Report-The Global Divide PDF

THE GLOBAL DIVIDES The terms “Global North” and “Global South” divide the world in half both geographically. According to Karpilo (2018), the Global North contains all countries north of the equator, which is the Northern hemisphere, while the Global South holds all...

THE GLOBAL DIVIDES The terms “Global North” and “Global South” divide the world in half both geographically. According to Karpilo (2018), the Global North contains all countries north of the equator, which is the Northern hemisphere, while the Global South holds all the countries south of the equator which is the Southern hemisphere. Kwarteng and Botchway (2018) stated that “The North and South divide in the practice and application of international law where the globally developed northern countries advocate for a collective action to protect the environment, while the globally developing southern countries argue for social and economic justice in practice. The world is divided in terms of development and wealth. Back in 1980s, the world was geographically split into relatively richer and poorer nations. In order to show this phenomenon, the Brandt Line was developed. According to this model, the Northern Hemisphere is where richer countries are situated, with the exception of Australia and New Zealand; whereas, in the Southern Hemisphere is the place of poorer countries. This shows the concept of a gap between the Global North and Global South. This differentiation is based on the fact that most of developed countries are in the north whereas, the most of developing or underdeveloped countries are in the south. Nonetheless, not all countries in the Global North can be called “developed,” while some of the countries in the Global South can be called “developed” because there are some countries in the Global South that are developing such as Nepal, Kazakhstan, and other African countries. What is Global South? Global South countries have been unable to evolve an indigenous technology appropriate to their own resources and have been dependent on powerful Global North multinational corporations (MNCs) to transfer technical know-how. This means that research and development expenditures are directed toward solutions of the Global North’s problems with technological advances seldom meeting the needs of the Global South. On the other hand, Claudio (2014) stated that the global south is both a reality and a provisional in progress. This is because according to Sparke (2007), Global South is everywhere, but is also somewhere, located at the intersection of entangled political geographies of dispossession and repossession, therefore Global South and Global North may exist in the same location such as in Manila or anywhere else. Moreover, Grovohui (2011) explained that “The Global South is not a directional designation or a point due south from a fixed north. It is 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.” Mahler (2017) coined three primary definitions of Global South. It has traditionally been used within intergovernmental development organizations - primarily those that originated in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) - to refer to economically disadvantaged nation- states and as a post-cold war alternative to “Third World.” However, the term Global South is employed in a post-national sense to address spaces and peoples negatively impacted by contemporary capitalist globalization. *NAM is a movement of 115 states, not an organization. It is formed by developing countries who do not want to side with the two conflicting groups during Cold War. These countries are against ,or some might say, neutral towards the conflict between the Western Capitalist Bloc and Communist Bloc. A cartoon is presented below to easily understand how NAM was formed during Cold War. This graphic presentation is for fun and educational purposes ONLY and not intended to encouraged language obscenities or offensive behavior towards people and states. https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinterest.com%2Fpin%2F407857310003144789%2 The Global South captures a deterritorialized geography of capitalism’s externalities and means to account for subjugated peoples within the borders of wealthier countries, such that there are economic Souths in the geographic North and Norths in the geographic South. While this usage relies on a longer tradition of analysis of the North’s geographic Souths -- wherein the South represents an internal periphery and subaltern relational position - the epithet “global” is used to unhinge the South from a one-to-one relation to geography. Global South refers to the resistant imaginary of a transitional political subject that results from a shared experience of subjugation under contemporary global capitalism. The use of the Global South to refer to a political subjectivity draws from the rhetoric of the so called Third World Project, or the non-aligned and radical internationalist discourses of the cold war. In this sense, the Global South may be productively be considered a direct response to the category of postcoloniality in that it captures both a political collectively and ideological formulation that arises from lateral solidarities among the world’s multiple Souths and moves beyond the analysis of the operation of power through colonial difference towards networked theories of power within contemporary global capitalism. Global South from the Third World The term “Third World” countries was coined by Alfred Sauvy, a French demographer, after World War II and during the Cold War era. It is also the tag to those countries that did not align with democratic or communist countries. This eventually evolved to refer levels of development. The Third World included the developing nations of Africa, Asia and Latin America. To Wolvers, et al. (n.d.), the “Third World” become a central political slogan for the radical left. The term in its origins had suggested that societies of the Third World, embarking on the long path to modernity, had one of two paths to follow, the capitalist or the socialist. Even as socialist and capitalist (former colonialist) states vied for the influence in the “Third World”, there was a lingering assumption in mainstream Europe/American scholarship, ultimately to be vindicated, that the socialist path itself was something of a temporary deviation. Nevertheless, given the close association of capitalism with imperialism, the socialist example exerted significant influence on the national liberation movements that the Third World idea spawned. The developmental failure of Third World alternatives was evident by the 1970s. The term Global South, seemingly politically neutral, proposed to incorporate these societies in the developmental project of capitalism, already named “globalization” in one of the early uses of that term, which would not acquire popularity until the 1990s. References: Mendoza, Cheryl C. et al. 2019. “Worktext in The Contemporary World.” Nieme Publishing House Co. Ltd Additional Readings The Gap between the North and the South (Royal Geographic Society) Despite very significant development gains globally which have raised many millions of people out of absolute poverty, there is substantial evidence that inequality between the world’s richest and poorest countries is widening. In 1820, Western Europe’s per capita income was three times bigger than Africa’s but by 2000 it was thirteen times as big. In addition, in 2013, Oxfam reported that the richest 85 people in the world owned the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the world’s population. Today, the world is much more complex than the Brandt Line depicts as many poorer states have experienced significant economic and social development. However, inequality within countries has also been growing and some commentators now talk of a „Global North‟ and a „Global South‟ referring respectively to richer or poorer communities which are found both within and between countries. For example, whilst India is still home to the largest concentration of poor people in a single nation, it also has a very sizable middle class and very rich elite. There are many causes for these inequalities including the availability of natural resources; different levels of health and education; the nature of a country’s economy and its industrial sectors; international trading policies and access to markets; how countries are governed and international relationships between countries; conflict within and between countries; and a country’s vulnerability to natural hazards and climate change. GLOBAL SOUTH By Olaf Kaltmeier (Professor of Ibero-American History, Bielefeld University, Germany) The term Global South has been of great benefit in re-introducing studies on Africa, Asia and Latin America into the academic field. The necessary deconstruction of development in post-development approaches in the 1990s has contributed to the - probably unintended - crisis of Development Studies and the Third World Area Study Centers. The end of the „Third World‟ has been proclaimed, which has led to a significant reduction of studies on these areas. After the end of bipolar world, and in the context of an accelerated globalization process, Area Studies -- especially on the so called Third World countries -- have been displaced by Global Studies. With a Global South- oriented approach, areas formerly peripheral to global studies are placed at the center of attention once more. Nevertheless, the concept of the Global South shares some of the limitations of the concept of the Third World. It evokes imaginations of a geographical North-South divide, which does not correspond to the complex entanglements and uneven developments in the real world. Areas incorporated under the label Global South can also be found in the geographical North. Ethnic ghettos and barrios in US American cities are one example; the “Latinazation” of the US is another. Also, the gated communities of the cosmopolitan elite in Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, or Santiago de Chile have more common with their counterparts in Miami, L.A. or Chicago than with the surrounding barrios, marginales and favelas. Olaf Kaltmeier is Managing Director of the Center for Inter-American Studies (CIAS) at Bielefeld University, (http;//www.uni.bielefeld.de/%28de%29/cias/)