A Culture of Solidarity?

In this article, based on interviews, ethnographic data, and documentary evidence, I examine the case of a Bolivian-Iranian hospital in the context of south-south scientific and economic collaboration. This hospital provides a lens through which we can understand the tensions between local and global processes. Medicine, in particular, has become a site where such alignments are made visible and tangible: the term 'biogeopolitics' helps to describe this process. I use the hospital as a way to illustrate what theory from the south might look like ethnographically, and conclude with a discussion of the contradictions and promises of theory from the south within south-south collaborations.