Unit 3: A World of Regions

Lesson 4: Perceptions on Global South

The term “Global South” may not be popular among the common or ordinary people as we say but
in the circle of international politicians, policy-makers, development program advocates and
academicians, the term is used with much gusto. Economists, historians, researchers have written books
and articles about it in accordance with their fields. But, what does the term really mean? Why is the
knowledge and understanding of the term important to students like you? Well, you have learned from
the past lessons what globalization is and its impact in our lives, why we should start thinking of
ourselves as citizens of the world supposedly to cope with the changes this world propounds. Thus, it
would be best to familiarize ourselves with the latest label given to the players of this so-called
globalization, with emphasis on the global south.
Concepts to Master
1. Global South
2. Global North
3. Dependency theory
4. Modernity
5. Modernization
The Global South (Riggs, 2015)
There are many possible terms associated with the poorer nations in the world. Here are examples
and how the terms were defined from Jonathan Rigg’s “The Global South” (2015).
 The Global South
 The Less-developed World
 The Majority World
 The Non-Western World
 The Poor World
 The South
 The Third World
 The Undeveloped World

 The term “undeveloped world” has its reference on the Dependency theory which believes that
poor nations are poor because they were under-developed by the rich countries who colonized
them.
 The “less-developed” and “poor world” are largely descriptive statements and not ideologically-
laden which some critics find lacking because of the assumption that there is no history or
politics behind the patterns of development.
 The former German chancellor Willy Brandt in his famous 1983 Brandt report popularized the
term “The South” signifying that most of the poor nations lie south of the latitude and the richer
ones lie north.
 It was the French scholar Alfred Sauvy who coined the term “Third World” to distinguish the
formerly colonized countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America from the modernized “first”
world of capitalism and the modernizing “second” world of socialism. (Dirlik,2015)
  Some writers resorted to the term “Non-Western World” which separates North America and
Europe from the rest of the world and some used “The Majority World” which denotes that the
bulk of the world’s population is found in the south.
Global South as Defined by the Experts

“And so we return to the question: why “the global South” rather than just “the South”? The reasoning
here, as I explained in my 2007 book, is that the addition of the word “global” makes it clear that this is
not a strict geographical categorization of the world but one based on economic inequalities which
happen to have some cartographic coherence. It also emphasizes that both North and South are,
together, drawn into global processes rather than existing as separate slices of the world. Conditions in
the Global South are only understandable when they are set against those in the Global North; global
processes and structures make all countries part of an increasingly integrated world.” (Jonathan Rigg,
2015)

“One main shortcoming of these huge, global classifications is their methodological nationalism.
Entire countries, whether they are called Nauru or China – China has 150,000 times as many
inhabitants as Nauru – are considered the relevant entities and are thus presumably comparable. But
GDP, or HDI for that matter, for a country as a whole reveals precious little about how the poorest
20%, or the poorest 80%, or the richest 1%, live. So, obviously, what is needed are more fine-grained
instruments to gauge the quality of life and the economic circumstances of a community, since most of
the world's population live mainly in communities and not in states.” (Thomas Hylland Eriksen,2015)

“Nevertheless, the concept of the Global South shares some of the limitations of the concept of the
Third World. It evokes imaginations of a geographical North-South divide, which does not correspond
to the complex entanglements and uneven developments in the real world. Areas incorporated under
the label Global South can also be found in the geographical North. Ethnic ghettos and barrios in US
American cities are one example; the “Latinization” of the US is another. And the gated communities
of the cosmopolitan elite in Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, or Santiago de Chile have more in common
with their counterparts in Miami, L.A. or Chicago than with the surrounding barrios, marginales and
favelas.” (Olaf Katmier, 2015)

“…the Global South cannot be defined, a priori, in substantive terms. The label bespeaks a relation, not
a thing in or for itself. It is a labile signifier whose content is determined by everyday material and
political processes…there is much South in the North, much North in the
South, and more of both to come in the future…as Euro-America evolves toward the world of its
former colonies.” (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2012)

Literature 1: Jean Comaroff & John Comaroff (2012) Theory from the South: Or, how Euro-
America is Evolving Toward Africa, Anthropological Forum, 22:2, 113-131

Salient Points:

 Western enlightenment thought has, from the first, posited itself as the wellspring of universal
learning, of Science and Philosophy, upper case; concomitantly, it has regarded the non-West—
variously known as the Ancient World, the Orient, the Primitive World, the Third World, the
Underdeveloped World, the Developing World, and now the Global South—primarily as a
 place of parochial wisdom, of antiquarian traditions, of exotic ways and means. Above all, of
unprocessed data. These other worlds, in short, are treated less as sources of refined knowledge
than as reservoirs of raw fact.

 Despite decades of postcolonial critique, the modernist social sciences—not excluding those of
more radical bent—tend still to ‘bypass . . . the third world’, its narratives of modernity and the
work of its ‘local’ intellectuals, in writing the planetary history of the present (Chakrabarty as
cited by Comaroff, 2012)

Modernity vs Modernization

MODERNITY: Modernity refers to an orientation to being-in-the-world, to a concept of the person as

self-conscious subject, to an ideal of humanity as species being, to a vision of history as a progressive,
man-made construction, to an ideology of improvement through the accumulation of knowledge and
technological skill, to the pursuit of justice by means of rational governance; to a relentless impulse
toward innovation whose very iconoclasm breeds a hunger for things eternal (cf. Harvey 1989)

MODERNIZATION: a unilinear trajectory toward a particular vision of the future—capitalist,

socialist, fascist, whatever—to which all humanity should aspire, to which all history ought to lead and
all peoples should evolve, if at different rates.

 Modernity, as observed by writers from the South, was treated by Euro-American social theory
as inseparable from the rise of Enlightenment reason. (Eurocentric)

 But Modernity was more of a North-South collaboration as gleaned from their relationship
since the colonial era. The Metropole and colonies were co-constitutive elements in a rising
world of capitalist order. Colonies were pale proxies, subsidiary holding companies as it were,
for sovereign Western powers.

 African modernities, in sum, have long had their own trajectories, giving moral and material
shape to everyday life. They have yielded diverse-yet-distinctive means with which to make
sense of the world, to fashion beings and identities, to act effectively on contemporary
conditions. Africa, for instance, has generated what are arguably the most dynamic instances
anywhere of iconic modern cultural forms, like popular Christianity, or mass-mediated
musical modes, or cinematic genres (as evident in the mighty Nollywood straight-to-video
movie industry)

While Euro-America and its antipodes (opposites) are caught up in the same all-embracing world-
historical processes, old margins are becoming new frontiers, places where…

 industrial manufacture opens up ever more cost-efficient sites for itself

 those performing outsourced services for the North develop cutting edge info-tech empires of
their own, both legitimate and illicit
 new idioms of work, time, and value take root, thus to alter planetary practices.

Which is why the Global North appears to be ‘evolving’ southward. In many respects, Africa, South
Asia, and Latin America seem to be running ahead of the Euromodern world, harbingers of its history-
in-the-making.
  The North is now experiencing practical workings ever more palpably as labor markets contract
and employment is casualized, as manufacture moves away without warning, as big business
seeks to coerce states to unmake ecolaws, to drop minimum wages, to subsidize its
infrastructure from public funds, and to protect it from loss, liability, and taxation, as center-
right governments cut public spending, public institutions, and public sector jobs; this, often,
over unavailing protests from civil society (financial and cultural crises)

 The so-called ‘New Normal’ of the North is replaying the recent past of the South, ever more in
a major key.

 At the same time, some nation-states in the South, by virtue of having become economic
powerhouses—India, Brazil, South Africa—evince features of the future of Euro-America in
other ways, having opened up frontiers of their own and having begun to colonize the
metropole.
Examples: the seizure of global initiative in the biofuel economy by Brazil, or the reach of the Indian
auto industry into Britain, or the impact of the Hong Kong banking sector on the development of new
species of financial market. Or, in another register, the emergence of South Africa, a major force in the
international mineral economy, as the America of Africa, eager to experiment with constitutional law,
populist politics, and, if hesitantly, post-neoliberal forms of redistribution. Or, in yet another, the rise of
new forms of urbanism, as in Nigeria.

But why Africa or why the South?

 the answer begins with the past, with the fact that most colonies were zones of occupation
geared toward imperial extraction

 post-colonies have remained dependent and debt-strapped, tending still to export their resources
as raw materials and unskilled labor rather than as value-added commodities or competencies;
this even as some of them—like Nigeria, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, and, again, South Africa—
have experienced real growth in their manufacturing industries, in their service sectors, and in
urban consumer spending

 because large sectors of their populations have long worked under conditions designed to
depress wages and disempower potentially dangerous classes because market forces in Africa
have never been fully cushioned by the existence of a liberal democratic state and its forms of
regulation

 because governance there has frequently been based on kleptocratic patronage—all these things
also being, in part, legacies of colonialism and its aftermath—African polities have been
especially hospitable to rapacious enterprise: to asset stripping, to the alienation of the
commons to privateers, to the plunder of personal property, to foreign bribe-giving. In sum, to
optimal profit at minimal cost, with little infrastructural investment.

In conclusion, these realities give an ironic twist to the evolutionary pathways long assumed by
economists and social scientists.
References:
Jean Comaroff & John Comaroff (2012) Theory from the South: Or, how Euro-
America is evolving toward Africa, Anthropological Forum, 22:2, 113-131

Eriksen, T (2015) What’s wrong with the global north and the global south? Concepts of the Global
South- Voices from Around the World, 3-4

Kaltmeier, O (2015) Global south, Concepts of the Global South- Voices from Around the World,
10

Rigg, J (2015) The global south, Concepts of the Global South- Voices from Around the World,
6-7

Link: https://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/6399/1/voices012015_concepts_of_the_global_south.pdf

______________________________________________________________________________

Tutorials
Core Literature:

 Mawdsley, E (2018) The ‘southernization’ of development, Asia Pacific Viewpoint

59(2): 173-185

Mawdsley focused on a new development landscape that has emerged breaking the formerly
accepted North-South partnership of power and knowledge. This trend presents the Northern donors to
be increasingly adopting some of the development practices employed by their Southern partners. In a
way proving the contention, the ‘North’ is moving ‘Southwards.’

_______________________________________________________________________________
Assessment Activity

This may be done by the students individually or by groups. It may also be done in class or may serve
as their assignment (teacher’s prerogative).

Instructions: Draw an editorial cartoon (short coupon bond) describing how the ‘North’ is moving
‘Southwards’ according to the aspects presented by Emma Mawdsley. 30 points

Rubric

1. Required elements: the cartoon includes all required elements (5 pts)

2. Labels: all items of importance on the cartoon are clearly labelled (5)
3. Relevance of the graphics: all graphics are related to the topic and make it easier to understand (10)
4. Orderliness & Attractiveness: the cartoon is organized and attractive in terms of its design, lay out
and neatness (5)
5. Grammar: there are no grammatical/mechanical mistakes on the cartoon (5)