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This review has been accessed times since September 9, 2009

Chisholm, Linda and Steiner-Khamsi, Gita (Eds.). (2009) South-South Cooperation in Education & Development. NY: Teachers College Press Pp. 304         ISBN 978-0-8077-4921-0

Reviewed by Krystyann Krywko
Teachers College, Columbia University

September 9, 2009

Chisholm and Steiner-Khamsi have compiled in South-South Cooperation in Education & Development a volume that reflects a broad understanding of the concept South-South Cooperation and its historical evolution in the field of development aid. The book emerged from a collaborative focus on the reasons behind why South-South cooperation has “suddenly entered the talk of major donors (p.1)”. The current debate aims to define whether South-South cooperation is perceived as a new strategy in the field of international development, or has the concept simply been repackaged as an approach that ostensibly reduces dependence on funds and knowledge from the North. Chisholm and Steiner-Khamsi state their skepticism about the current use of the term “South-South cooperation” and present this volume as an initiation of a more critical discussion than what is found in most development literature.

South-South Cooperation is divided into three parts: Conceptualizations of the South and South-South Cooperation; Modalities of Transfer and Cooperation; and Contradictions, Complexities, and Ambiguities. In the introduction Chisholm states how this volume approaches the topic of South-South cooperation from two different, but related research interests. Chisholm is based in South Africa and is concerned with educational inequalities that exist both within and between nations and how these relationships unfold over time. Using this research lens, Chisholm explains, allows South-South collaboration to be seen as a form of “collective organization” that will lead to the improvement of country inequalities on a global scale, however inequalities will still exist within and between countries. On the other hand, Steiner-Khamsi is based in the United States and is interested in the concept of “traveling reforms” – which are defined as “educational reforms that are uncritically transferred or transplanted” between countries. The use of policy borrowing and lending research allows South-South cooperation to be viewed as a natural extension of North-South transfer. The contributors to this volume, composed of both researchers and practitioners, frame their analyses within these two separate research strands.

Part One of the volume teases out nuances present in the complicated aid relationship that develops between donor and country and explores the historical development of South-South cooperation. The section offers two working definitions of the concept of South-South collaboration. Caruso, in his chapter Imperial Connections, Entangled Peripheries: Cadiz and the Latin American Monitorial Schools, rigidly defines the relationship between the borrower and the lender with the idea that the lender country has to have the right amount of “cultural authority” with the borrowing country and there also has be a shared understanding between the countries of their similarities. Caruso does acknowledge these “centers” and “peripheries” as being socially constructed and continue to shift over time. In her chapter, South-South Cooperation: Past and Present Conceptualization and Practice, Sa e Silva works under the premise of a more loosely defined relationship that South-South cooperation “is any cooperative relationship between two or more developing countries” and that the relationship does not necessarily have to be arranged around centers and peripheries.

Part Two further elaborates on the range of responses the concept of South-South cooperation and transfer evokes, and provides an overview of the agents and social actors involved in the promotion of South-South transfer and cooperation. The contributors to this section illustrate how motivations and outcomes behind South-South cooperation have varied across time and have included a wide variety of participants –multilateral and bilateral aid agencies, national governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and transnational corporations (TNCs). Mochizuki (Chapter 4) and Samoff (Chapter 7) both analyze the “hidden” motivations and relationships that are often behind South-South cooperation. Mochizuki discusses how Japan’s official development assistance (ODA) strategies serve as a vehicle to develop and expand foreign policy, and that in order for Japan to receive recognition as a respected donor it was important to move beyond their traditional aid recipients and expand into Africa. Samoff’s chapter adds an important component to the discussion as he analyzes the language used in the development world and how foreign aid “influences not only what knowledge is transferred and how, but also the specification of what is knowledge and how it is to be created, validated, managed, and exchanged (p. 123).”

Bhanji (Chapter 5), Tikly and Dachi (Chapter 6), and Abdenur (Chapter 8) round out this section with discussions of emerging alliances and donors and how these new actors impact the field of development. Bhanji, notes the emergence of transnational corporations as key players in the field of educational transfer and the emphasis placed on the development and promotion of “best practices”. Tikly and Dachi, probe what role South-South collaboration might play in the development of the new regionalism movement in African education. Their focus is on regional initiatives that involve African partners for the most part, although international partners are involved in some of the initiatives. Abdenur questions the emergence of “triangular cooperation” (an alliance between an industrialized country and a developing country to provide assistance to a third country) as an alternative between the traditional forms of bilateral and multilateral aid and focuses on the impact it has had on Brazil in particular as a new “node for growth in the South-South transfer network”.

The final section of this volume dissects the idea of “traveling reforms” and explores the necessary preconditions involved in the processes of educational transfer and cooperation between countries – the contributors discuss how educational reforms are not only promoted and “borrowed” between countries for different reasons, but are also received and enacted upon in different ways.

Silova (Chapter 9) and Chabbott (Chapter 10) illustrate that recipient countries are not passive in aid acceptance. Silova discusses the expansion of the Fethullah Gulen’s Islamic reform movement, that is more popular outside Turkey than within, and how this transferred reforms fulfills the shared goals of the Islamic reform movement, the Turkish state, and the Central Asian governments where the expansion is focused. Chabbott analyzes the efforts of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) to expand the model to other developing countries. Both chapters illustrate how the success of an imported reform is inextricably linked to subtle contextual similarities. Chabbott also acknowledges BRAC’s reliance on external funding in the creation of their model – and that perhaps their model is simply a more organized and effective use of aid dollars, rather than a model to be replicated in its entirety.

Gillespie (Chapter 11) and Soudien (Chapter 12) concentrate on how the idea of South-South cooperation can succumb to the same rhetoric, obstacles, and inequalities that characterize North-South development. In Gillespie’s case she recounts the experiences of African students in China and how despite government intentions ideals do not always transfer to the ground. The result being the isolation, experiences of racism, and lack of acceptance into mainstream Chinese culture by African students who are viewed as beneficiaries of outreach aid by the Chinese government. Soudien’s focus is on the how the transfer of knowledge, while beneficial in some ways, can also oppress and obstruct processes of social development through the creation of monopolies of power. He further states that disrupting these monopolies involves weakening the dependence of developing countries, but that this can also give rise to the creation of new “centers of knowledge” and the unequal distribution of privilege within the developing country network.

Steiner-Khamsi concludes South-South Cooperation with an attempt to answer the question, if South-South cooperation is “a way out from the dependency trap in educational development?” In doing so she focuses on three main issues that serve to blur the lines of the development aid relationship and serve as interesting starting points for future scholarship. These are: 1) the arrival of “unruly donors” and how they impact the aid relationship as these celebrities and private foundations view themselves as “cosmopolites” who represent global capital and a global community, rather than their governments in the North; 2) the presence of “policy bilingualism” where one set of reforms is proposed at the donor level, yet another set of diametrically opposite set of reforms are implemented at the local level; and 3) the reality that development benchmarks are set in the North and South-South development has become a more cost effective way of reaching those goals resulting in a “North-South-South” flow of funds and knowledge.

South-South Cooperation fulfills the editors stated purpose of serving as a critical lens to better understand the increased attention placed on the idea of south-south transfer in the development community. This book ties into the rising trend and tendency to reference the term of South-South cooperation – it is important because it goes beyond the seemingly neutral face of “neighbors helping neighbors” and the warm, fuzzy feeling that is often invoked by the concept of developing countries assisting those who are in similar stages of development. Importantly, the contributors also acknowledge the historical and contextual development of South-South cooperation, which is so important in understanding how the term is currently used in development circles.

Where South-South Cooperation becomes trapped is in its dependency on contributors who are largely affiliated with the “North” and who are also affiliated with Northern institutions, mainly universities. It would have added greater depth to this volume if a greater variety of voices were included, particularly those from the South. This goes towards a point that was raised by Tikly and Dachi in their chapter about how there is a need to increase local research capacity and technical expertise. While the contributors clearly have a depth of knowledge and experience, in some cases it felt as if there was too much “analysis from afar” and not enough attention paid to constructing cases from the ground up. A volume that includes a place for critical scholarship, like South-South Cooperation, would be the perfect place to include those voices that are not often heard in the development world.

About the Reviewer

Krystyann Krywko is a doctoral student in International Education Development, with a focus on early childhood education, at Teachers College, Columbia University. The focus of her research is on the borrowing and adaptation of the United States Head Start Program by the Open Society Institute in the development and implementation of the Step-by-Step program, with a particular focus on Azerbaijan, Latvia, Slovakia, and Tajikistan. Krystyann’s other research interests include: community and parent involvement in the schooling process; the “exportation” and implementation of U.S. educational models; the influence of network programs; and the link between education and open societies

Copyright is retained by the first or sole author, who grants right of first publication to the Education Review.

Editors: Gene V Glass, Gustavo Fischman, Melissa Cast-Brede

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