THE DIVIDING LINE: WHERE IS THE ‘GLOBAL SOUTH’?

T he Global South a phrase we use today generally to indicate countries in cer- tain regions which are deemed low or middle income. These regions tend to be Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and Oceania. Notice my use of ‘tend to be’ and ‘generally’. This ambiguity is intentional as there is no definite list of which countries do or do not come under the Global South banner and the map provided with this introduction is only an estimate. The label has a complicated history running back to the earliest days of European exploration, leading right up to the modern day and contemporary debate. By following this path through how the world has been divided and nations sorted by academics we will be able to answer our two key questions: how did so much the world become a part of this Global South and is the

phrase even useful?

LABELLING DEVELOPMENT:

As with many discussions rooted in scholarly debate, the origins of the argument on how different areas of the world should be labelled began in the period of European colonisation, culminating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The journeys taken by European explorers, soldiers and administrators effectively determined which countries were ‘close’ and which ‘distant’, of course from the perspective of imperial capitals. Accompanying this was the process of ‘logical’ Westerners trying to understand some of the ‘primitive’ societies far from home. Such a mentality prevailed throughout colonisation and only began to change as these territories across the world began to gain their independence after the Second World War. Many of these new nations needed assistance former colonial powers to build infrastructure for transport, trade and communications. Programmes were set up by nation states such as the US

BY SAM FOLWER

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but also by new international organisations like the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations. Thus was created the difference between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries – i.e. those giving the help and those receiving it.Whilst many of these development plans continued, a new conception of the world was devised in the 1960s based around an economically central set of countries and those other nations which served their interests. The ‘Core-Periphery’ model singled out wealthy, industrialised and mostly former-imperial states in the West as remaining very much in control of the global economy despite the wave of independence days sweeping large parts of the globe. The often newly autonomous ‘periphery’ was set up to support this core by providing cheap commodities for processing and markets to purchase back much more valuable manufactured goods. Now not only were parts of the planet more or less ‘developed’ there was the new question of agency – did poorer countries really have control or were they simply manipulated for the good of the longstanding elite?

A GLOBAL PUPPET SHOW ?

Cold War politics and divisions between capitalist and communist went some way to leaving direct imperialist legacy behind. The new split was between those countries allied with the US (the First World) and those supporting the USSR (the Second World). In between was a final and uninspiringly named group, the Third World – for those who supported neither side distinctly or were not targets of either American or Soviet wooing. So ubiquitous this phrase would become to describe countries with poor standards of living that its’ original purpose has largely been forgotten. Now it is rather out-dated as the fall of the USSR removed most traces of the Second World, and many former members of the Third World became extraordinarily productive. Namely these were countries such as India or the ‘Asian Tiger’ economies (Singapore and the Philippines amongst others).

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Scholarly attention turned away from the old rivalries of the Cold War and focussed

more closely on the idea of globalisation. This is the process by which countries, often

great distances apart, become economically interdependent on one another due to of the creation of a homogenous global identity which would wipe out smaller social increasingly close trade links and agreements. Initially concerns rested on the prospect

characteristics which didn’t suit the mould. Later they turned to the idea that leaving some others behind – reinforcing and not reducing international inequality. globalisation, which whilst enriching some nations and revolutionising economies, was THE EMERGENCE OF THE GLOBAL SOUTH:

This is where we see the ‘Global South’ emerge. The map should make clear that ‘south’

is not entirely a geographical designation, instead reflecting a contrast hanging over

from imperialism. This is insomuch as ‘northern’ states such as the US and Europe were industrialisation. Any phrase which covers such a broad, unspecified set of nations is where development occurred earliest and therefore acted as a model for subsequent

going to reduce nuance regarding the complexities of individual cases. However, the the world’s varying levels of development whilst respecting the history of often Global South does represent a genuine step forward in describing broad phenomena in

systematically disadvantaged countries and simultaneously their present inequality. By

covering a large area in a sweeping statement, it also removes the internal barriers of

nation states in this group, allowing for comparisons across this immensely diverse

cohort to be established and studied with greater ease.

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Going forward there are new challenges. Even nations tagged with the Global South label have their own domestic inequalities, and trends in many of them suggest the gaps between the richest and poorest in society are increasing. A new description may need to be established instead to more clearly differentiate between these groups and how certain internal groups have common experiences across national boundaries due to their income, a great challenge without returning to communist ideas of class theory and struggle. It must also be remembered that many states in the Global South now wish to assert themselves, aware of how they are perceived and how they got into that position. In this case the Global South might become a group for resistance against the processes of globalisation which many governments feel have failed and manipulated them in the past. The debate over how the world should be descriptively divided is now over a century old and it shows no sign of waning – if anything it is more complicated than ever.

FIN.