Decolonising cities of the global South in the classroom and beyond

2020 ◽  
Vol 91 (5) ◽  
pp. 535-552
Author(s):  
Astrid Wood

In the post-colonial context, the global South has become the approved nomenclature for the non-European, non-Western parts of the world. The term promises a departure from post-colonial development geographies and from the material and discursive legacies of colonialism by ostensibly blurring the bifurcations between developed and developing, rich and poor, centre and periphery. In concept, the post-colonial literature mitigates the disparity between cities of the North and South by highlighting the achievements of elsewhere. But what happens when we try to teach this approach in the classroom? How do we locate the South without relying on concepts of otherness? And how do we communicate the importance of the South without re-creating the regional hierarchies that have dominated for far too long? This article outlines the academic arguments before turning to the opportunities and constraints associated with delivering an undergraduate module that teaches post-colonial concepts without relying on colonial constructs.

Author(s):  
Marcel Van der Linden

Often, all too often, global working-class solidarity remains fragile, conditional or fails to be realized in practice, whatever the lofty rhetoric may be. The present paper explores one possible explanation: workers in the North profit from the exploitation of workers in the South through cheap commodities and services, and additional job opportunities. For example, wage-earners in the North can buy T-shirts so advantageously because their real wages are much higher than the real wages of labourers in the Global South. This is what I would like to call a relational inequality within the world working class: some workers are better off because other workers are worse off. The paper presents a very tentative historical outline of global relational inequality since the 1830s.


Exchange ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-298
Author(s):  
Jim Harries

AbstractLimitations in the possibility of clear communication, even when the language in use (English) is supposedly international, form the foundation for this post-Jenkinsian view of the relationship between Southern and Northern churches today. Presented by a Northerner living in the South this perspective suggests that Northern domination of Southern Christianity (as well as of the South in general) is a threat to the Southern church. Colonial, and particularly post-colonial North/South relations aggravate corruption in the South, and promote a shallow imitation of Northern ways which forms a thin veneer over lives that are deeply rooted in magical/witchcraft worldviews. The widespread negative evaluation of Northern Christianity is here identified with a linguistic idiosyncrasy arising from the preeminence of secularism in the North. 'Southern English' makes different sense of the term 'religion'. Christianity is a way of life. Secularism is also a way of life, and it was its being omitted from Jenkins' look at the world religious scene that has given it a misleading singular status. Christianity is alive in the north, but needs a jerk to arrest its current injurious southwards impact.


Author(s):  
Sharlene Swartz

This essay reflects on the process of developing a handbook that foregrounds Southern perspectives on youth life-worlds, and does so by realigning theory, praxis, and justice. It applies the principles of self-reliance, solidarity, self-knowledge and a move from subordination to interdependence as described in the 1990 report of The South Commission, led by Julius Nyerere, to youth studies scholars from the Global South. Taking seriously the South Commission’s injunction that responsibility for change rests with those from the South who need to recreate their relationship with the North in order to make a global rather than parochial contribution, it describes the aims of the handbook and the many challenges experienced in producing it. Among these challenges are the difficulty Southern scholars have in producing theory, the precarity of their lives, the invisibility of much existing Southern scholarship, and the importance of communities of practice within the South and between the South and North. It concludes by offering a charter for remaking youth studies from one that universalizes Northern perspectives into a truly global youth studies, one that is enriched by, and welcomes the contribution of Global South scholars on their own terms.


Author(s):  
Daniel Newell McLane

Ecotourism is often framed as a development tool in the traditional sense of bringing capital to developing countries in exchange for an exported good. Unlike most commodities however, tourism does not merely bring capital to the South, it brings people. While recognizing that the presence of Northern bodies has often been seen as a concrete example of power inequity between the North and South, in this paper I argue that the embodied nature of this exchange allows for the potential of a type of development that moves from South to North through the generation of what is termed biotic capital. Biotic capital refers to the size and coherence of 1) an environmental imaginary, 2) the individuals within that imaginary and 3) the biophysical. Biotic capital that promotes sustainability is created through the reinforcement of already existing environmental orientations as well as recruitment of tourists by messages perceived as apolitical.


Author(s):  
Clarence M. Batan ◽  
Adam Cooper ◽  
James E. Côté ◽  
Alan France ◽  
Terri-Ann Gilbert-Roberts ◽  
...  

This essay comprises reflections of scholars in and originating from the Global South, plus some comments from Northern scholars, forming an integrated dialogue. It focuses on the development of youth studies in Africa, Latin America, parts of Asia, and the Caribbean, illuminating how youth studies in, from, and for the South emerge as a result of struggle—to get recognition, to theorize beyond dominant Northern frameworks, and state-led developments, and to be heard. Paradoxically, youth studies from the South are strongly influenced by the work of Northern scholars. Despite these influences, Northern ideas struggle to grasp local contexts and conditions and consequently there is a need for more localized knowledge and theorizing to make sense of young people’s lives outside the Global North. The reflections provide a reminder that struggles over the meaning and situation of youth, within particular contexts, are highly political.


2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Wapner

This article provides a first-hand account of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) and an analysis of how to advance environmentalist concerns in the post-Jo'burg era. It reviews some of the achievements and disappointments of the Summit and describes significant changes in global environmental affairs that the WSSD was unable fully to appreciate and which, therefore, must be addressed in the post-Jo'burg world. One change is a switch in emphasis in the North and South in terms of sustainable development. For too long we've been told that the North is concerned with the environment while the South is focused on development. At the WSSD it became clear, however, that this is no longer the case. Many in the North now claim a development focus although, to be sure, through the more fundamental goal of economic globalization. Concomitantly, many in the South voice a commitment to environmental sustainability as a way to reduce poverty. A second change has to do with the power of environmentalism. After enjoying much strength, concern for the environment is flagging throughout much of the world as key states find themselves distracted by geo-political concerns in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks. Both changes indicate the need to rethink environmentalist strategies in a post-Jo'burg era. The article offers several suggestions including abandoning sustainable development as a policy objective (although keeping it as a conceptual framework) and resuscitating the older, more narrow and arguably less complicated goals of environmental protection.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hamed D. Ibrahim

North and South Atlantic lateral volume exchange is a key component of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) embedded in Earth’s climate. Northward AMOC heat transport within this exchange mitigates the large heat loss to the atmosphere in the northern North Atlantic. Because of inadequate climate data, observational basin-scale studies of net interbasin exchange between the North and South Atlantic have been limited. Here ten independent climate datasets, five satellite-derived and five analyses, are synthesized to show that North and South Atlantic climatological net lateral volume exchange is partitioned into two seasonal regimes. From late-May to late-November, net lateral volume flux is from the North to the South Atlantic; whereas from late-November to late-May, net lateral volume flux is from the South to the North Atlantic. This climatological characterization offers a framework for assessing seasonal variations in these basins and provides a constraint for climate models that simulate AMOC dynamics.


Zootaxa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4758 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. LEE GRISMER ◽  
PERRY L. JR. WOOD ◽  
EVAN S. H. QUAH ◽  
MYINT KYAW THURA ◽  
JAMIE R. OAKS ◽  
...  

An integrative taxonomic analysis based on morphology, color pattern, and the mitochondrial gene ND2 recovered four new species of Hemiphyllodactylus Bleeker that are endemic to the Shan Plateau or Salween Basin in eastern Myanmar. Hemiphyllodactylus ngwelwini sp. nov. from the Shan Plateau is part of the earlier described “eastern Myanmar clade” renamed herein as the north lineage and H. kyaiktiyoensis sp. nov. and H. pinlaungensis sp. nov. of the Shan Plateau and H. zwegabinensis sp. nov. of the Salween Basin compose an entirely new Burmese clade herein referred to as the south lineage. Although the north and south lineages come within 46 km of one another on the Shan Plateau, they are not sister lineages but sequentially separated by two lineages from Yunnan, China and another from northwestern Thailand. Hemiphyllodactylus zwegabinensis sp. nov. is the first species of this genus to be recorded from the Salween Basin and is known only from a wind-blown cloud forest on the top of the insular, karstic mountain Zwegabin in Kayin State. All other Burmese species except for H. typus, are endemic to the various localities throughout the Shan Plateau. These four new species bring the total number of Hemiphyllodactylus in Myanmar to at least 10 which is certainly an extreme underestimate of the diversity of this genus given that we discover new species at every upland locality we survey. 


2021 ◽  
pp. 375-395
Author(s):  
Kathryn Weathersby

This paper examines some of the ways the US-centric framework of Anglophone Korean studies has distorted scholarship on post-colonial Korean history. First, an over-emphasis on the American role in the division of Korea has exaggerated the possibility that the US and USSR could have compromised to create a unified government for the peninsula. The Soviet documentary record reveals that Moscow was determined to obstruct such an outcome if it endangered Soviet security. Second, by focusing on the serious damage the American occupation inflicted on the South, scholars have understated the control Soviet occupation authorities exercised in the North.


1998 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatrice Forbes Manz

Temür has been many things to many people. He was nomad and city-builder, Turk and promoter of Persian culture, restorer of the Mongol order and warrior for the spread of Islam. One thing he was to all: a conqueror of unequalled scope, able to subdue both the vast areas of nomad power to the north and the centres of agrarian Islamic culture to the south. The history of his successors was one of increasing political fragmentation and economic stress. Yet they too won fame, as patrons over a period of brilliant cultural achievement in Persian and Turkic. Temür's career raises a number of questions. Why did he find it necessary to pile conquest upon conquest, each more ambitious than the last? Having conceived dreams of dominion, where did he get the power and money to fulfill them? When he died, what legacy did Temür leave to his successors and to the world which they tried to control? Finally, what was this world of Turk and Persian, and where did Temür and the Timurids belong within it?


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