Beyond ‘BRICS’: ten theses on South–South cooperation in the twenty-first century

Abstract Grounded in a review of past and present academic South–South cooperation literatures, this article advances ten theses that problematise empirical, theoretical, conceptual and methodological issues essential to discussions of South–South cooperation in the 21st century. This endeavour is motivated by the perceived undermining, especially in the contemporary Anglophone academic South–South cooperation literature, of the emancipatory potential historically associated with South–South cooperation. By drawing on the interventionist South–South cooperation agendas of ‘left’-leaning Latin America-Caribbean governments, the article seeks to establish a dialogue between social science theories and less ‘visible’ analyses from academic (semi)peripheries. The ten theses culminate in an exploration of the potential of South–South cooperation to promote ‘alternative’ development.


Thesis One: reduction to 'rhetoric' serves dismissive labelling; discourse is a co-constitutive moment of social transformation
Expressed commitment to South-South cooperation, especially with respect to 'solidarity' , from such governments as those of Brazil and of the other BRICS members is frequently dubbed 'rhetoric' . 9 While this may be associated with 'effective or persuasive speaking or writing' , 10 'rhetoric' equally connotes 'exaggeration' and 'insincerity' , 11 perhaps vacuousness and even 'irrationality' . 12 Inherently political, this atheoretical label sweepingly discredits governments (and/or sectors thereof ) that may actually be seeking a transformation of the global power geographies towards a more democratic, multipolar world order, against the (historical) structural constraints within which they are operating.
In contrast, as is widely recognised across the (critical) social sciences, discourse, characterised as 'structured totalities articulating both linguistic and non-linguistic elements' , 13 offers a more socio-theoretically grounded approach to language and social transformation. Specifically, in foregrounding the socially constructionist effect of discourse, david harvey proposes to understand this as one of six co-constitutive, dialectically related moments of the social process, as South-South cooperation is, besides, social relations; material practices; institutions/rituals; beliefs/values/desires; and power. 14 While this is not the place for a discussion of the interrelatedness of discourse, power and ideology, 15 language, as a social practice, is involved in naming and producing the worlds that we inhabit, in (re)producing ways of seeing, doing, being and imagining. Thus, social relations and, therefore, social realities are also discursively (re)produced and interests strategically promoted. For example, the neoliberal discourse has driven the reconstitution of imaginaries and subjectivities sometimes even before its operationalisation changed the material world -'things' , such as institutions, cities, states and regionalisms, as well as regimes and structures. 16 The materialisation of the 'BRICS' grouping itself illustrates the 'power of discourse': BRICS has gone from being originally a discursive construal to holding regular meetings and the establishment of a development bank in 2014, the New development Bank BRICS (NdB BRICS). 17 Through the discursive moment of South-South cooperation, which involves, inter alia, the principles of 'solidarity' , 'complementarity' and 'cooperation' , counter-hegemonic mental conceptions of the world become disseminated, seeking to denaturalise and destabilise hegemonic representations, that is, taken-as-given, implicit and commonsensical propositions, assumptions and stereotypes that appear as non-ideological because of their dissociation from the particular social base (class, grouping) and interests which generated them. 18 Rather than simply 'rhetoric' , as Ernesto Laclau elaborates, discursive production is about constructing collective identities indispensable for transformative political action. 19

Thesis Two: there are key global South-South cooperation protagonists beyond BRICS
The Anglophone academic South-South cooperation literature of the past 10-15 years is biased towards BRICS and individual members thereof, while such formations as IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa) and BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India, China) have received some attention. Other global actors, such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, are marginalised, if not omitted. 20 however, in 2006 the shares of Saudi Arabian and Venezuelan South-South development cooperation globally were estimated at 40% and 18%, respectively, as compared to China (14%), India (4.1%), Brazil (2.6%) and South Africa (1.4%). 21 Measured in estimated percentage of gross national income (GNI), the Venezuelan (0.71-1.52%) and Saudi Arabian (0.70%) allocations were significantly higher than those of India (0.06-0.11%), China (0.06-0.08%), South Africa (0.07%) and Brazil (0.04%). 22 Also in 2006, in absolute terms, the Venezuelan volume was estimated at US$1166 and the Saudi Arabian at $2095 million, roughly matching the Chinese volume of $2172 million and significantly higher than the Indian ($433 million), Brazilian ($365 million) and South African ($100 million). 23 These figures, compiled from a range of different sources, are only indicative, however, and they are outdated. definitional inconsistencies and the frequent unavailability of data, combined with methodological and technical limitations, make more precise calculations difficult. 24 Nonetheless, the prominence given to BRICS members Brazil, India and South Africa in the Anglophone academic literature, certainly over the 2000s, was never empirically justified and may have been geopolitically motivated in accordance with Western/ Northern interests.

Thesis Three: South-South cooperation as Third World emancipation has been reinvigorated in Latin America-Caribbean
Michelle Morais de Sá e Silva usefully distinguishes between three historical phases in the evolution of South-South cooperation since World War II: (1) 'self-reliance and political strengthening ' (1949-79) during cold war decolonisation and independence struggles; (2) 'demobilisation ' (1980-98) during the West's neoliberal counter-offensive; and (3) South-South cooperation as 'best practice transfer' among developing countries. The latter is associated with the World Bank's creation of the Global development Network in 1999 and the emergence of North-South-South triangular collaboration, in which international agencies and Northern governments act as 'brokers' , turning South-South cooperation into an instrument of neoliberal 'efficiency' and performance enhancement. 25 This discursive accommodation, and re-conceptualisation of South-South cooperation as 'transfer' rather than 'collective process' , undermines the 'organic, political and potentially innovative nature of South-South cooperation...While some cooperative efforts engender transfer [eg technology transfer], transfer does not necessarily engender cooperation. Cooperation is a voluntary process whilst transfer includes voluntary and coercive processes. ' 26 The advocacy of 'best practice transfer' , however, has in Latin America-Caribbean been accompanied by a reinvigoration, or re-intensification, of South-South cooperation as Third World emancipation and liberation. 27 Grounded in the decade-long protagonism of Cuban developmental internationalism, key moments in this were the Cuban Revolution's launch of the Integral health Programme for Central America and the Caribbean within the context of hurricane Mitch in 1998 (subsequently extended to African and Asian nations 28 ), followed by the inauguration of the Latin American School of Medicine (Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina, ELAM) and of the International School of Physical Education and Sports (Escuela Internacional de Educación Físisca y deporte, EIEFd) in 1999 and 2001, respectively. Importantly, while the economic crisis following the collapse of the USSR forced the Cuban government to reduce its humanist (altruistic) cooperation during the first half of the 1990s, this commitment was never abandoned. 29 Simultaneously, with hugo Chávez assuming the presidency of Venezuela in 1999, the 1970s project of a 'New International Economic Order' was resumed alongside calls for a multipolar world order. 30 Accordingly the Cuba-Venezuela Integral Cooperation Agreement of October 2000 initiated the construction of the ALBA-TCP, which became formalised by presidents Fidel Castro and Chávez in december 2004 (composed of 11 states in 2015), followed by the creation of Petrocaribe in June 2005 (19 member states in 2015). In the respective discourses the South-South cooperation principles are defined thus: solidarity, being 'The commitment to mutual support and joint efforts to achieve sustainable and integral human development, and the appropriate care of countries' emergent needs, within the possibilities and in accordance with shared responsibilities'; complementarity, being 'The commitment to identify and develop joint projects that permit the integration and/or synergies of the capacities in accordance with their [partners'] potentialities and interests'; and cooperation, being 'strategic alliances of mutual benefit' . 31 South-South cooperation has thus been 'upscaled' in Latin America-Caribbean (from the international to the regional) as an idea, social practice and multidimensional set of processes. Grounded in dependency theory, it may be defined thus: as more horizontal (egalitarian and just, at times-but not necessarily-altruistic) diplomatic, trade, aid and investment relations of mutual benefit and for national and collective self-reliance, self-determination and independence, to liberate the (semi-)periphery from the exploitative, unequal terms of trade with the core, while strengthening its political autonomy within the (neo)colonial and imperialist global system. 32 Such relations and exchanges include: agriculture, culture, economy, education, energy, environment, finance, food, health, infrastructure, knowledge, law, military, production (value adding capacities), social protection, technology and humanitarian issues.
Latin America-Caribbean South-South cooperation extends to the global and intercontinental scales, however. For example, the Africa South America (ASA) Summits, which involve the 12 UNASUR member states and the 54 African states, led to the establishment in 2009 of a Permanent ASA Secretariat on Isla Margarita (Venezuela), as well as a Strategic Presidential Table, then composed of four coordinating governments (Brazil, Venezuela, Nigeria, Libya) and the regional representatives of the African Union and of UNASUR. 33 As the 2006 Joint declaration between the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the Republic of Mali suggests, the different South-South initiatives and actors involved may indeed cooperate and complement rather than compete with each other: Within the framework of strengthening South-South cooperation, and especially the cooperation between Africa and South America, the two Parties welcomed the initiatives by Brazil and Nigeria to celebrate the First African-South American Summit in Abuja, Nigeria...Equally, the Malian Party welcomed the proposals made by President hugo Chávez Frías during the VII Summit of the African Union realised in Banjul, 1 and 2 of July 2006, with respect to the implementation of South-South cooperation via concrete programmes such as Petrosur, Telesur, Bank of the South and the University of the South. 34 The cooperative potential among major Southern actors is further mirrored in growing triangular South-South-South cooperation practiced among the governments of Argentina, Brazil, China, Cuba, Iran, Russia and Venezuela with African partners. 35

Thesis Four: solidarity and interests are not per se mutually exclusive
Emma Mawdsley warns that Southern actors may 'conceal national interests under the veil of solidarity' . 36 While this possibility may exist, it should equally be highlighted that, far from concealing, governments such as those of Brazil and Venezuela make the existence of 'national interests' explicit, 37 as does the definition of 'complementarity' stated in Thesis Three ('integration and/or synergies of the capacities in accordance with their [partners'] potentialities and interests' , emphasis added). In more conceptual terms, the above statement bears the implicit assumption of a mutual exclusiveness of commercial (trade) interests and solidarity, while treating solidarity as synonymous with altruism. 38 That this should not be generalised is shown by the definition of 'solidarity' among the 21 ALBA-TCP/Petrocaribe member states and of bilateral cooperation among Venezuelan, Argentine, Brazilian, Uruguayan and African partners, among others. As cited in Thesis Three, solidarity is the 'commitment to mutual support and joint efforts to achieve sustainable and integral human development, and the appropriate care of countries' emergent needs, within the possibilities and in accordance with shared responsibilities' . It is noteworthy that even the Cuban Revolution, historically perhaps the most prominent protagonist of South-South solidarity, has always reconciled altruism with commercial and political or ideological interests. 39 Accordingly such governments as the Brazilian and Venezuelan have also officially distinguished in their approaches to South-South cooperation between a commercial (trade, finance and technology transfer) dimension in the interest of socioeconomic development within their territories ('national interest') and altruistic cooperation (donations, grants or in-kind) in the interests of partner societies' development (agriculture, food security and food sovereignty; debt cancellation; education; energy sovereignty; health; social protection; technology; sport). 40 Four observations need highlighting here: first, as Monika Sawicka argues with respect to official Brazilian-African relations, 'main trade partners and main development beneficiaries are not the same' . 41 This insight weakens the blanket assumption of commercial exploitation on the part of (for instance) Brazilian corporations under the guise of South-South altruism. Second, trade and altruism can be complementary and mutually reinforcing and reciprocal benefits may be generated that cannot always be expressed in quantifiable monetary terms, such as with respect to experience, knowledge and cultural exchange, capacity building, diplomatic solidarity, human rights promotion, and the visibility and recognition of the South generally. 42 After all, how may, for instance, solidarity voting behaviour in international fora (eg the UN) be monetarily quantified? Or, in accordance with Peter Kragelund's findings, how can strengthened national sovereignty, and independence from traditional Northern donors thanks to the availability of alternative development finance from Chinese, Indian and Brazilian partners, be grasped in monetary terms? 43 Assessment of South-South cooperation, therefore, faces the methodological challenge of capturing its holism and multidimensionality: reducing South-South cooperation to single 'variables' , such as the economic (usually itself reduced to trade and investment figures), is inappropriate. Attempting to measure South-South cooperation may in fact be a futile enterprise altogether. As has been observed with respect to the ALBA-TCP, 'While critics have noted the difficulties involved in quantitatively measuring the 'value' of such transactions, the whole point of the model is to move beyond the mediation of trade through capital exchange' . 44 Third, while South-South trade may indeed reproduce global structures of inequality, 45 the precise terms of trade need to be explored in each case. For example, if, as in the ALBA-TCP/Petrocaribe, Venezuelan petroleum is exchanged for services and goods (eg Cuban medical staff, dominican language teachers, Nicaraguan primary food stuffs) within a concessional financing scheme and with governments enjoying the 'flexibility to negotiate the terms of their participation which are appropriate to their [nations'] idiosyncrasies' , 46 then South-South trade as a reciprocal relation of mutual benefit (in both parties' interests, while 'taking into account the asymmetries between the Parties' -see Thesis Three) among equals materialises, even if one party accumulates profit. After all, depending on the partner's economic situation, even the Cuban government has charged (variable) commercial rates for services, albeit below world market prices, thus generating the 'win-win' relationship with which South-South cooperation is frequently associated. 47 Fourth, private surplus value appropriation may not only be inevitable in the current social reality of most nations but is also politically necessary to counter resistance by elite sectors and thus make South-South cooperation less vulnerable to government change. As Inoue and Vaz sum up, 'national interest' and solidarity, even if narrowly understood as altruism, 'are not necessarily mutually exclusive' . 48

Thesis Five: 'the national interest' is an inadequate ontological category
The notion of 'the national interest' , however, is problematic in itself. Criticisms of, say, a particular BRICS country pursuing 'its' interest, 49 are ontologically flawed: states and societies, as (critical) social science has maintained, are not homogeneous, unified, monolithic subjects that act in 'the national interest' , but are constituted through social relations that imply class struggle related to distinct class interests. 50 Social groups, classes, class fractions and the components that make up the state apparatus thus may be in conflict and act relatively autonomously with or against each other. Transforming world order through South-South cooperation, as Mahbub ul haq states, is not only a slow and long-term political process, but one that involves struggle, inextricably linked to a fundamental restructuring of Third World societies through a 'countervailing power' organised on a 'political, economic and intellectual front' . 51 That is, the construction of a Gramscian counter-hegemonic bloc.
While states (state apparatuses) in the capitalist core at this historical conjuncture may appear unitary and largely free from class conflict, in the peripheral and semi-peripheral nations of Latin America-Caribbean the struggle over the form of the state and national, regional and global development projects -including South-South cooperation -is overt. This class struggle has been manifest in political, military, economic and media-related transnational capitalist class destabilisation and in successful and attempted coups d'état against constitutional governments -Venezuela (2002), haiti (2004), honduras (2009), Ecuador (2010), Paraguay (2012, a 'parliamentary' coup) -that drive societal restructuring in the interests of the historically marginalised and dispossessed classes. Class struggle within the Brazilian state apparatus, for example, became overt in former president Lula da Silva supporting the Venezuelan adhesion to MERCOSUR throughout 2006-09, blocked, however, during this period by the Federal Senate, despite ratification in the Chamber of deputies. Accordingly South-South cooperation, that is, its particular form, 'is also driven by differing domestic sectoral interest, as well as by the interests of competing political parties and bureaucratic organizations' . 52 The policy outcomes, as with respect to South-South cooperation, obviously depend on the particular power relations in the distinct national state-society complexes. however, these dialectics cannot be delinked from such struggles at the transnational, regional and global scales (see Theses Eight and Nine). 53 A class analysis that accounts for competing class-related interests is indispensable for understanding constraints, apparent inconsistencies and contradictions in such national policies as South-South cooperation.

Thesis Six: South-South cooperation is principally about interdependences, not 'new dependencies'
Claims of South-South cooperation creating 'new dependencies' and aggravating the (re) indebtedness of impoverished nations has in the absence of conclusive evidence been dismissed as little more than ideologically driven propaganda. 54 Beyond the empirical, of theoretical interest in this respect is the difference between 'dependency' and 'dependence' as two distinct relations of inequality: while dependency implies 'the absence of actor autonomy' , that is, the subjection and conditioning of (semi)peripheral economies to the interests of transnational capital (systemic value transfer to the 'core'), dependence connotes 'asymmetric interdependence' which, however, can be legitimate if consensual. 55 As 'total self-reliance' for resource-poor nations appears unachievable, 'controlled dependence' is a 'counter-dependency' relationship in which the partners can 'affect the fundamental nature of their relationships' , despite the existing power asymmetries in interdependent relationships. 56 The Venezuelan government's energy security cooperation provides an apt example of such counter-dependency politics. This dimension of South-South cooperation reduces the 'fracture' between energy producers and consumers in the South, identified as a structural impediment to Third World unity in the 1970s. 57 Rather than obfuscating inevitable asymmetries, the principle of reciprocity (see Thesis Three) explicitly recognises such unequal 'power geometries' as a prerequisite for emancipatory political action, that is, to transform them. 58 Rather than (re)producing dependency, Southern interdependences drive global structural transformation.

Thesis Seven: Southern homogeneity is a false expectation
As fragmentation has been regarded to have contributed to the defeat of Third World emancipation in the cold war era, it has been suggested that growing heterogeneity among Southern actors may further have eroded the potential for 'progressive' global transformation. 59 While this may be true, little is gained by stating the obvious, unless it encourages constructive exploration of how to reconcile South-South cooperation with the reality of heterogeneity. historically key exponents of South-South cooperation, such as Julius Nyerere, made no pretence of ideological/political, economic, social and cultural heterogeneity within the South, proposing to concentrate on mutual interests. 60 Against this backdrop ul haq warned that a 'global and "idealized"' approach to South-South cooperation may be counter-productive, implying that, under certain circumstances, concentrating on specific areas and operational scales, such as the regional and sub-regional, might be more effective. 61 This in fact can be observed in Latin America-Caribbean, where such processes and relations have culminated in the declared intention of creating the ALBA-TCP/Petrocaribe-CARICOM-MERCOSUR 'Complementary Economic Zone' . In these projects, especially the ALBA-TCP/ Petrocaribe, which is ideologically the most explicit, strategic and institutionalised South-South cooperation project at the moment, Nyerere's and ul haq's calls for the creation of Third World multinational corporations and jointly owned industries, media enterprises, shipping lines, institutions of research and development, and financial clearing institutions, 62 have materialised at the regional and global scales as expressions of synergies generated through common interests. 63 Rather than dwelling on the litany of heterogeneity, analysing how this is exploited by Northern/Western imperial social and political forces and developing counter-strategies may be a more productive contribution to global democratic transformation.

Thesis Eight: South-South cooperation involves transnationalism and non-traditional non-state actors, which challenges mainstream uses of 'the global South'
Rather than restricting the notion of South-South cooperation to inter-national (interstate) relations, twenty-first century South-South cooperation, while facilitated by governments, also involves non-state actors. 64 While this is commonly associated with 'civil society' (so-called NGOs and the private capitalist business sector), the reinvigorated South-South cooperation in Latin America-Caribbean involves the construction of 'transnational organised society' . As a counter-hegemonic concept antithetical to liberal-bourgeois 'civil society' , 'organised society' challenges the historical association of civil society with liberal individualism and a capitalist market society and means popular, mass-based organisation and the collective exercise of 'popular power' through councils and movements in the construction of non-capitalist social relations. 65 In other words, the dialectical sets of South-South cooperation relations (discourse, practice, institutionalisation) driven by politically like-minded, left-leaning Latin America-Caribbean state and government actors have involved cooperation with such popular movements as the Landless Workers Movement (Brazil) and so-called 'recuperated factories' (Uruguay). however, such transnational South-South cooperation relations extend to the global, including individuals, sectors and communities in territories of the North, eg the New york Bronx and other places in the USA as well as in Europe. 66 Such rescaling of class struggle implies that such formerly relatively homogeneous neoliberal elite projects as MERCOSUR have become arenas of class struggle from which such struggle had hitherto largely been excluded.
This bears implications for conceptualising the 'global South' . 67 In recent years the term 'global South' has been popularised in the sense of a geographic north-south binary, equivalent to the depiction of 'the South' on the well-known front cover of the 1980 Brandt Report. however, as Linda Chisholm states, 'belonging to the South is not defined by being located in the Southern hemisphere'; rather, 'the South' is 'a relational concept that invariably refers to a relationship of inequality' . 68 This observation corresponds with Manuel Castell's notion of the 'Fourth World' as a socio-geographic conception of exploitation, exclusion and deprivation: the coexistence of inter-country inequalities and dramatically increased intra-country inequalities at the global scale, ie the selective inclusion and exclusion of segments of societies across nation-states. 69 While 'the South' evokes a state-centric inter-national ontology, the global South, as Luis Angosto-Ferrández suggests, can be viewed as a people-based concept, whereby a collective transnational political identity is produced through the shared experiences of exclusion, marginalisation, exploitation and disenfranchisement. 70 As discussed (Thesis Five), this does not exclude from the analysis popular states and governments of the South that act in the (diverse and contradictory) interests of the people rather than transnational capital. The global South should thus be understood in socio-spatial terms, as the globalised South, which coexists with the globalised North within and across territories in both the geographical north and the south. This raises more substantive methodological issues, discussed below.

These Nine: South-South cooperation facilitates the construction of a socialist counter-space
The social relations, processes and inter-connectivities associated with South-South cooperation produce their own spatiality. Rather than absolute space (such as the bounded nation-state territory), relational space is constructed (and lived and changed) through a multiplicity of social practices or actions, including discourse; 71 it is produced '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' . 72 Space, therefore, is 'imbued with power' and 'power in its turn always has a spatiality' . 73 Political-sociologically, this means that the 'struggle for (and in) space' is an expression of class struggle. 74 Subsequently a 'simultaneous multiplicity of spaces' means the interpenetration and superimposition of spaces upon one another. 75 Therefore, while South-South cooperation is not per se an anti-capitalist project, it nonetheless produces a spatiality within which a socialist 'counter-space' (a socialist space produced by non-capitalist social relations) can be constructed. 76 Even though the prevailing historical structure (global capitalism) is not necessarily directly challenged by South-South cooperation, even in part reproduced through, for instance, surplus value extraction and other exploitative practices, it is simultaneously resisted as an alternative configuration of forces -a rival structure or counter-spatiality -is being produced. 77 Consequently, while contemporary practices of South-South cooperation may be criticised for failing to pursue or achieve a 'partial withdrawal or "de-linkage" from the global economy' , 78 gradual structural transformation (a counter-hegemonic 'pluri-scalar war of position' 79 ) may be an alternative strategy in the contemporary global conjuncture of economic and military power. A socio-spatial analysis thus facilitates capturing the coexistence of different (though in reality intertwined) political economies within and across territories, that is, various forms of capitalism as well as an emerging socialist economy. 80 Such parallel structures are manifest, for example, in the coexistence of capitalist multinational corporate and ALBA-TCP/Petrocaribe networks of petrol stations in, for instance, the territories of El Salvador, Nicaragua and the USA; 81 in Venezuela the 'Communal Economic System' is one of the coexisting political economies in that territory. 82

Thesis Ten, by way of conclusion: South-South cooperation cannot resolve all the world's 'ills' -why should it (be expected to)?
The theses presented in this article have in a cumulative, complementary and occasionally perhaps contradictory fashion problematised empirical, theoretical, conceptual and methodological limitations in the dominant Anglophone academic literature on contemporary South-South cooperation. This final, concluding thesis embeds some of the key arguments developed in order to explore the potential of South-South cooperation to promote 'alternative' development, which the actors involved in the construction of the Southern 'counter-space' (see Thesis Nine) associate with (some form of ) eco-socialist development. I enter this brief discussion via the popular criticisms of BRICS and ALBA-TCP member states reproducing the dominant exploitative, resource-extractivist model. On this basis expressed commitment to South-South cooperation is frequently challenged as 'rhetoric' (see Thesis One) by 'countries' that are allegedly merely pursuing 'their' exploitative interests (see Theses Four and Five). As argued, such reasoning overlooks the complexities of national, trans-and international socio-political processes, as well as the possibility of relations of inter-dependence rather than dependency (see Theses Five and Six). Thus, the stated criticisms usually adopt a methodologically nationalist and voluntarist approach that ignores, first, the fact that global historical structures constrain action, and that the construction of a rival structure or counter-spatiality may inevitably involve the partial reproduction of the prevailing structures (see Thesis Nine); second, following from the former, the fact that resource extraction in a particular locality is dialectically intertwined with global patterns of consumption, consumerism and militarism; and, third, that the tension between social and environmental rights may be unresolvable. 83 however, I perceive a larger issue looming behind the stated criticisms: the implicit expectation that South-South cooperation should -and could -resolve all the world's 'ills' by offering a coherent alternative model of social organisation, one that would displace global capitalism and the hegemonic modernist development ideology per se. Indeed, while a 'shared development vision' may be absent among many Southern partners, including BRICS, 84 calls for a common 'organisational platform' , 85 necessary for South-South cooperation to effect global change, have tended to ignore the very creation of such institutions in Latin America-Caribbean. Within the rationales of 'solidarity' , 'cooperation' and 'complementary' , and such principles as 'fair' trade to 'reduce the economic asymmetries among the Parties' , 86 these projects promote a counter-neoliberal development model, which may be a precondition for -but is far from -non-capitalist, environmentally and socially sustainable development. Importantly, rather than questioning development per se, as Richard Peet and Elaine hartwick emphasise, to the dispossessed and exploited, excluded and disenfranchised, the question of what development may be of greater pertinence. 87 While economic growth as a key indicator of development persists within the Latin America-Caribbean socialist South-South cooperation 'counter-space' (Thesis Nine), hegemonic modernity is being challenged, particularly through the notion of el buen vivir/vivir bien (the good living) 88 . Rooted in Andean indigenous knowledges, 89 this development ideal has discursively become integrated in bilateral cooperation agendas, such as the Brazilian-Venezuelan, as well as in national development plans (eg that of Nicaragua). As argued (Thesis One), discourse is one co-constitutive moment of social transformation. The creation of such ministries as the Ministry of Popular Power for Eco-socialism and Water (Ministerio de Poder Popular para el Ecosocialismo y Aguas, Venezuela) and the Ministry for Family, Communitarian, Cooperative and Associative Economy (Ministerio de Economía Familiar, Comunitaria, Cooperativa y Asociativa, Nicaragua), as well as the renewable energy security strategy within ALBA-TCP/ Petrocaribe, are only a few instances of the efforts undertaken to realise such an eco-socialist development vision. 90 As an example of a globalised localism, 91   raises this issue without, however, discussing its methodological implications. 50. For example, Jessop,"Nicos Poulantzas";Jessop,State Power;and Poulantzas,State,Power,Socialism. 51. ul haq, "Beyond the Slogan, " 744. 52. Inoue and Vaz, "Brazil as 'Southern donor' , " 528. 53. For studies of such struggles by forces from both the 'left' and the 'right' , see Angosto-Ferrández, Reframing Venezuela; Cannon, "As Clear as MUd"; duffy, "(Re)conceptualising democracy"; and Fuentes, "'Bad Left Government' . " 54. See Woods, "Whose Aid?, " largely informed by Chinese official cooperation. Kragelund, "'donors go home' , " provides similar arguments based on a Zambian case study. 55. Caporaso, "dependence, dependency, and Power, " 18. 56. Erisman, "Cuban development Aid, " 143.