice, means different things in hegemonic and weak states. In the global North, the perception of threats to global peace has varied historically; for example, during the Cold War global peace was perceived to be threatened by nuclear proliferation, then, after 11 September 2001, by ‘terrorists’ or ‘rogue states’. The prevailing normative conception of peace, which has been labelled the ‘liberal peace’ (Richmond 2006), is shaped largely by the North’s securitisation agenda, ideals of liberal democracy, and the economic and political orthodoxy as prescribed by the Washington Consensus. The liberal peace is paradigmatic in that it is promoted widely by Northern institutions as the solution for conflict-affected areas in the global South (ibid.). It is characterised by the presence (sometimes for an extended period) of an international peace-keeping force, reform and investment in the security architecture, governance reform that involves power-sharing between warring factions transformed into political parties, the holding of elections (however disputed), and the imposition of neoliberal economic policies, involving the reduction in public expenditure, privatisation and fiscal probity – policies that have led to the impoverishment of people even in non-conflict contexts. Such a conceptualisation of peace fits Galtung’s ‘negative peace’ concept, informs contemporary peace-keeping, and as many critics have argued, contributes to the difficulty of attaining sustainable peace in post-conflict situations. A lexicon of terms has been devised by realist scholars from the global North, to differentiate between states in the global South depending on their perceived level of threat to international security – those that have civil war conditions are termed ‘failed’; and those that are post-conflict, ‘fragile’. Such evolutionary discourse serves to distance such states from the ideal of liberal democracy. Historically, policy-makers and critics in the global South have sought to challenge the hegemonic conception of peace in order to prevent humanity’s annihilation, but also as a reaffirmation of the humanity of people in the global South. Post-Second World War, the dominant global powers saw further militarisation as the solution to peace; this intensified with the arms race and the development of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. In the 1950s and 1960s, many countries in the global South – as former colonially – dominated states where direct violence and wars of liberation were pre-conditions for self-determination – envisaged a peace within which a development trajectory would deliver social justice to those excluded and exploited under colonialism. As more colonially dominated states were engulfed in wars of liberation, states in the global North became hostile to recently independent states or liberation movements that advocated or were influenced by socialist or communist ideology. To counter the spread of communism, opposition groups were supported militarily to 321

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destabilise these newly independent states and overthrow the regimes. Consequently, the proxy wars during the Cold War were essentially fought in the global South – in Vietnam, Angola and Mozambique. With the looming prospects of confrontation between the superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union, newly independent Southern states sought a neutral or non-aligned position. At the 1955 Bandung meeting, Asian and independent African states dared to envisage a post-Western imperial future (Mackie 2005; Phạm and Shilliam 2016). Here, 23 Asian states and members of six independent African states (Egypt, Ethiopia, Gold Coast (present-day Ghana), Liberia, Libya and Sudan) gathered to promote African and Asian coalitions and decolonisation. According to Prashad (2007, p. 42), ‘the conference is best remembered . . . as one of the milestones of the peace movement. Whatever, the orientation of the states, they agreed that world peace required disarmament.’ Two years earlier, in 1953, an Indian initiative in the United Nations General Assembly had led to the formation of the Disarmament Sub-Committee of the United Nations.1 Delegates from the global South were concerned by the developments in aerial bombing and the threat of nuclear war, and were worried that decolonial and anti-imperialist movements in the global South would be the targets of nuclear attacks. They advocated for the peaceful settlement of international disputes, through the adoption of ‘a 10-point programme that called for (. . .) respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations, (. . .) nonintervention in the internal affairs of other nations and repudiated acts or threats of force against other nations’.2 Having liberated themselves from racially hierarchical colonial regimes, the delegates were aware that racism was a threat to international peace; therefore, in the program, they included a call for the ‘recognition of the equality of all races and the equality of all nations large and small’.3 Ironically, as Prashad observes, the Bandung states themselves continued to hoard weapons and build up their armies, while demanding that the ‘major powers [take] the lead to give teeth to the United Nation’s role as peace-makers’ (pp. 43–44). After the formation of the UN, the international community established peace-keeping missions as mandated by the UN Security Council (UNSC), with the first missions beginning in the mid-1950s. Since then, the UNSC – consisting of the five permanent members of USA, France, UK, Russian Federation and China who have veto rights, and ten revolving members that include states from the global South – has set the terms of peace, even if they result in differences due to power play between the permanent member states. In essence, states in the global North, and increasingly regional bodies such as the EU, with the funds to shape and script the peace process, became important in forming what has become known as the liberal peace. Linked to this was the emergence of what has been termed the ‘peace industry’, as numerous non-governmental and intergovernmental organisations were established to access the funds and shape the processes of negotiations and post-conflict reconstruction. Since the 1990s, these organisations have been replicated in the global South through the establishment of regionally based think tanks, consultancy agencies, and research centres addressing security, conflict and peace-building. After Bandung, critique of the liberal peace fell largely to scholars. In the 1980s, Emmanuel Hansen (1987, p. 6) and his co-contributors warned Africans against succumbing to the imposed Euro-American concept of peace during the Cold War as a ‘balance of terror’, where the peace of the world is based on fear and mutual suspicion instead of mutual trust and cooperation. The perspective that Northern-dominated peace-building reflected Northern interests became increasingly prescient after the Cold War. Those with the weapons to impose peace would set the terms of the resolution and the nature of the post-conflict states that emerged. The UNSC, with its rotating representation of states from the global South, decided the terms of intervention, and differences between states meant that actions to resolve conflict and promote peace were sometimes vetoed by a superpower. 322

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In general, Southern states have been largely ineffective in direct action to promote peace. From a policy-making perspective, one of the main constraints on South–South peace-making has been the lack of resources to fund the exercise, as the financial resources needed for peacekeeping have grown almost exponentially. The UN peace-keeping operations budget has risen from just under US$1 billion in 1990 to US$7.87 billion for the fiscal year 2016–2017.4 This is partly due to the increase in the number and duration of peace-keeping missions in the postCold War period. At the same time, global North states have been retreating from providing military personnel in peace-keeping missions, and, consequently they have been replaced by the militaries from countries in the global South; nonetheless, the cost is such that states in the global South are still reliant predominantly on Northern funding for their operations. Historically, limited resources have not hindered South–South support for people in the global South fighting white colonial and imperial domination. For example, Che Guevara, the Argentinian Marxist revolutionary, assisted guerrilla movements fighting anti-imperialist wars in the Congo. However, one of the most effective South–South peace interventions was against colonial domination in Africa, especially against the apartheid states in South Africa, Rhodesia and Namibia. Through the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Coordinating Committee for the Liberation of Africa that was established in 1963, states mainly from the global South provided financial and other material support (medicines, clothing, military equipment, education and food) to refugees and freedom fighters. Most visible was the support of the Cuban state under the leadership of Fidel Castro. Cuba provided ‘recognition, political support, and military assistance . . . to national liberation struggles and independent states all over Africa – from Algeria and Western Sahara, to Eritrea, Ethiopia, Zanzibar, and the Portuguese colonies of Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique’ (Seddon 2017, n.p.). Cuban troops played a decisive role in the defeat of South Africa in Angola in 1975–1976, and, in 1987–1988, in the war against the Western-backed Jonas Savimbi and his UNITA guerrilla army in Angola.5 After the end of the Cold War, Cuba retreated from its involvement in military activities in the continent, but continued to provide medical assistance, including through internationalist medical brigades (see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, this volume). We know that military support might have been given by Southern states other than Cuba, but these are less well-documented, unlike high-profile material assistance, such as China’s construction of the Tanzania-Zambia railway as an alternative export route for frontline states to reduce dependency on the apartheid regime in South Africa. At the same time, throughout the Cold War, less powerful Southern states tended to adopt the policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of other Southern states, and some multilateral regional and sub-regional organisations lacked the political will to intervene to promote peace.

The neoliberal peace Conceptually, UN-sponsored peace agreements were centred on imposing Western liberal democracy, and this became the normative framework after the Cold War period. In 1992, Boutros Boutros Ghali, the then Secretary General of the UN, declared a post-Cold War mission statement, entitled Agenda for Peace,6 which outlined an expanded future role for the UN in resolving conflict, and in peace-making and peace-building on a global scale. The report called for an augmentation of the UN’s peace-making and peace-building capacity by increasing military personnel among the agency’s staff worldwide, through UN member states from both the global North and South committing troops and resources, as well as supporting reconstruction and institution-building. In 2005, the UN established its Peacebuilding Commission, in order to facilitate its intervention and coordination of post-conflict states. 323

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By the end of the Cold War, and amid the prevalence of neoliberal ideology, peace-making consisted in bringing warring parties together to reach an agreement that involved power-sharing, the holding of democratic elections, the (re)introduction of neoliberal market-driven economic policies, and disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) – the administration of which was largely overseen by external donors. These prescriptions became formulaic and almost universal in post-conflict states. Such ‘fragile’ states were subjected to trustee-like supervision by the international community. In reality, many of these states existed and continue to exist in conditions of insecurity and extreme poverty, where, using Galtung’s formulation, negative peace has persisted. Forms of violence such as sexual and gender-based violence have remained prevalent in post-war contexts, and can be partly attributed to endemic structural violence aggravated by the prescriptions of neoliberal post-conflict reconstruction (Thornhill 2012). It is in this context that academics have critiqued neoliberal peace-making and have questioned its ability to deliver sustainable peace. As Lidén et al. (2009, p. 587) note, ‘grassroots, multidimensional, multi-level and emancipatory approaches to peacebuilding which transcend the Weberian/Westphalian order have been overtaken by an idealistic focus on building (neo)liberal states’.

South–South interventions: the case of intra-Africa cooperation for peace Three decades ago, Hansen et al.’s (1987, p. 7) position that Africans should ‘articulate and make practical a peace problematic other than the one defined by western states and trans-national cooperation’ is still relevant in the second decade of the 21st century. Hansen entreated Africans to reject a position on peace that sees peace as the peace of Europe and North America, replacing it with an ‘African perspective’, which is concerned not only with ‘the resolution of conflicts [but with] the transformation of the extant social systems at both national and international levels’ (ibid.). Therefore, peace, for Africans, should be conceptualised as ‘a certain minimum condition of security, economic welfare, political efficacy and psychic well being’ (ibid.). Why is it that African states have not been able to play a more active role in framing peace negotiations and peace-building in their regions? The answer can be partly attributed to the absence of political will. The principles in the OAU’s Charter of non-interference in the internal affairs of member states and respect for their territorial integrity were partly blamed for the foot-dragging that preceded most peace initiatives. African states have tended to rely on the global North to act, even though international intervention to resolve conflicts in African states has often been criticised as ‘too little too late’. However, the genocidal events of the 1990s spurred the OAU to introduce its Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution and the African Union, its successor, to set up in 2002 a Peace and Security Council with a more interventionist mandate. However, even when the political will is there, African states lack the financial resources and the institutional architecture necessary to establish peace. Although troops from independent African states were used in the first UN peace-keeping mission in Africa (Congo in 1960s), African states have never committed adequate resources to support regional missions. To date, the OAU/African Union member states have been active in 13 regional initiatives for peace in the post-Cold War period: brokering the peace agreement between Morocco and the Polisario Front of Western Sahara in 1991 and contributing peace-keeping troops to the MINURSO (UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara); spearheading peacekeeping missions in the form of the Neutral Military Observer Group (NMoG) in Rwanda (1993); in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau in the 1990s through the ECOWAS multinational military Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) established in 1990; in Burundi, in the 324

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form of the African Mission in Burundi (AMIB/later ONUB) (2000–2006); the OAU/UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) (2000–ongoing); in the Darfur region of Sudan (2004); in Somalia through the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) (2006–ongoing); in the Central African Republic through the African-led International Support Mission in the Central African Republic (MISCA) (2013–ongoing); in Mali with the Africanled International Support Mission in Mali (AFISMA) (2012–ongoing); in the Lake Chad Basin with the Multinational Joint Task force (2012–ongoing); in South Sudan (2014–ongoing) under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD); and West Africa’s G-5 Sahel Joint Force launched in 2017. Virtually all of these regionally initiated missions have either been superseded by UN-controlled missions or have personnel from Western militaries providing logistical support. Some governments in the global North, interpreting peace in Africa as integral to their own security, have established their own Africa peace-keeping initiatives for the continent – for example, France set up RECAMP (Renforcement des capacités africaines de maintien de la paix) in 1994 and intervened as Operation Sanagris (2013–2016) in the CAR; since 2014, it has been running Operation Barkhane in the Sahel, while the United States established its Africa Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI) (1996–2004), now the Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (ACOTA), and Operation Focus Relief founded in 2001. Regional organisations in the global North also have their own peace-keeping programmes, such as the EU’s Africa Peace Facility set up in 2004 to fund and support Africa-led peace-keeping initiatives. Most of these peace-keeping initiatives, both the African-led ones and those emanating from the international community, have their primary focus on a peace and security architecture that is essentially militaristic. Consequently, most interventions have rarely halted violent conflict and have thus been protracted. As argued earlier, Northern peace-building has tended to impose a universal liberal peace. In Africa, the nature of the peace-keeping and the peace settlement depended, especially during the Cold War, on the geo-political interests of states in the global North. Consequently, even the UN has not been a model of peace in the region, lacking the mandates to intervene to prevent massacres, most notably, during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, where it reduced its troops to 270 at a critical moment when it could have saved lives (Melvern 2000). In effect, the limited mandates and inadequate resources of UN peace-keeping missions have meant that they have rarely kept the peace. The particular failures of the UN throughout the 1990s have led to questions about the commitment of Security Council members to sustainable peace and effective conflict management. I would argue that the fundamental issue is not to do with mandates, but the hegemony of a conceptualisation of conflict resolution and peace that focuses on strengthening the military arm of the central state, while excluding non-violent alternatives. Ultimately, this narrow definition of peace ends up aiding the embeddedness of a militarised culture that has contributed to the perpetuation of conflict-like conditions in post-conflict countries. The question that arises, therefore, is: would initiatives emanating from the global South, whether in Africa or elsewhere, aid in promoting a broader definition of peace?

Regional experiences of peace-making Since the 1990s, there has been a steady growth in the willingness of African states to intervene in peace-making. As noted above, in the continent’s fight against colonial domination and white-dominated states, the OAU’s Liberation Committee played a critical role in coordinating member states’ support for liberation movements. However, the OAU Charter has enabled independent African states to adopt a laissez-faire approach to intervention in the affairs of 325

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other postcolonial African states. Even proactive African states can find themselves criticised by the international community, as Tanzania experienced when it intervened in Uganda in 1979 against the murderous Idi Amin regime. The prevalence of civil wars in the 1990s and the regional instability that ensued led some regional organisations to develop proactive interventionist positions. It was this context that led to the establishment of ECOMOG, the Monitoring Group of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), in 1990. ECOMOG has been involved in peace-keeping missions in Liberia (1989–1996), Sierra Leone (1997), Guinea-Bissau (1999) and Mali (1997, 2012–present), funded largely by the Nigerian state – the country with the largest economy in the region – with some logistical support from states in the global North. In 1994, after the tragedy of the Rwandan genocide, African states sought to revise the Organization of African Unity’s Charter with its principle of ‘non-interference in the internal affairs of member states’. The new African Union (AU), created in 2000, has a more explicit peace strategy in Article 4 of its Constitutive Act, which affirms the following: Peaceful coexistence of Member States and their right to live in peace and security (Art 4(i)); The right of Member States to request intervention from the Union in order to restore peace and security (Art 4(j)); and Promotion of self-reliance within the framework of the Union (Art 4(k)). In December 2003, the AU’s Peace and Security Council (PSC) was inaugurated. According to its website, the Union ‘has 15 members, elected by the AU Executive Council on a regional basis (three from Central Africa; three from East Africa; two from North Africa; three from Southern Africa; and four from West Africa).’ These are fixed-term memberships with permanent members and no veto, and a rotating chair.7 Despite the apparent progressiveness of the AU’s institutional architecture, the PSC is only an advisory body and the decision to intervene in conflict situations remains with the heads of states. The 2016 debate in the African Union, when heads of states failed to endorse the recommendations of the PSC to intervene in the political crisis in Burundi, exemplifies the continued reluctance of African states to support peace initiatives in the region, especially if they result in challenging one of their own (Jobson 2016). Nevertheless, there have been several examples since the 1990s where African states have taken on leading roles in the facilitation of peace on the continent (Liberia 1989–1996, Sierra Leone 1997, Guinea-Bissau 1999, Burundi 1996–2000, Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement 2005, South Sudan peace agreement of 2015 and subsequent negotiations, and Gambia 2016). The experience of these limited examples of interventions may provide lessons for further action. Here, I will focus briefly on two cases in different sub-regions by means of illustration: the Eastern/Southern African states peace initiative in Burundi and ECOWAS in West Africa.

Burundi peace negotiations: a South–South initiative The Burundi peace negotiations (1996–2000) marked the emergence of a regional thrust for peace in the East African region. An examination of the process, actors and modalities provides insights into why South–South peace-making is still constrained in delivering sustainable peace. The key factors I have identified, include a lack of trust between regional leaders, the multiplicity of actors involved, external funding setting the priorities, and the ability of external actors to control the process. The latter ensured that despite being regional, the process was informed by concepts of national security and peace emanating from the global North (Daley 2008). The Burundi peace and ceasefire negotiations and political settlement was a regional initiative overseen at various times by Julius Nyerere, Nelson Mandela, Yoweri Museveni and Benjamin Mkapa, and they took place mainly in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha. The 2000 326

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Arusha agreement took four years from the beginning of the talks before it was signed. This protraction was partly due to the factionalism among the principal actors, delaying tactics, and disputes over procedures, as well as the Burundi government’s opposition to what it perceived as regional interference, especially regional sanctions and the threat of a regional peace-keeping intervention force (Daley 2008). Criticism of local mediations was rife, especially of Nyerere and the Tanzanian state. Such criticisms emanated from Northern policy advisors and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), as well as the Burundi government, whose historical relations with the Tanzanian state had been tense as a result of Tanzania hosting Burundian refugees. This contributed to considerable hostility toward a Tanzanian-backed regional intervention force to stop the killings. In contrast, the Burundians were more at ease with the South African intervention when Mandela took over as facilitator after Nyerere’s death in 1999. The South Africans had little knowledge of Burundi and came with no historical connections. For South Africa, the Burundi peace-making process provided an opportunity to flex its regional muscle. With the largest economy on the continent and well-trained security services, it was in a position to exert pressure on the Burundi government (Bentley and Southall 2005). The involvement of a multiplicity of actors, ranging from local political parties, Western donors and multilateral organisations, peace consultants and international NGOs, and civil society organisations served to complicate the process. Some external actors worked to undermine the regional initiative, by holding parallel peace negotiations in European capitals, and siding with the Burundi government against regional sanctions, even though the sanctions were more symbolic than real. The reliance on external funding meant that regional facilitators had to compromise and to follow the blueprint developed in the global North. This funding was not confined to the peace negotiations but extended to post-conflict reconstruction, allowing hegemonic states and their institutions in the global North to dictate the format of the post-conflict state, whether in the fields of political reforms, disarmament or social and economic reforms. Since 2001, Burundi has been the space of post-conflict reconstruction, having three democratic elections won by a former rebel group that was not represented at the Arusha peace talks. This had not prevented the persistence of state-sponsored violence and gross human rights violations, which intensified before and after the 2015 Presidential elections, when the president stood for an unconstitutional third term (Daley and Popplewell 2016). The AU delegated the 2015 peace initiative to the East African Community, which assigned Yoweri Museveni of Uganda to chair the first round of peace talks, with a former Tanzanian president, Benjamin Mkapa, as the facilitator. As with the earlier Arusha peace talks, the Burundian state has not fully cooperated, citing regional vested interest as a factor. The 2015 crisis in Burundi, originating partly from the incumbent president (Pierre Nkurunziza) seeking to extend his term limit, is a problem common to many African states. This might explain the failure of the AU heads of states to endorse the recommendation of the PSC to send a regional intervention force to stop the state-sponsored killings in Burundi.

ECOWAS and peace-making in West Africa ECOWAS developed their multinational military Monitoring Group, ECOMOG, in 1990, to intervene in the civil war in Liberia (1989–1996). Howe (2012, p. 146) notes that ‘ECOMOG was the first sub-regional military force in the [global South] since the end of the Cold War and the first sub-regional military force with whom the UN agreed to work as a secondary partner’. 327

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ECOMOG was dominated by Nigeria – the largest economy in the region. It was reported that ‘in 2001, the Nigerian president said his country had spent $13bn on peacekeeping operations over 12 years’ (BBC News).8 Despite extensive criticism of ECOMOG, in particular its lack of central command, local knowledge, inadequate resources, and the dominance of the Nigerian battalion, ECOMOG has become the most successful of regional peace-keeping forces in Africa (Adebajo 2002; Howe 2012). In 2017, the threat of the intervention of an ECOWAS multinational force compelled President Yahaya Jammeh of the Gambia to resign the presidency. Jammeh had refused to step down after losing democratic elections and after the swearing-in of a new president in neighbouring Senegal.9 After a stand-off with troops amassing at Gambia’s border, an agreement was reached that Jammeh be offered sanctuary in Equatorial Guinea. He would neither face prosecution for crimes against humanity nor have his property seized, and would have the right to return to the Gambia at any time. This agreement had the backing of the AU and the UNSC. Ultimately, ECOWAS’s solution for peace is militaristic and is framed by the state-centred model promoted by the liberal peace. A key factor preventing the development of sustainable peace is the absence of state legitimacy, despite post-conflict elections, and the persistence of impunity aggravated by the option of sanctuary, without prosecution, in another country if leaders were to leave power.

South–South states and the issue of impunity The International Criminal Court (ICC) has become the major international court addressing the issue of impunity. The Court based in the Netherlands, is seen by African states as a continuation of external interference in a more direct fashion. The lack of Court jurisdiction to indict war crimes committed by citizens from hegemonic countries in the global North has helped to undermine its role as an impartial body. Despite the fact that only a small number of African leaders have been indicted by the Court, some African states see the Court’s actions as biased. By 2016, Burundi had withdrawn from the ICC, and South Africa has declared that it will seek to leave.10 If, as some critics argue, the ICC is directed at violators of human rights only in the global South, one should then ask where the institutional spaces in the global South are to tackle issues of crimes against humanity. In Africa, the recent case of the trial of the former Chadian dictator, Hissène Habré by the AU’s Extraordinary African Chambers in Senegal provides an exemplar of regional administered justice, and was the ‘first universal jurisdiction case to proceed to trial in Africa. Universal jurisdiction is a principle of international law that allows national courts to prosecute the most serious crimes even when committed abroad, by a foreigner and against foreign victims’ crimes’ (Human Rights Watch 2016, n.p.). The Chambers were set up by the African Union and Senegal in 2013 to prosecute, ‘the “person or persons” most responsible for international crimes committed in Chad between 1982 and 1990, the period when Habré was president’ (ibid.). Habré’s trial ran from July 2015 to February 2016 and involved 93 witnesses. According to Human Rights Watch, ‘It was the first trial in the world in which the courts of one country prosecuted the former ruler of another for alleged human rights crimes’ (Human Rights Watch 2016, n.p.). In May 2016, Habré was convicted of ‘crimes against humanity, torture and war crimes, including sexual violence and rape, and was given a life sentence’ (ibid.). The Habré case demonstrates the potential for African states acting together to deliver justice for the people and shows the efficacy of another route to South–South peace-making.11 It also points to the innovative role that states in the global South can play in framing the normative understanding of global peace. States in the global South have had some influence on the peace 328

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agenda at an international level and in a non-militaristic way, as the Indian government did after Bandung (Prashad 2007). Most of these interventions remain invisible, but new approaches to scholarship have begun to unearth the contributions of the global South to knowledge production and policy-making; for example, Jensen (2016) has also shown that postcolonial Caribbean states, particularly Jamaica, played a central role in the establishment of international human rights law in the 1960s. Africans, in their fight to tackle injustices, have contributed to global mechanisms for promoting peace. Two examples are worth elaboration: first, in 1998, the Arusha-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda’s role in defining rape as a crime against humanity. Mackinnon notes: [T]he Akayesu decision of Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) held that rape, there charged as a crime against humanity, is ‘a physical invasion of a sexual nature, committed on a person under circumstances which are coercive’. (Mackinnon 2005, p. 942) This was a significant step for the global recognition of sexual violence as an issue of human rights. The second example is the global adoption and widespread incorporation of the experiment that was the South African Commission for Truth and Reconciliation’s (TRC) project (1995–2002), with its specific approaches to tackle injustice, especially of a racialised kind, where the protagonists have to co-exist in the same political space. After the end of apartheid in South Africa in 1994, the TRC was mandated to investigate gross human rights violations that were perpetrated during the period of the Apartheid regime from 1960 to 1994, including abductions, killings, torture. Its mandate covered both violation by both the state and the liberation movements and allowed the commission to hold special hearings focused on specific sectors, institutions, and individuals. (US Institute of Peace 1995) As a restorative justice body, there were prosecutions, so long as victims and the accused had their day in court. For many in the international community, the TRC was a success. By allowing perpetrators of crimes to confess and gain amnesty, the TRC helped to avoid blood-letting in a racially charged South Africa. This model of transitional justice was expanded regionally and globally by international peace-makers, even though its limitations as a justice and reconciliation tool have become increasingly apparent (Grunebaum 2011; Ross 2003). The TRC also laid the basis for the development of transitional justice as a field of research and praxis. Overall, the global North-defined, top-down and state-dominated nature of South–South peace initiatives has led to the primacy of negative peace since the Cold War. Therefore, it is not surprising that critics have called for the recognition and promotion of more localised or hybridised approaches to, and understandings of, peace that are inclusive of the affected people, not just warring factions, and that might lead to a more sustainable peace (Richmond and Mitchell 2012; Megoran et al. 2015).

Conclusion Southern countries have a history of solidarity with peoples subjected to colonial domination. They have a unique conceptualisation of peace that they have attempted to bring to the fore in 329

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multilateral institutions. Nevertheless, lacking military power and associated financial resources, they have not been able to shape the modalities for peace, even within the global South. In praxis, Southern states have joined in the militarised peace that was put in place with the Cold War arms race. Consequently, as the case of the African continent has shown, Southerners have relied on the United Nations and countries in the global North, who then have the power to decide the nature of the peace that is implemented. Despite evidence of South–South solidarity against colonial and the apartheid regimes in South Africa and Namibia, SSC on peace has been largely muted, or, in fact, insufficiently researched. Anecdotal evidence indicates that across the global South anti-imperialist movements supported each other, but elaboration of such support would require substantial multi-country research that is now especially necessary with the global rise of the emerging powers (China, India, Brazil and South Africa). China’s establishment of a military base in Djibouti in 2017, seven miles from the US Africa Command base, suggests that militarised peace will continue to be the approach adopted by the international community, including states of the global South. This chapter has shown, using examples from the African continent, that states in the global South, even if economically weak in comparison to Northern states, can take a proactive stance in South–South peace-making and peace-building. However, as critics have argued, they still seem to lack the political will to change the hegemonic conceptualisation of peace to a more positive and non-violent one that addresses the structural disparities and social injustices that underlie most conflicts in the global South. Nevertheless, as the ICTR, the South African TRC, and the Habré case demonstrate, the possibilities for a more transformative peace exist within the region. While the empirical evidence for this chapter has come from Africa, a strong argument can be made for comparative research with other regions in the global South.

Notes 1 From George McTuran Kahin (ed.) (1956) The Asian-African Conference: Bandung, Indonesia, April 1955 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, p. 83), cited in Prashad 2007, p. 42. UN General Assembly Resolution 502 (VI), 11 January 1952, quoted in Prashad 2007, p. 42. 2 Conference delegates (www.blackpast.org/gah/bandung-conference-1955) [accessed June 2017]. 3 Conference delegates (www.blackpast.org/gah/bandung-conference-1955) [accessed June 2017]. 4 www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/operations/financing.shtml and www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/docu ments/bnotelatest.pdf [accessed June 2017]. 5 Seddon, D., (2017) Che Guevara in the Congo. Pambazuka News.org. 15 December 2017. https:// allafrica.com/stories/201712210197.html [last accessed 19 September 2018]. 6 UN Secretary-General (17 June 1992) An Agenda for Peace: Preventative Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peacekeeping. Report of the Secretary General pursuant to the statement adopted by the Summit Meeting of the Security Council on 31 January 1992. Available from: www.un-documents.net/a47-277.htm [last accessed 19 September 2018]. 7 See www.peaceau.org/en/page/38-peace-and-security-council#sthash.zeBAJHzG.dpuf [accessed June 2017]. 8 BBC profile: ECOMOG (17 June 2004) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/country_pro files/2364029.stm [accessed June 2017]. 9 ‘Gambia crisis ends as Yahya Jammeh leaves for exile: Newly elected President Adama Barrow to return to Gambia shortly as longtime ruler leaves country for Equatorial Guinea’, Al-Jazeera, 22 January 2017, www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/01/jammeh-arrives-banjul-airport-stepping-170121210246506.html [accessed May 2017]. 10 Human Rights Watch (2016) Burundi: ICC Withdrawal Major Loss to Victims: Latest Move Shows Government’s Disregard for Victims. www.hrw.org/news/2016/10/27/burundi-icc-withdrawal-majorloss-victims [last accessed September 2018]. 11 Keppler, E., 2016. ‘This is what the conviction of Chad’s former Dictator means for African human rights’. Human Rights Watch, 10 June 2016. www.hrw.org/news/2016/06/10/what-conviction-chadsformer-dictator-means-african-human-rights [last accessed September 2018]. 330

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Bibliography Adebajo, Adekeye, 2002. Liberia’s Civil War: Nigeria, ECOMOG, and Regional Security in West Africa. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Bentley, Kristina A. and Southall, Roger, 2005. An African Peace Process: Mandela, South Africa and Burundi. Cape Town: HSRC Press, Nelson Mandela Foundation & Human Science Research Council. Daley, Patricia, 2008. Gender and Genocide in Burundi: The Search for Spaces of Peace in Central Africa. Oxford: James Currey; Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press; Kampala, Uganda: Fontana. Daley, Patricia and Popplewell, Rowan, 2016. ‘The Appeal of Third Termism and Militarism in Burundi. Review of African Political Economy 43(150), 648–657. Dyzenhaus, David, 2000. Survey Article: Justifying the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The Journal of Political Philosophy 8(4), 470–496. Galtung, Johan, 1969. Violence, Peace, and Peace Research. Journal of Peace Research 6(3),167–191. Grunebaum, Heidi, 2011. Memorializing the Past: Everyday Life in South Africa After the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. London: Routledge. Hansen, Emmanuel (ed.), 1987. Africa Perspectives on Peace and Development. London: The United Nations University & Zed Books Ltd. Howe, Hubert, 2012. Lessons of Liberia ECOMOG and Regional Peacekeeping. International Security 21(3), 146–176. Human Rights Watch, 2016. Burundi: ICC Withdrawal Major Loss to Victims: Latest Move Shows Government’s Disregard for Victims. Jensen, Steven, 2016. The Making of International Human Rights: The 1960s, Decolonization, and the Reconstruction of Global Values. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jobson, Elissa, 2016. The AU Tried and Failed on Burundi. Now It’s Time to Try Again. African Arguments, 10 October 2016. Available from: http://africanarguments.org/2016/10/10/the-au-tried-and-failedon-burundi-now-its-time-to-try-again/ [Accessed 18 September 2018]. Lidén, Kristoffer, Mac Ginty, Roger, and Richmond, Oliver P., 2009. Introduction: Beyond Northern Epistemologies of Peace: Peacebuilding Reconstructed? International Peacekeeping 16(5), 587–598. Mackie, Jamie, 2005. Bandung 1955: Non-alignment and Afro-Asian Solidarity. Singapore: Didier Millet. Mackinnon, Catherine A., 2005. Essay Defining Rape Internationally: A Comment on Akayesu’. Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 44(3), 940–958. McTurnan Kahin, George, 1956. The Asian-African Conference: Bandung, Indonesia, April, 1955. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Megoran, Nick, Williams, Philippa, and McConnell, Fiona (eds), 2015. Geographies of Peace. London, New York: IB Taurus. Melvern, Linda, R., 2000. A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide. London: Zed Books Ltd. Phạm, Quỳnh N. and Shilliam, Robbie (eds.), 2016. Meanings of Bandung: Postcolonial Orders and Decolonial Visions. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Prashad, Vijay, 2007. The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World. New York: New Press. Richmond, Oliver P., 2006. The Problem of Peace: Understanding the ‘Liberal Peace’. Conflict, Security and Development 6(3), 291–314. Richmond, Oliver and Mitchell, Audra (eds), 2012. Hybrid Forms of Peace from Everyday Agency to PostLiberalism. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Ross, Fiona C., 2003. Bearing Witness: Women and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. London: Pluto Press. Seddon, David, 2017. Che Guevara in the Congo. Pambazuka News.org. 15 December 2017. Available at: https://allafrica.com/stories/201712210197.html [Last accessed 19 September 2018]. Steans, Jill, 1998. Gender and International Relations: An Introduction. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Thornhill, Kerrie, 2012. ‘You Must Sit on the Old Mat to Ply the New One’: Rethinking Threatened Masculinities and Post-conflict Gender Violence in Liberia. In: Jane Freedman (ed.), Engaging Men in the Fight against Gender Violence: Case Studies from Africa. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 69–100. US Institute of Peace, 1995. Truth Commission: South Africa. Public Report Friday 1 December 1995. Available at: www.usip.org/publications/1995/12/truth-commission-south-africa [Last accessed 19 September 2018].

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Part V

South–South connections

25 Struggles for gender justice Regional networks and feminist experiences of South–South collaborations Sohela Nazneen

Introduction Narratives of transnational feminist activism are usually dominated by a narrow focus on the global arena and contestations between Northern and Southern feminists on various issues. Indeed, as Chhachhi and Abeysekera argue, there is an ‘automatic association of the prefix “trans” in transnational feminisms with the global/international’ (2015, p. 570). Many of these narratives explore the strategies used by feminist global networks to build solidarity between Southern and Northern activists to shape the global agenda on women’s rights (Moghadam 2005). In turn, some narratives of transnational feminist activism also explore how feminists1 at the national level have been able to use international conventions and norms to pressure states to respond to their demands (Alvarez 1998; Keck and Sikkink 1998). Undeniably, these are some of the key elements of transnational feminist movements. However, the extensive focus on feminist collaborations at the ‘global’ level when researching transnational feminisms has led to the mobilisation by Southern feminists at the regional and continental levels, an important dimension of transnational feminist collaboration, receiving less attention (Tripp 2010). The strategies used by Southern feminist networks to collaborate at the regional level and the sites where Southern feminists exchange and contend ideas on women’s rights are diverse and their experiences rich. These feminist engagements have their own distinct political dynamics. Inevitably, this history is closely tied to the global spaces and the political and economic forces of globalisation, as Southern feminist networks take up different positions based on the context and changes they encounter at the national, regional and international levels. Given that regionaland continental-level activism receive less attention (with a few exceptions, see Alvarez 1998, 2000; Tripp 2010), in this chapter I focus largely on a number of regional feminist networks in the global South. This is because Southern regional and continental forums and conferences are key sites through which regional flows of ideas and norms take place that critically influence national movements and policy and shape regional and global initiatives. Transnational feminist activism has been defined by Moghadam (2005) as sustained feminist collective action across borders to promote women’s rights. Baksh and Harcourt (2015) point

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out that according to Moghadam (2015), transnational feminist networks bring together women from at least three or more countries around a specific set of grievances or issues. Based on this definition, the regional collaborations I discuss in this chapter involve more than two countries, although it is important to acknowledge that feminist exchanges between two countries have also led to significant policy changes and legal reforms. For example, exchanges between feminist lawyers and legal aid organisations based in India and Bangladesh2 were important for shaping Bangladesh’s Domestic Violence Act of 2010 (Nazneen 2017). In the global South, women’s movement actors and feminists have a long history of working across borders, supporting women’s political, economic and social rights. However, the majority of the current regional feminist networks, forums and sites largely came into being in the last three decades of the 20th century. Indeed, Moghadam (2005) points out that the majority of the Southern regional feminist networks and alliances were largely formed during the 1980s, 1990s and the last decade. This prompts the following questions: What led to the growth of these networks? What roles have regional feminist networks and organising played in shaping feminist agendas at the domestic, regional and global levels? What are the strategies used by these regional networks to collaborate with each other and where are the sites of contestation? What are the challenges that these forms of collaborations could face in the future? In the first two sections, I address these and other questions by focusing on the history and context of the growth of regional feminist networks, while also examining their modes of operation. In the next section, I explore the strategies used by regional feminist networks to collaborate with each other, and the key areas where they have contended with Southern states and global forces at the national, regional and global levels. I also explore the multiple sites – both formal regional policy-making forums and also regional feminist forums – for contesting and creating new forms of knowledge. In the last section I comment on the challenges raised by rapidly changing global and regional contexts for regional feminist networks to operate in an effective manner, and what we need to research further to enrich our understandings of feminist collaborations in the global South.

The growth of regional feminist networks in the global South During the 1980s, transnational feminist networks composed of and led by Southern feminists emerged as Southern feminists strove to highlight the importance of focusing on the unequal political and economic structures at the global level that sustain conditions of underdevelopment in the global South. Research conducted by Southern feminists highlighted how these structures are gendered and documented their adverse impacts on poor women and men. The UN Decade for Women (1975 to 1985) and the first and second world conferences in Mexico City and Copenhagen, respectively, brought the divergences between feminists from the global North and the South to the forefront (Moghadam 2005). At that time, feminist analysis and policy measures in gender inequity were primarily influenced by the ideas of white-middle class-liberal feminism (Baksh and Harcourt 2015).3 The ‘First World versus Third World feminisms’ debate highlighted that these feminisms had disparate priorities. Many Northern feminists saw legal equality and reproductive rights as key feminist issues, whereas Southern feminists highlighted the extent to which the low status and subordination of women were linked to unequal North– South relations – sustained by the legacies of colonialism and unequal access to resources, trade and finance (Baksh and Harcourt 2015). The instrumental focus of international development projects on women’s role in development (including through fertility control, and participation in income-generation activities) promoted by aid donors, and the adverse impact of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP) in many Southern countries, encouraged Southern feminists to 336

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form alliances and networks to resist moves at the national level that marginalised women economically and limited women’s rights. A key player in this process was Development Alternatives for Women in a New Era (DAWN), a Southern feminist scholar-activist network, founded in 1984 during the preparations for the Third UN World Women’s Conference to be held in Nairobi. As a feminist scholar-activist network, DAWN brought forward a distinct ‘Southern’ perspective which acknowledges the colonial roots in which the specific experiences of Southern women are embedded, which reflect the racism of Eurocentrism as well as the structured marginalization and disempowerment that anticolonial struggles have sought to resist and overturn. DAWN developed a methodology that drew directly on the experiences of women living in the South, . . . validating knowledge produced through dialogue and debate; reflecting Southern women’s diversity based on ethnicity, culture, and class. (Antrobus 2015, p. 159) The preparations for the Third UN World Women’s Conference in Nairobi in 1985 coincided with the decline of the welfare state in the global North and increased poverty in the global South due to economic recession, global debt crisis and the imposition of neoliberal economic policies. This meant that the context was conducive for building bridges and consensus among feminists from the global North and South alike (Moghadam 2015). Feminists in the global South engaged in national and regional processes to prepare for Nairobi and, later on, for the Fourth World Women’s conference in Beijing. These processes not only created opportunities for Southern feminists to come together nationally to develop position papers but also to engage at a regional level on a diverse set of issues and to set regional priorities. During the late 1980s and 1990s, many feminist regional/transnational networks also emerged in the global South which focused on specific priorities and women’s rights agendas (such as reproductive rights, gender mainstreaming in trade, informal sector work, violence against women, and peace-building). Many of these regional networks engaged in policy-oriented research, lobbying and advocacy pertaining to women’s development needs and women’s human rights. Many of the scholar-activists who formed or joined in these networks were part of the gender and development research community at national, regional or global institutions. This led to debates and feminist engagements over how the gender mainstreaming of development initiatives could be effective at the regional level. The 1980s and the 1990s also witnessed the emergence of regional sites where scholars, activists and practitioners debated feminist concerns. The most well-known of these are the Latin American and Caribbean Feminist ‘Encounters’,4 which fostered sustained interactions between a diverse set of feminist actors. These sustained interactions led to the exchange of ideas and contestations over the nature of feminism(s) and its political and cultural meanings. These contestations and debates led to the construction of alternative political and cultural meanings and a common regional feminist grammar (Alvarez 2000). The growth of the NGO sector in Asia, Latin America and Africa, and the availability of donor funding for gender and development work in the 1980s and the 1990s, meant that Southern national feminist groups were able to leverage resources for their activities and form wider alliances on women’s rights issues at the national and regional levels. NGO coalitions on women’s rights issues and the direct exchange of ideas between NGO coalition members from different countries facilitated the diffusion of ideas at the regional level. The democratisation of many Southern countries, particularly in Latin America and subSaharan Africa (Vargas 2015; Tripp 2010), also opened up national policy spaces for feminists. These conditions, along with changes in communication technology in the 1990s, led to the 337

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proliferation of regional and continental feminist networks that created new avenues for feminist collaboration and exchange in and across the global South. The proliferation of these networks and their activism and engagement in international processes and events in the 1990s helped to broaden the international feminist agenda and enriched the feminist critique of neoliberal policy shifts, in addition to strengthening the feminist stance against growing fundamentalism and militarism in the global South. Undeniably, the above discussion is a sweeping representation of the rapid changes that took place during these decades. For each of the Southern regions, the context and the nature of change were different, and how these affected the formation of regional feminist networks and shaped the priorities and the possibilities or influencing regional and national agenda were distinct. The next section explores feminist regional collaborations and contestation in different regional contexts.

Strategies and sites: South–South collaborations and contestations In the global South, the regional feminist networks comprise different types of feminist groups and other organisations. Broadly speaking these include professionalised women’s lobbying groups (including NGOs), country offices of international NGOs, feminist academic or research groups, and grassroots women’s groups (Moghadam 2015). These categories are not exhaustive, nor are they necessarily easy to define. Nonetheless, grassroots women’s groups are perceived to be more locally based and community driven, while, generally, the former three organisations/ groups are perceived to have top-down management structures and leaders who are from elite or professional classes. The class composition and the location of these organisations (i.e. urban/ rural; cosmopolitan/non-cosmopolitan) and the kinds of activities (i.e. policy advocacy and/or research) undertaken by these types of organisations means that regional networks comprised of such organisations have had to grapple with questions related to inclusivity, diversity and depoliticisation (the latter caused by an excessive focus on policy).

Strategies used by regional feminist networks With the above-mentioned heterogeneity in mind, what are the strategies used by regional feminist networks in the global South? How are these strategies deployed to foster South– South collaborations and exchange among diverse feminist groups and organisations? In essence, regional feminist networks use a diverse set of strategies to promote women’s rights and gender equity that foster feminist collaborations at the domestic, regional and global levels. These broadly fall under the following categories. First, regional network member-organisations act within their own borders and also collaborate across borders to raise awareness about and engage in the promotion of gender transformative policy changes at the national level. These activities require members to build large cross-sectional solidarity campaigns and engage in various policy spaces at the national and, at times, the local level. Through these and other processes, there is thus a direct diffusion of regional ideas and norms across the border through the network members. Second, regional feminist networks participate in regional and multilateral policy forums, attend meetings, lobby delegates and cultivate support for the policy changes promoted by network members and for gender transformative regional initiatives. Third, network members interact with each other to share information and ideas on specific issues to mobilise against ‘outside (global) forces and institutions’ (Moghadam 2015) that seek to undermine women’s rights. Fourth, through interactions at multiple sites, but particularly through knowledge produced by feminist regional research networks and participation in feminist regional conferences, regional feminist networks challenge conventional understanding 338

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and knowledge, and create alternative discourses around women’s rights. These strategies are not unique to regional feminist networks and are deployed by other types of rights-based movements and networks. How effective these strategies are in fostering South–South collaborations and feminist exchanges depends on the type of issue, the strength of the regional network, the nature of resistance they face from other organised groups, the availability of space and resources, and the specific national/regional/and international context within which South–South collaborations are taking place. In the discussion below, I touch on these issues.

Areas and issues on and the sites where South–South feminist collaborations take place There are many issue-based regional and continental feminist networks and organisations. These include regional networks against trafficking in women in South Asia; sub-regional networks such as HomeNet South East Asia comprised of national networks of home-based workers; regional coalitions such as the Latin American and Caribbean Women’s Health and Reproductive Rights Networks; regional non-profits such as the Asia Resource and Research Centre on Women (ARROW) which works on sexual and reproductive rights; and the African Women’s Development and Communications Network (FEMNET) that monitors women’s political advancement in African countries. Apart from the activities of these issue-based feminist regional networks and organisations, feminist exchanges at the regional and continental levels also occur through South–South collaborations on research and academic projects, feminist conferences and trainings designed to foster feminist leadership. For example, SANGAT, a South Asian feminist network, holds month-long workshops to foster regional dialogue between feminists from across South Asia. In turn, the Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encounters, which created space for feminists to contest established discourses and ideas in feminism, identify common regional causes and strategies to engage with states and in regional forums collectively. These indicate that there are multiple sites where feminist collaborations and contestations happen in the global South (discussed further below). In the last three decades, apart from specific forms of issue-based advocacy at the regional and continental levels, knowledge production and movement-building by regional feminist networks in the global South have, in particular, focused on the following areas: (a) regional networks that are against neoliberalism/neoliberal policies; (b) regional networks contesting the rise of fundamentalism; (c) and women’s regional networks for peace-building. Southern feminist critiques of the neoliberal agenda developed through the workshops and dialogues between feminist scholars at the national, regional and international levels during the 1980s. These workshops and dialogues focused on investigating the adverse impacts of SAPs imposed by global financial institutions that led to the reduction of state services and public spending, privatisation, deregulation, expansion of free trade and neoliberal economic policies. The impact of these policies on social reproduction (primarily done by women) and the biased nature of the international gendered division of labour were key areas of concern. DAWN played a key role in developing a Southern feminist critique of neoliberalism in the 1980s and the 1990s (Moghadam 2005), and DAWN’s work was enriched by collaborations with various Southern regional networks. In Africa, feminist economists who were a part of the Association of African Women in Research and Development (AAWORD) and the Council for the Economic Empowerment of Women (CEEWA) played key roles in developing a gendered analysis of Africa’s regional experience and the impact of neoliberal policies (Tripp 2010; Williams 2015). In Latin America and the Caribbean, Feminist Encounters provided scholars and women’s organisations with a space in which to debate the gendered impacts 339

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of neoliberal policies, and in turn to mobilise against these. Networks such as the Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Advocacy (CAFRA) played a key role in highlighting the impact of neoliberal policies in the Caribbean (Williams 2015). In the 1990s, a key focus of Southern feminist scholar-activists was the World Trade Organization (WTO), shifts in global finance and trade, and their gendered impacts. They were particularly concerned with how WTO rules might undermine existing national laws protecting workers and the environment. Their concerns also extended to the shifts in global production structures that would lead to employment losses and dislocations, and whose burden would be disproportionately borne by women. In addition to the scholar-activist networks mentioned above, Southern feminist organisations have also engaged with the International Gender and Trade Network (IGTN) and its affiliated regional coordinating bodies, focusing on the impact of regional trade deals and treaties (Williams 2015). Contesting fundamentalism at the national, regional and international levels is another area where much of the energies of South–South feminist collaborations have been invested. In the 1990s and throughout the last decade, Latin American countries and sub-Saharan Africa have witnessed the rise of ‘Christian fundamentalism’ which holds a strong position against women’s reproductive rights and bodily integrity. During the same time period, in the Middle East and across many Muslim-majority countries, forms of Islamic fundamentalism have grown which advocate a strict application of Shariah laws (orthodox Islamic laws) that would curtail women’s rights in marriage, divorce, custody, equal inheritance and women’s participation in the wider society. In the 1980s, the initial response against Islamic fundamentalism came from Southern scholar-activists researching the rise of the religious right in their countries. Women Living Under Muslim Law (WLUML) was established by nine Southern women from eight different countries in 1984, and the solidarity network focused on developing links between women in Muslim countries in order to exchange information on women’s status and strategies used to counter fundamentalism and create pressure on the state (Helie-Lucas 1993; Shaheed 1994). Apart from WLMUL, other regional networks and groups have focused on resisting fundamentalism in their work to advocate for women’s rights. For example, the regional nationality campaign in the Middle East to reform citizenship laws, led by a regional NGO coalition, has challenged the patriarchal norms embedded within the personal status codes5 in Middle Eastern countries (Pittman and Naciri 2014). With regard to the third key area, Southern women’s groups and feminist networks have a long record in promoting peace and security. In the 1980s and 1990s, Feminist Encounters created space for Latin American and Central American feminist activists to debate the impact of conflict and civil war on women and also to examine how strategies deployed by protestors used women’s traditional roles to promote peace (for example, protests by mothers and grandmothers in the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina). These debates deepened our understandings of the gendered nature of conflict, and the gendered impacts of state-sponsored militarism. At these Feminist Encounters, indigenous women were also able to challenge other feminists for overlooking the role of the state in marginalising their communities and the gendered nature of state violence toward indigenous people (Alvarez et al. 2003). They also shifted the conventional focus on conflict – that had historically excluded the role of women in discourses and debates on conflict and security – and contributed toward the development of notions of human security, which place people at the centre of analysis (ibid.). Subsequently, the 1990s and the last decade have witnessed the active roles played by regional feminist networks and women’s groups in brokering peace deals and forcing states to negotiate peace agreements in Africa. For example, despite possessing minimal resources and being excluded from formal peace processes, the Mano River Union Women’s Peace Network – which involves women 340

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activists from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea (Tripp 2010) – managed to get the feuding heads of states of Guinea and Liberia to discuss peace. This network was instrumental in defusing tensions between the two countries by organising large-scale women’s marches in their respective capitals. There are also many other continental feminist/women’s networks promoting peacebuilding in Africa, including the Federation of African Women’s peace networks (FERAP), which was formed in 1997 with the aim of ensuring women’s involvement in peace-building in the member countries (Tripp 2010). As indicated earlier, feminist regional networks engage in multiple sites and forums, including as a means of engaging in advocacy targeting continental, regional and sub-regional policy-making bodies. These include bodies such as the African Union (AU), Southern African Development Community (SADC), and various regional coordinating bodies of the UN. Over the years, regional feminist networks have successfully mobilised around various UN conferences and also in targeting and engaging UN regional offices. Other sites of feminist contestation are regional feminist forums and conferences. As discussed earlier, the Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encounters were/are critical sites where issues such as feminist autonomy, identity issues and the inclusivity of the feminist movement have been vigorously contested. In these Feminist Encounters, over the years the debates have focused on: the marginalisation of black and indigenous feminist voices within the movement and also in shaping feminist discourse; the domination of regional feminist organisations and leadership by women from elite classes; the discomfort among some activists about the visible presence of sexual minorities within the movement; and the professionalisation and NGO-isation of the movement and the impact of these processes (Alvarez et al. 2003). These debates compelled Latin American and Caribbean feminists to explore whether it was possible to create a movement based on ‘differentiated solidarity’, in essence, an awareness of common but differentiated interests (Jonasdottir 2009, p. 20). These discussions later filtered into other regional and global spaces through feminist scholarship. Indeed, academic exchanges and research collaborations among Southern feminist research networks are important sites for South–South collaboration for building feminist knowledge. These are also important sites for maintaining autonomous Southern voices that are grounded within the complex and diverse realities of specific regions of the world. Autonomous pan-African Networks such as AAWORD have repeatedly challenged ‘imperial legacies, [and] encourage[d] transdisciplinary research’ (Mama 2004, p. 5) which ‘ensured [the] survival of [a] vibrant intellectual culture closely attuned with challenges facing African [women and men] at all levels’ (ibid.). However, the task of building ‘differentiated solidarity’ at the regional and continental levels, and of establishing autonomous spaces for feminist contestations, is becoming increasingly complex given the political, economic, social and technological changes that are taking place around the world. These changes create both possibilities and challenges for regional feminist networks operating from/in the global South.

Looking into the future: challenges and possibilities What possibilities does the future hold for South–South collaborations to build transnational feminist movements? What are the challenges faced by regional feminist networks in the global South? Will Southern feminist voices based in the global South continue to as effectively influence global feminist debates as DAWN and Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encounters have done over the years? These are difficult questions that can only be partially answered. Divisions exist between feminists based in the global South including due to a range of economic, cultural and geopolitical factors. While significant efforts have been made to build 341

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bridges, particularly through feminist mobilisation around preparations for regional events and UN conferences, these efforts have their limitations and can at times privilege certain styles of communication and linguistic skills, and require participants to have access to material and social resources. These could lead to the exclusion of women/feminists from marginalised groups. The diverse identities based on race/class/ethnicity/religion/sexuality and the differential locations and positionalities of women vis-à-vis each other mean that the task of building regional movements based on ‘differentiated solidarity’ (Young 2000) is complex. Questions exist within the feminist movements of the global South as to whether different forms of transnational/regional activism that engage in regional and multilateral policy spaces in fact privilege women from a certain class and social background and lead to the creation of a ‘transnational activist class’ while alienating other activists who are operating at the grassroots level. Apart from the privileging of particular classes in policy spaces, other forms of exclusion create challenges for effective feminist collaborations in the global South. Tensions among different generations of feminists in the global North and the South are not new, and it can be argued that the power dynamics between different generations of feminists in Latin America (Alvarez et al. 2003), South Asia (Roy 2012) and other regions (AWID 2011) have fragmented the movement in the global South. Whether the older generation would be able to effectively pass on the organisational knowledge, history and positional leadership to younger feminists is a crucial issue for the sustainability of regional feminist networks and organisations. In spite of these generational divides, the proliferation of ICTs and social media have led young feminists to create online platforms, thereby opening up their own niche and space within the movement (Mitra-Kahn 2012). These developments, of course, open up the possibilities for the diffusion of feminist ideas and debates on a wider scale in the global South and the North. Another important dimension is the role played by Southern feminist immigrants, exiles and refugees in the global North or in other countries of the South. For instance, feminist exiles from Iran and Latin America have long engaged with local struggles. Concurrently, Southern academics living in the global North have also played important roles in producing contextually grounded knowledge on the status of women for the Northern academy, and have in the past engaged in feminist organising and movement-building in the global South (see Murrey, this volume). As levels of migration increase and the role of women in the diaspora expands, this leads to the question of how this will affect the way North–South relations are conceived and redefined. As women in the diaspora play an increased role in feminist organising at the regional level, and as individuals’ identities become more fluid, their involvement might blur the distinct boundaries that are used to define categories, including the very categories of the global North and South. These developments will raise new questions, including: Should Southern regional networks be categorised as Southern by using measures such as where these are registered or where their headquarters are based; the regions they operate in; and/or where their members are from? There are no clear answers to these questions. Apart from the issue of how South will be defined, the challenge of securing funding for resourcing regional organising emerges as a key area. Invariably, regional-level organising requires resourcing. As the bi- and multilateral funding for women’s rights (as opposed to women’s development) work shrinks – influenced by the changes brought forward by the PostParis Agenda – sustaining regional-level activism by NGO coalitions or international NGO country offices presents a distinct challenge for feminists operating in the global South (AWID 2011). Other challenges to regional feminist organising are the changes in the global economic and political structures as the BRICS rise and cultural divisions deepen with the rise of extremist forces in the global South. The solidarity that was present among feminists from the global

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South in the 1980s, and that was linked to the unequal power relations that existed between global North and South, is no longer the case. Instead, we are witnessing the emergence of deeper fractures as some countries in the global South gain economic power, thereby shifting a series of power relations within, across and between different regions of the world. The elevation of regional powers as players at the global level also creates different forms of exploitative relations (or centre–periphery relations, for the want of a better term) among the countries of the global South. How do feminists in the global South move forward to develop collaborations and exchanges at the regional level given this new reality? In addition, the rise of religious extremism is another challenge to regional-level feminist organising as it creates new forms of social and political insecurities and divisions between feminist groups about what states should do to tackle different forms of violence. Indeed, there is a deep sense of discomfort in contexts where many Southern states have taken measures that might not be compatible with ensuring the feminist value of human security. How these challenges might affect South–South feminist collaborations in the future remains to be seen.

Conclusion The chapter began with the premise that regional feminist networks and organising have received less attention in the literature on transnational feminism that has traditionally explored modes of collaboration and contestation between feminists of the global North and the South. The discussion in this chapter on the growth of regional feminist networks and their activities has demonstrated that these developments are steeped in a rich history and have contributed significantly to the broadening of feminist agendas and movements. However, it also reveals that not all regions nor all types of issue-based regional networks are well researched. Among the continents, feminist regional networks in Latin America and the Caribbean and perhaps some parts of Africa have received more attention compared to other regions, while there is a need to identify how regional networks operate in the Middle East, South Asia and South East Asia. The discussion has also shown that further research is needed on the issue of generational divide, the impact of social media and ICTs on regional organising, the challenge shrinking biand multilateral funding poses to regional-level activism, and the discomforts within Southern feminist movements around the ways in which Southern states are addressing human security. Analysis around these issues needs to be deepened as they will influence the nature, trajectory and sustainability of South–South collaborations.

Notes 1 Not all women’s rights movements or networks in the global South identify themselves as feminists, even though they are struggling for gender equality. With this in mind I use the terms feminist and feminist networks to refer to those networks and groups that clearly identify themselves as feminist and believe in structural transformation of power. While some of the groups discussed here use ‘women’ in their names, such as WLMUL, they are feminist networks. 2 The Lawyer’s Collective based in India; Bangladesh National Women Lawyers Association, Ain Salish Kendra (ASK), Bangladesh Mohila Parishad based in Bangladesh. 3 These interpretations were challenged by the critiques produced by women of colour in US academia. In parallel, socialist and Marxist feminisms drew attention to structural inequalities and global capitalism. 4 The first Feminist Encounter was organised in 1981 in Bogotá and since then one has been organised every two/three years (Vargas 2015). 5 The personal status codes are largely inspired by Muslim rights-based social rules or fiqh drawing on the Qu’ran and Islamic jurisprudence.

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References Alvarez, S.E., 1998. Latin American Feminists ‘Go Global’. In: S.E. Alvarez, E. Danigo, and A. Escobar (eds), Cultures of Politics/Politics of Cultures: Revisioning Latin American Social Movements. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Alvarez, S.E., 2000. Translating the Global: Effects of Transnational Organizing on Local Feminist Discourses and Practices in Latin America. Meridians 1(1), 29–67. Alvarez, S.E. et al., 2003. Encountering Latin American and Caribbean Feminisms [online]. University of Chicago. Available from: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/342589 [Accessed 28 February 2018]. Antrobus, P., 2015. DAWN: The Third World Feminist Network. In: R. Baksh and W. Harcourt (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Transnational Feminist Movements. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 159–187. AWID, 2011. Where is the Money for Women’s Rights? [online]. AWID. Available from: www.awid. org/publications/where-money-womens-rights-factsheets [Accessed 28 February 2018]. Baksh, R. and Harcourt, W., 2015. Introduction: Rethinking Knowledge Power and Social Change. In: R. Baksh and W. Harcourt (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Transnational Feminist Movements. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–47. Chhachhi, A. and Abeysekera, S., 2015. Forging a New Political Imaginary: Transnational Southasian Feminisms. In: R. Baksh and W. Harcourt (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Transnational Feminist Movements. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 553–577. Helie-Lucas, M., 1993. Women Living under Muslim Laws. In: J. Kerr (ed.), Ours by Right: Women’s Rights as Human Rights. London: Zed Books, pp. 52–64. Jonasdottir, A., 2009. Feminist Questions, Marx’s Methods and Transitions of Love Power. In: A. Jonadottir and K. Jones (eds), The Political Interests of Gender. New York: United Nations University Press, pp. 58–83. Keck, M.E. and Sikkink, K., 1998. Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Mama, A., 2004. Critical Capacities: Facing the Challenges of Intellectual Development in Africa. Paper presented at the Harold Wolpe Lecture Series at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 23 June 2005. Available from: www.wolpetrust.org.za/dialogue2005/DN062005mama_paper.htm [Accessed 28 February 2018]. Mitra-Kahn, T., 2012. Offline Issues, Online Lives? The Emerging Cyberlife of Feminist Politics in Urban India. In S. Roy (ed.), New South Asian Feminisms: Paradoxes and Possibilities. London: Zed Books, pp. 108–130. Moghadam, V., 2005. Globalizing Women, Transnational Feminist Networks. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University. Moghadam, V., 2015. Transnational Feminisms. In: R. Baksh and W. Harcourt (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Transnational Feminist Movements. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 53–81. Nazneen, S., 2017. Negotiating Gender Equity in a Clientelist State: The Role of Informal Networks in Bangladesh. In: G. Waylen (ed.), Gender and Informal Institutions. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 161–182. Pittman, A. and Naciri, R., 2014. Voicing Autonomy through Citizenship: The Regional Nationality Campaign and Morrocco. In: S. Nazneen and M. Sultan (eds), Voicing Demands: Feminist Activism in Transitional Contexts. London: Zed Books, pp. 118–151. Roy, S., 2012. New South Asian Feminisms: Paradoxes and Possibilities. London: Zed Books. Shaheed, F., 1994. Controlled or Autonomous: Identity and Experience of the Network of Women Living Under Muslim Laws, Occasional Paper no. 5, WLUML, London. Tripp, A.M., 2010. Regional Networking as Transnational Feminism: African Experiences [online]. Eldis. Available from: www.eldis.org/document/A21887 [Accessed 28 February 2018]. Vargas, V., 2015. Feminisms and Democratic Struggles in Latin America. In: R. Baksh and W. Harcourt (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Transnational Feminist Movements. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 534–552. Williams, M., 2015. Feminist Organizing on Gender and Trade: The Role of ITGN. In: R. Baksh and W. Harcourt (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Transnational Feminist Movements. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 446–484. Young, I.M., 2000. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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26 A political economy analysis of South–South youth relations in Africa Drivers and future research questions Grace M. Mwaura

Introduction This chapter examines key drivers of South–South youth relations, including economic, human capital, and socio-political factors. Using the African continent as a case study, I argue that the demographic dividend in African countries will have an impact on how citizens interact across borders, who participates, and who benefits from South–South relations. The main concern, then, is with how to optimise the potential for young people to contribute to South–South cooperation (SSC) in a continent undergoing demographic, socio-political and economic changes. Adopting a ‘youth-lens’ will ensure that the challenges and opportunities of participating countries are interrogated and interventions are coordinated toward achieving a greater synergy and action by and for the youth. This requires continuous dialogue on the perspectives and strategies for the future and guarantees that the voices of young people contribute to the effective achievement of SSC, while also addressing the looming unemployment and inequality on the continent. While SSC emerged as a result of the decolonisation movement of the 1950s and 1960s (Mihyo 1992; Rhee 2011; see Aneja, this volume), it has now expanded to include interests such as regional and sub-regional integration, enhanced trade and investment flows, knowledge exchanges and greater development assistance (Amanor 2013; Hardeep 2010; Rosseel et al. 2009; see Muhr, this volume; Mathews, this volume; Hanafi, this volume; Mawdsley, this volume). Anchored on socio-political and economic pillars, South–South relations provide a platform for bridging knowledge and technology gaps, enhancing capacities at different levels, as well as building partnerships and strengthening institutions. I suggest expanding our knowledge of South–South relations to include how different peoples can participate in the practices such as knowledge exchange, trade and socio-political activities. In Africa, these people include, but are not limited to, young people1 who comprise 70% of the continent’s total population, and who would most benefit from the paybacks of SSC. Yet, these young people have had limited access to normative SSC initiatives.

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A study of South–South youth relations in Africa is significant because of the continent’s complex and interconnected challenges of a growing young workforce, and high levels of both unemployment and inequality amid major economic and socio-political shifts. With over half of the population being under 18 years, Africa is the most youthful continent and will remain so until 2050 when the median age will climb to 24 years (UNFPA 2014). UNFPA estimates that if sub-Saharan countries make the right human capital investments, the combined demographic dividend could be at least $500 billion per year (equal to one-third of the region’s current gross domestic product) for up to 30 years. For African countries to reap this highly praised demographic dividend, it is imperative that we understand how South–South relations will affect young people’s contribution to the economic and socio-political developments while bearing in mind the principles of SSC – equality, solidarity, respect for national independence, mutual benefits and complementarity (Rosseel et al. 2009; see Aneja, this volume). Furthermore, demographic shifts around the world will put more pressure on the main pillars of SSC including health and education provision (the basis for human capital); food security and agriculture (the basis for economic development); urban living conditions, employment and livelihoods, and intra-region migration (the basis for socio-political development) (Cleland and Machiyama 2017; on health, see Ormond and Kaspar, this volume; on agriculture see both Rhiney, this volume and Cabral, this volume; and on migration, see Crush and Chikanda, this volume). Another important context for this chapter, and the volume it forms part of, concerns the urge to break away from dependency on richer countries created by North–South cooperation. In his 1982 Third World Lecture, Julius Nyerere argued that the so-called Third World countries needed to ‘reject the notion that the world’s goals, or our goals, have inevitably been set by technological and social patterns of the North’ (Ramphal and Gandhi 1982, p. 440). Trying to ‘catch up with the North’ would amount to individual Southern countries trying to get richer, rather than promote and adhere to people-centred development embodied in self-reliance and a pan-African culture forming a strong foundation for South–South relations. Therefore, the kind of South–South relations that this chapter interrogates are those that seek and choose knowledge, technologies, skills and expertise that are relevant to the national objectives of Southern countries, including in particular those objectives that are most relevant to youth. Furthermore, I am cognisant of the nature and implications of diverse drivers of ongoing North–South relations, including, more specifically, the labour mobility schemes which are designed in the form of mobility visas, work permits and education scholarships, allowing people from the South to migrate to the North either for a short period of time, and/or to eventually become citizens of these countries (see Crush and Chikanda, this volume). For instance, Africa’s brain drain has often been blamed on the migration of Africa’s skilled workforce (including, in particular, young professionals) to the North (Datta 2009) to address an ever-declining economic productivity attributed to the decreasing human capital in Northern countries as a result of their ageing populations. The migration of domestic workers to the Gulf and Middle East countries, often targeting women from deprived families, is motivated by the need to move out of poverty and improve the family’s living standards (Zewdu 2017). Similarly, migration to European countries through the Mediterranean Sea is largely motivated by the individual’s search for permanent protection solutions but also responds to the political, economic and geographical changes of the origin and host countries (RMMS 2014). In each case, remittances to the South remain a key factor as they provide an integral source of income for the families left behind while also consequentially, contributing to the country’s GDP. Examining South–South relations over four decades ago, Rosenbaum and Tyler (1975) argued that cultural curiosity created by education and increased incomes would stimulate an expansion of cultural tourism and other exchanges, representing new elements of South–South 346

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relations. Indeed, in 2017, we are witnessing all forms of exchanges across Africa owing, inter alia, to the cultural solidarity of these countries. For instance, for most African youth, adulthood is marked by fulfilment of certain obligations, such as providing for oneself and the extended family, marrying, and contributing to society. In this context, migration is a rite of passage enabling one to meet these intergenerational and intragenerational obligations while also participating in the global consumer culture (Veale and Dona 2014). Yet migration also provides a temporary escape for young people who feel constrained and burdened by their obligations toward their families and society, with whom they are expected to share their resources. As such, this chapter acknowledges that young people have their own experiences and expectations of relating across borders which are open-ended, less prescriptive, and have the potential to generate tailor-made solutions that respect their everyday circumstances. Essentially, including youth in the analysis of South–South relations extends the conversation beyond the formal processes and outcomes of cooperation between countries, to engage with the way these relationships are built, who participates, who benefits, and with what implications on the individual, society and the country. The relations I am hence interested in are the result of the interactions that exemplify differentiated opportunities for learning, sharing and collaborating as young people seek to attain adulthood. The rest of the chapter is organised as follows. The following three sections propose and discuss three drivers of South–South youth relations – economic cooperation and mobility, human capital (focusing on education), and socio-political factors. The penultimate section lays out key research questions to help build knowledge and evidence around South–South youth relations, and the final section concludes by summarising the necessity for further research to illuminate the key drivers of South–South youth relations.

Economic factors The biggest economic challenge for African countries is to build a momentum for growth that will provide decent jobs for the 440 million young people who will join the labour force by 2030 (AfDB 2014; Losch 2016). Fundamentally, South–South youth relations will be facilitated by ongoing and projected South–South economic activities such as interregional trade and crossborder development initiatives in infrastructure, as well as addressing climate change, agriculture, energy, disaster risks and pandemics (Amanor 2013; UNCTAD 2010). Yet, most economic policies presently exclude young people from participating in the formal economic activities and limit most youth to the informal economy (Gyimah-Brempong and Kimenyi 2013). Even though the informal sector creates most cross-border work opportunities in the African continent (Mahoi et al. 2015), its poor coordination and the lack of an enabling policy environment limit the extent to which it can be transformed to enable countries to compete in regional common markets. Consequently, this will limit South–South economic relations unless intentional efforts are geared toward improving the investment climate, expanding infrastructure, harnessing innovation and building institutional capacity across the continent (UNCTAD 2010). Even though structural change has been an important driver of economic development and job creation in other regions of the world, economic growth in Africa has been driven by commodities and other forces, such as aid, that do not lead to significant structural changes (Amanor 2013). In the context of South–South relations, it is important to investigate how this cooperation could stimulate structural change that limits the role of aid in economic growth and increase GDP, while triggering employment creation and labour mobility in Africa. Particularly, there is need to evaluate the impact of South–South economic models, such as the African Union’s Agenda 2063, which reflect the ambition of African states to improve the inter-Africa 347

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investment climate by focusing on domestic growth, equality and infrastructural development to prompt socio-political and economic transformation (UNECA 2016). While trade and mobility are essential in creating opportunities for young people across borders, the cost of travel across African countries tends to be higher than travelling to Northern countries. Phone calls are sometimes difficult to make across the continent and products imported from the North are often cheaper and more accessible in comparison with products from other global South countries. Such hindrances can be remedied by adopting inclusive infrastructure policies, reforming governance models to ensure that country ownership of infrastructure projects does not override the needs for cross-border connectivity and trade, and by ensuring that regional organisations facilitate the free movement of people across borders. Indeed, Ghana, Mauritius, Rwanda and Seychelles have made intra-Africa travel easier either by relaxing and/or removing visa restrictions or offering visas on arrival for all citizens of African Union member states. In turn, both the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the East African Community (EAC) have introduced a community passport to facilitate the free movement of their citizens, hence facilitating trade relations (Imbernon and Pesche 2016). Indeed, in 2016 the African Union issued an African Union passport, signalling an era of free movement across Africa. However, this passport is currently only issued to heads of state, bureaucrats and political elites who already travel freely on their diplomatic passports (Tikum 2016), hence limiting its usefulness in efforts to promote South–South relations. In spite of this limitation, the African Union as a whole has played a key role in facilitating South–South exchanges through regional and sub-regional partnerships which consolidate economic integration. Regional economic blocs, such as ECOWAS, the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), the EAC, and the Economic Community of Central Africa States (ECCAS), promote regional development cooperation and labour mobility and directly counter the move by individual countries toward strict immigration policies, hence accelerating South–South economic relations. Even though these regional economic blocs overlap in jurisdiction and mandate, they also allow member states to belong to more than one bloc, increasing their chances of trading with other countries. Efforts to integrate regional policies and institutions have helped to address barriers to trade and labour mobility while also enhancing sectoral competitiveness and productivity (UNECA 2016). Initiatives, such as regional science and technology councils, regional education and health policies, and regional centres and networks of excellence, ideally should foster leveraging of regional human resources to address common development agendas of participating countries. For example, the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme of New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), which aims for a 6% average annual growth rate in the agriculture sector, acknowledges the need for inter-Africa cooperation, and has more recently, through the Malabo Declaration, emphasised the role of young people in driving agricultural transformation in Africa (African Union 2014). Nonetheless, there are key issues that cannot be overlooked when employing a youthlens on South–South economic relations. While regionalism has become an important policy doctrine that promises to foster economic development, create wealth and build peace, other diverging and ambiguous outcomes might arise as regionalism affects existing power dynamics, creating winners and losers in a context where inequality exists across citizens, countries and regions (Veale and Dona 2014). For instance, xenophobic attacks on immigrants and refugees in South Africa largely resulted from the perception that ‘privileged’ migrants were taking up opportunities that belong to the locals. Such claims are often not consistent with reality,

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including because some of these countries face a shortage of skills and expertise that can only be filled by professional immigrants. Nonetheless, such attacks on immigrants and refugees are closely linked to perceptions and attitudes toward cross-border relations, be it in trade, labour mobility, or even cultural exchanges. Equally, there is an overarching narrative that creating youth livelihood opportunities is shifting from finding employment to encouraging people to create their own jobs, turning young people into what Osiakwan describes as ‘an asset class’ – a generation ‘asking less about who will help them and more about what problems they can solve and which businesses they can build’ (2017, p. 58). In the context of South–South economic relations, such narratives fall within a wider debate of what capabilities young people have, and what they might need in order to become successful entrepreneurs who drive economic growth in Africa. This debate also centres on young people’s attitudes and future aspirations that play a huge role in their uptake of entrepreneurial opportunities within and outside their countries of origin. As such, there is need to focus on what young people could learn from other countries about entrepreneurship and job creation. Hence, initiatives such as the Tony Elumelu Foundation, which finance and mentor African start-ups within what is widely referred to as Africapitalism (Amaeshi and Idemudia 2015), should not only focus on the success of young entrepreneurs but also on the cross-pollination of knowledge and experiences across borders and their influence on pan-African economic policies. This, essentially, impacts on human capital development, as discussed in the next section.

Human capital factors Capital and labour are the major resources traded when people move (Cleland and Machiyama 2017) and are significant determinants of South–South youth relations. When a person invests time and resources in building human capital (that is, skills, knowledge and talents, e.g. through education and training) (Bourdieu 1986), they anticipate receiving certain benefits, such as a job (labour force participation), high status, and the pleasure of understanding the world, all of which are needed to sustain a prosperous economy (social mobility) (Coleman 1990). In economic terms, human capital is ‘the acquisition and deployment of skills, talent, knowledge and experiences of individuals and/or populations and their value to organizations, economies and society’ (AfDB 2014, p. 4). Given the increasing young African workforce and their high unemployment on the one hand, and the telecommunications revolution and the changing world of work on the other hand, Africa could greatly benefit from investing in the development and the movement of skills and expertise within and outside the continent – both physically and virtually. In view of this potential, the African Development Bank’s investment agenda includes four key aspects of human capital development: education; workforce and employment; wellness; and enabling environment (AfDB 2014). The main focus has been on developing skills to boost productivity and competitiveness; tapping into technological innovations; creating jobs; while also providing safety nets to cushion the poorest against economic and social shocks. However, this strategy has not been explicit on how to accelerate South–South relations through human capital development, neither has it emphasised the role of youth whose transition into the labour market remains a challenge, resulting in a largely inactive workforce. Fundamentally, young people’s human capital is bound by a range of factors, including labour market characteristics, gender, intergenerational relations and spatial location. For those who are employed, the majority are in low-income and low-productivity jobs, and many others are engaged in

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types of work, such as care work and in smallholder agriculture, with self-employment often qualifying for underemployment (Betcherman and Khan 2015). Such under-utilised human capital potential should then trigger investments toward increasing productivity for the purpose of growing the economy and increasing the utility of South–South relations. Since mobility serves to spread risks and disseminate ideas and practices (van Heelsum 2016; Zewdu 2017), it informs some of the major considerations to make when investing in youth’s human capital, such as the historical trajectories of South–South mobility, the drivers of mobility, the role of borders, the role of the state and the impact and utility of mobility for young people in Africa. Gaining access to a livelihood opportunity is determined by one’s ability to move, a factor of infrastructure, and the opening up of opportunities as countries stabilise, industrialise, and as their cities grow (or, conversely, the closing up of opportunities as countries destabilise and economies shrink or stagnate) (UNDP 2009). Education and training facilitate mobility as people migrate to international and neighbouring countries through formal education paths, such as scholarships, fellowships, internships and apprenticeships. Historically, most African scholars migrate to Northern countries to attain higher education, with some returning to the global South while others remain in these countries, resulting in a brain drain. In response to the opportunity to develop human capital through professional migration, the African Union, with support from Northern countries, has invested in a Pan-African University, with nodes in five universities in each region (Pan-African University 2017). The university is based on a joint university model of pooling knowledge and resources from African universities and drawing on the different strengths of each university to deliver high-quality postgraduate education. African students are sponsored to study in any of the five universities, while Faculty members are hired for short periods of time to teach in these programmes. Newer universities are adopting similar models of inter-Africa professional migration, such as the African Leadership University in Mauritius and Rwanda, the African Institute of Mathematical Studies (AIMS) in South Africa and Senegal, the University of Mohammed VI Polytechnic in Morocco, and Ashesi University in Ghana. This move has increased investments and built institutional capacities and collaborations within African institutions for human capital development. In essence, it attempts to break the historical nature of funding to education programmes that was initially only available through models of North–South collaboration (for exceptions, see Muhr and Azevedo, this volume; also see Waters and Leung, this volume). The establishment of educational institutions whose target market is African countries has also introduced new ways of sharing the cost of strengthening institutions while also including new actors and mostly benefiting African youth. Knowledge exchange is equally important in human capital development. It is a horizontal process, meaning that it is co-created rather than vertically transferred from one individual or country to the other. Opportunities such as fielding experts and technicians, including coaching for the uptake of know-how and technologies, field demonstrations, training of trainers, on-the-job mentoring, and volunteering allow for organic growth, without much dependency on aid or development funding (FAO 2015; Rhee 2011). Learning exchanges, such as study tours and informal network exchanges, play a similar role in motivating change and action among participants. These result in highly effective capacity development as well as positive spill-overs such as self-confidence, mutual learning, and partnerships development, hence enhancing human capital. Such examples include the African Union Youth Volunteer Corps, a programme designed to promote the sharing of skills, knowledge, creativity and learning through volunteering schemes for African youth within African organisations. The participants gain professional experience, develop shared values and become agents of pan-Africanism (African Union 2017) essentially opening up opportunities for South–South relations. 350

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Socio-political factors South–South relations in Africa started as a mode of pan-African political cooperation through independence struggles, later transitioning into the formation of the African Union, inspired by a commitment among African leaders to work in solidarity to advance common political agendas (see also Biney, this volume). Over the years, regional and sub-regional socio-political issues have brought countries together to develop a variety of agreements on issues such as peace, transboundary resource conflicts (such as the Nile Basin Initiative), infrastructure (such as the Lamu Port, South Sudan, Ethiopia Transport Corridor), agriculture (such as the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme – CAADP) among many others. Hardeep (2010) argues that countries engaging in SSC do not like to be viewed as donors or recipients; rather, they prefer to express their cooperation as an expression of solidarity borne out of shared experiences and guided by the principles of respect of national sovereignty and ownership (also see Aneja, this volume). These views are being replicated in the rising youth movements across Africa where young people organise themselves with the aim of sharing knowledge, building capacity, and influencing regional and sub-regional socio-political and economic dialogues on regional agendas such as peace, climate change, agriculture and entrepreneurship. For example, the Pan African Youth Parliament influences the African governments to implement the African Youth Charter. In turn, the African Artists Peace Initiative, a pan-African movement with over 10,000 members, campaigns for a culture of peace and non-violence using arts, media and African cultural heritage (on South–South arts flows see Rojas-Sotelo, this volume). Furthermore, the ECOWAS Youth Council integrates all youth organisations in West Africa to advance socio-economic development and pan-Africanism. An additional example is the African Youth Initiative on Climate Change, which engages African youth in international and regional climate change actions in 34 African countries; and the Africa 2.0 Foundation provides a platform for African entrepreneurs to network and build their capacity. These and many other regional and subregional youth initiatives often uphold some of the principles of SSC such as respecting the sovereignty of their countries, mutual benefits and complementarity, while on the other hand, working to expand their opportunity base for livelihoods. At the same time, however, an organic kind of social movement exists, informed by new youth sub-cultures, which directly influences their everyday politics and, by extension, trade and mobility. This has been facilitated by the spread of new media and telecommunications technology that has opened up new economic and socio-political possibilities in a rising information society. For instance, the wave of protests and counter protests in North African countries in 2011 has been attributed to the links created over social media on shared economic and political experiences (Honwana 2012). Similarly, the diffusion of internet and transcontinental media networks has also increased the blurring of borders between states as individuals become linked through lifestyles, interests, experiences and causes (Musa and Willis 2014). These have stimulated competitive markets for Africa-made products across the continent and human capital development, as well as influencing socio-political relations. For example, the last three decades have witnessed increased production and distribution of African screen media, such as the Nigeria video films, Nollywood, and African music. Jedlowski’s (2017) research on the role of Côte d’Ivoire in the translation and distribution of Nollywood movies into francophone countries following the country’s political and economic crisis indicates that Côte d’Ivoire has regained its role as a hub of media, courtesy of Nollywood (see Rojas-Sotelo, this volume). Not only have the translation and distribution of African films resulted in cultural exchanges, they have also increased corporate investments from both African and non-African investors, in effect creating jobs and, often, employing young people. 351

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Nonetheless, these connections do not always produce positive outcomes. Musa and Willis (2014) warn that new media is now the basis for which social problems could exacerbate and relationships fail. A good example is the social media fight between Kenyans and Nigerians over football (ibid.) which escalated to disrespectful statements toward the citizens and political leaders of these countries, essentially allowing cracks of disintegration to appear. To advance in South–South relations, not only do we need new media ethics, but also a push toward constructing meaningful connections that embody community welfare and oneness that often go beyond the virtual to physical connections. New media should, then, evolve to break the boundaries that limit physical connections between countries, and in so doing, promote South–South relations. Through well-functioning institutions, young people will pursue myriad opportunities emanating from SSC. Lessons can be learnt from the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), which has started institutionalising people-to-people exchanges. In 2017, China committed to invest in people-to-people exchanges and cooperation so as to boost mutual understanding and friendship with South Africa (Xinhua 2017). It has also supported a ChinaAfrica Youth festival held annually with the aim of providing a platform for young people to learn and develop together through activities such as cooperation forums, signing declarations, and exchange activities for young entrepreneurs (FOCAC 2017). Such models can be adopted by African countries willing to collaborate in people-to-people exchanges. Crucially, for socio-political South–South relations to succeed, institutional capacities must be pursued that enable political stability, appropriate economic policies, efficient state bureaucracy and effective financial and legal systems. However, these should not undermine the social norms and practices that might hinder or accelerate young people’s drive in South–South relations.

Informing the future research agenda on South–South youth relations In this chapter I started by highlighting that the highly praised demographic dividend is expected to have an impact on South–South relations. Throughout the chapter, I have emphasised the importance of employing a ‘youth-lens’ to South–South relations, arguing that the demography would be beneficial to the achievement of this form of cooperation. Yet, most arguments in this chapter remain general as empirical evidence is still lacking vis-à-vis the opportunities and challenges presented by youth in the realm of SSC. Important questions revolve around the implications of an inactive youth workforce entangled in a nationalistic culture, a jobless economy, and high levels of inequality, against a backdrop of the principles of solidarity, respect for national independence and mutual benefits promoted by SSC. I propose employing a political economy analysis to develop a more nuanced understanding of South–South youth relations, a sub-field of development cooperation where little is known of the role of youth as actors, their perspectives, and the power dynamics they bring to SSC. Such studies should underline the significance of different forms of capital, institutions and collaboration in shaping youth aspirations and securing meaningful livelihoods. Importantly, they should employ a youth-lens to investigate issues such as mobility, power dynamics, cost of cooperation, and technological changes, among others. While research is being conducted to understand South–North youth mobility, particularly with regard to irregular forms of migration to Europe, people seeking asylum in the global North, and the temporary migration of young men and women to the Middle East for instance, there is little research on cross-border migration within a region such as Africa (see Crush and Chikanda, this volume). Major African cities such as Lagos, Johannesburg, Nairobi and Accra are increasingly becoming cosmopolitan, with immigrants from other African countries working in multinational 352

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companies, starting up informal businesses, or living with their families. While on the one hand, we can argue that South–North migration could benefit the ageing Northern countries by providing a much-needed workforce, it is unknown what benefits African countries will gain (or indeed what they stand to lose) with an increase in South–South youth mobility. Hence, a question such as what are the economic and socio-political implications for increased cross-border youth mobility will be important for both researchers and policy makers. Furthermore, as van Heelsum (2016) has argued, it will be necessary to understand how the aspirations and capabilities (resulting from education) of young people influence their mobility across the continent. Power dynamics in SSC are key in this and other regards. Nationalistic cultures, governance reforms and political shifts and transitions in any country will affect how and what young people negotiate for in South–South relations. Cognisant of the differentiated capabilities of individuals and countries, there is a need to examine the reciprocity of South–South youth relations, specifically, how principles of equality and mutual benefits will be defined and achieved. In particular, unearthing how South–South youth relations respond to the non-interference policy of SSC will help us understand how youth voices are included or excluded in diverse forms of South–South relations. For example, as some countries are already moving into middle-income status while others remain least developing countries, how do these economic differences affect the nature of their collaboration? As mentioned earlier, some of the financial cost of South–South youth cooperation has often been borne by a third party, often a Northern country, whose agenda has been to develop human resources that will benefit Northern countries. Given the new and innovative ways that young people are relating across borders, the rise of Africapitalism, and pan-African professional migration, what could we learn from these practices about sharing the cost of SSC internally? Importantly, the unaccounted-for costs, such as the social cost of building relationships, including socio-cultural and political adjustments on the part of the individual and society, have often been missed in analysing most forms of cooperation. They are both worth researching for the purposes of improving the cooperation models and transferring the lessons learnt. The revolutionary role of a knowledge economy, supported by science, technology and innovation (STI) has not been extensively explored in relation to South–South relations. Although Africa has 13.4% of the world population, it produces only 1.1% of the scientific knowledge (also see Mathews, this volume; and Hanafi, this volume). Progress in STI has been constrained by a shortage of skills, delaying the emergence of African countries as knowledge economies (AfDB 2014). Due to low investment in research and development, Africa ranks low in global competitiveness and productivity. Pooling as African countries to invest in research and development toward identified solutions to common challenges is yet to become a common narrative in South–South dialogues. The importance of upscaling indigenous knowledge to drive modern technologies can be underscored; particularly, how it might be shared across borders formally and informally. Further, the ICT narrative needs to be demystified by paying attention to fundamental issues of STI, such as increasing enrolment in science, engineering and technology courses, matching education with labour market needs, and overall improving the quality of education (AfDB 2014; Ndemo and Weiss 2017). Critically, Africa’s knowledge economy must be contextualised not just in use of ICTs, but in actual scientific innovations, technological advancements, and digitised economies that can help overcome technical barriers to trade. This would have the potential to transform infrastructure, drive low-carbon development initiatives, improve human, plant and animal health research, environment and natural resources as well as drive industrial technology. The role of the private sector in South–South youth relations is already evident and showing potential for expansion (Amaeshi and Idemudia, 2015). Multinational companies expanding to 353

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African countries hire local staff, thereby facilitating labour mobility and job creation. They are also providing avenues for pushing for a borderless continent as skilled members of the work force migrate to different parts of the continent. Other private sector initiatives are transforming the entrepreneurial spirit by gathering and supporting African entrepreneurs and exposing them to entrepreneurial ventures from across borders, thus enhancing cooperation and knowledge exchange. However, such initiatives remain under-researched on their potential role in advancing South–South relations on the continent. In light of ongoing political shifts in many African countries, a question worth reflecting on would be whether cross-border mobility instigates violence as young immigrants take up livelihood opportunities in their destination countries. This is particularly the case because countries have already developed nationalist attitudes and protectionist worldviews, such that it is unknown whether countries hosting refugees, for instance, would prioritise cross-border relations over their nation-building agenda. Finally, this chapter has made an underlying assumption that, indeed, young people embrace South–South relations. However, no research has been conducted to assess the utility of such relationships, some of which have often existed in the form of time-bound programmes funded by international organisations or Northern countries. Social scientists would be interested in investigating youth perceptions and attitudes toward South–South relations and within the broader context of an increased interest in the study of migration from Africa to the Middle East and Europe (also see Waters and Leung, this volume). What is the utility of South–South relations in a context of idolised Western cultures? Does ‘turning East’, or in this case, ‘turning South’, imply emancipation from the North or does it signal alternative opportunities for young people to create livelihoods?

Conclusion This chapter has first assumed that South–South youth relations indeed have some utility in securing the livelihoods of young people in Africa and then proceeded to explore three main drivers of such relationships. I have highlighted that improving human capital is as key to social, political and economic progress as it is to achieving the vision of SSC. I have emphasised framing South–South youth relations in the context of how to enhance youth livelihoods, reinforce the inclusion narrative and address institutional capacities. I have also highlighted some economic factors such as economic policies, trade and regionalism, and some socio-political factors such as political instability, cultural curiosity and new media connectivity that implicate the agency of young people in South–South relations. While SSC is well covered in the literature, the lack of empirical data on the role of African youth as key actors creates a gap in our knowledge of South–South relations. Research and policies on youth-centred South–South relations would greatly benefit from data that is disaggregated across gender, age, countries, and with time-series dimensions. There already exists a narrative that SSC does not intend to isolate African countries, but rather it is a strategic dimension to strengthen their capacity to be part of the much-needed North–South cooperation utilising South–South relations as an agent of growth in eradicating poverty (also see Aneja, this volume; and Mawdsley, this volume). The main challenge here is: is it really possible to have SSC address growth and poverty without requiring the support of a Northern country? In conclusion, I believe that the importance of South–South youth relations goes beyond livelihoods, mobility and institutions of young people; they also concern technological advancements, cultural exchanges and solidarity movements. Fundamentally, in order to identify good practices of South–South youth relations, we must be able to observe the horizontal and 354

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vertical dimensions of the relationships; their innovativeness; their adaptiveness and replicability as well as their sustainability.

Note 1 The definition of ‘youth’ or ‘young people’ is not straightforward. The United Nations define youth as those aged 15–24 years while the African Union defines youth as 15–35 years. Such definitions are limiting and often tend to ignore the significance of the underlying concept of youth as a transition period between childhood and adulthood that is marked by several social attainments such as completing school, finding work, family formation, establishing independent residence, and exercising citizenship rights and duties (Honwana 2012). This chapter adopts the latter definition that is shaped by the culture and politics of the actors who define youth at particular times and within particular spaces.

References AfDB, 2014. Human Capital Strategy for Africa, 2014–2018. Tunis: African Development Bank. African Union, 2014. Malabo Declaration. Assembly of the Union Twenty-third Ordinary Session 26–27 June 2014. Malabo, Equatorial Guinea. African Union, 2017. African Union Youth Volunteer Corps. Available from: www.au.int/web/en/vol unteer/african-union-youth-volunteer-corps [Accessed 28 September 2017]. Amaeshi, K. and Idemudia, U., 2015. Africapitalism: A Management Idea for Business in Africa? Africa Journal of Management 1(2), 210–223. Amanor, K., 2013. South-South Cooperation in Africa: Historical, Geopolitical and Political Economy Dimensions of International Development. IDS Bulletin 44(4), 20–30. Betcherman, G. and Khan, T., 2015. Youth Employment in sub-Saharan Africa: Taking Stock of the Evidence and Knowledge Gaps. Ottawa: MasterCard Foundation and International Development Research Centre. Bourdieu, P., 1986. The Forms of Capital. In: J.G. Richardson (ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research in Sociology of Education. New York: Greenwood Press, pp. 241–258. Cleland, J. and Machiyama, K., 2017. The Challenges Posed by Demographic Change in sub-Saharan Africa: A Concise Overview. Population and Development Reviews 43, 264–286. Coleman, J., 1990. Foundations of Social Theory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Datta, K., 2009. Transforming South–North Relations? International Migration and Development. Geography Compass 3(1), 108–134. FAO, 2015. FAO’s Quick Guide to South-South Cooperation: Fostering Partnership among the Global South. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization. FOCAC, 2017. China-Africa Youth Festival Opens in Beijing. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The People’s Republic of China. Accessed 17 July 2017 from: www.focac.org/eng/zt/zfqnlhj/t157559.htm. No longer available. Gyimah-Brempong, K. and Kimenyi, M.S., 2013. Youth Policy and the Future of African Development. Report by the Africa Growth Initiative at Brookings. Hardeep, S.P., 2010. Rise of the Global South and its Impact on South-South Cooperation. Development Outreach. World Bank. Honwana, A., 2012. The Time of Youth: Work, Social Change and Politics in Africa. Sterling: Kumarian Press. ILO, 2016. Youth Unemployment Report 2016. Rome: International Labour Organization. Available from: www.ilo.org/global/topics/youth-employment/lang--en/index.htm [Accessed 11 September 2017]. Imbernon, J. and Pesche, D., 2016. Regional Organisations in Africa: Overlap, Collaboration and Action. In: D. Pesche, B. Losch, and J. Imbernon (eds), A New Emerging Rural World: An Overview of Rural Change in Africa. Montpellier: CIRAD, NEPAD, pp. 27–28. Jedlowski, A., 2017. African Media and the Corporate Takeover: Video Film Circulation in the Age of Neoliberal Transformations. African Affairs 116(465), 671–691. Losch, B., 2016. Youth Employment: A Challenge for the Continent. In: D. Pesche, B. Losch, and J. Imbernon (eds), A New Emerging Rural World: An Overview of Rural Change in Africa. Montpellier: CIRAD, NEPAD, pp. 19–20. Mahoi, I., Jibao, S., and Sandy, J.F., 2015. Pilot Survey on Cross Border Trade from Sierra Leone to Other Mano River Union Countries. International Growth Centre Working Paper. Mihyo, P.B., 1992. Practical Problems in the South-South Development Cooperation: Some Experiences Involving Tanzania. Law and Politics in Africa, Asia and Latin America 25(2), 220–237. 355

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Musa, B.A. and Willis, J., 2014. From Twitter to Tahrir Square: Ethics in Social and New Media Communication. Westport: Praeger. Ndemo, B. and Weiss, T. (eds), 2017. Digital Kenya: An Entrepreneurial Revolution in the Making. London: Palgrave Macmillan Publishers. Osiakwan, E.M.K., 2017. The KINGS of Africa’s Digital Economy. In: B. Ndemo and T. Weiss (eds), Digital Kenya: An Entrepreneurial Revolution in the Making. London: Palgrave Macmillan Publishers, pp. 55–84. Pan African University, 2017. Home page. Available from: https://pau-au.net/en/home [Accessed 18 July 2017]. Ramphal, H.E.S. and Gandhi, I., 1982. Third World Lecture 1982: South-South Option (President Nyerere’s Address when receiving the Third World Prize). Third World Quarterly 4(3), 433–446. Rhee, R., 2011. Promoting South-South Cooperation through Knowledge Exchange. In: H. Kharas, K. Makino, and W. Jung (eds), Catalyzing Development: A New Vision for Aid. Washington: Brookings Institution Press, pp. 260–280. RMMS, 2014. Going West: Contemporary Mixed Migration Trends for the Horn of Africa to Libya & Europe. Nairobi: Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat. Rosenbaum, H.J. and Tyler, W.G., 1975. South-South Relations: The Economic and Political Content of Interactions among Developing Countries. International Organization 29(1), 243–274. Rosseel, P., De Corte, E., Blommaert, J., and Verniers, E., 2009. Approaches to North-South, South-South and North-South-South Collaboration. A Policy Document. KU Leuven University. Tikum, N., 2016. Prejudice Disguised as Critique: The Legacy of AU Commission Chair Dlamini-Zuma. Pambazuka News. UNCTAD, 2010. South-South Cooperation: Africa and the New Forms of Development Partnership. Economic Development in Africa Report 2010. New York: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. UNDP, 2009. South-South Migration and Human Development: Reflections on African Experiences. Human Development Reports Research Paper 2009/07. New York: United Nations Development Programme. UNECA, 2016. Status of African Integration: ‘The Implications of Agenda 2063 and Agenda 2030 on African Integration’. Addis Ababa: United Nations Economic Commission for Africa UNFPA, 2014. The Power of 1.8 Billion: Adolescents, Youth and the Transformation of the Future. New York: United Nations Population Fund. van Heelsum, A., 2016. Why Migration Will Continue: Aspirations and Capabilities of Syrians and Ethiopians with Different Educational Backgrounds. Ethnic and Racial Studies 39(8), 1301–1309. Veale, A. and Dona, G., 2014. Child and Youth Migration: Mobility-in-Migration in an Era of Globalization. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Xinhua, 2017. China Ready to Enhance People-to-People Exchange with South Africa: Vice-premier. The State Council. Available from: http://english.gov.cn/state_council/vice_premiers/2017/04/25/ content_281475636377714.htm [Accessed 18 July 2017]. Zewdu, G.A., 2017. Ethiopian Female Domestic Labour Migration to the Middle East: Patterns, Trends, and Drivers. African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 11(1), 6–19.

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27 South–South education relations Thomas Muhr and Mário Luiz Neves de Azevedo

Introduction While scholarly interest in South–South cooperation (SSC) has substantially grown over the past decade, South–South education relations have received only scant attention in the Anglophone academic literatures on SSC, international development and international and comparative education. This chapter adopts an historical and global approach to this topic in an effort to contribute to closing this research gap. The chapter unfolds as follows: the first section introduces the concepts of ‘the South’ and ‘South–South cooperation’, counter-posed with practices of ‘triangular collaboration’ and ‘best practice transfer’. On this basis, the second section conducts a critical review of existing South–South education cooperation literatures. Framed by these discussions, two case studies of contemporary South–South education relations are presented: the Cuban, globally deployed ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! (Sure, I Can!) literacy method; and the education cooperation agenda of the so-called BRICS.1 The conclusion resumes the question of whether South–South education cooperation simply represents ‘best practice transfer’ or Third World solidarity for global transformation, while proposals for a future research agenda are developed.

Conceptual clarifications Two complementary conceptualisations of ‘the South’ are of relevance to this chapter. In nationstate-centric terms, ‘the South’ is a group of developing countries, a geographic North–South binary as depicted on the well-known front cover of the 1980 ‘Brandt Report’. More recently, ‘global South’ has also become associated with a ‘relationship of inequality’ not only among states but also social actors and forces within countries (Chisholm 2009, p. 3; Lechini 2012). Evoking Manuel Castell’s (2000) notion of the ‘Fourth World’, ‘global South’ thus embodies sociogeographic inequalities, whereby a collective transnational political identity can be produced through people’s shared experiences of exclusion, marginalisation, exploitation and disenfranchisement (Angosto-Ferrández 2014). The global South thus implies coexisting intra-, inter- and transnational power asymmetries and a simultaneous ‘possibility of solidarities’ among political and social forces that resist and seek to transform these inequalities (Werner 2012, p. 142, note 1).2 357

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While much of the contemporary literature speaks of ‘South–South and triangular cooperation’ (frequently by reference to the 2011 Busan Partnership agreement that evolved from the OECD-DAC orchestrated Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, Busan, South Korea), the difference between ‘South–South cooperation’ and ‘triangular collaboration’ is crucial for analytical rigour. Grounded in dependency theory, SSC refers to the post-Second World War (approximately 1947–1981) idea of Third World emancipation, decolonisation and collective self-reliance for structural transformation toward greater political and economic independence or autonomy from the capitalist core (Chaturvedi 2012; Gosovic 2016). The principles of solidarity, complementarity and cooperation, as established in the 1967 Group of 77 (G-77) Charter of Algiers, are associated with ‘equal and reciprocal relationships with other developing countries’, ‘non-interference’ (i.e. sovereignty) and avoidance of ‘political conditionality’ (UNESCO 2014, p. 49). Defined thus, SSC excludes members of the OECDDAC, instead seeking partnerships among members of the Group of 77 (G-77+China) and the Non-Aligned Movement (on these principles and histories, see Aneja, this volume; Saney, this volume; Omata, this volume). Subsequently, South–South education relations in this chapter are taken to be state-led policies (state-financed and regulated) while, as especially the case of ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! shows, other activities (provision, ownership) can be performed by collective social and political non-state actors and forces outside the logic of profit maximisation as pursued by transnational private education corporations.3 This broadly accords with the distinction of two models of education governance, one related to neoliberal ‘transnationalisation’ in the interests of transnational corporations, including the establishment of North university subsidiaries in the South and the sale of academic licences; the other one to ‘international’ and ‘horizontal cooperation’, i.e. ‘respectful of the idiosyncrasies and identities of the participating countries’ (Tünnermann Bernheim 2009, pp. 51–52). As has been shown with respect to Brazil, the two strategies of ‘commodification and solidarity’ can coexist in national education policies (Azevedo 2015). It is important to highlight here that much of the international and comparative education literature speaks of ‘internationalisation’ (e.g., with respect to student mobility) when actually referring to transnationalisation. SSC as Third World emancipation is distinct to SSC as ‘triangular collaboration’ – promoted since the late 1990s in the context of neoliberalisation – in which international agencies and governments of the North act as ‘brokers’ for ‘best practice transfer’ among developing countries (Sá e Silva 2009). An authoritative definition of ‘best practice transfer’, or ‘policy transfer’, views this as a ‘process by which knowledge about policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in one political system (past or present) is used in the development of policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in another political system’ (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000, p. 5). Two key criticisms of such practice are fundamental to our discussion of South–South education relations in this chapter. First, ‘transfer’ can be of a more or less coercive nature, ranging from voluntary ‘lesson-drawing’ to direct and indirect imposition through, inter alia, international institutional pressures (e.g., OECD, IMF, G-7, think tanks), transnational corporations, and mechanisms such as conditionalities tied to loans and grants (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000). As a relation of inequality regarding actor autonomy, the coercive element in ‘transfer’ underscores the difference between triangular collaboration and SSC as a ‘counterdependency’ strategy: unlike dependency as a relation of inequality that implies ‘the absence of actor autonomy’, dependence connotes ‘asymmetric interdependence’ which, as a relation of ‘mutual control’ and ‘reliance’, is legitimate if consensual (Caporaso 1978). Since autonomy or ‘total self-reliance’ appears illusionary for especially resource-poor nations, ‘controlled dependence’ is a more egalitarian relation as the partners can ‘affect the fundamental nature 358

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of their relationships’ despite the existing power asymmetries in interdependent South–South relationships (Erisman 1991, p. 143). Therefore, the solidarity and ‘win-win’ relations associated with SSC should not per se be equated with altruism and absence of interests and power asymmetries. Rather, while the principles of solidarity, complementarity and cooperation can imply altruism, commercial and political interests are equally part of South–South relations (Muhr 2016a). However, this does not axiomatically translate into a competitive market and profit maximisation logic. For example, depending on the partner’s economic situation, Cuban socialist internationalism has at times charged (variable) commercial rates for services, although below world market prices (see Erisman 1991; Hickling-Hudson et al. 2012b, p. 19). Therefore, what is decisive is whether South–South interdependences generate South counter-dependency – that is, collective self-reliance. Subsequently, the second major criticism of ‘transfer’ views this as a depoliticisation of SSC as merely a technicality ‘no longer rooted in the political mobilization of the South’ (Sá e Silva 2009, p. 51). The instrumentalisation, cooptation and reconceptualisation of SSC as transfer rather than ‘collective process’ undermines the ‘organic, political and potentially innovative nature of South–South cooperation’ (Jules and Sá e Silva 2008, p. 58). International and comparative education literatures echo these discussions. With the World Bank adopting its self-styled role as a global ‘knowledge bank’ in the 1990s, it simultaneously assumed the role of a ‘monitor and lender of “best practices”’ (Steiner-Khamsi 2007, p. 285), with other organisations of global governance, including Transparency International and United Nations (UN) agencies, following suit. Together with such donor conditionalities as efficiency and effectiveness (performance enhancement) and practices of benchmarking, ranking and scoring associated with ‘international standards’, best practice transfer has been considered a ‘unidirectional’ mechanism that advances ‘interstate competition, coercion and convergence’ (Steiner-Khamsi 2007, pp. 285–286). Subsequently, UNESCO has also adopted best practice transfer ‘as a tool within its overall EFA [Education for All] program and strategy’ (Sá e Silva 2009, p. 50). Even in documents that make reference to the post-Second World War spirit of SSC, such as the UNESCO (2014) BRICS: Building Education for the Future report, the view of SSC as a technicality rather than political process dominates, stating that BRICS should ‘learn from one another’ for improvement of the ‘effectiveness’ of their cooperation programmes (p. 3).

Literature review With the conceptual discussions of the previous section in mind, the following analytical literature review limits itself to contemporary academic publications that relate to SSC as a state-interventionist policy and potentially counter-dependency solidarity effort. Projects and relations within the market rationale of privatisation and commoditisation, such as the Turkish government’s educational cooperation with the Turkic Republics (Yanik 2004), are not considered. As such, the review serves to set up the context for the case studies to follow, and no claims to completeness are made. From a scoping of the literature, it appears that the only current academic book in English that signals the mere existence of the field of South–South education and development cooperation in its title is Linda Chisholm and Gita Steiner-Khamsi’s (2009) volume South–South Cooperation in Education and Development. While raising important questions regarding definitions of ‘the South’ and practices of policy transfer, however, the assembled case studies barely transcend triangular collaboration initiatives involving OECD-DAC members (such as Japan), transnational 359

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corporations, and private and NGO actors (also see Heyneman 2010). Among the literature that engages with South–South education relations without necessarily making this explicit, two broad camps can be discerned: a mainstream approach, embedded in liberal and (neo)realist international relations theories; and a critical theory approach, associated with counter-dependency thinking. In what follows, we discuss both. Most generally, the mainstream literature relies on a methodologically nationalist ‘country’ approach as a basis for comparison (e.g., Robertson and Dale 2008), frequently with liberal and (neo)realist underpinnings of nation-state competition and behaviourist ‘soft power’ (states viewed as subjects that have the ability to affect other states to ‘obtain preferred outcomes by co-option and attraction’ (Nye 2010, p. 216)). Much of this literature concentrates on higher education in the BRIC/BRICS grouping, and individual members thereof, especially China and Brazil. A close look reveals, however, that major publications in this area are simply collections of individual country studies without exploring relations, agendas and synergies generated among South actors. For example, Carnoy et al. (2013) compare ‘BRIC state behaviour’ (p. 26) in national higher education policy-making ‘to develop a broad picture of the higher education system in each country’ (p. 4); Altbach and collaborators (Altbach et al. 2013) compare ‘the academic systems and challenges of each of the BRIC countries’, pointing to ‘aggressive international strategies’ by each of these ‘countries’ to ‘compete with each other for prestige and placement in the global rankings’ (pp. viii–ix); and, Oleksiyenko and Yang’s (2015) special issue collection of a ‘comparison’ of BRICS members’ higher education ‘internationalization policies’ is mostly concerned with transnational, North-oriented and neoliberal cooperation initiatives and ‘soft power diplomacies’ (p. 3). Inherently Eurocentric, this literature takes the established global ranking and benchmarking regimes and/or North (higher) education systems as references for comparison. As Carnoy et al. (2013) insist, ‘the BRIC countries will likely have to make some major investments in order to bring their higher education systems in line with the U.S./European models of research universities’ (p. 14). Similarly, while Lane and Kinser’s (2013) comparison of ‘nonpublic’ (i.e. non-state) forms of ‘provider-based cross-border higher education’ recognises the dominance of Western governments and NGOs in shaping African higher education, they equally view Chinese, Brazilian and Indian state cooperation with African governments in this sector as driven by ‘economic competitiveness and soft power’ (pp. 106–107, 119). And, by reference to the two contributions in their collection that engage in some detail with SSC in education (China, Chapter 8; India, Chapter 10), Cheng and Chan (2015) conclude that ‘China and India are intent on aid intervention in education as a soft power to reidentify themselves as education hubs and regional leaders exerting greater influence over developing Asia’ (p. 246). As Jules and Sá e Silva (2008) highlight in their review of different disciplinary approaches to SSC and transfer, within the (neo)realist view of nation-states as homogeneous, rationally behaving units locked into permanent struggle for survival and domination (‘power politics’, e.g., Buzan et al. 1998), ‘real cooperation is unlikely’ (Jules and Sá e Silva 2008, p. 53). Within this approach, SSC is a state’s tool to pursue its interests, and ‘soft power’ depicts power as a unidirectional mechanism (rather than relational-dialectical) in which the affected is inherently objectified. As King (2013) points out in his China’s Aid and Soft Power in Africa, ‘soft power’ means a ‘winner-loser’ relation that rules out the essence of SSC, namely, of common or mutual interests (such as the objective of self-reliance), solidarity, equality, win-win cooperation and mutual benefit (pp. 10–11, 193–194). Probably the most thorough analysis available on South–South education relations, King’s six-year research ‘safari’ (ibid., p. 208) from 2006 and 2012 conducts a historically grounded critical comparison of ‘the difference and similarities of China’s cooperation with that of traditional [OECD-DAC] donors’ (ibid., p. x), distinctly 360

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through ‘China’s lens on cooperation’ in education and training (which the Chinese government refers to as ‘human resource development’) (ibid., p. ix). This permits identifying ‘policy learning’ as mutual or bidirectional learning, rather than ‘policy transfer’. While King detects contradictions in China’s more recent official SSC discourse, and proposes an ambiguous ‘soft soft power’ or ‘soft power “with Chinese characteristics”’ (2013, p. 207), the book as a whole in fact refutes the transfer of the notion of ‘soft power’ from the USA’s foreign policy discourse to China’s cooperation practice. Even less doubt about this is left in Niu and Liu’s (2016) historical account of Chinese-African education relations grounded in the Confucian philosophy of peace and harmony, friendship and mutual benefit (on China’s philanthropy over time, see Reeves, this volume). Other critical education work adopts a more explicit counter-dependency approach. Most prominently, perhaps, is Hickling-Hudson’s prolonged research into education in the Cuban Revolution, which has evolved into an edited volume that comprehensively illuminates the multi-dimensionality of Cuban ‘internationalism integrating solidarity and South–South cooperation’ in education, ‘based not on market-norms (profits and competition)’ (Hickling-Hudson et al. 2012a, pp. 4–5) – in partner countries such as Bolivia, Jamaica, Ghana, Namibia, TimorLeste and Venezuela. Similarly, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh’s (2015) multi-sited ethnography conducted since 2001 in Algeria, Cuba, Lebanon, Libya and Syria thoroughly visibilises socialist education internationalism in the form of the Cuban and Libyan state-provided free-of-charge primary, secondary and tertiary education to Sahrawi and Palestinian refugees within and beyond the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. A relational analysis of the refugee-students’ mobilities disaggregates the ‘trans-regional, intergenerational and multi-directional’ (ibid., p. 6) complexities of these education programmes while identifying contradictory outcomes regarding self-sufficiency and dependency on Northern aid. Finally, there is a body of critical work that approaches SSC through the lens of regional integration (regionalisms) and multiscalar governance. This includes the deprivatisation and decommoditisation of education, and enhanced equity in access to education in/through the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – Peoples’ Trade Agreement (in its Castilian acronym, ALBA-TCP) and the Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR) (e.g., Muhr 2010, 2016b); and, as an expression of the overt class struggle in Latin America-Caribbean, contesting political projects of higher education governance in MERCOSUR (Azevedo 2014; Perrotta 2016).

Case studies of South–South education relations On the basis of the preceding review, the following case studies of the ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! global literacy campaign and the BRICS education agenda seek to underscore the relevance of education as an indispensable dimension in SSC as a ‘political project of emancipation, liberation, political and economic independence’ and ‘system-changing process’ (Gosovic 2016, pp. 733, 740). Arguably, this objective requires a holistic approach to education that includes formal and non-formal modalities at any level of the educational process. Thus the two case studies extend the reductionist focus on South–South higher education relations that dominates the existing literature.

¡Yo, Sí Puedo!: global SSC for literacy4 ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! was developed in the early 2000s by Leonela Relys Díaz at the Latin American and Caribbean Pedagogical Institute (Instituto Pedagógico Latinoamericano y Caribeño, IPLAC), which belongs to the Cuban Ministry of Education. Although ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! is often 361

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used synonymously with the associated literacy campaigns or programmes, strictly speaking the name denominates an alphanumeric method that makes use of audio-visual technology. The focus here, however, is neither the method itself nor its quantitative achievements. Rather, this section contests two interrelated assumptions: that the globalisation of ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! simply constitutes policy and/or best practice ‘transfer’ (see Jules and Sá e Silva 2008, p. 57; Sá e Silva 2009, p. 52; Steele 2008, p. 36); and that ‘the quest for Third World autonomy’ is merely ‘part of the discourse’ of SSC (Sá e Silva 2009, p. 53), rather than really existing practice. The globalisation of ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! originates in the Cuban Revolution’s decades-long South–South solidarity in education, and it is worth recalling that historically Cuban ‘internationalism’ always involved interstate relations as well as transnational support to revolutionary movements. Accordingly, ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! has been globalised through inter-governmental SSC, especially among the 11 member states of the ALBA-TCP, founded by the Republic of Cuba and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in 2004. In fact, the first internationalisation of the method occurred in the form of the Venezuelan government’s national literacy campaign Misión Robinson (Mission Robinson), launched on 1 July 2003. Subsequently, and increasingly also with Venezuelan support, to date ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! has been deployed in at least 27 Latin America-Caribbean countries by both governments and non-state actors (such as Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, MST), as well as in Africa (Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa), Asia (especially Timor-Leste), and in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Spain and the USA. In most – if not all – of these cases, cooperation has been requested by global South political and social actors and forces – community- and movements-based groups and associations (rather than NGOs and for-profit business sectors), political parties, and/or sub-national political entities such as municipal governments. Thus, the globalisation of ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! is a demand-driven, purely voluntary and conditionality-free process, whereby the Cuban solidarity cooperation typically comprises advisors and logistics (TV sets, video players, teaching materials, in some cases solar panels for energy generation in remote zones, general health checks including eyesight tests, and reading glasses). Importantly, it is the partners that take the lead in contextualising (assuming ownership) and implementing the campaign in their localities (delivery). By 2015, the method had been adapted to at least 14 different socio-linguistic contexts, including Aymara, Creole, English, Guarani, Portuguese, Quechua, Swahili, Tetum and Braille. The Nicaraguan case is illustrative of this while underscoring the difference between instrumental ‘lesson-learning’ and ‘collective process’ (cooperation) grounded in political mobilisation. Following a cooperation request by the Managua-based Carlos Fonseca Amador Popular Education Association (Asociación de Educación Popular Carlos Fonseca Amador) in 2005, the Cuban government provided the ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! method alongside six advisors and resources for 5,000 so-called ‘literacy points’. The following two years, ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! was implemented through an alliance of the Cuban state, the Fonseca Amador Association and Nicaraguan municipal councils, whereby the Fonseca Amador Association was responsible for technical and pedagogical coordination, training and evaluation, while the participating municipalities established Municipal Commissions for Literacy. With the return of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) to national government power in 2007, and Nicaragua joining the ALBA-TCP, ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! was universalised as the national literacy campaign ‘From Martí to Fidel’ (launched on 23 June 2007), supported by 86 Cuban advisors and 61 Venezuelan brigadistas. By 2009, when UNESCO declared Nicaragua as illiteracy-free, 57,631 voluntary literacy workers had been mobilised; in 2013, 13,519 literacy points actively involved 75,018 learners. While Nicaragua might not be representative of all contexts in which ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! is deployed – due to the nation’s historical trajectory of socialist revolution – over 1.1 million 362

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people (of a total population of about six million in 2014) are annually mobilised in organised, collective solidarity action (rather than liberal individualistic charity), not only in the literacy campaign but also in other state and ALBA-TCP promoted schemes related to reforestation, public health care and social inclusion (of, for instance, street children). Even though the political purpose of ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! is rarely made explicit, the available case studies highlight the social mobilisation and emancipatory and empowering elements of the popular education method. For example, as Boughton and Durnan (2017) conclude on the basis of their involvement in ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! in Timor-Leste and Aboriginal Australia, Paulo Freire’s ‘theory of liberation’ becomes ‘liberatory practice’ in a ‘pedagogy of international solidarity’ that ‘support[s] the development of participation by the least literate in the political processes available to them’ in their specific contexts, or ‘own existing conditions’ (pp. 45–46). Rather than a unidirectional technical transplant driving competition and convergence, ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! epitomises SSC as a locally appropriated collective process with the potential of building a transnational political identity for global structural transformation toward a socially just and democratic world order.

BRICS: toward a common education cooperation agenda This case study is a first approximation to the BRICS education agenda, and can be viewed as a response to the relevant literature in two main ways: first, methodologically, to overcome the practice of simply grouping together individual BRICS country studies without exploring common projects, relations and potential synergies within BRICS as a unit. Second, to challenge the reduction of education to higher education in the academic literature on BRICS, alongside such premature judgements that ‘grouping them [the BRICS countries] for analytical purposes in higher education is simply not relevant’ (Altbach and Bassett 2014, p. 2). An analysis of the seven BRIC(S) declarations and respective action plans between 2009 and 2015 (BRIC 2009, 2010; BRICS 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015a) reveals a discursive shift toward a more pronounced and assertive SSC agenda over time. While this is a hybrid discourse that also integrates elements of the ‘best practice’ discourse, the SSC discourse became increasingly dominant over time.5 Materially this is underscored by an effort to build a counter-dependency structure. Most significantly, in reaction to the reluctance of North governments to ‘reform’ (i.e. democratise) the World Bank and the IMF, most vocally called for by the BRIC(S) between 2010 and 2012 (and subsequently largely abandoned), the establishment of the ‘New Development Bank’ and the ‘Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) amongst BRICS countries’ emerged on the agenda in 2012, and entered ‘into force’ in 2015 (BRICS 2015a, Point 2). Pursuit of a more emancipatory politics of the South is further reflected in the objective of enhancing ‘the collective role of our countries in international affairs’ by, inter alia, consolidating relations with other regional organisations such as the Eurasian Economic Union, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) (BRICS 2015a, Point 3), and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) (BRICS 2014, Point 3). Evoking the idea of the UN New International Economic Order (NIEO), it has been stated that ‘[i]mproved regulation of the derivatives market for commodities is essential to avoid destabilizing impacts on food and energy supplies’ (BRICS 2012, Point 38). Therefore, ‘state enterprises’ and, to some extent ‘cooperatives’ (BRIC 2010; BRICS 2013, Action Plan), are attributed prominence over private capitalist enterprises and NGOs (see BRICS 2013, Point 18; 2014, Point 23). As Varghese (2015) affirms, BRICS cooperation ‘may be seen more through the lens of cooperative development than through the prism of profit operated market operations’ (p. 49). Education is considered only twice in the general BRIC(S) declarations up to 2013 (BRIC 2009, Point 11; BRICS 2012, Point 48). With the 1st Meeting of the BRICS Ministers 363

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of Education in Paris in November 2013, within the context of the 37th session of the UNESCO General Conference (which formed the basis of the aforementioned UNESCO (2014) BRICS: Building Education for the Future report), intra-BRICS education cooperation gained momentum, and a common education agenda was established in 2015 via the 2nd and 3rd Meetings of BRICS Education Ministers and a Meeting of the BRICS Working Group on Education (BRICS 2015b, 2015c, 2015d). This agenda is framed by the hegemonic ‘Education for All’, ‘Millennium Development Goals’, and the ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ with their contradictory association of sustainable development with economic growth (BRICS 2014, Point 56; 2015a, Point 63; 2015e). However, the UNESCO Constitution and the 1998 World Declaration on Higher Education for the Twenty-First Century are also stated as reference points (BRICS 2015e). Thus appearing more conservative than the general BRICS SSC discourse, a discursive shift can be observed that reinforces this tendency. All three documents emphasise ‘lifelong learning opportunities’ (BRICS 2015b, 2015c, 2015d), while ‘sharing’ and ‘exchanging’ best practices among BRICS members (BRICS 2015b, Points 3, 13) have been replaced by ‘implementation’ of ‘international best practices’ (BRICS 2015c, Point 14; 2015d, Point 11). Furthermore, neoliberal ‘benchmarking’ and ‘excellence’ entered the discourse in November 2015 (BRICS 2015d, Points 2, 13, 14), as did the view of education as an ‘investment’ for the ‘development of human resources’ (BRICS 2015d, Point 17). In this respect, even ‘pre-school education’ becomes instrumentalised for ‘skills and competencies development indispensable for innovative activities’ (BRICS 2015c, Point 8) – that is, for economic growth. Simultaneously, references to ‘mutual interest’ (two instances) and ‘synergies’ (one instance) (2015b, Points 1, 8, 12), as indicators of a pursued counter-dependency strategy, diminished between March and November to just one entry of ‘mutual interest’ (BRICS 2015d). In this case, however, ‘mutual interest’ is stated right in the introductory statement of the Declaration, thus assuming an agenda-setting position, i.e. providing the overall frame of reference for the entire Declaration (on hierarchy and hybridity in discourse studies, see, e.g., Fairclough 2003). This hybrid discourse, however, gains in complexity by the claim that the ‘development of joint methodologies for education indicators’ through ‘collaboration’ in the form of ‘mutual technical support’ serves ‘to support decision making in BRICS member states’ (BRICS 2015b, Point 2; 2015c, Point 7). This suggests that rather than developing indicators for competitive ends, as in the neoliberal project, here collective development is pursued: ‘cooperation in social and labour relations for establishing full-scale social, political and cultural cooperation and ensuring a qualitatively new level of external relations for BRICS’ (BRICS 2015c). As Dilvo Ristoff, Head of the Brazilian delegation in the BRICS meetings until 31 August 2016 (during the Rousseff government), reports, the atmosphere in the meetings of BRICS representatives were always very cordial and productive. The BRICS partner countries treated each other ‘as equals and they were looking for a project of mutual interest, a university project that would contribute to the development of all the countries involved’ (personal communication, 17 September 2016). In policy terms, four key cooperation areas are outlined: Higher Education; Technical Vocational Education & Training (TVET); General Education; and Educational Policy Strategy (BRICS 2015d). However, ‘higher education and research is a priority’ (BRICS 2015b, Point 8), whereby the BRICS Universities League (an ‘association of BRICS universities’ (2015b, Point 9)) and the BRICS Network University (BRICS NU) have been created to drive internationalisation through academic mobility and the establishment of research networks ‘in areas of mutual interest’ (BRICS 2015b, Point 8): energy; computer science and information security; BRICS studies; ecology and climate change; water resources and pollution treatment; and economics (BRICS 2015e). As the key institution so far, the BRICS NU is not a supranational institution but an international structure among 364

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BRICS NU National Coordination Committees, created in each member state by the education ministries, and financed by the participating universities (BRICS 2015e, Article 13). At its foundation stage, this Network University integrates a maximum of 12 state universities from each BRICS member. However, other initiatives within the BRICS education cooperation structure, such as the BRICS Scientific, Technological and Innovation (STI) Framework Programme (for the promotion of joint research projects among partners from at least three BRICS members), are also open to private though not-for-profit institutions (see BRICS 2016). Ristoff, in personal electronic communication with the authors, reveals that Russia proposed the BRICS Network University and China contributed with the idea of a BRICS Universities League, with the understanding that ‘both are projects that complement each other’ (personal communication, 17 September 2016). This occurs ‘in accordance with national guidelines, norms and regulations in each of the BRICS countries’ (BRICS 2015e, Article 11). For example, as Ristoff (2016) shows in a contribution to a newsletter published by the Ural Federal University (Russia), with respect to Brazil, the BRICS Network University and BRICS Universities League are in line with other internationalisation efforts as considered in the National Education Plan 2014–2024: ‘(a) to promote scientific and technological exchange, national and international, between universities and (b) to raise the quality and quantity of scientific and technological activity of the country . . . expanding scientific cooperation (p. 17, emphasis in original). Although it is early to reach even an intermediate conclusion, despite ambiguities and potential contradictions, we nonetheless perceive BRICS education cooperation to contribute to building a counter-dependency structure. While individual member governments may drive integration in the North-dominated global higher education market such as China and India as ‘major “sending” countries’ of international students to ‘major English-speaking universities’ (Altbach and Bassett 2014, p. 2), BRICS cooperation seeks to build on and generate ‘synergies’ (BRICS 2012, 2015a, 2015b). Since synergies are generated through cooperation relations, as in the BRICS Network University, researching these requires a relational methodology rather than a comparison of individual country studies.

Conclusion This chapter has explored the question of whether South–South education relations simply represent ‘best practice transfer’ or whether they provide an alternative to the commoditisation and privatisation of education, building a counter-structure to the political project of neoliberal global governance of education. Despite noting the dominance of a Euro- or North-centric bias in the Anglophone literature on the topic, we have also identified a body of literature that underscores that the South–South principles of solidarity, mutual benefits and efforts of selfreliance are very much practised. However, claiming that these projects advance a structural challenge to the interests of global capitalism would be far-fetched. Much of the literature reviewed in fact confirms the instrumentalisation and cooptation of SSC as ‘triangular collaboration’, including through ongoing North-driven initiatives that actively seek to integrate South education systems and cooperation projects into the global neoliberal education circuits. The literature review and our case studies, however, equally reveal that there is more to this picture than meets the eye. In developing some propositions for future studies, this final section draws attention to South–South education projects and relations that receive only marginal attention in the existing literature or are altogether invisibilised by dominant discourses. First, with respect to bilateral relations, India’s SSC in TVET with such partners as Afghanistan, Indonesia, Maldives, Mongolia, Namibia, Senegal, South Africa, Vietnam and Zimbabwe (Tilak 2016, p. 312) appears under-researched, as are China’s education relations with 365

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non-African South partners. Equally, entirely absent from academic discussions is Venezuela’s large-scale education cooperation initiated in the 2000s with almost all African states (sketched out in some Latin American literature, e.g. Lucena Molero 2013), alongside the Vietnam-Laos and Vietnam-Cambodia SSC in ‘education and training and human resource development’ (People’s Army Newspaper 2016). Second, with respect to regional formations, while the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) receives considerable scholarly attention, the ASEAN education objectives of building an ‘ASEAN identity rooted in friendship and cooperation’ and ‘to promote cooperation and solidarity among scholars, academicians and researchers in ASEAN member states’ (Chao 2016, pp. 131, 132) have empirically remained unexplored. The same appears to be true of the African Union sponsored Pan-African University, to which Lane and Kinser (2013, p. 110) point, once envisioned to further ‘African emancipation and liberation’ and ‘challenge the citadel of Eurocentric paradigms and western “scientistic” epistemologies of knowledge’ (Nabudere 2003, p. 2). Likewise, the Pacific Islands Development Forum as a potential scheme for South–South education cooperation (Fox 2014) has largely gone unnoticed. Third, regarding global multilateral SSC, research gaps persist with respect to the IBSA (IndiaBrazil-South Africa) Dialogue forum, which, according to Tilak (2016), ‘stresses that education is vital for development’ (p. 312); and the tri-annual Africa-South America Summits (ASA) among the member states of the African Union and the Union of South American Nations (Unión de Naciones Suramericanas, UNASUR), whose education agenda seeks to, inter alia, ‘foster networks of higher education institutions’, including the Pan-African University, ‘to expand access to higher education, especially for vulnerable groups’ (ASA 2013). Future studies, as this chapter has suggested, will have to be conducted from and by the global South to reclaim the idea of SSC from neutralisation as ‘South–South and triangular cooperation’. That is, ‘to decentre the hegemonic stranglehold of the Eurocentric epistemological order – to construct more empowering knowledges for the South and symmetrical forms of internationalisation’ (Zeleza 2012, p. 5).

Notes 1 The acronym ‘BRIC’ for Brazil, Russia, India and China first appeared in an article by Goldman Sachs consultant O’Neill (2001) when looking for potential alternative investment markets, and grouping these countries was based on demographic projections, accumulated capital models, production growth analysis, and GDP size. The first formal meeting of the four countries through their foreign ministers was held in September 2006. In 2010, South Africa joined to form ‘BRICS’. On other geographies of educational cooperation, see Waters and Leung (this volume). 2 Following globalisation, human geography and global governance literatures, ‘international’ connotes official relations between national governments or inter-nation-state relations, while ‘transnational’ refers to border-crossing forces, institutions and processes, i.e. relations that traverse or interpenetrate across national boundaries and territories. 3 Drawing from the notion of four specific sets of activities in education governance: funding; regulation (control); provision (delivery); and ownership (Dale 2005). 4 This section is based on Muhr (2015). The interested reader is pointed to this article for background literature to the argument developed. 5 For example, the 2015 Declaration is the first and only Declaration in which ‘South-South cooperation’ and ‘win-win’ relations are overtly stated. The frequency of the South-South cooperation principles of ‘solidarity’, ‘complementarity’, ‘mutual benefits’ and ‘friendship’ (as used in China’s discourse, see King 2013) in total increased from zero in 2009 to 11 in the 2015 Declaration, just as reference to ‘common interests’ (or ‘mutual’ or ‘shared’ interests) increased from a maximum of one in each of the 2009–2014 Declarations to 10 in 2015. 366

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28 South–South cooperation through education? The example of China with/in Africa Johanna L. Waters and Maggi W.H. Leung

Introduction As argued by Naidoo (2011, p. 40), Given the rapid development of a global higher education arena and the intensification of higher education relationships across borders, low-income countries cannot be researched in isolation but must be analysed in the context of changing relations between capitalism and contemporary globalization, and the transformation of higher education systems worldwide. Indeed, in a recent article in the UK newspaper The Guardian (2015), Choudaha describes how China ‘plans to become a global force in higher education’. He writes that China is ‘a primary engine of growth for international higher education, leading the way in student recruitment, English and Chinese language programmes, transnational education and shortterm study abroad. The country, therefore, is critical to the economics of global higher education’ (Choudaha 2015). While the impact of Chinese investment in higher education has been felt around the world, it has had the greatest relative importance within countries located in the global South, most notably within the African continent, where China has contributed significantly, for reasons explored in more detail below. Between 2005 and 2015, for example, the number of African students in China rose from 2,757 to 49,792 (Gu 2017), reflecting in part a huge expansion in scholarships available as well as university slots reserved specifically for students from Africa. The following table (Figure 28.1) highlights the most notable educational initiatives linking China and Africa: This specific case of Africa–China linkages through higher education is part of a more widespread transformation in the geographies of international higher education and academic knowledge (also see Muhr and Azevedo, this volume; Mathews, this volume; Hanafi, this volume), with implications for how we understand South–South, as well as North–South, geostrategic, social and economic relations (Ho 2017; Leung 2014, 2015). Traditional boundaries, demarcating national educational regimes and markets, are being increasingly dismantled through a combination of transnational education (or TNE, where ‘foreign’ providers enter domestic educational markets) (Leung and Waters 2013; McBurnie and Ziguras 2007) and 370

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Figure 28.1  Sino-African higher education programmes and initiatives. Source: WES (2017)

international student mobilities (where young people travel ‘abroad’ for study) (Brooks and Waters 2011; Findlay et al. 2012; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015; Waters 2008; Huang and Yeoh 2005; Xiang and Shen 2009). Through international and transnational education, the state operates across scales and locations, through ‘spatial stretching’. Leung (2015, p. 187) writes: The spatial stretch broadens the usual analysis of the state as a coherent unit, anchored at the nation-state level and located in the ‘homeland’, the country of origin of the diaspora. In more concrete terms, this stretching emphasises the fact that the state comprises different agencies and exists in a multiplicity of forms. Education is being ostensibly ‘unbounded’, at the same time as certain boundaries and hierarchies around what constitutes academic ‘excellence’ and valuable institutionalised cultural capital, persist in significant ways (Jöns and Hoyler 2013; Waters 2017). The past decade has seen an unprecedented growth in the number of: (a) transnational educational programmes on offer, worldwide; (b) higher educational institutions becoming involved in TNE; and (c) students studying for TNE programmes (British Council 2016). Growth has spawned a diversity of ‘models’, from franchising to ‘flying faculty’, to satellite campuses and joint degree programmes. TNE is usually defined as representing formal academic programmes ‘in which learners are located in a country other than the one in which the awarding institution is based’ (McBurnie and Ziguras 2007, p. 21). One of the most interesting characteristics of TNE has been the way in which it works alongside – or within – existing domestic education markets (see argument pursued in Waters and Leung 2017). For many years, but particularly over the past two decades, there has been a year-on-year increase in the number of international students, globally, the vast majority of whom chose to study at universities within the global North (the USA, followed by the UK, have been and continue to be the top two destination countries for international students). The number of international students, worldwide, has now reached over 5 million, from 1.3 million in 371

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1990 (ICEF Monitor 2015). The ‘cultural capital’ (and other forms of non-monetarised capital) attainable through sustained learning in an English-speaking environment where universities top the global rankings is undeniably important in explaining these spatial trends (Waters 2006, 2008; Findlay et al. 2012). However, scholars interested in the ways in which education is being transformed have observed some significant changes in patterns – both of student mobility and of institutional involvements in transnational education. Newer, regional patterns of student and knowledge mobilities are emerging, which include what could be described as South–South educational flows and linkages, potentially ‘decentring the hegemony of Western education institutions as sites of modern education’ (Ho 2017, p. 19; see also Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015). As Waters wrote in 2012: ‘It is striking . . . how little attention to date has been paid by geographers to the diverse ways in which, through the process of internationalisation, higher education has become and is becoming increasingly spatially (and socially) differentiated’ (p. A1). Social differentiation of international and transnational education appears to be happening along largely class lines – until relatively recently, international education (particularly study abroad) was pursued only by the most wealthy and privileged members of society (and this is still, largely, the case when it comes to international students – see Findlay et al. 2012).1 More recent changes in international education, however, have arguably enabled a more socially diverse cohort of students to emerge, including: the provision of scholarships to ‘poorer’ students; and the growth in educational ‘hubs’ (such as seen in Singapore; Olds 2007, Sidhu et al. 2011), acting as ‘magnets’ for students in the wider region wanting a ‘world class’ international education at a cheaper price and more proximate location.2 In this chapter, after considering in more detail these wider debates – particularly around the (social and spatial) diversification of international higher education – we focus on the emerging power that is China, looking specifically at the educational linkages it is developing with/in Africa. Since the 1990s, higher education has been ‘one of the most important powerhouses for development in low-income countries’ (Naidoo 2011, p. 40). We are particularly interested in exploring the claim made by Naidoo (2011) that restructuring and cross-border interactions in higher education are increasingly characterised by governance mechanisms and rationales that aim to deploy higher education as a lever to enhance the competitive edge of the nation-state in the global economy and to assert political influence in the regional and global context. (ibid., p. 40) China is a particularly fascinating case, with an especially compelling, historical interest in all things related to ‘education’. We are swayed by the arguments made by Yang (2014), that education in China has a vital role to play in how the country perceives state power and sovereign governance. Yang identifies two key aspects to education as a ‘social technology’ in the Chinese case: ‘firstly, there is a Confucian moralistic dimension where academic accomplishments are associated with honour, virtue, and intrinsic self-worth. Secondly, there is a utilitarian dimension that ties educational qualifications to materialistic and worldly success’ (Yang 2014, p. 15). These conceptions of the meaning of education are important for understanding Chinese educational linkages with/in Africa, and how they do not obviously align with traditional colonial or imperialistic notions of education as ‘development’. As Bischoff (2017) has argued, China provides an ‘alternative counterpoint to entertaining relations with traditional Western powers’ (p. 898) (see also review of King’s (2013) important book in Muhr and Azevedo, this volume, and Reeves’ discussion of China’s history of philanthropy, this volume). 372

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This leads us to one of the key questions underpinning the focus of this chapter: to what extent does China’s involvement with/in African education represent a ‘new’ imperialism, where the exercise of power is understated (‘soft power’) and national sovereignty and territory are respected? Although far more research is needed in order for this question to be properly addressed, it is still an important one to pose, and we shall offer some reflections on this in the conclusion to this chapter. We begin, however, with a discussion of emergent spatialities of international higher education and how, most recently, a change in their configuration is notable.

Emergent spatialities of international higher education Hitherto, flows of knowledge, pedagogy, staffing and students have been assumed to follow a more-or-less ‘neat’ and predictable path: academic knowledge and pedagogical ideas are generated at key metropolitan sites within the global North, while students and scholars move from the global South to the global North in the process of acquiring valuable credentials and institutionalised cultural capital. As Jöns and Hoyler (2013) have argued in an excellent paper on global university rankings, the measures that rankings use reflect ‘a scalar shift in the geopolitics and geoeconomics of higher education from the national to the global that prioritizes academic practices and discourses conducted in particular places and fields of research’ (ibid., p. 45). Western governments (and institutions such as the World Bank) tend to rely on policy-literature for information on internationalisation (e.g. British Council 2015a; OECD 2016), eschewing more the more nuanced, complex and critical pictures produced by social scientists. They tend also to rely on particular (Western-derived) metrics (and conceptions of what constitutes valuable and useful knowledge); thus, the initiatives around HE, such as seen with the World Bank, focus on supporting (particular types of) science and technology to the detriment of indigenous scholars within the countries in which it is operating (see Daley and Kamata in Powell et al. 2017). To a considerable extent, this shift to a (partial) ‘global’ perspective on higher education continues inadvertently to reinforce and bolster traditional, colonial patterns of knowledge production and valuation. However, it is also notable that universities outside of this longstanding spatial nexus have been moving up the rankings in recent years, particularly institutions within East and South Asia. Similarly, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tables, produced by the OECD, have suggested that schooling systems in Asia are far superior to their ‘Western’ counterparts in many respects (this issue is returned to, below). Relatedly, more recent work is challenging the Western-centricity apparent in many of these debates, suggesting the emergence of newer regional dynamics around the internationalisation of higher education: particularly in East Asia. These regional dynamics ‘decentre’ the internationalisation of higher education, forcing recognition of the poly-centric nature of contemporary educational geographies. As Madge et al. (2009, p. 34) have written: This mobility of international students is multi-sited. Some students travel along established colonial routes in postcolonial contexts, as for example from Cape Verde to Portugal or India to the UK (Khadria 2001). Others move to geographically proximate locations, such as students in Lesotho moving to South Africa (Mashinini and Mashinini 2003) and from Mainland China to Hong Kong and Macau (Li and Bray 2007), or to locations that have become lodestars for generalised student mobility (such as the US). More complex southsouth student migration can also be seen, such as that of African students to India (Bhardwaj 1997, Ndoleriire 2003). 373

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With these new educational spaces and regional dynamics come questions about social justice and social inequalities vis-à-vis higher education. To what extent do these emergent patterns indicate a greater propensity for global social justice? To what extent do they suggest a progressive form of decolonisation around education and knowledge? Or, conversely, do they merely indicate a proliferation in the ways in which social inequalities are manifest – in relation to higher education – globally?

International education: a postcolonial analysis The links between international education and post-coloniality have only very recently been addressed within extant scholarship (also see Muhr and Azevedo, this volume). Madge et al.’s (2009) paper on ‘engaged pedagogy and responsibility’ provides one of the key texts in this regard. Although it has a largely UK focus, it nevertheless makes some very important and insightful points about how we should think about ‘international students’ (see also Madge et al. 2015; Noxolo et al. 2012; Raghuram 2013). They write: The paper challenges contemporary debates that seek to present the internationalization of UKHE as a ‘neutral experience’ within normalizing conceptions of internationalization, and instead moves towards a more ‘layered’ understanding that highlights the connections between the geographical, historical, political, economic and cultural spheres in order for an ‘engaged pedagogy’ to emerge. They are keen, like other postcolonial scholars, to emphasise that colonialism is not ‘over’ but ‘lives on’ through contemporary academic practices. Arguments around decoloniality/ postcoloniality have been especially germane in Africa, as Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2015) discusses in an influential essay on ‘decoloniality’ and ‘the future of Africa’ (also see Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Tafira, this volume, Rojas-Sotelo, this volume, and Murrey, this volume). He argues (ibid., p. 485) that decoloniality is a necessary liberatory language of the future for Africa. Decoloniality speaks to the deepening and widening decolonization movements in those spaces that experienced the slave trade, imperialism, colonialism, apartheid, neo-colonialism, and underdevelopment. This is because the domains of culture, the psyche, mind, language, aesthetics, religion, and many others have remained colonized. Returning to debates concerning international students and international education, Madge et al. (2009, p. 35) note the ‘lack of literature specifically focusing on the complex relational ties involved in caring for and thinking responsibly about international students’. Indeed, certainly in policy literatures but also in many academic texts, the meaning of ‘international’ in discussions of international education are rarely if ever explored (see British Council 2015a, 2015b; OECD 2016). The postcolonial analysis deployed by Madge et al. (2009) when thinking about international students is applied to international students in the UK, where in some ways the underlying power dynamics might be easier to render explicit (although, in no ways easy). It is even more challenging to think about what a postcolonial or decolonial perspective might bring to discussions of international student mobilities when South–South exchanges and relations are involved (Chisholm and Steiner-Khamsi 2009). And it is to one such conceptually complex relationship, China with/in Africa, that this chapter now turns. 374

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China with/in Africa It is necessary, briefly, to contextualise China’s interest in providing educational investment in China vis-à-vis other Western initiatives, such as the UK’s support provided to higher education institutions in Africa (the UK-African University Partnerships) and the World Bank’s Centers of Excellence, announced in 2014, to finance 19 ‘centres’ to help ‘transform’ science, technology and higher education in Africa. Agriculture, Health and STEM subjects dominate, reflecting, as noted above, a particular model and conception of what valuable and useful knowledge is. However, China’s engagement with/in Africa and aspects of African ‘development’ is notable for its distinctiveness and difference from previous interventions emanating from the global North. This difference is something that China, itself, has tended to emphasise – its discourses around ‘development’ have tended to ‘construct China as a viable alternative to the West whilst simultaneously signalling China’s role as a generous global power’ (Power and Mohan 2010, p. 481). China’s ‘new imperialism’ (Naidoo 2011) has several characteristic features, including the absence of ‘political conditionalities’ – or ‘grand, moralising meta-narratives’ (Power and Mohan 2010, p. 481) – attached to its aid (something for which China has been subject to international criticism); and the way in which China itself ‘frames’ discussions around its linkages to Africa in terms of South–South cooperation (SSC), partnerships and mutual dependence (China is able to access natural resources and Africa financial backing, representing a ‘win-win’ situation) (Power and Mohan 2010; also see Mawdsley, this volume). Extant research on linkages between China and Africa have often focused primarily on trade and/or resource extraction, neglecting important ‘geo-social’ aspects, of which education is one salient aspect (Ho 2017). King (2014) notes: ‘While China’s dramatic economic and trade impact on Africa has caught global attention, there has [been] little focus on its role in [fostering] education.’ There are, however, some recent, notable exceptions to this – emergent work on China’s involvement in education in Africa include Bischoff (2017), Haugen (2013), Nordtveit (2011) and Yang (2015). All of these papers emphasise the fact that China’s education push into Africa has been significant and substantial, and has included the opening of and support for 38 Confucius Institutes (teaching Mandarin and Chinese culture within several of Africa’s top-ranking universities) and a recent increase in the number of full scholarships available to African students to study at universities within China. Ho’s (2017) research has specifically examined African educational migration to China (see also Haugen 2013). It begins from the point that much work on China–Africa relations has focused on either ‘geo-politics’ or ‘geoeconomics’. Unusually, Ho (2017) has chosen to focus on the ‘geo-social’. In addition to the linkages between Africa and China that are being developed through trade, significant linkages are being forged at the household level, as families undertake ‘transnational education projects’ involving the migration of young adults to Chinese cities to attend university. In Ho’s paper, the ‘geo-social’ is defined as an intertwining of transnational social reproduction and global trade and politics (the coming together of geo-politics, geo-economic and social reproduction), consequently highlighting the ‘geopolitical significance of education and concomitant power geometries populating the transnational circulation of knowledge’ (Ho 2017, p. 16). Chan (2013) emphasises China’s ‘aspirational approach’ to education in Africa, and distinguishes it from the way in which educational ‘interventions’ by countries in the global North have tended to emphasise ‘basic needs’. Consequently, China has invested more heavily in supporting higher education (rather than compulsory education at primary or secondary levels) than have many other countries, historically.3 More recently, other countries such as the UK have also begun to invest in higher education in Africa (through the UK’s department for international development which allocated £1.97 million to fund research capacity in 15 university 375

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departments under its Africa University Research Approaches Capacity Building Programme – see Daley and Kamata in Powell et al. (2017)). China’s focus on HE has fed through to an increase in the number of African students choosing to study in China (King 2014) – nine out of ten African students in China are now fee paying (Haugen 2013). Understanding alternative routes and pathways of knowledge (diverse spatialities of international education) can go some way toward facilitating the ‘decentring’ of Western education and knowledge, away from traditional global hierarchies, as more diverse sites become seen as producers (not simply consumers) of modern education (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015; Ho 2017; Huang and Yeoh 2005; Waters 2012, 2015; Muhr and Neves de Azevedo, this volume). Mass media confusion (particularly in the UK) around how to interpret the most recent PISA tables, for example, has added to this ‘decentring’ process.4 Singapore was found to ‘top’ the PISA rankings in 2015. The Telegraph (UK national newspaper) reported, for example: However, despite attempts to replicate the educational practices of East Asian countries, the UK’s performance in maths has fallen, with the UK dropping from 26th to 27th in the rankings with a decrease in average point score from 494 to 492. (Gurney-Read 2016) As countries outside of the global North begin to assert themselves as producers of valuable knowledge, and as this assertion is increasingly reflected and upheld in the rankings themselves, so students in the global South might begin to view higher education differently – more openly and less circumscribed by old colonial legacies.

Conclusions This chapter continues nascent discussions around China’s growing contemporary influence upon education and knowledge with/in Africa. It suggests (concurring with a number of influential scholars) that an analysis of China’s global power and reach needs also to take into account its involvements in ‘education’ within countries in the global South. There are a number of interesting and notable characteristics to this involvement: the way education can be seen to be a cornerstone of Chinese history and present; the way China itself frames its educational engagements within Africa as ‘South–South corporation and exchange’; the way China’s involvement in aspects of ‘development’ within Africa (including education) have lacked the moralising standpoints characteristic of classic imperial and colonial interactions; and China’s emphasis on higher education. A focus on education also forces us to move beyond classic geopolitical and geo-economic concerns, as we have discussed vis-à-vis Ho’s (2017) fascinating recent paper on the ‘geo-social’, claiming that African students studying in China promote a version of social reproduction that involves global or transnational householding. In short, the form of SSC through education that China espouses is unconventional and, consequently, challenging to analyse. This brings us to the question: are China’s involvements with/in Africa significantly different from other approaches to investing in education (with a view to development)? There is a nascent argument that says they are – that China’s ‘aspirational’ approach to education and learning is refreshingly progressive (Chan 2013). As noted above, China’s investment, to date, has tended to centre on higher education (rather than a more conventional, Western focus on basic needs and primary schooling – although as noted, this is changing even in the West). Analysts suggest there are two key reasons for this focus – one is China’s espousal of neoliberal discourses around ‘knowledge based economies’ and highly educated workforces, yet the other, rather different reason concerns 376

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an historical reverence for higher levels of learning in China and a contemporary obsession with university-level qualifications as the ‘ultimate goal’ of any household (Waters 2008, 2015). And a third reason is suggested by Leung (pers. comm.), who sees a mantra of ‘aim high’, ‘aim big’ reflected in China’s recent development politics, channelling commitments toward ‘big projects’ rather than more localised, smaller scale initiatives. There clearly needs to be more research in this area, however – not just on China with/in Africa, of course, but on South–South educational linkages and exchanges of knowledges more broadly. As part of a wider movement in academia toward decoloniality (Jazeel and McFarlane 2009; Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2015; Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Tafira in this volume, Patel in this volume, Murrey in this volume, Hanafi in this volume), scholarship needs to expose the spatial and social diversity characterising contemporary international higher education, which should include a discussion of the potential epistemic pluralism that an alternative to Eurocentric knowledges might bring to Africa and elsewhere.

Notes 1 It should be noted, however, that historical examples of the internationalisation of education are relatively easy to find. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (2015), for example, notes in her book that from 1960s onwards Cuba offered many scholarships to students from a large range of different countries to facilitate ‘study abroad’. Although the scale, scope and diversity of internationalisation is far greater today than it has been in the past, it is not a totally new phenomenon. 2 For instance, children from South Korea following the Early Study Abroad route (ESA) are relocating to Singapore rather than to more well-worn and far more expensive destinations in North America (Park and Bae 2009; Bae 2013). 3 Although there are some fascinating examples of other countries located outside the global North investing in the higher education of less privileged populations (see, for example, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh’s (2015) work on Cuba’s provision of tertiary-level education to refugee populations). 4 Carried out by the OECD, the PISA is described as a triennial international survey which aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students. In 2015 over half a million students, representing 28 million 15-year-olds in 72 countries and economies, took the internationally agreed two-hour test. Students were assessed in science, mathematics, reading, collaborative problem solving and financial literacy. The results of the 2015 assessment were published on 6 December 2016. (OECD 2017)

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29 South–South migration and diasporas Jonathan Crush and Abel Chikanda

Introduction South–South migration has emerged as an important research and policy issue as global and regional debates about the relationship between migration and development have intensified (Bakewell 2009; Campillo-Carrete 2013; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015; Gagnon and KhoudourCastéras 2012; Hujo and Piper 2007; Ratha and Shaw 2007). The new interest in South–South migration stems from a growing appreciation that intra-South migration has been consistently sidelined in these debates (Ratha and Shaw 2007). Hujo and Piper (2007, pp. 19–20) provide a compelling set of arguments as to why more attention should be paid to South–South migration. There is substantial evidence that globally it is almost as voluminous as South–North migration, and for most origin and destination countries in the South it is by far the more important form of migration. One of the reasons is that geographical proximity and porous borders mean that the transaction costs of South–South migration are usually much lower. The migration process within regions of the South is also facilitated by networks based on ethnic, community and family ties. Indeed, increased movement between neighbouring countries and regions results in networks that promote further migration. Another driver of South–South migration is differences in levels of development within and across the global South which mean that middle-income countries attract migrants from nearby low-income countries. And finally, refugees and other forced migrants from conflicts, wars and natural disasters most often tend to go to neighbouring countries within the South. In addition, while most discussions of South–North migration focus on the positive and negative development implications for countries of origin only, it is clear that South–South migration has development consequences for both countries of origin and destination (Anich et al. 2014). The idea that diasporas play an important role in furthering the development impacts of international migration is now well-accepted (Plaza and Ratha 2011; Chikanda et al. 2016; Tai Yong Tan and Rahman 2013; Sahoo and Pattanaik 2014). However, assessments of the role played by diasporas are still largely confined to the development implications of migration from South to North. Ratha and Shaw’s (2007) otherwise comprehensive overview of South–South migration and remittances, for example, mentions the word diaspora only once in relation to a discussion of population movements in Southern Africa in the nineteenth century. This chapter argues that confining the discussion of diasporas only to 380

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migrants living in the North reinforces the fundamental Eurocentrism of much of the migration and development debate. Furthermore, it obscures and dismisses the actual and potential development role of diasporas within the global South. The first section of the chapter discusses the available sources for constructing a global picture of South–South migration. Using data from the 2015 UNDESA bilateral migration database, the chapter identifies the major original and destination countries in the global South, as well as the major South–South migration corridors. The discussion then turns to the issue of the feminisation of migration and uses a similar methodology to identify the major source and destination countries of female migrants and illustrates how the relative importance of female migration varies considerably across the global South (also see Nazneen, this volume). The next section of the chapter adopts a concept of diaspora that is appropriate to the reality of South–South migration and develops a typology to describe different forms of South–South migration. Using the latest data from the World Bank, it then provides a global overview of the major form of South–South diaspora engagement; that is, remittance flows from migrant destination to migrant origin countries. Research on other aspects of South–South diaspora engagement is still in its infancy, and the chapter concludes by drawing attention to the research gaps.

Calibrating South–South migration A useful starting point in the study of South–South migration is to ask which origin and destination countries we are talking about. According to Ratha and Shaw (2007), South–South migration refers to migration between ‘developing countries’. However, this only defaults to the broader question of what constitutes a ‘developing country’ for the purposes of deciding which migration streams fall under the umbrella of South–South migration. Bakewell (2009) argues that there are at least three ways of deciding if a country falls within the purview of South–South migration. First, there is the longstanding spatial and regional division of the globe into five developing regions: Africa, the Americas (excluding the US and Canada), the Caribbean, Asia (excluding Japan), and Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand). By this definition any migration movement between or within these general regions would qualify as South–South migration. Second, there is the World Bank’s country-based approach, which uses aggregate national income indicators to categorise countries into different groups: in essence, low- and middle-income countries are designated as developing countries. This approach would effectively exclude major migrant destination countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and much of the Gulf from the analysis of South–South migration. Finally, the UNDP classifies developing countries according to the Human Development Index (HDI). In this typology, countries with low and medium HDI are placed in the South, while countries with a high HDI are in the North. This means that countries such as Argentina and Chile would be excluded from ‘the South’. In addition, as increasing numbers of Asian and Latin American countries attain higher HDI scores, more migration processes stand to be reclassified as South–North. Depending on which of these three options is chosen as the basis for defining South–South migration, different conclusions arise about which migration movements are of interest. For example, the UNDP’s (2009) standard categorisation of migrant stock by region would mean that the total number of South–South migrants was 82.4 million individuals or 44% of the total. If, on the other hand, only countries with a medium and low HDI are seen as constituting the South, then the total numbers of South–South migrants would only be 37.5 million or 17% of the total (Table 29.1). While there is a strong case for greater conceptual precision, to date the literature on South–South migration has tended to avoid a narrow taxonomic approach and has adopted instead the less precise and more conventional regional division of the world. 381

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Table 29.1  Different definitions of South–South migration Total migrant stock (millions) By region Africa Northern America Latin America & the Caribbean Asia Europe Oceania By HDI category Very high HDI High HDI Medium HDI Low HDI

Share of world’s migrants (%)

20.6 54.5 9.2 75.1 76.1 8.1

8.5 22.4 3.8 30.8 31.2 3.3

156.4 49.8 16.6 20.9

64.2 20.4 6.8 8.6

Note: Migrant stock data includes refugees recorded by national censuses Source: Data from UNDESA (2015)

Beyond the lack of conceptual and definitional clarity, the measurement of global South–South migration movements represents a significant data challenge. Ideally, this would be based on bilateral data on annual migration flows from all countries to all other countries in the South (Black and Skeldon 2009). The main attempt to compile a comprehensive picture of migration flows is the Determinants of International Migration (DEMIG) database at the International Migration Institute (IMI) (Vezzoli et al. 2014). However, while DEMIG aims to report total immigration, emigration and net migration for up to 163 countries, there is very little information on which to construct a global picture of South–South flows. Detailed post-2000 global bilateral net flows are only available for six countries in the South (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, South Africa and Uruguay), and yet this data is clearly incomplete; for example, there is no data on net flows between South Africa and Zimbabwe (South Africa’s largest migrant source country). In the absence of reliable migration flow data, most analyses of global migration rely on bilateral migration stock databases (which show the number of residents in a country who were born in other countries) (Abel and Sander 2014). There are three main bilateral migration databases available to construct spatial patterns of South–South migration. The first, which is now rather dated, is the Global Migrant Origin Database (GMOD) produced at the University of Sussex (Parsons et al. 2005; Skeldon 2012). The database used various data sources, including national population censuses, to construct an international bilateral migrant stock database for 226 by 226 countries. An analysis of the database by Chikanda and Crush (2014) showed that in 2000, South–South migration was greater than South–North migration in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, while South–North migration was greater in Oceania and Latin America and the Caribbean. In Africa and Asia, South–South migration made up as much as two-thirds of total international migration. A second bilateral database was constructed by the World Bank and relies purely on census data. The Bank’s Global Bilateral Migration Database (GBMD) covers the period 1960–2000 and has been used to trace changes in the global distribution of migrants over time (Özden et al. 2011). The main conclusion with respect to South–South migration is that although the global migrant stock increased from 92 million in 1960 to 165 million in 2000, the relative proportion of migration between developing countries has been ‘remarkably stable over the period’ (Özden et al. 2011) (Figure 29.1). Another analysis has used the GBMD data to show how South–South migration has become progressively more important in Africa over time (Flahaux and de Haas 2016). 382

South–South migration and diasporas

100.0

Percent

80.0 60.0 40.0 20.0 0.0

1960

1970 Intra–Soviet South–North

1980 North–North South–South

1990 North–South

2000 Partition

Figure 29.1 Changes in the share of migrants by migration corridors, 1960–2000 (% contribution). Source: Data from Özden et al. (2011)

A third bilateral database of migrant stock is maintained by UNDESA which provides estimates of international migrant stock by age, sex and origin for all countries in the world for the years 1990, 1995, 2005, 2010 and 2015 (UNDESA 2015). The 2015 iteration suggests that there were 91.9 million migrants from countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America living in other countries in those regions (amounting to 38% of the global total of 244 million migrants). However, the relative proportion of South–South varied from region to region. For example, 63% of African migrants, 61% of Asian migrants and 18% of Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) migrants were living in the South (Table 29.2). In terms of migrants living Table 29.2  International migrant stock by region of origin and destination, 2015 (millions) Region of destination Africa Region of origin

Africa Asia

Asia

Europe LAC

N. America

Oceania

Total

S–S total % S–S

16.4

4.1

9.2

0.0

2.3

0.5

32.5 20.5

63.1

1.2

59.4

20.2

0.3

15.5

3.0

99.6 60.9

61.1

Europe

1.0

7.0

40.0

1.3

7.5

3.0

59.8

0.0

0.0

LAC

0.0

0.4

4.7

5.9

24.6

0.2

35.8

6.3

17.6

N. America

0.1

0.5

1.0

1.3

1.2

0.2

4.3

0.0

0.0

Oceania

0.0

0.1

0.4

0.0

0.3

1.1

1.9

0.0

0.0

Other North

0.4

1.2

0.5

0.0

0.0

0.0

2.1

0.0

0.0

7.7

4.2

54.5

243.7 91.9

37.7

Other South Total

1.6

2.4

0.3

0.2

3.1

0.1

20.7

75.1

76.3

9.0

54.5

8.1

S–S Total

19.2

66.3

0.0

6.4

0.0

0.0

91.9

% S–S

92.8

88.3

0.0

71.1

0.0

0.0

37.7

Source: Data from UNDESA (2015)

383

Jonathan Crush and Abel Chikanda

in these three regions, 93% of those in Africa, 88% of those in Asia, and 71% of those in Latin America and the Caribbean were South–South migrants. All three databases rely heavily on census data for their calculations of migrant stock (Zlotnik 2003). However, census data on South–South migration is limited in both quality and quantity, which means that the true scale of these movements is probably understated (Ratha and Shaw 2007). A recent analysis of the Indian census, for example, seriously questioned its accuracy, which would affect calculations of the number of migrants in India (Agrawal and Kumar 2012). In turn, in Africa, Jerven (2016, p. 353) points out that census taking is ‘sporadic and uneven’. Using the census as a data source for migration is further complicated by the fact that, in many countries, migrants (and especially the undocumented) have no interest or incentive to volunteer information about themselves. Furthermore, inter-census calculations in UNDESA projections are based almost entirely on the sometimes problematic assumption that past rates of change in migration can be projected into the future. Another challenge of interpretation is that cross-sectional migrant stock data is actually cumulative and may represent years or even decades of migration to a country (Henning and Hovy 2011; Abel and Sander 2014). Nonetheless, these qualifications aside, the UNDESA database is the best and most up-to-date source we have for quantifying South–South migration.

Migrant origins and destinations UNDESA data for 2015 suggests that the majority of countries in the global South both send and receive migrants. In total, there are 161 migrant countries of origin and 158 countries of destination (Table 29.3). Across the board, there is a strong association between the numbers of migrants sent or received and the number of countries in each size category. So, for example, there are eight origin and six destination countries with more than 3 million migrants, and 19 sending and 23 destination countries with more than 1 million migrants. The greater the number of migrants sent or received, the smaller the number of countries involved, and vice-versa. Based on UNDESA 2015, there are 19 countries with at least one million citizens living in other countries in the South. Many of those in the list of major migrant origin countries have experienced significant political unrest and economic turmoil over the last decade, including

Table 29.3  Number of South–South migration origin and destination countries, 2015 No. of countries No. of migrants

Migrant origin

Migrant destination

>5 million 3–5 million 1–3 million 500,000–1 million 250,000–500,000 100,000–250,000 20,000–100,000