BRICS and Global South: Towards Multilateral Educational Collaboration

  • Maxim B. Khomyakov National Research University Higher School of Economics, Saint Petersburg, Russia and Ural Federal University, Yekaterinburg, Russia http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1996-9896
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15826/csp.2018.2.4.050

Abstract

The article is devoted to the discussion of the educational policies of the BRICS countries in the context of rising Global South. The author argues that BRICS grouping is better understood not as a union of the countries based upon common identity or a set of the values, but as a group, which is held together by certain imaginaries. These imaginaries are a vision of alternative world order on the one hand and of the emerging Global South on the other hand. Education, then, pays a pivotal role in BRICS collaboration, because it helps to develop and to spread these imaginaries. The article analyses multilateral educational collaboration in BRICS in comparison with excellence programmes devoted to establishment of elite world-class universities and oriented at indicators of the main international academic rankings. The author argues that such projects as BRICS Network University are much more relevant to the tasks of South-South collaboration than the excellence programmes such as Russian 5/100 one. In conclusion, the author attracts readers’ attention to the multiple modernities theories as possible rationale for BRICS cooperation or South-South collaboration in general.

Author Biography

Maxim B. Khomyakov, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Saint Petersburg, Russia and Ural Federal University, Yekaterinburg, Russia

Maxim B. Khomyakov is a Deputy Director of the Higher School of Economics (Saint Petersburg), and a Head of the BRICS Studies Centre at the Ural Federal University. His research interests comprise various issues of political philosophy, history of philosophy and social theory as well as theory of Education. He was a visiting scholar at Texas A&M University, USA; the University of Bologna, Italy and The University of York, UK. He also spent two years as a Marie Curie Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence. In 2002-2015 he organized a number of projects in political philosophy for the young faculty from Eastern Europe, Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia. Now he is also a head of national coordinating committee of the BRICS network University.

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Published
2018-12-15
How to Cite
Khomyakov, M. (2018). BRICS and Global South: Towards Multilateral Educational Collaboration. Changing Societies & Personalities, 2(4), 329–350. doi:10.15826/csp.2018.2.4.050
Citation Formats
Issue
Vol. 2, No. 4 (2018): Special Issue: "Higher Education in the BRICS and the Global South: A Driver for the Development?"
Section
Articles