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Essay On Retroliberalism

Decent Essays

In order to substantiate the claim that Brazil’s South–South development cooperation model is merely an instantiation of retroliberalism and therefore does not seek to overturn the existing aid structures, this section will examine the extent to which the Brazilian cooperation practices in the Mozambican agricultural sector diverge from the noble rhetoric that elites involved in the programme’s formulation and implementation claim to endorse. For the purpose of this investigation, I have relied on: i) Document analysis: review of governmental reports from the websites of the Brazilian Presidency and the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MRE); media and press releases from websites of ProSAVANA, the Brazilian Agricultural Research …show more content…

Among other Brazilian agricultural development programmes, ProSAVANA is by far the most ambitious, as it covers the vastest area, uses the highest budget and also outspokenly claims to put forth a new model of development (FGV Projetos 2013; ProSAVANA n.d.). Yet, the programme has faced a barrage of criticism (Durán & Chichava 2017, Shankland & Gonçalves 2016, UNAC et al. 2013, UNAC et al. 2014), not least related to its conception of what development entails, highly opaque language, erratic dissemination of information and continued delays. This has heightened the public’s fears related to land grabbing, resettlements, reduced food security, widening income inequality, environmental sustainability and social inclusion of native communities. As will be demonstrated in the next sub-sections, many of these concerns are not unjustified. 3.2. The discursive construction of Brazil’s South–South development cooperation model Careful analysis of documents revealed that Brazil’s South–South experiment is packaged in a language of success that evokes storylines about Brazil's domestic achievements (regarding its agricultural trajectories specifically) (FGV Projetos 2013), about landscape-based, historical ties and cultural affinities with African countries (MRE 2003a, MRE 2011), about the emergence of the global South

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