The rise of the BRICS - a bloc of emerging economies, comprised of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, is one of the defining features of the modern global economy.

This book explores these nations, which seem to be growing at a much faster rate than the developed nations of the Eurozone and North America. Will they drag the developed world out of the economic mire? Will they force social change and innovation into the tired 'old world order'? And politically, do they herald a new dawn for democracy or do they represent a continued political repression?

This edited collection answers these questions by offering critical analysis of the rise of the BRICS economies within the framework of a predatory, exclusionary and unequal global capitalism. From Chinese oil geopolitics to the ruinous 'mega-events' in Brazil, the authors provide a new, radical way of understanding these controversial developments.