Draft:Global south

The Global South

The Global South is a term used to describe regions historically marginalized by colonialism and global capitalism, including Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The Global South is characterized by economic dependency, extractive exploitation, and structural inequalities, embedded in the world system. The origin of the Global South as a concept lies in the postcolonial and dependency theories, which critique the Eurocentric development model imposed on former colonies. Scholars such as Samir Amin argued that southern economies were structurally subordinated to Northern capital; suppliers of cheap labour and raw material.

Debated terminology

The term Global South, risks homogenizing vastly different societies, economies and political struggles into a singular, often romanticized category. Global South is frequently reduced to a symbolic contrast to Northern overconsumption, rather than being understood in its full complexity.

There is ongoing debate whether the term Global South is a dangerous oversimplification which serves to rearticulate dynamics of domination and othering between colonial and formerly colonised nations or whether such a term necessarily encapsulates prevalent global power asymmetries defined through historic and ongoing colonisation. This is not necessarily a debate that has an answer. Rather, a critical engagement with the term ‘Global South’, and an analysis into what in fact contributes to the ontological ‘making of the south,’ enables an important injection of nuance into a politically charged classification with violent and complex roots.

Making of 'the South'

Authors Nikita Sud and Diego Sánchez-Ancochea argue for an understanding of the so-called ‘making of the south’ through the geographical, relational, structural, and political factors that define it. Firstly, from a geographical perspective, the idea of ‘the south’ is conceived of through colonial plunder in which colonial powers, especially Europe, defined themselves as civilised and superior through the territorial domination of others and systemic cultural erasure. Secondly, from a relational perspective, the making of ‘the south’ is steeped in racism. Colonisation and slavery were reliant on the ontological construction of ‘darker nations’ which created violent hierarchies of personhood that validated exploitation in those regions. A perceived ‘white north’ contrasting with a ‘south of colour’ was structurally entrenched. From this structural perspective, equitable evolution and sovereignty were, and continue to be, violently suppressed by global systems which operate through artificially imposed dependency dynamics in which ‘the south’ is reliant on ‘the north’ for so-called development. Many of these initial dependencies were artificially imposed during the colonial period. Lastly, ‘the south’ can also be defined politically as a space of contestation over power and resources, people in situations of oppression have resisted colonial, racial, and structural domination through revolutionary struggle, transnational solidarity, and grassroots movements that reimagine justice beyond geographic or economic boundaries.

These structural and political conceptions of the ‘the south’ challenge the narrative of ‘underdevelopment’ that is often placed upon Global South contexts and instead amplifies the historical and ongoing dynamics perpetuating violence on these regions and the energy and capacity that is actively opposing that.

To this regard, the use of the term Global South, must be situated within a broader reflection regarding power and power relations. Depending on how these power relations are challenged or validated, the use of the term Global South can perpetuate rhetorics of inferiority and domination or, in contrast, can articulate a broader empowered struggle for liberation and self definition within ‘the south.’

For instance, using the term Global South to describe ‘power over dynamics’ in which the ‘empowered and developed’ Global North must aid the ‘less developed’ Global South, fosters a problematic duality of North/ South relations that further entrenches global inequality. If the term, however, is used to describe ‘power to’ relations, in which ‘the south’ is defined through its identity as a pluriversal entity resisting and leading a broader political struggle for liberation, this constructs a very different relevance for such a classification.

Explanation of Historic Colonization and Social Impact

The cultural and social fabric of the Global South has been profoundly influenced by colonialism, which imposed political, economic, and cultural systems while suppressing indigenous traditions. Colonial legacies include:

• Linguistic domination (ex. English, French, Spanish):

Scholar Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o argues in Decolonising the Mind that language was a key tool of colonial control, disconnecting people from their oral and literary traditions.

• Religious conversions:

Missionary campaigns imposed Christianity, disrupting animist, Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic traditions. In Latin America, Catholicism was enforced alongside the destruction of indigenous spiritual systems

• Disruption of local governance structures:

Reorganisation of social hierarchies- colonial administrations radicalised and divided populations (e.g., caste systems in India, racial classifications in Latin America), creating lasting inequalities.

• Additionally, legacies of colonialism’s cultural impacts persist in different forms such as Neocolonial dependencies in which former colonies remain economically subordinate- with Western media and education systems perpetuating cultural hegemony. Psychological colonization, as Franz Fanon (1952)(6) analyzed how internalized racism and Eurocentric beauty standards damaged the people’s psyches. And lastly the museums and cultural restitution looted artefacts such as Benin Bronzes highlights ongoing struggles for cultural sovereignty

However, postcolonial societies have engaged in processes of decolonization and cultural reclamation, blending pre-colonial traditions with colonial influences to create hybrid identities (e.g. syncretic religions, creole languages).

Challenging Assumptions in Global South definition

Countering the dominant economic discourse

The divide between Global North and Global South is primarily justified on economic development grounds. This assumption is based on an exclusively Eurocentric linear path of modernity, suggesting that increased economic and trade power lead nations to higher steps of the development ladder. Most theories explaining the divide argue that economic growth in the North is an imperative for eventual development in the South. As Escobar argues, the poverty discourse emerging after World War II “brought into existence new discourses and practices that shaped the reality to which they referred. That the essential trait of the third World was its poverty and that the solution was economic growth and development became self-evident, necessary, and universal truths…”.

Postdevelopment theories radically critique the core assumptions of economism. As discussed by scholars Felix O. Olatunji and Anthony I. Bature, post development theory “suggests that societies at the local level should be allowed to pursue their own development path as they perceive it without the influences of global capital and other modern choices, and thus a rejection of the entire paradigm from Eurocentric model and the advocation of new ways of thinking about the non-Western societies” . However, scholars from countries of the Global South, particularly in Africa, argue that such models are not universally applicable as they become a form of cultural relativism, “which is capable of veering into fundamentalism and does not allow for mutual borrowing” .

In this context, the positioning of western banks and the IMF as the hero to help develop national economies of Global South countries reinforces a hierarchical power structure that places Global North in a diametrically opposed and superior position to Global South countries. This power structure presents Global North as a developmental and economic model that should be replicated and aspired to by Global South countries. Post Development theorists argue that “certain characteristics of the ‘Western’ ways of talking about and representing the non-West should be understood as ideological projections rather than as scientific knowledge about people and places elsewhere” .

Moving Beyond ‘linear progress’ and using a trans-temporal lens

In debates about the Global South, the emphasis on economic prosperity fails to acknowledge the diversity of “alternatives to development”. The concept of pluriverse, signifying multiple worldviews, practices and communities that produce different worlds than the hegemonic capitalist economic system, presents an alternative path emerging from Indigenous knowledges and practices in the Global South.

“Linear progress often confines our perspectives within rigid timelines, focusing solely on the present or the future” . Rejecting histories, ancient wisdom and knowledges from the past in the name of economic progress or modernity silences the diverse possibilities to imagine radically alternative future worlds modelled on human and non-human well-being in coexistence with natural ecosystems, and not GDP growth as a marker of progress.

As highlighted by Indigenous, municipal and community leaders across Canada, “many indigenous cultures imagine time to be circular and believe that when we tell stories or share experiences from a particular time in history, [...] we are able to re-weave the teachings, sensibilities and depth of meaning that the story continues to hold within our current context. [...] we can see that there are other paradigms and wisdoms that offer us more life-sustaining and ennobling possibilities and hope beyond the dominant systems and structures bringing us and our Earth so much harm. For example, Antônio Bispo dos Santos speaks about Indigenous cosmology and polytheistic cosmovisions of quilombolas and Indigenous people in Brazil as a means to counter-colonisation. He argues that “Our relationship with world images is based on the logic of the emancipation of peoples and traditional communities through counter-colonization. It is not based on the logic of class struggle, for class struggle is European and Christian-monotheistic. I do not treat traditional peoples and communities as Marxist categories: workers, unemployed, revolutionaries. That language is not ours. That is the Euro-Christian-colonialist language.”

Scholar and environmental activist Vandana Shiva claims that re-localisation and decentralisation of organic food and energy systems operating through grassroots democracy, local economies and the preservation of soil and ecological integrity represents the resistance needed for Global South countries to delink from the hegemonic globalised capitalist economy.

Resistance and Cultural Hybridity

Despite repression, colonized societies developed strategies of cultural survival syncretism:

• Reclamation movements: post-independence, many nations revived pre-colonial symbols, languages and governance models. For example Bolivia’s 2009 constitution recognised indigenous autonomy under President Evo Morales .

• Intellectual decolonisation: Scholars like Walter Mignolo and Achille Mbembe critique the Eurocentric framing of history, advocating for epistemologies rooted in Global South experiences.

Global North and Global South