The Relevance of the BRICS to Global Knowledge Production

Cláudio PinheiroSephis Programme

The South-South Exchange Programme for the Research on the History of Development

International ForumCooperation of Brics Universities and Research Centres: Education, Science, Innovations

Ural University December 6th 2014

Here does the name “Brazil” comes from?

ModernityPlace-imagining and Place-making

The legend of Hy-Brazil(or) St. Brendan Island

The legend of Hy-Brazil (or St. Brendan Island)• 6th C Irish mythological narrative of a fantastic “land without illnesses”, nor “excessively hot or

cold weather, neither hungry nor thirsty or sadness”.• Curious about this legend – it says about a movable island, that straggled in the horizon every

time one ship tried to get closer to the coastline.

Modernity• Imagination of fantastic lands (like Atlantis or Lemuria) is a common narrative of the period• Place-making is indistinguishable entangled to place-imagining as part of a mythology of

Modernity

Place-making an irresistible condition of ModernityModernity has not only been merely preoccupied with progress and advance, but also loss and disappearance. Loss is also good to think in regard to what it means to be Modern. [Sumathi Ramaswamy. 2001. The Lost Land of Lemuria]

ModernityPlace-imagining & Place-making

Imaginations of Development

Provocative questions• Can we take this point to think about the 20th C Western Theories of Development?• Can we think about the BRICS through this same framework?

• In other words: how our minds are framed when we imagine ways for promoting development in order to produce prosperity and achieve Modernity?

Imagination of places (mythological or real) as a Metaphor & Epistemological Point for conceiving Development – Prosperity –

Modernity

as narratives of imagined geographies typical of Modernity

Modernity, Place-making and developmental imagination

Imagining the BRICS• Refers to a long history of the mythical imaginations concerning unknown worlds – places in

Americas, Asia and Africa – as sites of prosperity and bliss.

• Reflects conceptions of Modernity through Antinomies that opposed both imaginations of development and its absence (wealth vs. poor, First vs. Third Worlds) as much as imaginations of idyllic paradises (as Hi-Brazil) or places that emerge (as the 1990s “Asian Tigers” or the BRICS).

• Undeniably reverberates on narratives of place-making concerning geographies of development, visually and theoretically structured over a cartography of development.

There is an investigation yet to be done comparing the a) late medieval and early modern narratives of imagined futures of prosperity and geographies of opulence to the b) contemporary economic futurological analysis of geopolitics of development.

Emergency of the BRICs

Jim O’Neill (2001) thoughts of the BRICs• Geopolitical Imagination of possible futures: Prosperity – Development – Modernity• BRICs, as a “place” – a imaginary land of prosperity – produced by futurological imagination

– “They will probably” be the leading economies and the leading powers of the world in 2050.– Six pages paper: “will” appears 23 times, “could” 8 times, “probably” 5 times

Emergency of the BRICs – political circumstance, full of passions/sentiments• Excitement for the possibilities of re-striking of balances within global power;• Apprehension if the emerging countries of the South reproduce the unequal division of resources

and power;• Expectations if these newcomers would help on reducing inequality at a global level, and include

other countries/regions that could not to adhere their rhythm of development;

Outline of the presentation

Framework• The present global pressure for academic (e.g. knowledge production)

internationalization

Background – researches on• Brazilian intellectual capacity – vis-à-vis the IBSA countries (MEC)• Knowledge circulation – Dependency Theory in South/Southeast Asia• Brazilian representations concerning India – through the local market of

publications

Topics for discussion1. Place-making and sociological imagination2. The rhetoric of “emergence” – sociological thinking and development theories3. BRICS challenges to Social Sciences: Theoretical – Epistemic – Methodological

Provocative questions

• How does Development frames Geography?

• How does Cooperation for Development in S&T and Higher Education frames Geography?

• How Science frames geography in International Cooperation?

• How can we frame BRICS within the “area studies” schematic division?

Modernity, Place-making and developmental imagination

Sociological Relevance of thinking through the BRICS

• What is the sociological relevance of thinking across the BRICS to Social Sciences?• What is the heuristic value of thinking the BRICS or across the BRICS?

BRICS• Product of an economic futurological imagination – idyllic futures • Countries dealing with similar inequalities and unequal similarities• Similar, though unequal – Histories/Experiences of empires, colonialism and state-building

Contribution to Social Sciences Contemporary Agenda1. BRICS and “area studies”2. BRICS and the Categories of sociological thinking3. Antinomies of Modernity and the Rhetoric of emergence

Which attributes/commonalities should these countries share, to sound relevant so Sociological Theory

How does Brazil frame other Peripheries on research agendas and funding?

BRAZIL - 2009Research sponsoring and country of destination

Source: CAPES - Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduated Education

Brazil – 2010Scholarships abroad

Main destinations in 2010

France30%

USA21%

Portugal13%

Germany9%

Spain8%

United Kingdom5%

Canada3%

Others9%

Italy2%

Source: CAPES - Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduated Education

Africa10

North America

1174

South America

95

Europe 3551

Asia and the Middle East57

Oceania54

Central America

17

BRAZIL – 2010Brazilian Cooperation in Education and S&T

Northern countries: more than 95,3 % of the total

Southern countries: less than 4,7% of the total

Governamental Funding for Research and Cooperation in Academics and S&T

• Brazilian agencies divise cooperation through Estates when it comes to North countries and with “regions” when it comes to the South.

• Brazilian Research Funding Agencies – strong difficulty to imagine creative modalities of academic cooperation vis-à-vis the South countries.

2010Brazilian agreements for international cooperation in Higher Education or S&T

French Cofecub Agency – 125 agreements X

The Argentinean ministry of S&T – 39 agreements

Texas University – 20 agreements Including Africa – 3 agreements

Brazilian Governmental Research Funding agencies

US26%

Europe70%

Latin America2%

Oceania1%

Africa1%

Caribbean0%

Asia 0%

Middle East0%

CAPES/CNPq2008-2011

Destination of Brazilian individual and institutional funding

for Research, Higher Ed. and S&T Initiatives

Source: Databese of CAPES (Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduated Education) and CNPq

Researches concerning the South stands for 5% of the interests from academics in Brazil

Brazil (and other countries of the Global South)

• North-South Cooperation – development, Modernity, progress

• South-South Cooperation – foreign help, donation, aid and official development assistance

• Brazil without boarders program – Peripheral, Southern, Emerging Countries are outside– Human Sciences Outside

Brazilian Governmental Research Funding agencies

BRICS Challenges

1. The development of a more horizontal academic debating agenda – challenging an international division of intellectual labour

2. To confront the imaginative outline within which knowledge is normally produced – the theoretical apparatus, the vocabulary and grammar of a Northern oriented scientific international agenda; AND to challenge the geographical compartmentalization (like the area studies) of Knowledge Production and International Cooperation in S&T

3. Sociological analysis of the BRICS may challenge a certain world-music academic effect – analytical frameworks that places South as illustrative case studies within a Global Economy of Knowledge directed towards Northern models of Development and Modernity;

4. To influence the agenda of scientific funding on knowledge production, including issues that affect our societies and idiosyncrasies of knowledge production (urban studies, youth, social movements, gender and participation, scientific cooperation)

5. Should reframe the vocabulary of global political economy of knowledge production to avoid reproducing existing schemas of international cooperation in higher education and S&T.

Sociological Relevance of thinking through the BRICS

Contribution to Social Sciences Contemporary Agenda

1. BRICS and “area studies”

• A good opportunity for critically reviewing the literature of area studies in theoretical and methodological terms

• Potential to avoid the “area studies-cization” effect – the world-music effect that normally places the Periphery as “areas”

• To reinforce the heuristic value of comparative approaches between regions that do not constitute as natural “areas” – that do not share a common past or language.

• Methodologically contrasting: Comparison vs. Connection approaches (Subrahmanyam, 2005)

Peripheral Countries and the attempts of developing place-making imaginationShould be referred to other political attempts of the peripheral countries to descry alternative Modernities• 1960s Dependency Theory debates in Sociology

• Brazilian Political Imagination concerning Africa, moving from an Imperial imagination – based on the mythological remains of the Christian Portuguese Empire – to new Geographic Concepts for cooperation – that conceive Africa through the South – the Arabic – Peripheral Imaginations (ASPA, ASA, IBSA, CPLP)

Sociological Relevance of thinking through the BRICS

Contribution to Social Sciences Contemporary Agenda

2. BRICS and the Categories of sociological thinking

• BRICS: as other peripheries were subjected to experiences of colonialism, postcolonialism, empire and state building reflected in their categorization and administration of diversities: territories, languages, ethnicities and populations. This process reverberated on Inventing vocabularies to define minorities (such as indigenous populations or tribes) and institutions to rule them.

• Comparative approaches to histories and usages of categories/politics for classifying and ruling diversities

How can we do the same for categories of labour, age and life cycle, forms of inequality etc?

How to reshape a an inclusive vocabulary that refers diversity in terms of social life and local theories?

• John Monteiro and A.C Souza Lima – reinforcing the importance of comparative studies on colonial and state politics towards indigenous people in India and Brazil.

Sociological Relevance of thinking through the BRICS

3. Antinomies of Modernity and the Rhetoric of emergence

• Peripheral countries tend to appear to one another through two basic identities: places of timeless traditions and/or sites or ultimate modernity. (My research on Brazilian publications concerning India) refers to a vocabulary of unchangeable time or ultra-rapid changes

• To study the BRICS as emergent/future superpowers invites to a sociology that replicates agendas of development. It ratifies the relevance of comparisons/connections of China-Brazil and makes irrelevant comparisons/connections such as Japan-Brazil or India-Argentina or Iran-Venezuela.

Sociology can be inspired by macro-narratives of prosperity, but cannot be confined to that. If sociological imagination is confined to that. If not, how to conceive the relevance for studying Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Japan or Algeria, nowadays?

Sociological Relevance of thinking through the BRICS