Talk by Lina Benabdallah: "Whither Solidarity? The Global South between Fragmentation and Shifting Architectures of Power"

"Whither Solidarity? The Global South between Fragmentation and Shifting Architectures of Power"

Lecture and discussion Lina Benabdallah
Associate Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Wake Forest University, North Carolina (USA)

South-South Cooperation has always been a space of resistance to dominant power forms and collective agency for Global South. Today, in a moment of significant structural power changes with the retreat of traditional powers from the international development scene and the emergence of even more players from within the Global South as serious partners in development, South-South cooperation is even more at the center of politics. However, at a moment when countries such as China, India, and Brazil, and South Africa are battling to keep their domestic economies afloat amidst global tariffs and trade barriers imposed by the US, it is also a challenging time for South-South cooperation from a practical sense. As such, it is important to dig deeper into reflections about whether in today’s geopolitical moment South-South cooperation is truly a path of alterity for Global South states or is it indelibly caught in extractive and exploitative competition over resources and markets?

Hosted by Jana Hönke, Professor, Chair for Sociology in Africa, University of Bayreuth
Bayreuth Peace Talks, co-organized with the Postcolonial Hierarchies network (supported by the BMFTR)