What exactly is the Global South?

A broader concept emerging from the narrow confines of the ‘Third World’ and ‘developing nations’

Good morning! In a recent interview to The Economist, India’s foreign minister S Jaishankar said that as the country holding the G20 presidency this year, one of the first things it did was to ask 125 other nations “if we speak for you, please tell us what we should be saying.” The minister made the remark in the context of India positioning itself as the leader of the Global South, a term for countries that are marginal to the big debates in the world, on technology, climate change, and economic growth. India is not the only one claiming to be the leader of the Global South. Its neighbour and rival China is not only exerting its influence but also taking on the US, the world’s foremost military and economic power. Here is an explainer on how the concept of the Global South evolved over the past five decades. Also, a list of the best reads for the weekend.

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Photo credit: Andrew Stutesman/Unsplash

The unwillingness of many leading countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to stand with NATO over the war in Ukraine has brought to the fore once again the term “Global South.”

“Why does so much of the Global South support Russia?” inquired one recent headline; “Ukraine courts ‘Global South’ in push to challenge Russia,” declared another.

But what is meant by that term, and why has it gained currency in recent years?

The Global South refers to various countries around the world that are sometimes described as “developing,” “less developed” or “underdeveloped.” Many of these countries – although by no means all – are in the Southern Hemisphere, largely in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

In general, they are poorer, have higher levels of income inequality and suffer lower life expectancy and harsher living conditions than countries in the “Global North” — that is, richer nations that are located mostly in North America and Europe, with some additions in Oceania and elsewhere.

Going beyond the ‘Third World’

The term Global South appears to have been first used in 1969 by political activist Carl Oglesby. Writing in the liberal Catholic magazine Commonweal, Oglesby argued that the war in Vietnam was the culmination of a history of northern “dominance over the global south.”

But it was only after the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union – which marked the end of the so-called “Second World” – that the term gained momentum.

Until then, the more common term for developing nations – countries that had yet to industrialize fully – was “Third World.”

That term was coined by Alfred Sauvy in 1952, in an analogy with France’s historical three estates: the nobility, the clergy and the bourgeoisie. The term “First World” referred to the advanced capitalist nations; the “Second World,” to the socialist nations led by the Soviet Union; and the “Third World,” to developing nations, many at the time still under the colonial yoke.

Sociologist Peter Worsley’s 1964 book, “The Third World: A Vital New Force in International Affairs,” further popularized the term. The book also made note of the “Third World” forming the backbone of the Non-Aligned Movement, which had been founded just three years earlier as a riposte to bipolar Cold War alignment.

Though Worsley’s view of this “Third World” was positive, the term became associated with countries plagued by poverty, squalor and instability. “Third World” became a synonym for banana republics ruled by tinpot dictators – a caricature spread by Western media.

The fall of the Soviet Union – and with it the end of the so-called Second World – gave a convenient pretext for the term “Third World” to disappear, too. Usage of the term fell rapidly in the 1990s.

Meanwhile “developed,” “developing” and “underdeveloped” also faced criticism for holding up Western countries as the ideal, while portraying those outside that club as backwards.

Increasingly the term that was being used to replace them was the more neutral-sounding “Global South.”

Geopolitical, not geographical

The term “Global South” is not geographical. In fact, the Global South’s two largest countries – China and India – lie entirely in the Northern Hemisphere.

Rather, its usage denotes a mix of political, geopolitical and economic commonalities between nations.

Countries in the Global South were mostly at the receiving end of imperialism and colonial rule, with African countries as perhaps the most visible example of this. It gives them a very different outlook on what dependency theorists have described as the relationship between the center and periphery in the world political economy – or, to put it in simple terms, the relationship between “the West and the rest.”

Given the imbalanced past relationship between many of the countries of the Global South and the Global North – both during the age of empire and the Cold War – it is little wonder that today many opt not to be aligned with any one great power.

And whereas the terms “Third World” and “underdeveloped” convey images of economic powerlessness, that isn’t true of the “Global South.”

Since the turn of the 21st century, a “shift in wealth,” as the World Bank has referred to it, from the North Atlantic to Asia Pacific has upended much of the conventional wisdom on where the world’s riches are being generated.

By 2030 it is projected that three of the four largest economies will be from the Global South – with the order being China, India, the United States and Indonesia. Already the GDP in terms of purchasing power of the Global South-dominated BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – surpasses that of the Global North’s G7 club. And there are now more billionaires in Beijing than in New York City.

Global South on the march

This economic shift has gone hand in hand with enhanced political visibility. Countries in the Global South are increasingly asserting themselves on the global scene – be it China’s brokering of Iran and Saudi Arabia’s rapprochement or Brazil’s attempt to push a peace plan to end the war in Ukraine.

This shift in economic and political power has led experts in geopolitics like Parag Khanna and Kishore Mahbubani to write about the coming of an “Asian Century.” Others, like political scientist Oliver Stuenkel, have began talking about a “post-Western world.”

One thing is for sure: The Global South is flexing political and economic muscles that the “developing countries” and the “Third World” never had.

Jorge Heine is Interim Director of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, Boston University. He is a Wilson Center Global Fellow and a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for China and Globalization and a former Chilean ambassador to China, to India and to South Africa.

This article is republished from https://theconversation.com under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article at https://theconversation.com/the-global-south-is-on-the-rise-but-what-exactly-is-the-global-south-207959

 

TECHTONIC SHIFT

Faster than the speed of light: That’s how we’d describe the bumper-to-bumper developments in the virtual cage match between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Within just 24 hours of launch, Meta’s Twitter competitor, Threads, amassed a whopping ~60 million users. Is this the end for Twitter? In this week’s episode of TechTonic Shift, hosts Rajneil and Roshni discuss the future of social media and interoperable platforms. New episodes drop every Saturday at 8 am. Available on Spotify, Apple, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

 

ICYMI

Why Barbie matters: One of the year’s most-anticipated releases will be out in theatres less than two weeks from now. Judging by the way the internet has already gone nuts over Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, Mattel could be in for a turnaround. God knows the company needs it. Bloomberg Businessweek details Mattel’s rise and fall through the lens of the world’s most famous doll—the brainchild of co-founder Ruth Handler, who named Barbie and Ken after her children. Once the world’s largest toymaker, Mattel struggled with poor leadership in the aughts, an accounting scandal, product recalls and, worst of all, Barbie’s growing irrelevance. Enter Ynon Kreiz, who took over as CEO-Chairman in 2018. Mattel’s market value has more than doubled since then and could skyrocket further if Kreiz’s ambitious IP strategy turns into gold. Will it?

Desert mystery: Four princesses of Saudi Arabia have vanished without a trace. Sahar, Maha, Hala, and Jawaher were reportedly held captive for years by Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, their father and ruler of the kingdom for 10 years, until his death in 2015. They were said to have been kept for many years somewhere in the palaces in retribution for their mother, Alanoud Al-Fayez, fleeing to London. Their captivity came to light when one of them got hold of a mobile phone in 2014 and got in touch with a Saudi dissident in Washington. They were imprisoned in abysmal conditions, often without food, when King Abdullah was being feted by the rest of the world as a progressive monarch who enacted several women’s rights initiatives. Strangely, no one has heard from the princesses after the king’s death in 2015. Their mother Al-Fayez, who regularly protested before the Saudi embassy in London and tried to keep up pressure through media interviews and Twitter, too, stopped responding to well-wishers. The New Yorker has put together the mystery of the vanished princesses.

No data, no drought: The land is dry, the crop is turning brown, the sun is fierce, and there’s not a drop from the sky. Everyone in the eastern Uttar Pradesh village of Chikani knows they are facing a severe drought. But they cannot get help because there are no tools to measure rain (which isn’t there) and prove the drought is occurring. In 2016, India’s government introduced a new set of criteria to declare a drought and compensate those affected. This investigation in Scroll.in details how cumbersome new definitions, which require elaborate measurements at the block and even panchayat level, have made it impossible to declare a severe drought. The result? Crops fail, people migrate, and families starve. All while the state machinery stands by and watches.

Twin support: Irradiated cockroaches. An “instant chapel” that parachutes into war zones. Liquified meals that can be consumed through straws affixed in helmets. A literal courage pill. Uniforms that change colour and enable wearers to jump over 20-foot walls. These are innovations by the US Army’s DEVCOM Soldier Center, the Willy Wonka-ish research lab tasked with updating or inventing everything, from tactical gear to weaponry. In her delightful firsthand account of the centre, The New Yorker’s Patricia Marx writes about the Army Tactical Brassiere or the ATB, which will become a staple for women in the US Army. What makes it so special? Well, it’s fire-resistant. And that’s just the beginning.

Tangled in the sea: Diving into the deep sea might sound like a great summer holiday. For generations of women in coastal Tamil Nadu, it is a means of survival. This photo essay in The Guardian chronicles the lives of women in Olaikadu, who run their homes by diving for seaweed. The seaweed is used as an ingredient in packaged food, personal care, and medicines, but the divers are paid poorly. The profession is passed on from mother to daughter, but these women are using their savings to send their daughters to colleges so they can build better lives. Interviews with divers demonstrate just how dangerous the job is; for instance, they suffer from allergies and face dangerous marine life as they dive with little to no protective gear. Another photo essay from 2019 by the People’s Archive of Rural India also highlighted how caste oppression and over-farming of seaweed plays a role in trapping generations of women from the Muthuraiyar community in a poorly paying, high-risk job.

Anatomy of a scandal: In The Signal, we’ve covered the TCS saga this year in detail, the latest being a bribes-for-jobs scandal. ICYMI, a whistleblower has alleged that the head of the IT services major’s recruitment division and others had accepted bribes from staffing firms for years. The bribes allegedly run up to at least ₹100 crore ($12.2 million). If you’re wondering how one of the largest IT firms in the world could succumb to such a scandal, Mint, which broke the story, has published a deeply investigated longread into how greed undermined recruitment processes at TCS and how the company missed all the red flags. At the heart of it is a man called ES Chakravarthy, who once got a message from former TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan saying, “You are my nuclear reactor.”