Decolonising Southern knowledge(s) in Aidland

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12552003
AutoresKátia Taela (0000-0002-7121-6971, Schlumberger (Ireland), autor de correspondencia)
Año2023
Volumen31
Número2-3
Páginas597-616
Fecha de publicación2023-09-02
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaGender & Development (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1355-2074 • E-ISSN: 1364-9221
EditorialTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13552074.2023.2256581
OpenAlexW4389630443
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas3
Referencias citadas29

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

Appropriation · Colonialism · Economic geography · Epistemology · Ethnography · Geography · Global South · Knowledge production · Modernity · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Solidarity · Anthropology · Gender Studies · International Development and Aid · Microfinance and Financial Inclusion · Tourism, Volunteerism, and Development