Concepts of the

Global South
The urge to come up with a new term highlights
not only the uncomfortable reality of previous
INTRODUCTION
terms, but also the political connotations of the
by Andrea Wolvers, Oliver Tappe, Tijo Salverda, Global South concept. It is not just a term; it
Tobias Schwarz (GSSC) also has political weight – for better or for
worse. Leigh Anne Duck, who reflects on the
Where and what is the Global South? If you ask
Global South as co-editor of the journal The
people on the street, many would probably not
Global South, highlights the positive impact of
have the faintest idea. In everyday parlance and
the term. In comparison with “Third World” and
mass media, Global South has hardly become a
“Developing World”, she considers the term
household term. In academic and (global) policy
Global South to carry more weight in resisting
circles, though, the term is used with much
hegemonic forces. Alvaro Mendez, as co-
more gusto. Politicians refer to it. The United
founder of the London School of Economics
Nations organize their statistical data in accord-
and Political Science’s Global South Unit,
ance with the term. Academics write books
equally highlights the empowering aspect the
about it - or, as in our case, explicitly include the
term has – and the unprecedented upward tra-
term in the name of a research center: Global
jectory of its usage. In theory, indeed, it appears
South Studies Center (GSSC).
to be a less hierarchical – or evolutionary – term
But what does the term entail? Who uses it and than the other two. Barbara Potthast, the
why? And what are the implications of marking speaker of our research center, highlights how
distinctions between the Global South and the this in the case of Latin America may actually
Global North? We thought it relevant to address lead to a reconsidering of its relationships with
these questions in more detail – after all, we other parts of the world.
work for a recently established research insti-
However, Boike Rehbein states that those
tute featuring the term in its name. Accordingly,
choosing this terminology are mainly members
we asked a number of academics, journals and
of the upper classes in the Global South who
academic institutions to reflect on the term. In
profit from the political and economic reality –
this online issue, we share their various per-
through expanding south-south relations, for
spectives and critical reflections on the notion of
example. Which term is used barely matters for
the Global South – see also a short discussion
the large majority of the inhabitants of the so-
on a number of YouTube videos we have in-
called Global South. Indeed, Felix Lamech
cluded.
Mogambi Ming’ate illustrates that it means little
The emergence of the term Global South in its to most Kenyans – who live in a country con-
historical context constitutes an interesting pro- sidered to be part of the Global South.
cess, which illustrates how the term has been
The question remains as to the geographical
charged with various shades of meaning. Some
boundaries of the region referred to as the
of the contributions touch on the historical gen-
Global South. It readily conjures the notion of a
esis of the term and narrate how they experi-
division between the northern and southern
enced this process. Thomas Hylland Eriksen
hemispheres of the globe. A country like Kenya
and Jonathan Rigg, among others, reflect on
would then belong to both categories. But, as
the emergence of the notion, with particular
Rigg also highlights, the term should not be
regard to the historical trajectory of defining
taken too literally, with the equator dividing the
different (poor and rich) parts of the world. Rigg
world in two. Instead, it should be understood in
explains, for example, why he used the term
the wider context of globalization – or global
Global South in the title of a book. He acknowl-
capitalism, in the case of Arif Dirlik’s reflection.
edges that the term is not perfect, yet he con-
In most cases it then becomes related to an
siders it more favorable than its predecessors,
economic division between rich(er) and poor(er)
“Third World” or “Developing World”.
countries, with most people in the so-called
Global South actually living in the northern hem-

Concepts of the Global South – Voices from around the world

Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne, Germany – http://gssc.uni-koeln.de/node/452
isphere (for example, in India and China). With this set of contributions we hope to provide
Moreover, as Tobias Schwarz illustrates in his an interesting snapshot of opinions about the
critical reflection on UN categorizations, it also term Global South. They show that there are
spills over into other domains, such as migra- different opinions with regard to various aspects
tion. of the term and that it evokes different mean-
What is evident is that it is difficult to escape the ings for different people; meanings, moreover,
political use and consequences of the term. that may shift over time. After all, the Global
Dirlik and Rehbein, for example, are very ada- South is contextual, as most contributions high-
mant about the close correlation Global South light. In times of geopolitical uncertainty, it is
has with geopolitics. As a result, it is not a static hard to predict how the term will develop and/or
concept. With geopolitical shifts, the definition of change accordingly. One open question is
the Global South may also change; not only whether it will actually become an obstacle to a
with regard to the meaning of the term, but also, more equal distribution of the world’s gains and
as Dirlik shows, with regard to which countries power or whether it might actually empower
are considered to be part of the Global South parts of the world that have a long history of
and which are not. This implies that there is not disadvantage. Following this, it would imply that
necessarily agreement about who is part of the the mere use of the term might have implica-
Global South and who is not, or about whether tions, for better or for worse. But the increasing
it is actually useful to apply the term in the first usage of this concept might also simply reflect
place. Rodolfo Magallanes is particularly critical changing realities, as Manuela Boatcă argues:
of the idea of grouping together a large variety the terms that seem convenient to describe the
of countries and regions into one category. reality of specific historical moments are closely
This, he argues, tends to obscure specific (his- related to the respective socioeconomic and
torical) relationships between different countries political structures. In reflecting on the contribu-
and/or regions, especially when it comes to tions, this is up to you, the reader, to decide.
unequal power balances. Or, as Eriksen ar-
gues, it may obscure wealth differences within
countries – and, therefore, similarities between
the wealthy in the Global South and Global
North, as well as the dire situation the poor may
face all around the world.

Concepts of the Global South – Voices from around the world

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WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE GLOBAL usage less so than Worsley's attempt to opera-
NORTH AND THE GLOBAL SOUTH? tionalize them. For what was Argentina? Or
Turkey? Immanuel Wallerstein's concepts (from
by Thomas Hylland Eriksen (Professor at the Uni-
The Modern World System, 1974–78) of center,
versity of Oslo’s Department of Social Anthropology)
periphery and semi-periphery seemed to do the
As a young schoolboy in the 1970s, I learned job somewhat better, and his model had the
that there were two kinds of countries in the additional advantage of indicating dynamic con-
world: The industrialized countries and the de- nectedness within the global system.
veloping countries. In Norwegian, they were It makes little sense to speak of three worlds
abbreviated as i-land and u-land (“i-countries when there is only one game in town. Instead,
and d-countries”). As a slightly older schoolboy, during the last decade or so, scholars and en-
I would discover that there were progressive lightened commentators increasingly have be-
people who had read up on the latest literature, gun to speak of the Global South and the Glob-
and who distinguished between the First, the al North. I've even used these terms myself
Second and the Third Worlds; the industrialized, sometimes, almost inadvertently, when lecturing
Western countries; the Communist bloc; and about big and general issues, but I have invari-
the poor, underdeveloped or developing coun- ably asked myself afterwards, slightly embar-
tries (make your choice). Some made it more rassed, what's so global about them. Why can't
complicated and added the Fourth World, that we just say the south and the north; or just ma-
of stateless indigenous peoples. I had one terially rich and materially poor countries? Or –
teacher – this was in Nairobi in the mid- again – center, semiperiphery and periphery?
seventies – who even differentiated between Any conceptual investigation of these classifica-
the Third, the Fourth and the Fifth Worlds within tions must inevitably lead to ambivalence.
the general subcategory of the Third: The Third Global diversity is simply such that it cannot
World countries were those that were well on meaningfully be subsumed under a few, let
their way to becoming rich and “developed” (I alone two, concepts. It is true that at a very
think he mentioned Malaysia and possibly Alge- general level, the Global North is associated
ria); the Fourth were those that struggled but with stable state organization, an economy
had potential (Kenya was, generously, includ- largely under (state) control and – accordingly –
ed); and the Fifth World was chanceless and a dominant formal sector. The recipients of for-
mired in perennial poverty. eign aid, needless to say, belong to the Global
The idea that there were three “worlds” origi- South. China and – again – Argentina are hard
nates, in the Anglophone world, with the an- to fit in.
thropologist and sociologist Peter Worsley (The One attempt to produce an objective classifica-
Third World, 1964; and The Three Worlds, tion uses the UNDP's Human Development
1984). However, the notion of the Third World is Index to differentiate. In brief, the Global North
older, coined by the demographer Alfred Sauvy consists of those 64 countries which have a
in 1952, and his reference to le tiers monde did high HDI (most of which are located north of the
not presuppose the existence of a First or Sec- 30th northern parallel), while the remaining 133
ond World. Rather, when speaking of the poor countries belong to the Global South.
countries and colonies, he explicitly drew a par-
The terms have become fashionable very re-
allel with the third estate, le tiers état, at the
cently. In a bibliographic study by a group of
time of the French revolution; that is, everyone
German scholars, the first recorded use was in
who did not belong to the clergy or the nobility.
1996. In 2004, the term The Global South ap-
He spoke of those that had potential – those
peared in just 19 publications in the humanities
who would eventually rise and claim their share.
and social sciences, but by 2013, the number
Latterly, these terms have become increasingly had grown to 248. The scholars who use it as-
unfashionable. This definitely has something to sociate it largely with some of the ills of globali-
do with the collapse of the Communist Bloc zation. While the countries of the Global North
almost 25 years ago. But the concepts were at not only have stable states but also a strong
the outset too crude to make sense to a serious public sector, the Global South is, to a far
social scientist, Sauvy's loose and metaphorical greater extent, subject to the forces of global

Concepts of the Global South – Voices from around the world

Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne, Germany – http://gssc.uni-koeln.de/node/452
neoliberalism, rather than enacting the very standards, but so unevenly distributed that you
same forces. literally move from one “world” to another within
Seen from this perspective, the neologisms minutes if you enter the taxi, say, at the Univer-
make sense. The post-Cold War world is not sity of Cape Town and get out in the Cape
mainly divided into societies that follow different Flats. Same thing in Nairobi. And I haven't even
political ideologies such as socialism or liberal- mentioned the Gulf States. Even in my
ism, but by degrees of benefits in a globalized hometown of Oslo, inequality within the city is
neoliberal capitalist economy. This is why the striking. Notwithstanding Norway's reputation
prefix “Global” may be appropriate, as it signals for being equitable and egalitarian, life expec-
the integration of the entire planet (well, nearly) tancy between two adjacent boroughs in the city
into a single economic system – that which Tom can differ by more than ten years – equal to the
Friedman (in-)famously described as “a flat gap between Sweden and Morocco!
world” (in The World is Flat, 2005). So far, so One main shortcoming of these huge, global
good. The Global South and the Global North classifications is their methodological national-
represent an updated perspective on the post- ism. Entire countries, whether they are called
1991 world, which distinguishes not between Nauru or China – China has 150,000 times as
political systems or degrees of poverty, but be- many inhabitants as Nauru – are considered the
tween the victims and the benefactors of global relevant entities and are thus presumably com-
capitalism. parable. But GDP, or HDI for that matter, for a
But you then start to wonder how useful such country as a whole reveals precious little about
huge blanket terms are at the end of the day. I how the poorest 20%, or the poorest 80%, or
certainly do as an anthropologist, but also as the richest 1%, live. So, obviously, what is
someone who travels and observes everyday needed are more fine-grained instruments to
life as I go along. In Albania some years ago, I gauge the quality of life and the economic cir-
saw dark blue BMWs and horsecarts side by cumstances of a community, since most of the
side. In India, I've seen lush oases of luxury world's population live mainly in communities
alongside struggling lower-middle class life and and not in states. The result of this kind of en-
plain hopelessness. In Russia, the contrast be- deavor might surprise some, and it would cer-
tween glittering St Petersburg (where I'm writing tainly make for a more mottled and colorful map
these sentences) and the surrounding country- of the world than the drab monochrome surfac-
side is dramatic. In the US, there are inner city es produced by a planet divided into the Global
areas where life expectancy matches that of North and Global South.
some of the poorer African countries. And what
to make of a country like Brazil? It is sometimes Thomas Hylland Eriksen has published widely on
said that before Lula, half of the population had globalization and he is currently running a research
an obesity problem, while the other half were project on three crises of globalization called Over-
undernourished. The proportions have shifted heating. He shares his opinions and observations on
somewhat after years of bolsa familial and other his personal blog http://hyllanderiksen.net.
progressive policies, but in terms of inequality,
Brazil still fares just barely better than South
Africa, where the GDP is excellent by African

Concepts of the Global South – Voices from around the world

Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne, Germany – http://gssc.uni-koeln.de/node/452
THE GLOBAL SOUTH VIA THE US
SOUTH1
by Leigh Anne Duck (Associate Professor at the oppressed by colonialism and global capitalism
Department of English, University of Mississippi, and investigate their similarities to and differences
editor of the journal The Global South) from others around the globe in order to devel-
op expressive forms and political strategies that
The journal The Global South, with its broad can generate new perspectives and possibili-
geographic and methodological parameters, ties.
was generated from specifically local condi-
Now editing our eighth volume, we publish spe-
tions, as a range of faculty at the University of
cial issues organized through remarkably di-
Mississippi began to converse about the signifi-
verse cartographies. Featuring the work of au-
cance of contemporary globalization and the
thors from around the globe – and often guest-
history of global exchange in their research.
edited by scholars at other institutions – these
Mindful of the historical trajectories and statisti-
collections also vary widely in theme. Some
cal proportions through which the Global South
provide perspectives on how different conti-
is often conceptualized (particularly as an heir
nents or global regions have experienced glob-
to the term Third World), these scholars were
alization; some explore how distinct enterprises
more energized by the potential flexibility of this
– such as Nollywood or the Panama Canal –
framework: its overt geographic imprecision.
have altered global relations; some consider
The term Global South flaunts the impossibility
how aesthetic works from widespread locales
of simple divisions, because the blunt instru-
configure particular problems in globalization,
ment of the equator cannot pretend fully to map
and some seek to understand the relationship
the planet's socioeconomic conditions. Accord-
between the southern United States and the
ingly, it provided a particularly useful rubric for
Global South. In these efforts, our authors mo-
scholars situated, despite their geographically
bilize varying spatial methodologies: diasporic
diverse research projects, in Mississippi.2 A
studies, postcolonial studies, area studies,
state with a history of acute racial exploitation
comparative studies, and urban/rural studies, to
and violence as well as continuing struggles
name a few. What remains paramount, from the
with poverty and poor access to educational
perspective of The Global South, is to under-
and healthcare resources – yet simultaneously
stand how forces that seek to impose exploita-
located in a nation (in-)famous for its wealth and
tive and hegemonic economic and political
its institutions devoted to the spread of neolib-
forms have been and can be resisted, both in
eralism – this locale (arguably, like all locales)
discrete geopolitical spaces and through broad-
necessitates methodologies that can negotiate
er collaborative networks.
an array of geographic scales, from the planet
to the neighborhood, with numerous spatial
configurations in between. Such approaches
are vital, after all, for residents of the Global
South, as peoples historically and/or currently

1
Thanks to Adetayo Alabi, Magalí Armillas-Tiseyra,
Deborah Barker, Annette Trefzer, and Jay Watson for
feedback, and thanks to the members of the working
group for sharing their manuscript with me.
2
Nancy Bercaw, Kirsten Dellinger, Jeffrey T. Jackson,
Kathryn B. McKee, and Annette Trefzer, “A Short History
of the Faculty Working Group on the Global South at the
University of Mississippi”, manuscript.

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THE GLOBAL SOUTH Soviet Union in 1987, for example), which in
the process became so-called “transition”
by Jonathan Rigg (Department of Geography, Na-
economies. The Third World was always non-
tional University of Singapore)
aligned more in word than in deed, and to add
What term do we use when we wish to dis- to this much of the Second World was em-
cuss the collectivity of countries that consti- bracing capitalism with alacrity, notwithstand-
tutes the poorer world? There are quite a few ing some governments continuing to pay lip
possibilities to choose from: service to the rhetoric of Socialism. As Deng
 The Global South Xiao-ping, the architect of China’s reforms, is
 The Less- developed World said to have remarked, “it doesn’t matter
 The Majority World whether a cat is white or black, so long as it
 The Non-Western World catches mice”. Pragmatism rather than ideolo-
 The Poor World gy became the order of the day.
 The South To compound these geo‐political complications,
 The Third World the key unifying characteristic of the Third
 The Undeveloped World World – that it was the poor world – was also
losing its explanatory and empirical bite. No-
In 2007 I wrote a book with the title An every- where did this have more traction than among
day geography of the global South the “tiger” economies of East Asia. The East
(Routledge). I could have used any of the Asian “ miracle”, the term used to describe the
terms listed above, yet plumped for the Global extraordinary economic expansion of Asia,
South. Why? began with the Newly Industrialising Countries
(NICs) of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea
To answer this question it is necessary to take
and Taiwan. In fairly short order these early
a short terminological journey. If I had written
developers were then joined by Indonesia,
the book in the 1970s or 1980s I might well
Malaysia and Thailand, and they in turn by
have titled it An everyday geography of the
the late developers, namely Vietnam and –
Third World. Strictly speaking, at least as it was
most notably – China. Many people in these
initially formulated, the Third World was the
countries began to push against the idea that
non-aligned World, distinct from the First (capi-
they were part of a Third World, objecting to
tialist) and Second (socialist/communist)
its pejorative undertones. They were also, self-
Worlds. But pretty quickly the Third World be-
evidently, becoming more rich than poor.
came a quick-and-easy referent for the poor
world. There are many great books with “Third This last point, of course, also made some of
World” in the title; most were published before the alternative terms that scholars and com-
1990, and in large part they used “Third mentators had begun to use equally problem-
World” to denote the Poor World. Looking atic: “ Poor World”, “ Less-developed World”
across my shelves as I write this piece, for and “ Undeveloped World”. These terms failed
example, I can see the third edition of Michael to reflect the degree to which this grouping of
Todaro’s highly influential Economic Develop- countries was becoming increasingly differen-
ment in the Third World (1985), P.T. Bauer’s tiated and therefore less and less amenable
polemic Equality, the Third World and Eco- to easy categorization.
nomic Delusion (1981) and, at the more popu- There are sometimes quite nuanced distinc-
list end of the spectrum, the second edition of tions that betray where people stand on key
Paul Harrison’s widely read The Third World issues. Take, for example, the decision wheth-
Tomorrow (1983). er to refer to the Less-developed World, Un-
The 1980s, however, not only saw the frag- developed World, or Poor World. On the face
mentation of the First/Second World dualism of it these seem to be interchangeable. “Un-
with the collapse of the former Soviet Union at developed World”, however, pays heed to the
the end of the decade, but also – and perhaps belief that the “Poor World” is poor because it
more importantly – the embracing of market has been under-developed by the “Rich (or
reforms by most command economies (China First) World”, through processes of globaliza-
in 1978, Vietnam and Laos in 1986, and the tion and capitalist expansion. This links the

Concepts of the Global South – Voices from around the world

Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne, Germany – http://gssc.uni-koeln.de/node/452
terminology to dependency theory. “ Less- UN-recognized states. But this term hasn’t
developed World” and “ Poor World” are less caught on, I sense because it is obtuse and its
ideologically loaded, and can be seen as meaning is less than clear. Another option that
largely descriptive statements turned into col- has found favor in some quarters is the
lective terms (critics, however, would say that “Non‐Western World”, which separates Europe
this narrowness, in itself, betrays the ideology and North America (the West), from the rest.
of the user by its tacit assumption that there is This has fallen foul, I think, of its own geo-
no history or politics to the patterns of devel- cultural inclinations.
opment that we see arrayed around the And so we return to the question: why “the
globe). global South” rather than just “the South”? The
In 1983 the Brandt report was published by a reasoning here, as I explained in my 2007
commission chaired by the former German book, is that the addition of the word “global”
Chancellor Willy Brandt. This report identified makes it clear that this is not a strict geo-
a North/South line (or Brandt line), and thus graphical categorization of the world but one
popularized another term, namely “The based on economic inequalities which happen
South”. The South is a geographical conven- to have some cartographic coherence. It also
ience based on the fact that most of the Poor emphasizes that both North and South are,
World lies south of latitude 30° North. There together, drawn into global processes rather
were exceptions, most notably Australia and than existing as separate slices of the world.
New Zealand, but nonetheless it worked for Conditions in the Global South are only un-
many people: scholars, politicians and the derstandable when they are set against those
media. Critics, however, objected to the fact in the Global North; global processes and
that once again it hid from view the political structures make all countries part of an in-
and economic processes and historical inher- creasingly integrated world.
itances that rendered these southern countries All that said, I doubt very much that the story
poor in the first place. It portrayed their pov- ends here. The Global South, too, will in time
erty as a geographical accident (although the get tripped up by events.
New Environmental Determinists would argue
otherwise). Within a decade, however, even
the term the South was showing evidence of Jonathan Rigg is the author of An Everyday Geogra-
losing its definitional appeal because of the phy of the Global South
differentiation processes noted above.
By the 1990s, then, scholars were in a bit of a
pickle. We need from time to time to refer to the
Third/Poor World, or some such thing, to avoid
long-winded inclusions and exclusions. And yet
this world was becoming harder and harder to
pigeonhole as the political and economic cer-
tainties of the past were fraying. However, It
is also one of those cases of “we know it when
we see it”, and it can be become rather trying
when people point out “Ah yes, but what about
Singapore …”, or “but Australia is also in the
South”. There were a few alternative attempts
to arrive at terms that downplay the
poor/undeveloped character of this region of
the globe. Some scholars took to referring to
the “Majority World” on the basis that the Cover of the 1980 edition of:
South supports some 80 per cent of the North-South: A programme for sur-
vival. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.
globe’s population and a large proportion of

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THE GLOBAL SOUTH: WHAT DOES IT
MEAN TO KENYA?
by Felix Lamech Mogambi Ming’ate (Department of However, with the current changing world land-
Environmental Studies and Community Develop- scape, in which various institutions, both of
ment, Kenyatta University, Kenya) higher learning and of development, have start-
ed to vigorously use the term Global South to
The nations of Africa, Central and Latin Ameri- enhance their cooperation endeavors it is very
ca, and most of Asia are collectively known as likely that this term will start to emerge in Kenya
the Global South. These nations are also re- in the near future. For instance, most universi-
ferred to collectively as the poor world, the less- ties are currently establishing centers for Global
developed world, the non-Western world, and South Studies in the Global North countries,
the developing countries. In fact, the Global and these centers have started to attract atten-
South is the latest term used to describe the tion from the Global South countries. Most of
non-Western or developing countries. The term these centers try to capture issues related to
is normally used to mean countries that are social, economic and political development in
faced with social, political and economic chal- the Global South, and in my opinion I see that
lenges – for instance poverty, environmental through these centers new international struc-
degradation, human and civil rights abuses, tures and institutions are going to emerge that
ethnic and regional conflicts, mass displace- will create linkages between the Global North
ments of refugees, hunger, and disease. and Global South. Most likely the Global North
The terms Global North and Global South clear- have seen the need to change the terms they
ly divide the world into two halves geographical- use – such as “the poor world”, “the less-
ly. Kenya, a country through which the equator developed world”, “the non-Western world”, and
passes, could be considered to be part of both “the developing countries” – which they have
the Global North and the Global South, geo- used for several decades, so as to renew their
graphically speaking. Despite this divide, how- relationship with the countries collectively
ever, the term Global South is not commonly termed the Global South economies.
known in Kenya, most likely because the donor
agencies and development partners refer to
Felix Lamech Mogambi Ming’ate is working on Local
Kenya as a “developing country”. The term
rules and enforcement in the Arabuko-Sokoke forest
Third World is not common either, as most peo-
reserve co-management arrangement in Kenya at
ple would see it as demeaning.
Kenyatta University.

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Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne, Germany – http://gssc.uni-koeln.de/node/452
ON THE GLOBAL SOUTH
by Rodolfo Magallanes (Director of the Institute of Independently of the aim to define or classify,
Political Studies, Universidad Central, Caracas, the Global South concept confronts different
Venezuela) groups of countries more than it unifies them
into a comprehensive one (“underdeveloped”,
As underdeveloped countries become more “developing”, or “dependent” are better terms to
visible, they are frequently referred to under the define these types of countries). In connection
collective label the “Global South”. Despite the with its static character, to which I have already
advantages this designation offers as a synthe- referred, the concept of the Global South does
sizing term, I consider it ambiguous because it not sufficiently take into account the types of
uses a simple geographical criteria to describe relations these different countries have main-
a complex social situation which distinguishes tained throughout their long histories (Colonial-
poor countries from the wealthiest. The implied ism and Neocolonialism).
North-South dichotomy has never been as geo- Nevertheless “developed” and “underdevel-
graphically fixed as the labels imply. For exam- oped” countries imply one another’s existence.
ple, Australia and New Zealand have always They are involved in unequal economic and
been regarded as southern outliers of the North. politic relations and potentially form part of the
Some of the richest countries in the world (with uneven balance of world power, but they are
a high GDP per capita) are classified as part of still part of a shared dialectic reality. Besides,
the Global South. Yet the model still rests ex- this static definition does not consider enough
clusively on a “latidunal” division (see the global character by itself; this means that it
www.geocurrents.info/economic- does not take into account the increasing fre-
geography/there-is-no-third-world-there-is-no- quency of the contacts or relations among all
global-south). countries that together make up the present
In addition, the term Global South is ahistoric globalized world. As policy issues become
and decontextualized. It omits a critical core of global, global or more integrative approaches at
dynamic variables that characterize different international level become necessary in order to
kinds of countries, especially historical, eco- solve them.
nomic, social, cultural, and political variables,
among others. It is these factors that might ex-
plain the reality of these countries as a product Rodolfo Magallanes is author of the book Globaliza-
of a societal process, and the type and origin of ción de la Educación Superior. Impacto en países
the differences among them. desarrollados y subdesarrollados, Caracas: UCV,
2012

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GLOBAL SOUTH Nevertheless, the concept of the Global South
shares some of the limitations of the concept of
by Olaf Kaltmeier (Professor of Ibero-American His-
the Third World. It evokes imaginations of a
tory, Bielefeld University, Germany)
geographical North-South divide, which does
The term Global South has been of great bene- not correspond to the complex entanglements
fit in re-introducing studies on Africa, Asia, and and uneven developments in the real world.
Latin America into the academic field. The nec- Areas incorporated under the label Global
essary deconstruction of development in post- South can also be found in the geographical
development approaches in the 1990s has con- North. Ethnic ghettos and barrios in US Ameri-
tributed to the – probably unintended – crisis of can cities are one example; the “Latinoization”
Development Studies and Third-World Area of the US is another. And the gated communi-
Study Centers. The end of the “Third World” ties of the cosmopolitan elite in Rio de Janeiro,
has been proclaimed, which has led to a signifi- Mexico City, or Santiago de Chile have more in
cant reduction of studies on these areas. After common with their counterparts in Miami, L.A.
the end of the bipolar world, and in the context or Chicago than with the surrounding barrios,
of an accelerated globalization process, Area marginales and favelas.
Studies – especially on the so called Third-
World countries – have been displaced by Olaf Kaltmeier is Managing Director of the Center for
Global Studies. With a Global South-oriented InterAmerican Studies (CIAS) at Bielefeld University,
approach, areas formerly peripheral to global http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/%28de%29/cias/
studies are placed at the center of attention
once more.

Concepts of the Global South – Voices from around the world

Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne, Germany – http://gssc.uni-koeln.de/node/452
WHAT I THOUGHT OF THE TERM “Periphery” (if talking among students) or “Third
GLOBAL SOUTH … BEFORE I LEARNED World” (when older folks – say, unionists – were
HOW THE MAINSTREAM USES IT around). And we used it a lot (debating about
by Tobias Schwarz (Global South Studies Center,
revolutionary movements, as you might guess).
University of Cologne)
In my opinion, the three expressions Global
South, Periphery, and Trikont do have substan-
Before I started working at the Global South tially different connotations (Periphery relies
Studies Center I never thought much about the heavily on dependency theory; Trikont is about
term Global South. Since that time, I have oppressors and oppressed; Global South con-
gradually come to realize that the term is riddled notes less of both), but are rather synonymous
with contradictions, at least when used in the to the extent that they denote a complex global
specific context that interests me most – migra- configuration with a long history. And they do of
tion studies. course suffer from the same shortfall, as they
In my naïve opinion, it seemed self-evident to lump together very diverse economic and politi-
me to use the most neutral term available to cal positions and countless ways of life into one
denominate the relationship between the domi- overarching category. But this is part and parcel
nant and the subaltern regions of the world. of all such catch-all terms, and not using them
Global South, I believed, was shorthand for a would leave us ill-equipped to have discussions
complex, historically evolved configuration of about anything beyond the basic assessments
global power relations. By talking about the of macro structures that most social scientists
Global South (and by implication, the North, or can agree on.
the other way around), one did not constantly At least, that’s what I thought before I came to
have to stress that we currently experience a the GSSC. Now I realize that the mainstream
world order that grew out of European colonial use of my beloved (critical, post-colonial, and,
domination over most of the world between, yes, almost anti-imperialist) term is a mere win-
roughly, 1880 and 1914, and resulted in today’s dow dressing, disguising that in fact it substi-
unequal distribution of economic and political tutes “developing countries”. Under “main-
power on a global scale. Likewise, it was obvi- stream use” I include official documents of the
ous to me that this is not strictly a geographical United Nations.
expression (as, I would guess, most would As I’m working on migration control in the
nowadays agree). Western world, I draw on UN data and look at
The term seems neutral in the sense that it their publications from time to time. The Migra-
does not judge the whole world by the Northern tion Section, within the Population Division of
paradigm of development, as did the (previous) the Department of Economic and Social Affairs,
term “developing countries”. At the same time it maintains the United Nations Global Migration
is inherently relational, as to talk about the Database, which contains an abundant set of
South becomes meaningless without its con- statistics on international migration. With its
ceptual counterpart. It that sense, I always saw huge dataset and the wide reach of its publica-
very little difference between the North-South tions, the Population Division has a significant
and the Core-Periphery relationships (as long visibility, and influences the perception of global
as those you talked to were familiar with world- migration flows far beyond the direct context of
systems theory). Another term I consider largely the UN, and, If I may be forgiven for quoting
synonymous is Trikont (meaning, of course, Spider-Man, “With great power comes great
Africa, Asia, and Latin America). It was coined responsibility”.
after the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Ha- In its reports and other publications, the Popula-
vana, and denotes those regions of the world tion Division structures the information by major
affected in a similar manner through their areas, regions and countries of the world. Let’s
shared history (and present-day situation) of take a look at two recent reports (Population
(post)colonial domination. Trikont was the term Facts, No. 2013/3 Rev.1, April 2014, cited as
in vogue when I started to become politicized in Facts 2014); International Migration Report
Germany in the early 1990s, and my anti- 2013, ST/ESA/SER.A/346, December 2013,
imperialist friends used it interchangeably with cited as Report 2013). Both frequently draw on

Concepts of the Global South – Voices from around the world

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the distinction between the global “North” and into the same category “developed” countries
“South” – respectively the “developed” and “de- like Romania and Albania (HDI rank of 56 and
veloping” regions of the world, stating, for in- 70) – because they are in Europe – and put
stance: “Since 1990, South-North migration has Singapore (HDI of 9), South Korea (15) and
been the main driver of global migration trends, Israel (19) into the same category “developing”
but South-South migration remains the largest along with Afghanistan and Haiti. I simply don’t
category” (Facts 2014, 1). While it is immediate- understand why these publications are not even
ly convincing that “countries and areas are using empirically valid classifications (i.e. the
grouped geographically into six major areas” Human Development Index that is promoted by
(Report 2013, vii) – hence it is easier to find the UN, in combination with the latest World
them on a map – it is less clear why the total of Bank data). Anyone who knows how to use an
all countries is divided into “developed” and Excel spreadsheet could sort the data accord-
“developing” regions (ibid.), also named “North” ingly with a few mouse clicks.
and “South” in the same documents. Now, leaving aside the precise content of the
This juxtaposition is made very prominent and categories used, my main issue is with the rea-
runs through all of the presentations of the data sons for their application to data about global
in these publications (e.g. the whole first page migration. When I thought longer about it, the
of Report 2013). Yet nowhere do the publica- juxtaposition of developed/North and develop-
tions comment upon the reasons for this distinc- ing/South even seemed counterintuitive to me,
tion. The explanatory notes prominently and as the regions represented by the two catego-
abundantly explain which country is put into ries (North and South) are of such different size
which (sub)category, but do not explain why and quality that any comparison is logically un-
these categories are created and used at all. feasible. To give an example, the fact that
Therefore the question arises as to why these “South-South migration is as common as South-
publications are primarily structured according North migration” (Facts 2014), given in absolute
to a North-South-divide. numbers, is next to meaningless, because it is
At first glance, the reason seems to be com- not related to the (very unequal) size of the
pletely arbitrary. One possible interpretation is population in the respective areas.
that the terms North/South are simply reproduc- I cannot help but wonder what the practical rel-
ing the older classifications devel- evance of this juxtaposition is for analyzing mi-
oped/developing, without evaluating their prac- gration on a global scale, because at first
tical relevance for the issue at hand. But this is glance it seems to be arbitrary to match migra-
not even done by reference to empirical param- tion flows to the broad categories of ‘devel-
eters (like the rightly criticized GDP or HDI), and oped/developing’ countries. Unfortunately, the
ends up containing obvious contradictions. The Population Division are silent about their under-
classification that defines “all countries of Eu- lying assumptions, and did not answer a query I
rope, Northern America, Australia/New Zealand sent in August 2014.
and Japan” as “developed”, and the rest as “de- What I learned from my study of the UN publi-
veloping” regions classifies three out of the ten cations was that outside my cozy ivory tower,
economically most powerful states as “develop- not everybody agrees with me on what North
ing countries” (China, rank 3; Brazil, rank 7; and South mean. In the real world, it seems,
India, rank 10 by GNI, see http://databank.- one can get away with classifying whatever one
worldbank.org/data/download/GNI.pdf). Also, in wants as “developing”, and package it appeal-
this classification, Portugal would be classified ingly with the hip label Global South. This
as “developed”, and the United Arab Emirates means that I can either surrender, and not use
as “developing”. “Yet the UAE bests Portugal on this term anymore, or continue to use it while
the Human Development Index, and far ex- remaining aware that it must be accompanied
ceeds it in regard to per capita GDP” by a string of explanations. Neither alternative is
(www.geocurrents.info/economic- appealing to me.
geography/the-developing-world-and-the-de-
developing-world#ixzz3BU48CPuM). At the Tobias Schwarz is Research Fellow at the Global
same time, the broad categories lump together South Studies Center, University of Cologne, re-
search area Citizenship and Migration

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GLOBAL SOUTH ism against the world of socialism. It called for
cooperation between advanced capitalist and
by Arif Dirlik (Independent scholar, Eugene, OR,
socialist states in the development of the South.
USA)
The South in this formulation was a stand-in for
In hindsight, the appearance of the term Global the “Third World”, a term that had been coined
South was a significant marker of the transition three decades earlier by the French scholar
in global political economy and geopolitics that Alfred Sauvy to distinguish the formerly colo-
has led to the contemporary situation. The term nized and presently neo-colonized societies of
– or at least the “South” component of it – was Asia, Africa and Latin America from the mod-
popularized by the Brandt Commission reports ernized “first” world of capitalism and the mod-
published in 1980 and 1983, both of which bore ernizing “second” world of socialism. By the
“North-South” in their titles.3 Over the following 1960s, “Third World” would become a central
decades, “global” was attached to the “South” to political slogan for the radical left. The term in
form the contemporary compound term. The its origins had suggested that societies of the
predicate is indicative of the discourse of global- Third World, embarking on the long path to mo-
ization that was on the emergence in the 1990s. dernity, had one of two paths to follow, the capi-
The United Nations Development Program initi- talist or the socialist. Even as socialist and capi-
ative of 2003, “Forging a Global South”, under- talist (formerly colonialist) states vied for influ-
lined the significance of the term and the new ence in the “Third World”, there was a lingering
conceptualization of global relations it repre- assumption in mainstream Euro/American
sented.4 scholarship, ultimately to be vindicated, that the
The Brandt Commission was established in socialist path itself was something of a tempo-
1977 by then head of the World Bank, Robert rary deviation. Modernization discourse as-
McNamara of Vietnam War fame, who had re- signed to capitalism the ultimate teleological
invented himself – from the official in charge of task of bringing history to an end.5 Neverthe-
the military conduct of the war in Vietnam to less, given the close association of capitalism
compassionate patron of the Third World as with imperialism, the socialist example exerted
head of the World Bank (note the parallel to significant influence on the national liberation
Paul Wolfowitz, who made a similar transition movements that the Third World idea spawned.
three decades later from the manager of anoth- The developmental failure of “Third World” al-
er disastrous war – in Iraq – to the World Bank). ternatives was evident by the 1970s. The term
Chaired by former Berlin mayor and German Global South, seemingly politically neutral, pro-
Chancellor Willy Brandt, a Social Democrat with posed to incorporate these societies in the de-
Green affinities, the commission perceived an velopmental project of capitalism, already
impending economic and environmental global named “globalization” in one of the early uses of
crisis on the horizon, and saw the development that term, which would not acquire popularity
of the South as one crucial way to avert catas- until the 1990s.6
trophe for humankind. The changing usages of the term Global South
The Brandt reports anticipated the end of the and the alternative agendas different uses imply
Cold War by asserting the primacy of North- offer clues to both continuities and discontinui-
South economic disparities over the East-West ties over the last half century in the global posi-
political divide that had set the world of capital- tioning of the “South”, as well as in the ideologi-
cal and political role assigned to it in global ge-
opolitics. The use of the term is explained by
3
Independent Commission on International Development
Issues (The Brandt Commission, after its Chair), North-
5
South: A Programme for Survival (Cambridge, MA: MIT The classic discussion of the various implications of the
Press, 1980), and, Common Crisis North-South: Third World idea is to be found in, Carl Pletsch’s “The
Cooperation for World Recovery (Cambridge, MA: MIT Three Worlds, or the Division of Social Scientific Labor,
Press, 1983). circa 1950-1975,” Comparative Studies in Society and
4
United Nations Development Programme, “Forging a History 23 (October 1981): 565-590. More recent
Global South,” United Nations Day for South-South discussions may be found in the special issue of Third
Cooperation, 19 December 2004. The Global South World Quarterly, “After the Third World?” (ed. by Mark T.
program reconceptualized and reorganized the UN Berger), 25.1 (2004).
6
Conference on Technical Cooperation that went back to A Programme for Survival called for “a globalization of
1948 in its origins. policies”, p. 13.

Concepts of the Global South – Voices from around the world

Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne, Germany – http://gssc.uni-koeln.de/node/452
some geographically: that with two exceptions – economic development no longer means the
Australia and New Zealand – the developed development of the whole nation, but rather
countries of the world lie to the North of the de- only of those sectors of the economy and popu-
veloping, undeveloped or least-developed ones. lation that can participate successfully in the
While the term was no doubt not intended by its global economy, usually in urban networks that
coiners to be taken in a literal physical geo- are components of a global network society.
graphical sense, it nevertheless seems worth The uneven development of the Global South
pointing out that, like all geographical designa- since the term was coined has rendered the
tions for ideological and political spaces and geography of the term even more complicated –
projects (globalization comes to mind readily), to the point where it may have become an ob-
its geography is much more complicated than stacle to understanding the contemporary glob-
the term suggests, and is subject to change al situation. Some of the societies covered by
over time, so that the “South” of the contempo- the term – such as the People’s Republic of
rary world may be significantly different in its China, India, Brazil, Turkey – have benefited
composition and territorial spread than the from globalization to become more assertive in
“South” of the early 1970s, or the colonial global relations – with the PRC aspiring to world
“South” of the immediate post-World War peri- leadership and hegemony. These days South-
od. The Inuit are practically at the North Pole, South relations are quite likely to be relations of
while some formerly colonial or neocolonial ur- exploitation reminiscent of colonialism. Internal-
ban centers of the South are a match, in activity ly, too, development under the regime of ne-
and appearance, for metropolitan cities at the oliberal globalization has created inequalities
headquarters of Capital. within individual nations. The same tendencies
With all the good intentions of the formulators toward economic (and, therefore, political) oli-
that are evident in the Reports, the course de- garchy in the developed capitalist world are
velopment took in the Global South would be visible also in the “Global South”. Major urban
dictated by changes in its global context. The centers in developing societies increasingly
publication of the first Brandt Commission re- serve as nodes in the global networks of capital,
port in 1981 coincided with the beginnings of distanced from their hinterlands by the concen-
the so-called Reagan/Thatcher revolution, the tration of wealth and power. Regional inequali-
appearance of East/Southeast Asian capital- ties are accompanied by sharpening class dif-
isms as competitors of the “North”, and the re- ferences in societies across the globe as wealth
ceding of socialism, beginning with the People’s is accumulated in ever fewer sectors of society.
Republic of China in the late 1970s. The Brandt The result is economic, political and cultural
Commission’s global neo-Keynesianism was division and fragmentation, a far cry from the
stillborn in its rapid replacement in the course of vision of equality between and within nations,
the 1980s by Neoliberal economic policies en- with economies serving national development
forced by the US-dominated World Bank and and integration, that inspired societies of the
the International Monetary Fund. The transfor- Global South in the aftermath of decolonization
mation found expression in the late 1980s in the after World War II, when “Third World” suggest-
so-called Washington Consensus, a term that ed the possibility of viable alternatives both to
was coined with reference to US policies in Lat- capitalism and “actually existing socialism”. The
in America, but quickly came to be associated term may still serve to delineate the developed
with the shift from governmental intervention in from the developing world, but the line dividing
the economy to marketization that characterized the North from the South presently runs right
the discourse of globalization, which itself ac- through the north, the south, and across both.
quired prominence in the 1990s. The South had
no choice but to seek development in the global
Arif Dirlik is the author of Global South: Predicament
capitalist economy. This also signified an im-
and Promise. In: The Global South 1 (1), S. 12–23.
portant shift in the content of development –
away from an earlier emphasis on development
as national development (or the development of
the whole nation). It is quite evident in hindsight
that under contemporary conditions national

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DISCUSSION ON THE GLOBAL SOUTH
by Alvaro Mendez (co-founder London School of At the heart of this ongoing global transfor-
Economics and Political Science’s Global South mation is a phenomenon known as “South-
Unit) South cooperation”. Once consigned to the
margins, South-South cooperation is coming to
The Global South has embarked on an unprec- occupy an important place in the changing
edented upward trajectory. Already, the output theory and discourse of development. Originally
of the developing world’s three leading econo- bound up in the response of the developing
mies (Brazil, China and India) is close to equal- countries to the destabilising politics of the
ing the combined output of the longstanding Cold War, South-South cooperation gave voice
industrial powers of the North – Canada, to aspirations for a development path untainted
France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom by ideological conflict, and to an acknowledge-
and the United States. ment that relations between developing coun-
Even smaller countries like Bangladesh, Chile, tries should be a crucial means of achieving
Ghana, Mauritius, Rwanda and Tunisia are ex- these aspirations.
periencing rapid economic development. Ac-
cording to the 2013 UNDP Human Develop- Against the backdrop of continuing growth in
ment Report, it is estimated that 80% of the Southern economies – in the teeth of the con-
world's middle-class population will be living in current economic travails afflicting the donor
developing countries by 2030. countries of the North – South-South coopera-
This surge of the emerging economies is now in tion has finally come to the fore. It has been
process of reconfiguring the political and eco- formally recognized by the OECD-DAC in late
nomic geometry of the international system. 2011, at the Busan High Level Summit on Aid
New modalities of engagement in international Effectiveness, as a dynamic form of engage-
development, from the state-led capitalism of ment contributing to a rapid transformation of
Asian economies to the world-bestriding opera- the developing world. Its patterns are far from
tions of global market-savvy Southern multina- homogenous, and each emerging economy –
tionals, are replacing the once-dominant North- be it a potentially great-power BRIC country
South aid and investment paradigm. [Brazil, Russia, India and China] or a smaller
The dynamic global actors driving this process CIVETS country [Colombia, Indonesia, Vi-
are pressing for a greater voice in the interna- etnam, Egypt, Turkey, and South Africa] –
tional system, and introducing norms and prac- functions in a variety of ways.
tices that are reshaping – or that aim to reshape
– both the formal and the informal institutions Alvaro Mendez is a senior lecturer in international
of global governance. The world is being flipped relations at Regent’s University London. More on the
on its axis – a redress that promises huge op- Global South Unit can be found here:
portunities for potential development, whilst also http://www.lse.ac.uk/internationalRelations/centresan
posing major challenges, and indeed dangers. dunits/globalsouth/GShome.aspx
With material progress comes huge responsi-
bility for effective human and social develop-
ment.

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NOT HAVING NEUTRAL TERMS DOES MB: Rather than a misunderstanding, this is a
NOT EQUAL HAVING NO TERMS AT ALL conflation of two distinct, yet related geopolitical
strategies of naming and mapping, operating at
Interview with Manuela Boatcă (Professor of the
different moments in time. Both the conceptual
sociology of global inequalities, Institute for Latin
American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Germa-
difference between the “North-South” and the
“West-Rest” divide and the analytical uses we
ny)
make of these terms become clear once we
Tobias Schwarz: In your work you have fre- historicize and contextualize the moments of
quently commented on the term “The West”, their emergence and the time span to which
criticizing – very correctly, I think – the “ideal- they most likely apply.
ized distinction between Western (modern) cul-
tures and non-Western (pre- or non-modern) TS: What do you think is the main advantage of
cultures” (M. Boatcă, Grenzsetzende Macht. using “the North” (and “South”) instead of talk-
Berl. J. f. Soz. 20 (1) 2010, p. 23–44). On the ing about “the West”? Is it primarily that
other hand, you seem to take the “global North- “North/South” connotes significantly less of a
South divide” for granted. To my understanding, dichotomy between “modern/traditional” and
there is a commonly shared understanding of “civilized/primitive” than did “the West”?
“The West” that does not significantly differ from
MB: The “West vs. Rest” is by far the older di-
the “Global North”.
vide, going back to the 15th century expansion
Manuela Boatcă: I disagree. There are many of Europe into the Americas and operating
different understandings of “The West” depend- mainly on cultural criteria. By contrast, the
ing on the time period on which we focus when “North-South” divide comes into play at the end
referring to it and the criteria used as a basis for of World War II and uses primarily socioeco-
defining “Westernness”. In their 1997 book “The nomic criteria. The “North-South” distinction
Myth of Continents. A Critique of Metageogra- emerged in close connection to another classifi-
phy”, Martin W. Lewis and Kären E. Wigen dis- catory scheme: The First, the Second and the
tinguish no less than seven versions of the Third Worlds. With the virtual disappearance of
West, from a standard minimal West limited to the socioeconomic and political reality of the
Britain, France, the Low Countries, and Switzer- Second World, as well as with the proclaimed
land, through the historical West of medieval “end of history” of opposing political conflicts
Christendom around the mid 13th century after 1990, the North-South dichotomy resur-
(where the criterion of belonging is religion) or faced even more forcefully – all the more so, as
the Cold War Atlantic alliance formed by Europe it was precisely the socioeconomic disparities it
and its settler colonies in the twentieth century,
and up to the greater "cultural West", which
groups the criteria of language, religion, and
"high culture" together into a version of the
West that also includes Latin America and
South Africa (see maps below). By contrast,
there are not nearly as many different under-
standings of “Global North”, which points to its
much more recent history.

TS: My first question referred to the current use

of the terms North and West, and to me it
seems that both are taken as basically meaning
the same in everyday speech. Did I understand
correctly: You argue this is a misunderstanding
and that instead there is an important concep-
tual difference between the “North-South” and Versions of the “West” (in Lewis & Wigen 1997, The
the “West-Rest” divide? myth of continents. A critique of metageography. Berke-
ley: University of California Press, p. 50)

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Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne, Germany – http://gssc.uni-koeln.de/node/452
expressed that were and have been growing the most important common denominators
worldwide since the 1990s. In other words, shared by many countries and regions of the
whereas at the basis of the “West vs. Rest” di- world today. Economically, and despite the
vide lies the “civilized vs. barbarian” binary op- much-hailed (but overrated) examples of suc-
position, “North-South” is one that distinguishes cessful growth as in the BRICS, yesterday's
rich vs. poor (regions and countries, rather than colonies have tended to become today's pe-
individuals). So this is less about advantages ripheries. This is not to say that there is a sim-
and disadvantages and more about the fact that ple line linking Europe's colonial expansion to
the terms refer to different, though partly over- the colonized countries' economic, political or
lapping disparities. cultural condition today. But situations of mili-
tary, economic, political, and cultural domination
can and have been enforced in the absence of
TS: Do you think there is a sufficiently precise
colonial administrations, and they have histori-
understanding of “Global South/North”, which
cally tended to outlive formal colonial rule. This
can be used in a meaningful way? (And is this
is what Aníbal Quijano has termed “coloniality”
widely shared?) Could you give a brief definition
(A. Quijano, Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism,
of the way you use it?
and Latin America, Nepantla: Views from South
MB: Again, a historically contextualized under- 1 (3) 2000) – a set of political, economic, and
standing of “Global South/North” is quite pre- sociocultural hierarchies between colonizers
cise, but it is not widely shared, because there and colonized emerged with the conquest of the
is an insufficient engagement with history, i.e., Americas in the sixteenth century that is distinct
with the longue durée of the current world- from pre-modern forms of colonial rule in that it
system, in many of today's social scientific translates administrative hierarchies into a ra-
works. cial/ethnic division of labor; and it is more en-
compassing than modern European colonialism
TS: You also refer to “The South” as a meta- alone, in that it transfers both the racial/ethnic
phor for the “global periphery”. I agree that we hierarchies and the international division of la-
need terms that point to very general, very bor produced during the time of direct or indirect
broad global power relations, somehow as colonial rule into post-independence times. The
shorthand for the diversity of current relation- problem therefore is not having excessively
ships and the long history of colonization and of general concepts, since concepts can always
Western dominance. But, at the same time I be refined and debated, but rather relinquishing
feel uneasy with the generalizing tendency of the possibility of assessing historical trends and
terms like the “Global South”, “global periphery” perceiving broadly shared patterns.
or “Western dominance”. With a container con-
cept like the “the South” we group very different TS: I sympathize with Heriberto Cairos’ attempt
historical experiences and current realities to- to promote the “Decolonization of Area Stud-
gether into one homogenizing category. Do you ies”, published in a volume that you edited in
have good arguments for using such a general- cooperation with E. Gutiérrez Rodríguez and S.
izing category, as “the global periphery” or “the Costa (“Decolonizing European sociology.
global South”? What do you think are the pros Transdisciplinary approaches. Farnham: Ash-
(and cons) of such broad categories? gate, 2010). My reading is that he suggests a
MB: Historical patterns (as well as their ab- rethinking of all geographical labels that we
sence) are in the eye of the beholder. If we come up with when we describe the world sys-
never ask ourselves the question of whether or tem, because they emerged together with (or
not the countries and regions formerly colonized were the results of) concrete geopolitical strate-
by Western Europe retain economic, cultural gies – military, imperial. But his decolonization
and political commonalities that relate to the critique leaves us with no terms at all. Is there a
experience of colonization, as well as a position way out of this dilemma?
in today's global power structures that reflects MB: The problem lies in the fact that the very
that experience, we will not receive an answer gesture of classification (whether of humans,
to such a question. We might thus miss one of the animal realm, or regions) as well as the

Concepts of the Global South – Voices from around the world

Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne, Germany – http://gssc.uni-koeln.de/node/452
emergence of modern European cartography ca” was linked to France's geopolitical project of
were intimately linked to Western Europe's co- promoting latinité in the Americas in the eight-
lonial and imperial expansion. So it is true that eenth century against the growing influence of
there are no “innocent” geographical labels, as the United States does not leave us with no
well as no neutral ones. But not having neutral terms. It leaves us with precise, but unsatisfac-
terms does not equal having no terms at all. As tory terms on the one hand, and with the need
explained before, as long as we historicize and and duty to excavate, discuss and hone more
contextualize our concepts and our geograph- precise ones, on the other.
ical labels, they are (imperfect) analytical tools
that further the debate and locate our
Manuela Boatcă is author of of Global Inequalities
knowledge production within a particular cultural
Beyond Occidentalism, Ashgate Publishing, 2015.
geopolitical space. Understanding that the Eu-
The interview was conducted by Tobias Schwarz.
ropean name for the “West Indies”, which has
now become a general geographical reference,
comes from Columbus’ wrong belief that he had
reached India and that the name “Latin Ameri-

Concepts of the Global South – Voices from around the world

Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne, Germany – http://gssc.uni-koeln.de/node/452
YOUTUBE AND THE NOTION OF THE
GLOBAL SOUTH
by Oliver Tappe and Andrea Wolvers (GSSC) Another video that concerns economics and
global trade features voices from the Global
While the contributions to this issue of Voices South which criticize the EU trading policies and
from around the World feature a variety of per- present alternative options:
spectives on the term Global South, a wide
Trade Justice: Alternative Visions from the
range of (public, academic and other) opinions
Global South
is also available on the internet. A quick search
on the popular video platform YouTube yields
numerous video contributions by different indi- The content of these videos does not necessari-
viduals and institutions that reflect varieties of, ly reflect the opinions of the editorial board. Ra-
and controversies about, the term Global South. ther, we decided to include them to emphasize
We have collected links to some exemplary their variety, specific political agendas, and to
videos to broaden the scope of our discussion. raise the awareness to the impact of the inter-
While some discussions in these videos tie in net on global knowledge transfer. What hap-
with topics raised in the written contributions to pens if a Google search leads to biased results
this issue, others point at diverging perceptions and delivers only specific viewpoints? How can
of the concept, and at stereotypes and clichés we avoid undifferentiated or stereotypic usages
dominant in the public usage of the term Global of concepts such as the Global South? The
South. In the following we would like to intro- confusion of the Global South concept with
duce the video snippets with a little context and Third World or Developing World, for example,
critical reflection. remains a critical issue, in particular for aca-
demic institutions like ours who dedicate them-
selves to identifying and analyzing questions
The London School of Economics (see as well
relevant to the people in the Global South. As
the written contribution by Alvaro Mendez) has
already discussed in our general introduction,
produced a range of videos which feature con-
the project constitutes a platform that aims to
ference presentations and discussions. The
connect different means of knowledge transfer
following contributions focus basically on eco-
and debate; and internet sources – given their
nomic and development issues concerning the
wide distribution, whatever their quality and
Global South and its rise:
heuristic value might be – should be reckoned
The Rise of the Global South with.
The Challenges of the Global South: Defining a
Strategic Agenda toward 2050

The focus of these videos corresponds with two

documentaries from the TV channel Aljazeera
that also deal with economic aspects of the
Global South. They critically discuss the notion
of the Global South and address questions of
economic transformations and global market
integration. Moreover, they also raise the ques-
tion of whether the Global North can actually
learn from the Global South:
Rise of the Global South
Inside Story Americas - The rise of the global
South

Concepts of the Global South – Voices from around the world

Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne, Germany – http://gssc.uni-koeln.de/node/452
FIRST WE HAD THE ‘THIRD WORLD’,
THEN THE ‘DEVELOPING WORLD’ AND
NOW THE ‘GLOBAL SOUTH’. WHICH
TERM DO YOU PREFER?
Video interview with Barbara Potthast (Professor of
Iberian and Latin American History, University of
Cologne, Germany)

Video: http://gssc.uni-koeln.de/node/475

WHAT IS THE GLOBAL SOUTH?

Video interview with Boike Rehbein (Professor of
Society and Transformation in Asia and Africa,
Humboldt-Universität, Berlin, Germany)

Video: http://gssc.uni-koeln.de/node/477

Concepts of the Global South – Voices from around the world

Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne, Germany – http://gssc.uni-koeln.de/node/452
THE NEW SOUTH PROJECT CULTIVATED LANDSCAPES

Photographs by Brooke C. White (Department of Art,

University of Mississippi)

The New South Project investigates the ways

that identity and place are affected by the eco-
nomic and technological changes taking place
within specific regions of the Global South, such
as South Central Asia and the southern United
States. Through the use of photography, digital
mapping technology and short film animations,
The New South Project makes transnational
comparisons that are crucial for understanding
the cultural and geographical impact of globali- Bangalore Shopping District, Cultivated Land-
zation on some of the most disadvantaged re- scapes, Archival Pigment Prints, 12”x12”, 2012.
gions of the world.
Each geographic location in The New South
Project faces many challenges due to globaliza-
tion, including for example environmental deg-
radation, displacement, and political instability.
This project began in Bangalore, India, known
as the “Silicon Valley of India”, where I was a
Senior Fulbright Scholar in the fall of 2012. It
has grown to include the deep south of the
Unites States and focuses on four common
themes that evolved while photographing: Ex-
pansion, Cultivated Spaces, Oil and Water.
Each one of these themes can be traced
throughout regions of India, Mississippi, Louisi-
ana and Alabama, and demonstrate the various
ways that the global economic market impacts Downtown Bangalore, Cultivated Landscapes,
the landscapes of The New South Project. Archival Pigment Prints,12”x12”, 2012.

More work of Brooke White:

http://art.olemiss.edu/2012/07/09/brooke-white/

Levee, Louisiana, Cultivated Landscapes, Ar-

chival Pigment Prints, 12”x12”, 2012

Concepts of the Global South – Voices from around the world

Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne, Germany – http://gssc.uni-koeln.de/node/452
 E-city, India, Expansion, Archival Pigment
Kudzu, Mississippi, Cultivated Landscapes, Prints, 12”x12”, 2012
Archival Pigment Prints, 12”x12”, 2012

EXPANSION

New Mall, India, Expansion, Archival Pigment

Prints, 12”x12”, 2012

OIL
Recycling, India, Expansion, Archival Pigment
Prints, 12”x12”, 2012

Oil Refinery, India, Oil, Archival Pigment Prints,

Flyover, India, Expansion, Archival Pigment 12”x12”, 2012
Prints, 12”x12”, 2012

Concepts of the Global South – Voices from around the world

Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne, Germany – http://gssc.uni-koeln.de/node/452
Oil Jack, Mississippi, Oil, Archival Pigment
Prints, 12”x12”, 2012 Ganesh Aftermath, India, Water, Archival Pig-
ment Prints, 12”x12”, 2012

Oil Rig, Louisiana, Oil, Archival Pigment Prints,

12”x12”, 2012 I See, India, Water, Archival Pigment Prints,
12”x12”, 2012

WATER

Guide Post, Louisiana, Water, Archival Pigment

Danger, India, Water, Archival Pigment Prints, Prints, 12”x12”, 2012
12”x12”, 2012

Concepts of the Global South – Voices from around the world

Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne, Germany – http://gssc.uni-koeln.de/node/452