Global interconnect-\r edness is woven into the fabric of everyday life.

It is visible to those who

observe. In Manila and New Delhi, there is a good chance that, upon leaving the cafe, you will find a
child beggar in tattered clothes and worn-down slippers. Harlem's shantytowns are built from
discarded plywood and galvanized iron sheets, and often contain children who can't afford to go to
school. Harlem may be poor, but it does not have many child labor-\r ers. There is something more
confronting about poverty in the global south, and the north/south divide.

The shanty represents the tenacity of the local, which is unable to participate in a cosmo-\r politan
culture represented by the Starbucks. The underdevelopment of the global south prevents it from
being globalized. In times of economic crisis, the WB and the IMF demand that developing
economies cut government spending and raise interest rates to reduce inflation. The shrinking of the
public sector ultimately leads to a reduction in services like healthcare. In many cases, this is worse
than the illness; we need a cure, not a disease.
Could this be the same United States that backed
the International Monetary Fund’s get-tough
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 investors’ confidence and
regain access to lending from abroad?

The shanty is as much a symbol of globalization as the Starbucks coffee shop. Structural adjust-ment
deepens inequality in the world's poorest countries. This chapter explores the
develop-ment/underdevelopment paradox of globaliza-tion. It aims to shed light on the term 'global
south' - a concept that operates under various logics. In this chapter, I examine the historical
emergence of the term 'global south' and its antecedent forms like the 'Third World' by looking at
how inequalities have been produced through political projects like colonization and neo-liberal
globalization. The chapter ends with an argument concerning the importance of the global south
relative to other notions of collectivity such as nations or regions.

CONCEPTUALIZING WITHOUT
DEFINING
Drawing lines between the global south and the global north, the developed and the developing
first, the first and the Third World, has a powerful political function. Contemporary critics of neo-
liberal globali-zation use 'global south' as a banner to rally countries victimized by the violent
economic 'cures' of institutions like IMF. The global south is both a reality and a provisional work-in-
progress. It can be located in between the objective reali-ties of global inequality and the various
sub-jective responses to these. Academic analysis is in a better position to document its articu-lation
rather than set its ontological limits.
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 sem-
blance of cohesion that emerged when former
colonial entities engaged in political projects of
decolonization and moved toward the realization
of a postcolonial international order.

The term 'interstate' is crucial because we are discussing imbalances of aggregate economic and
political power between states. There are forms of power inequality that cannot be reduced to
discussions of state politics. A continued emphasis on the state remains politically and analytically
relevant. Movements, though they may alter and chal-lenge the state, are not always direct
challenges to it. The process of globalization places into question geographically-bound conceptions
of poverty and inequality.

One cannot avoid mention of movements that explicitly or implicitly negate state-centric notions of
political praxis. Why must we insist on ana-lyzing states and interstate inequalities? The
decolonization process produced states, now recognized as sovereign under the system of
international law promoted by the U.N. Many of these formerly colonized countries are represented
in global organizations like the World Trade Organization (WTO) and various international banks. The
global environmental crisis is, in fact, a reflection of interstate inequality.

Governments of the north, though having the ability to regulate polluting companies, do so
inadequately. Such solutions require a continued reaffir-mation of the unequal position of states
in the global south.

In the global south, the struggle for autonomous governance is largely waged against a struggle to
democratize the state in order to make it responsive to the needs of people rather than the
demands of power. In this context, an economically activist state is a necessary response to forces
such as inter-national business, international financial and foreign state power.

COLONIALISM, MODERNITY, AND THE

CREATION OF GLOBAL INEQUALITY

The term 'global south' is not so important as to distinguish the term from its antecedent forms. In
many respects, the global south is a product of Western imagination. The conquistadors saw non-
Christian non-peoples as lesser beings, requiring enlighten-\r ment by a Christian civilization.
It is characteristic of the blacks that their con-
sciousness has not yet even arrived at the intuition
of any objectivity, as for example, of God or the
law, in which humanity relates to the world and
intuits its essence.

Civilizational discourse was not only the dominant ideology of European colonialism, but its logic also
shaped the birth of the international order. The French mission civilisatrice – which held that
colonization was a necessary tool for the spread of 'civilization' – allowed for the subjugation of vast
parts of Africa and Asia. Modernization became a key foreign policy precept of the Kennedy
administration. Walt W. Rostow's modernization theory outlined historical progress in terms of a
society's capacity to produce and consume material goods. Economic sub-disciplines meant to
address Third World poverty ema-nated from impulse to universalize Western social scientific
rationality.
Development has become the grand strategy
through which the transformation of the not-yet-
too-rational Latin American/Third World subjectiv-
ity is to be achieved. In this way, long-standing
cultural practices and meaning – as well as the
social relations in which they are embedded – are
altered. The consequences of this are enormous,
to the extent that the very basis of community
aspirations and desires is modified. Thus the effect
of the introduction of development has to be seen
not only in terms of social economic impact, but
also, and perhaps more importantly, in relation to
the cultural meaning and practices they upset or
modify. (Escobar, 1988: 438)

Samuel Huntington's (1996) theory of world poli-tics rehashes many of colo-nial stereotypes
associated with so-called backward civilizations. Thomas Friedman articulates global progress in
terms of a binary between embracing free trade and being left behind by the pace of economic and
technological developments. For the globalists, to not partake of globality is backward. Globalism
borrows from notions of linear progress that originated in colonial discourse. There would have
been no civilization if there had been no barbarians, no development without underdevelop-ment,
no globalism without parochial local-ism.

CHALLENGING THE COLONIAL

ORDER
The notion of solidarity among colonized states was pre- sent from the beginning of anti-
colonialism. Benedict Anderson (2007) shows that resistance against Spanish coloni-alism in Latin
America and the Philippines benefitted from contact with political dissidents. Lenin argued that
capitalism's strength is premised on creation of markets via imperialism. The Comintern's analysis of
colonialism was crucial because it allowed the Comintern to tie the fate of its revolution to the
colonized world. Lenin's views paved the way for theories that examined the world economic system
in light of the exploitative interactions between core and peripheral economies.

The end of the Second World War was the highpoint of decolonization. Since then, the international
Left has continued to articulate modes of solidar-ity with the global south. As I discuss below,
however, the Communist Left would not be above accusations of neo-colonialism.

The 'Third World' emerged as a non-aligned, inter-pretation of global politics in the post-war era.
The founding moment for this movement was the Asia-African Conference held in Bandung in 1955.
It brought together delegates from 29 Asian and African countries to forge economic and cultural
cooperation.
All of us, I am certain, are united by more impor-
tant things than those which superficially divide
us. We are united, for instance, by a common
detestation of colonialism in whatever form it
appears. We are united by a common detestation
of racialism. And we are united by a common
determination to preserve and stabilise peace in
the world. ... We are often told ‘Colonialism is
dead.’ Let us not be deceived or even soothed by
that. I say to you, colonialism is not yet dead. How
can we say it is dead, so long as vast areas of Asia
and Africa are unfree.
And, I beg of you do not think of colonialism only
in the classic form which we of Indonesia, and our
brothers in different parts of Asia and Africa,
knew. Colonialism has also its modern dress, in
the form of economic control, intellectual control,
actual physical control by a small but alien com-
munity within a nation. It is a skilful and deter-
mined enemy, and it appears in many guises. It
does not give up its loot easily. Wherever, when-
ever and however it appears, colonialism is an evil
thing, and one which must be eradicated from the
earth.... (Sukarno, 1955)

Third Worldism began as a resistance to new forms of colonialism. Delegates from Pakistan,
Thailand, Lebanon, Ceylon, and the Philippines objected to the repressive policies of the USSR
against Eastern European states. In the 1960s and 1970s, Third Worldism became a vehicle for the
mainstreaming of human rights. The fall of the Berlin Wall paved the way for the withering of the
second world. The old language of Third Worldism is no longer tenable.

Even remnants of the Communist bloc like Castro's Cuba no longer occupy positions of prominence
in struggles against neo-colonialism. Development in the first world has weakened the coherence of
Third Worldist attempts to sketch alternatives to Western capitalism. The emergence of
conservative, anti-Western nationalisms and regionalisms in intensely capitalist countries like
Malaysia reveal how criticisms of neo-colonialism may turn reactionary (Berger, 2004: 27–8).
Challenging neo-liberalism means moving beyond territorial politics of nation-states - a poli-tics to
which Third Worldism is con-nected. Even a reconcep-tualization of the Third World as global south,
if it remains embedded in 'territorial politics', will suffer the same political pit-falls. This puts into
question the centrality of interstate inequalities discussed earlier.

CONCLUSION: THE GLOBAL SOUTH

AS NEW INTERNATIONALISM
Greece, along with other European economies, is proving to be the worst hit by the global financial
crisis. In March of this year, prostitution and heroin addiction were on the rise. Malaria was reaching
epidemic levels as the country was set to receive €5.9 billion from the EU and IMF. The global
south has provided models of resistance for the world, and continues to do so. Gandhi's non-
violence, initially directed at colonial authority, is now part of global protest culture.

Most recently, the Occupy movement drew inspiration from the revolts of the Arab Spring. As global
problems intensify, it becomes more and more necessary for people in the north to support
alternatives from the south. The effects of global warming have hitherto been most pronounced in
the southern parts of the world. The global south is not only relevant for those who live in countries
traditionally associated with Western environmentalism. Hau and Shiraishi propose that the concept
of Asianism should be rethought as 'a networked formed through intellectual, physical, emo-tional,
virtual, institutional, and even sexual contacts, or some combination thereof'.
For them, Asianism can be conceived as a mov-ing, living, and open-ended political project. The
Bandung conference was premised not on a common primordial identity shared among its dele-gate
states. Rather, it occurred as various states were negotiating a his-torical conjuncture. Similar
observations can be made about the anti-globalization movement or environmental movements.

De-emphasizing territorial and state-based politics means abstracting from concrete struggles in the
global south. It does nothing to buttress movements for environ-\r mental sustainability, food
security, and eco-dystopia. The global south is not essentialist, nor does it premise the struggle for
global justice on common identities or cultures.