Photo credit: ©Juan Manuel Herrera/OAS
You do not need to look far to find linguistic instances of the ‘Global South’. Currently, in scholarship, public policy, and discourse the term is ubiquitous: we have all heard it. But where does it come from? And is the term even meaningful anymore?
It is not surprising that ‘Global South’ is making a comeback in the public sphere. As geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China rises, so too has Cold War-esque bipolar dynamics, with states pressured to choose a side. This has made ‘Global South’ an incredibly convenient – and arguably reductive – term; that is, any state that is not a part of the ‘Global North’.
But, where does this term come from?
The term ‘Global South’ was (apparently) coined in 1969 by New Left American activist and writer Carl Ogelsby in reaction to the ‘intolerable’ social order formed amidst the Vietnam War. This was the time where Alfred Sauvy’s 1952 depiction of the tripartite world (that is ‘First World’, ‘Second World’, and ‘Third World’) was still notably in fashion.
The construction of the ‘Global South’ as a synonym for ‘Third World’ gained traction in the 1970s with the call for a New International Economic Order. Interestingly, as the ‘Third World’ delineation began to disappear for its pejorative and indiscriminate roots, ‘Global South’ took over – while being no less vituperative, and still inexplicably marred in political ontology.
Yet, this expression has breached the bounds of academia to become a common tool of the public lexicon. International institutions and state leaders have begun to use the expression, with the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently lamenting that “Many countries of the Global South face huge debts, increasing poverty and hunger, and the growing impacts of the climate crisis”. The UN has even created multiple bodies that seek to respond directly to the needs of the ‘Global South’ including a UN Office for South-South Cooperation.
However, the question now becomes is the term still relevant?
The most obvious limitation of the term is its conceptual incoherence: when used generically, ‘Global South’ refers to an heterogenous amalgam of 130 countries that represent approximately two-third of the world’s population, spread across wide spatial centres.
Given this, there is little to no policy or analytical relevance offered by the characterisation since the ‘Global South’ shares such political, social, and economic diversity. That is, the expression risks reinforcing assumptions and anachronistic dichotomies, at the expense of seeing the world in its mélange of political and economic incongruity.
Further, the expression fails to account for discrete demarcations of governance and regime. Just consider Freedom House’s scores for the criteria of “people’s access to political rights and civil liberties”; South Sudan and Syria receive a low score of 1 (that is, ‘not free’), compared to Uruguay’s 96 (‘free’). Similarly, the label ignores recent economic growth and the move to conservation and clean energy - see Costa Rica’s conservation efforts and clean energy transition as opposed to Nigeria’s indefatigable petrostate.
In particular, the label imbues states with the Eurocentric teleological ideal of linear political progress, classifying states along some spectrum where the goal is that of the ‘Western’ model. Such assumptions are reductive and unhelpful.
Seeing its surge in popularity it is unlikely that the term ‘Global South’ is going anywhere very soon at all. Labels are helpful – especially in marco analysis – for they provide the ability for generalisation, yet this too can be harmful. We must acknowledge that the ‘Global South’ is not a single entity, but instead a collection of states with unique contexts and preferences. It is important to understand the assumptions and historical generalisations that are carried part in parcel with the term.