Why, When, and How the Global South Became Relevant

Author(s):  
Adam Cooper

The idea of the Global South gained traction in the second half of the twentieth century, as certain real and discursive changes occurred to the geopolitical, economic, and epistemological processes established under modernity. Three interconnected global processes—colonialism/postcolonialism, capitalism/industrial development and knowledge flows—processes which collectively forged modernity, underwent significant changes. Previously colonized territories became independent and new technologies and connectivity enabled ideas and people from the former colonies to speak and indeed move back to the Global North. These changes formed part of global transformations to economic modes of production and corporate governance. Industrial and economic processes have therefore intersected with geopolitical changes and epistemological flows to enable slivers of the Global South to emerge in the interstices of powerful political, industrial, and epistemological forces. The Global South creates portals of opportunity for a more democratic, inclusive, and collaborative world, but it could also simply produce new inequalities and divisions reinforced along familiar lines.

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ning Ma ◽  
Wai Yan Shum ◽  
Tingting Han ◽  
Tsun Se Cheong

The spread of COVID-19 has significantly dampened global economic activity and has also wreaked havoc on the industrial sector. Understanding the disparity and convergence of global industrial outputs is important in assessing the effectiveness of concurrent development policies. This study investigates the spatial distribution of global industrial output to unveil the disparity in industrial development and the feasibility of achieving convergence over time. Stochastic kernel analyses are carried out for national regimes to study the overall pattern of industrialization for all the countries in the world. Countries are then classified into different groups to further analyse the geographical and income effects on industrial development. The results show that disparity between the Global North and the Global South will enlarge further in the future. Industrial development in the Global North will continue to prosper, while the industrial output in many countries in the Global South just cannot reach the global average.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-33
Author(s):  
Simranpreet Kaur Hansaram

The growing number of children internet users are causing parents to worry. While there are many researches in the Global North, very few studies are done in the Global South. The study aims to bridge this gap with a study of Malaysia, a Global South country. Using a contextual approach, this research investigates middle-class Malaysian parents’ perceptions and concerns about their children’s internet usage. Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with seven parents, whose children – aged from five to eighteen – are active internet users. The analysis of the interviews revealed three major themes; firstly, parents make evaluative judgments about internet contents and platforms; secondly, children’s age determines use and device ownership; and thirdly, Malaysian parents used mediation strategies unique to Malaysia: they employ spies among their children and enlist help from older children. The analysis further revealed two generalized Malaysian parents’ fears about the internet: foreign culture influencing the dominant culture and apprehensions about new technologies.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Bellamy Foster ◽  
Intan Suwandi

Since the late twentieth century, capitalist globalization has increasingly adopted the form of interlinked commodity chains controlled by multinational corporations, connecting various production zones, primarily in the Global South, with the apex of world consumption, finance, and accumulation primarily in the Global North. COVID-19 has accentuated as never before the interlinked ecological, epidemiological, and economic vulnerabilities imposed by capitalism.


Author(s):  
Floor Haalboom

This article argues for more extensive attention by environmental historians to the role of agriculture and animals in twentieth-century industrialisation and globalisation. To contribute to this aim, this article focuses on the animal feed that enabled the rise of ‘factory farming’ and its ‘shadow places’, by analysing the history of fishmeal. The article links the story of feeding fish to pigs and chickens in one country in the global north (the Netherlands), to that of fishmeal producing countries in the global south (Peru, Chile and Angola in particular) from 1954 to 1975. Analysis of new source material about fishmeal consumption from this period shows that it saw a shift to fishmeal production in the global south rather than the global north, and a boom and bust in the global supply of fishmeal in general and its use in Dutch pigs and poultry farms in particular. Moreover, in different ways, the ocean, and production and consumption places of fishmeal functioned as shadow places of this commodity. The public health, ecological and social impacts of fishmeal – which were a consequence of its cheapness as a feed ingredient – were largely invisible on the other side of the world, until changes in the marine ecosystem of the Pacific Humboldt Current and the large fishmeal crisis of 1972–1973 suddenly changed this.


Contexts ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-41
Author(s):  
Lindsey Ibañez

Most sociological studies of job searching are from higher-income, industrialized countries, often referred to as the Global North. Much less is understood about job search behavior in the lower-income countries of the Global South, where there are fewer labor market institutions, weaker social safety nets, higher underemployment, more informality, and more precarity. In this environment of deprivation and insecurity, low-wage workers in the Global South turn to their personal networks for the resources that markets and states cannot provide. While job referrals allow workers to earn a living, however, they also extend employer surveillance and control beyond the bounds of the employment relation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 8399
Author(s):  
Sally Adofowaa Mireku ◽  
Zaid Abubakari ◽  
Javier Martinez

Urban blight functions inversely to city development and often leads to cities’ deterioration in terms of physical beauty and functionality. While the underlying causes of urban blight in the context of the global north are mainly known in the literature to be population loss, economic decline, deindustrialisation and suburbanisation, there is a research gap regarding the root causes of urban blight in the global south, specifically in prime areas. Given the differences in the property rights regimes and economic growth trajectories between the global north and south, the underlying reasons for urban blight cannot be assumed to be the same. This study, thus, employed a qualitative method and case study approach to ascertain in-depth contextual reasons and effects for urban blight in a prime area, East Legon, Accra-Ghana. Beyond economic reasons, the study found that socio-cultural practices of landholding and land transfer in Ghana play an essential role in how blighted properties emerge. In the quest to preserve cultural heritage/identity, successors of old family houses (the ancestral roots) do their best to stay in them without selling or redeveloping them. The findings highlight the less obvious but relevant functions that blighted properties play in the city core at the micro level of individual families in fostering social cohesion and alleviating the need to pay higher rents. Thus, in the global south, we conclude that there is a need to pay attention to the less obvious roles that so-called blighted properties perform and to move beyond the default negative perception that blighted properties are entirely problematic.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-260
Author(s):  
John Harrington

AbstractThe spread of COVID-19 has seen a contest over health governance and sovereignty in Global South states, with a focus on two radically distinct modes: (1) indicators and metrics and (2) securitisation. Indicators have been a vehicle for the government of states through the external imposition and internal self-application of standards and benchmarks. Securitisation refers to the calling-into-being of emergencies in the face of existential threats to the nation. This paper contextualises both historically with reference to the trajectory of Global South states in the decades after decolonisation, which saw the rise and decline of Third-World solidarity and its replacement by neoliberalism and global governance mechanisms in health, as in other sectors. The interaction between these modes and their relative prominence during COVID-19 is studied through a brief case-study of developments in Kenya during the early months of the pandemic. The paper closes with suggestions for further research and a reflection on parallel trends within Global North states.


2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442198970
Author(s):  
Maissaa Almustafa

The end of 2015 witnessed a global record in the number of forcibly displaced people fleeing because of wars and persecution. The unprecedented total of 65.3 million displaced individuals, out of which 21.3 million were refugees, was the highest number that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has recorded since its establishment in 1950. During the same year and in the face of this large-scale crisis, only 107,100 refugees were admitted for resettlement through official resettlement programs, whereas 3.2 million people applied for asylum globally. And in spite of the fact that the majority of the world refugees are hosted in ten developing regions, the dominant narrative in the global media was about the “unauthorized” arrival of more than one million asylum seekers in Europe by sea during 2015. This paper argues that the unexpected nature of refugees’ arrivals has proven that refugees were supposed to be contained in their camps in the Global South, deterred from reaching the territories of the Global North, represented here by Europe. Thus, the paper proposes that these arrivals are rather reflections of a crisis of protection that developed in the Global South where containment and deterrence strategies against refugees from the Global South exacerbate their inhumane displacement conditions in home regions. In the same context, the paper discusses how international protection structures have been reconstructed to serve the same goals of containment and deterrence, with the ultimate aim of putting people ‘back in place’ with minimal access to protection and rights.


2010 ◽  
Vol 84 (4) ◽  
pp. 773-798 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abe de Jong ◽  
Ailsa Röell ◽  
Gerarda Westerhuis

This study traces the evolution of corporate governance and financing structures in the Netherlands during the second half of the twentieth century. A description of Dutch shareholder rights, fi nancing structures, and networks of directors reveals the changes that have occurred in many aspects of the Dutch corporate system over the course of six decades. The case of Royal Ahold illustrates some of the developments that have taken place. Most indicate a transition from a coordinated market economy to a more liberal system. The internationalization of the Dutch economy, which has played an important role in the transition of the system, is reflected in the expansion of Dutch firms beyond the national borders and in the growing number of foreign investors in Dutch fi rms.


2021 ◽  
pp. 101269022098134
Author(s):  
Billy Graeff ◽  
Jorge Knijnik

The past few decades have seen an increase of sport mega events (SMEs) held outside the Global North. This tendency has been accompanied by a growing public expenditure in these events. This paper employs selected Global South SMEs to discuss this trend. By critically analysing public documents, biddings and reports, the study traces comparisons between 21st-century Global South and Global North SMEs expenditures, in the revenue of franchise owners (FIFA and the International Olympic Committee), in construction costs within the budgets and in the costs related to security. This comprehensive and intertwined investigation shows the need for new analytical tools – such as the Renewed Policy of Sport Mega Events Allocation, a concept developed here - to better capture the central questions posed by the challenges of ‘SMEs going South’.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document