LOCATING THE GLOBAL

SOUTH
Lisandro E. Claudio

Fabula, Fresha Mae C.

Galvez, Roselle Jeneve F.
INTRODUCTION:
THE STARBUCKS AND THE SHANTY
• Globalization or neo-liberalism

• Could this be the same United States that backed

the International Monetary Fund's tough-up
strategy during the emerging-market crises in
the 1990s - pushing countries from Asia to Latin
America to slash government spending and raise
interest rates to recover investor's confidence and
regain access to lending from abroad? (Porter,
2008)

• Globalization creates both affluence and poverty

Conceptualizing without defining
Global South
• Levander and Mignolo (2011:3), “The important
question may not be 'what is global south' but
'for whom and under what conditions the global
south becomes relevant'.“

• Sparke (2007: 117), “The global south is

everywhere, but it is also somewhere, and that
somewhere, located at the intersection of
entangled political geographies of dispossession
and repossession..."
• A readily and provisional work-in-
progress

• It should not be defined a priori, but

rather articulated in the context of
provisional and mutable processes of
political praxis.

• THERE IS NO UNIFORM GLOBAL

SOUTH
• Grovogui (2011: 176), "The global south is
not a directional designation or a point
due south from a fixed north. It is a
symbolic designation meant to capture
the semblance of cohesion that emerged
when former colonial entities engaged in
political projects of decolonization and
moved toward the realization of a
postcolonial international order."
• Interstate Inequalities

• Jonathan Rigg (2007), emphasizes

the everyday nature of politics in
the global south, where local
practices, subtend, transcend, and
overwhelm statecraft.
• Bayat (2010: 14), theorized the notion of
'non-movements' or the 'quiet
encroachment of the ordinary'
encapsulated in the 'discreet and
prolonged ways in which the poor struggle
to survive and to better their lives by
quietly impinging on the propertied and
powerful, and on society at large.'
• Not all of the formal colonial entities are
states

• The process of globalization places into

question geographically bound
conceptions of poverty and inequality.

• The proletariat has no country

Why must we insist on analyzing states and
interstates inequalities?
A. Decolonization process produced states
B. Solution to problems produced by
globalization are largely forwarded and
articulated on a state level
– Walden Bello (2006: 113), developmental in
the global south must begin by 'drawing most
of a country's financial resources for
development from within rather than
becoming dependent on foreign investments
and foreign financial markets'.
• C. Phenomena largely considered
'transnational' are the results of state
policies
COLONIALISM, MODERNITY, AND
THE CREATION OF GLOBAL
INEQUALITY
• Product of western imagination

• 16th century: Spanish conquest

• Early 19th century: Georg Wilhelm

Friedrich Hegel
“It is characteristic of the blacks that
their consciousness has not yet even
arrived at an intuition of any
objectivity, as for example, of God or
the law, in which humanity relates to
the world and intuits its presence.”
-Hegel (1975: 35)
• French mission civilisatrice

• Civilization discourse

• Institute of International Law, 1837

• Colonial logic

• Walt W Rostows modernization theory

“The notions of 'underdevelopment'
and 'third world' emerged as working
concepts in the process by which the
West (and the East) redefined
themselves and the global power
structure.”
-Arturo Escobar (1988: 429)
“Clash of civilizations is the main
source of conflict in the post-cold war
world, rehashes many of colonial
stereotypes associated with so-called
backward civilization.”

-Samuel Huntington (1996)

• Francis Fukuyama

• “Articulating global process in terms

of a binary between embracing free
trade and being left behind by the
pace of international economic and
technological developments.”
Thomas Friedman (2000, 2007)
“Globalism is not only a coherent set of
beliefs but also the dominant political
belief system of our time again which
all of its challengers must define
themselves.”

-Manfred Steger (2005: 12)

Challenging the Colonial Order
 How have the peoples of the present-day
global south responded to colonialism and
other linear visions of modernity?
• Solidarities would serve as the
foundation for contemporary
conceptions of the global south.

• Benedict Anderson (2007)

– Resistance against Spanish colonialism
increased interaction of political dissidents
amidst an early phase of globalization in the
late 19th century.
• Social Internationalism
• The Socialist International
– The colonized people struggled in its policies.
• The Communist International
(Comintem)
– Lenin founded it in 1919 as an alternative locus
of Socialist Internationalism
“Capitalism’s strength is premised on
the creation of new markers via
imperialism. The subjugation of
colonies, as such, is an essential stage
in growth of the capitalism, which
constantly expands and creates surplus
value.”
-Lenin (1919)
• Lenin’s view paved the way for theories
that examined the world economic system
in light of the exploitative interactions
between core-peripheral and peripheral
economies
• Lenin urged Communists to forge ties with
nationalist elites and radical peasants in
their fight against colonialism.
– Asian versions of Communism would only
flourish after the disbandment of Comintern.
– It sustained the alliances between Western
Communists and anti-colonial nationalist.
“It was through associating
imperialism with capitalism that the
international left, which had hitherto
ignored national liberation in favor
of the international class struggle,
made a détente with the
nationalisms of the colonized world.”
-Lenin (The Third International)
• The end of the Second World War
was the highpoint of decolonization.

• It was through UN that International

Law ceased to formally divide the
world into civilized and uncivilized
nations.
• Third Worldism began as a
common resistance to new forms
of colonialism.
• Countries were not just wary of
first world imperialism, but also
of communist colonialism.
“The controversy over Soviet
imperialism raised other more general
critiques over the nature of the
communist authoritarian development
model, a model that would be
embraced by many Third World
regimes in the 1960’s and 1970’s.”

-Roland Bruke, 2006.

• Third Worldism became a vehicle for
the mainstreaming of human rights.
• In the 1960’s and the 1970’s, the
international Left’s interest in the
post-colonial world intensified.
• The 1968 student protests in France
drew inspirations not only from
anarchist traditions that has been
obscured by the rise of Leninist
Communism, but also from Mao Tse-
Tung’s peasant communism.
• Third World as a global south, if it
remains embedded in “territorial
politics” will suffer the same political
pitfalls.
• To Jettison territorial politics as a
whole would nullify not only Third
Worldism, but even emergent visions
of the global south.
 CONCLUSION:
THE GLOBAL SOUTH AS NEW
INTERNATIONALISM
• The economic prescriptions to Greece
by Germany and the IMF are the
same as the “cures” routinely
recommended for countries of the
Global South.
• The ills of the Global South are being
globalized, and the Greeks seem to
be sharing the struggles.
• As its citizens continue to protest the
belt-tightening being enforced to
them, they will realize how similar
their problems are to those of
peoples in the global south.
• The global south has routinely
provided models of resistance for the
world, and it continues to do so. The
guerrilla struggles of the colonized
world served as inspirations for the
Western Left.
• As global problems intensify, it
becomes more and more necessary
for the people in the north to support
alternatives from the south.
• The GLOBAL SOUTH –as a symbol
and metaphor – is not only relevant
for those who live in the countries
traditionally associated with it.
• The ‘global’ in the ‘global south’ does
not only mean that the south is in
the globe. It also signifies that the
south continued to be globalized.

• UNIVERSAL HUMAN EQUALITY!

Thank you!!!
Quiz
1. ______ is also known as the
interstate inequality.

2. Give the title of the report.

3. Referring to the answer to the first

question, what was the term used
before that?

4. Who is the author of the book?

5. When was the term 'third world'

coined?
6. According to Lenin (1919),
__________ strength is premised
on the creation of new markers via
imperialism.
7. _____________ was the highpoint
of decolonization.
8. _____________ represents the
Global North.
9. _____________ represents the
Global South.
10.The “global” in Global South also
signifies that the south is continued
to be __________.