South-South Relations in Education: the program ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! and BRICS education cooperation in focus

• Autor(a) principal: Muhr, Thomas
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Outros Autores: Azevedo, Mário Luiz Neves de
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por; spa
• Título da fonte: Revista Ibero-Americana de Estudos em Educação (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.fclar.unesp.br/iberoamericana/article/view/11730
• topic: South-South Cooperation; Education; Global South; BRICS; ¡Yo; Sí Puedo!; Cooperação Sul-Sul; Educação; Sul Global; BRICS; ¡Yo; Sí Puedo!

This paper adopts an historical and global approach to the under-researched field of South-South cooperation in education and development. The first section discusses the concepts of “the South”, “the global South” and “South-South cooperation”, counter-posed with practices of “triangular collaboration” and “best practice transfer”. On this basis, a review of existing South-South education cooperation literatures distinguishes a mainstream approach embedded in liberal and (neo)realist international relations theories from a critical theory approach associated with counter-dependency thinking. Framed by these discussions, two case studies of contemporary global South-South education relations are presented: the ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! (Sure, I Can!) global literacy campaign promoted by the governments of Cuba and Venezuela; and the BRICS common education cooperation agenda. While it cannot unambiguously be concluded that South-South education cooperation produces a counter-structure to the neoliberal global governance of education, the paper equally shows that the South-South principles of solidarity, mutual benefits and self-reliance are very much practiced among South partners. Finally, proposals for future research in this field are presented.