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Global South Rising? BRICS and the Reconfiguration of Knowledge Systems

Global South Rising? BRICS and the Reconfiguration of Knowledge Systems

Global South Rising? BRICS and the Reconfiguration of Knowledge Systems poses an important provocation: can BRICS reshape global knowledge hierarchies? This edited volume examines the bloc’s socioeconomic rise and its ambition to reconfigure not just the global economy, but also intellectual power structures. Framed as a potential ‘New Bandung’, it echoes the 1955 Bandung Conference, where newly independent nations sought solidarity amid Cold War tensions. Contributors explore whether BRICS can similarly foster a new global knowledge order. International experts assess the bloc’s performance, highlighting its challenge to dominant Western epistemologies and its potential to amplify Global South agency. South Africa, viewed as the smallest BRICS member, emerges as a key player in advancing collaboration in higher education and science. With strategic analysis and fresh insights, this volume invites readers to rethink power, knowledge, and global cooperation.  

HSRC Press

Product Information

Format: 

229x152mm

Pages: 

352pp

ISBN-13: 

978-0-7969-2709-5

Publish Year: 

March 2026

Rights: 

World Rights

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List of Tables and Figures
Acknowledgements
Prologue:
Chapter One:
Of Brains and Brics: An Introduction to BRICS and Social Scientific Knowledge Circulation.
Ari Sitas
Chapter Two:
Some Economic Dimensions of Developing Country Emergence and the Role of BRICS.
Sumangala Damodaran
Chapter Three: New World Order, New Epistemic Order?
Rigas Arvanitis,
Wiebke Keim, Leandro Rodrigues Medina
Chapter Four:
BRICS Countries and the Knowledge System
Ari Sitas
Chapter Five:
BRICS in Mainstream Social Sciences. Mapping the Imagination of an Emerging Global South Phenomenon.
Matias Milia
Chapter Six:
Social Science Scholars from BRICS Countries as Invited Professors at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris: An Empirical Analysis of their Presentation Topics.
Wiebke Keim
Chapter Seven:
Unlikely Trajectories: BRICS Intellectuals, European Universities, and New Epistemological Roads in the 21st Century.
Beatriz-Veliz Aguerta
Chapter Eight:
Geopolitics of Knowledge from a UK-India perspective: Precarity, post-coloniality and new trends of capital flow between the Global North and South.
Vinicius Kauê Ferreira
Chapter Nine:
The Whole and the Parts: Two Empirical Approaches to Building BRICS Sociology.
Tom Dwyer
Chapter Ten:
Dreams of Change. Testing the rewiring vs. reconfiguration hypothesis in BRICS’ Mainstream Social Science discourse
Matias Milia
Chapter Eleven:
Is Brics Just Rewiring or Reconfiguring the World System?
Ari Sitas
About the Authors
Index

Global South Rising? BRICS and the Reconfiguration of Knowledge Systems poses an important provocation: can BRICS reshape global knowledge hierarchies? This edited volume examines the bloc’s socioeconomic rise and its ambition to reconfigure not just the global economy, but also intellectual power structures. Framed as a potential ‘New Bandung’, it echoes the 1955 Bandung Conference, where newly independent nations sought solidarity amid Cold War tensions. Contributors explore whether BRICS can similarly foster a new global knowledge order. International experts assess the bloc’s performance, highlighting its challenge to dominant Western epistemologies and its potential to amplify Global South agency. South Africa, viewed as the smallest BRICS member, emerges as a key player in advancing collaboration in higher education and science. With strategic analysis and fresh insights, this volume invites readers to rethink power, knowledge, and global cooperation.  

Ari Sitas is emeritus professor at the University of Cape Town, honorary professor at the University of Stellenbosch, and former chair of the board of the National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2761-3064 Wiebke Keim is a senior researcher at the National Centre for Scientific Research, Strasbourg, France. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1332-5931

 

 

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