Cristina Yumie Aoki Inoue

Brazil as ‘Southern donor’: beyond hierarchy and national interests in development cooperation?

This article analyses Brazils growing role in external development assistance. During Lula da Silvas presidency, cooperation with developing countries grew dramatically. While the official position is that Brazilian development assistance is moved not by national economic or political interests, but by international ‘solidarity’, and does not reproduce the North–South traditional aid relations, we suggest that it is not completely divorced from national, sub-national or sectoral interests and cannot be viewed apart from Brazils broader foreign policy objectives. Brazil does pursue political, economic and commercial interests and, concomitantly, has made a positive difference in the recipient countries. However, more empirical research and field investigation are needed to better gauge the impact of Brazils assistance initiatives and their contributions to South–South cooperation more broadly. During Lulas terms (2003–2010), Brazil could be classified as a ‘Southern donor’, which expresses the countrys own novelties, and tensions, of simultaneously being a donor and a developing country.

Governance of global climate change in the Brazilian Amazon: the case of Amazonian municipalities of Brazil

With regards to the debate about governance of climate change, it should be assumed that the Amazon region plays an important role, as this large area is highly vulnerable to its effects. In this sense, this article aims to discuss how some Amazonian municipalities of Brazil have been taking part in the complexes and multilayered processes of climate governance.

Many worlds, many nature(s), one planet: indigenous knowledge in the Anthropocene

This article explores the idea of many nature(s) and its implication for the studies of global environmental politics. It discusses the inadequacy of the nature-society dichotomy and argues for epistemological parity, as well as for the recovery of indigenous knowledge systems. Looking at indigenous knowledge uncovers many ways to consider nature and contributes to recast global environmental studies in the Anthropocene.

Many Worlds, Many Theories?

The idea of organizing this RBPI special issue was born in April 2014, during an event organized to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the creation of the first undegraduate program in International Relations in Brazil at the University of Brasilia. The keynote speech, deliverd by Andrew Hurrell on the subject of pluralizing IR, was like a seed falling into a soil fertile with the discussions that were already taking place at the Institute of International Relations, particularly in light of recent disciplinary developments that have highlighted the importance of history, geography and culture for problematizing the “international”. The November 2014 seminar, “Many Worlds, Many Theories?”, in which Nicholas Onuf and Arlene B. Tickner participated, became the basis for launching the Call for Papers. Although the existence of “one world” and “many (or rival) theories” is a fairly well-known claim in the field of International Relations (Walt 1998, Snyder 2004), few alternative approaches have actually been recognized as constituting competing but equally authoritative (meaning scientific) readings of world politics. At IR’s core, the view that there are three main “families” of theories (realism, liberalism and constructivism), and that the discipline has evolved along two sets of debates between neorealism and neoliberalism, and rationalism and reflexivism, continues to prevail. And yet, the idea of a “one world” world at the root of the positivist mainstream is under increasing challenge. Posed initially by R.B.J. Walker in his seminal book, One World, Many Worlds: Struggles for a Just World Peace (1988), the possibility that international relations, understood as both Copyright: