The South–South Partnership Puzzle: The Brazilian Health Expert Community in Mozambique

Abstract

The chapter looks at Brazilian health cooperation by focusing on one aspect that is often overlooked in studies about SSC: the sociology of SSC workers. The analysis departs from the position of the “cooperantes” that conduct Brazilian SSC based on their own policy experiences at home. By telling the story of how the BHEC was founded, the chapter explores the country’s progressive internationalization through an engagement in minilateral arrangements, such as the MERCOSUL, the UNASUL and the CPLP, as well as structuring SSC projects in health. The latter are referred to here as the South–South cooperation fold in health. The SSC fold supposedly gathers together agents from diverse countries around a shared understanding of health and healthcare in the aid relationship. However, taking the case of the health partnership with Mozambique and the establishment of an antiretroviral factory, the chapter argues that the common vocabulary is always subject to particular interpretations. These depend on the networks and sociohistorical processes in which the expert communities are embedded—that is, the agents’ structural positions.