Queering Development? The Unsettling Geographies of South–South Cooperation

Abstract

This paper deploys queer theory as a way of approaching South-South Cooperation (SSC). It examines the ways in which Southern development partners are not simply up-ending the longstanding spatialities, imaginaries and identities (re)produced through the mainstream international development regime, but queering terminologies and definitions, while presenting themselves in fluid ways, enrolling different identities and attributes in different places and to different audiences. At the same time, a queer lens reveals the (re)inscription of gendered, sexualised and racialized solidarities and hierarchies through the relationships, intimacies and practices of SSC. The paper proposes that queer theory can offer productive insights into the complex and compelling phenomenon of SSC, and its transgressive challenge the postcolonial hierarchies and binaries of 'traditional' international development.

Gender, technology and development: reflections on the past, and provocations for the future

“…The lack of focus on sexual and gender identity minorities however contributed to a view where issues of sexuality and gender identity did not matter in development, which effectively erased the gendered experience of these individuals and groups and prevented research and policy solutions conducted in or created for a development context. As a gender and development journal, many of our submissions tend to amplify the concept of gender as binary, or heterosexuality as the norm, and we hope going forward that the journal can contribute to research which questions this binarism and heteronormativity, including through iterations of queer thinking in specific development contexts (Mawdsley, 2020). Similarly, theorizing on gender-based marginalization of certain groups of men and subordinate masculinities can provide nuanced insights into the evolving conceptualizations of gender and development.…”

Reclaiming the politics of South-South cooperation

“…In any case, while such de-Westernising institutions as the BRICS New Development Bank are established (Al-Kassimi, 2018;Mignolo, 2021), confrontation joins with contestation within the institutions of global coloniality, where especially the BRICS -individually or collectively -frequently strategically ally with the G-77 (Cooper, 2021;Gürcan, 2019;Hopewell, 2017). Although SSC may indeed have engendered a partial 'fracturing' of the historical North-South hierarchies (Mawdsley, 2020), the North's 'manipulation' of the World Bank voting power adjustment process (see Vestergaard & Wade, 2013), however, is indicative of the limits to such a strategy, and of the Global North's steadfast resistance to any more substantive democratization of the global order, i.e. the even slightest challenge to the colonial matrix of power.…”

The gift of health: Cuba’s development assistance in the Pacific

“…In more recent work, Mawdsley (2019aMawdsley ( , 2019b argues that despite the continued proliferation of the language of solidarity, contemporary SSC has changed substantially and with few exceptions now serves the rolling-out of capitalist social and economic relations around the world. At the same time, Northern donors are beginning to sound more like Southern partners, mimicking the 'winwin' language" and adopting some practices associated with 'Southern' development approaches, in what Mawdsley (2018) terms the 'Southernisation' of development.…”