South-south development cooperation under analysis: Paradigmatic rupture or reproduction?

The present paper deals with the initiatives on international cooperation in the scope of North-South cooperation. Based on the analysis of the logic and the knowledge that support such initiatives, and drawing on the thinking of Boaventura de Souza Santos, the article challenges the capacity of cooperation between peripheral and semi-peripheral countries, that is, “South-South” cooperation, for giving birth to the emergence of a new perspective on “development”, one which would be based on the understanding that there is not a single model and that it refers to a process dependent not only on the recognition of and respect for the plurality of knowledge owned by its participants, as also on their capacity to build together new kinds and forms of knowledge.