Re-making the global economy of knowledge: do new fields of research change the structure of North–South relations?

How is global-North predominance in the making of organized knowledge affected by the rise of new domains of research? This question is examined empirically in three interdisciplinary areas – climate change, HIV-AIDS, and gender studies – through interviews with 70 researchers in Southern-tier countries Brazil, South Africa and Australia. The study found that the centrality of the North was reinstituted as these domains came into existence, through resource inequalities, workforce mechanisms, and intellectual framing. Yet there are tensions in the global economy of knowledge, around workforce formation, hierarchies of disciplines, neoliberal management strategies, and mismatches with social need. Intellectual workers in the Southern tier have built significant research centres, workforces and some distinctive knowledge projects. These create wider possibilities of change in the global structure of organized knowledge production.