Lesson 4: Conceptualizing without defining

Global South

a primary import to those engaged in social and political action against global inequality.

‘global south'

the effects of large-scale political projects from imperialism, to cold war-era containment, to neo-liberal globalization make it necessary for scholars and activists  to use

rhetorical anchors

that represents global difference.

global south

reality and a provisional work in progress.

academic analysis

is in a better position to document its articulation rather than set its ontological limits.

political function

allows critics and activists to make distinctions between the beneficiaries of uneven systems of global power.

NEO-LIBERAL GLOBALIZATION

Use the Global South as a banner to rally countries victimized by the violent economic ‘cures’ of institutions like the International Monetary Fund.

COLD WAR-ERA

power politics deployed the term ‘Third World.'

logic of non-alignment

their rejection of ‘colonialisms’ from both the USA and the USSR

Third Worldism or Nonalignment

is no longer tenable in light of the collapse of the Soviet Bloc or the ‘Second World,'

underdevelopment

certain states/peoples and their lack of representation in global political processes.

Levander and Mignolo (2011)

An important question may not be ‘what the global south is’ but ‘for whom and under what conditions the global south becomes relevant.'

Sparke (2007)

‘The Global South is everywhere, but it is also somewhere, and that somewhere, located at the intersection of entangled political geographies of dispossession and repossession …’

Grovogui (2011)

The Global South is not a directional designation or a point due south from a fixed north.

Symbolic Designation - Grovogui

meant to capture the semblance of cohesion that emerged when former colonial entities engaged in political projects of decolonization and moved toward the realization of a postcolonial international order.

former colonial entities

are almost all categorizable as states in an international system of governance.

Third World

developing world'

 Global south

are all ways to represent interstate inequalities.

‘Interstate’

is crucial because we are discussing imbalances of aggregate economic and political power between states.