World of Regions

The terms are not strictly geographical, and are not "an image of the world divided by the
equator, separating richer countries from their poorer counterparts."[1] Rather, geography should be
more readily understood as economic and migratory, the world understood through the "wider
context of globalization or global capitalism."[1]
Generally, definitions of the Global North is not exclusively a geographical term, and it
includes countries and areas such as Australia, Canada, the entirety
of Europe and Russia, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and the United
States. The Global South is made up of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Pacific Islands,
and the developing countries in Asia, including the Middle East. It is generally seen as home
to Brazil, India, Indonesia and China, which, along with Nigeria and Mexico, are the largest Southern
states in terms of land area and population.[5]
The overwhelming majority of the Global South countries are located in or near the tropics.
The term Global North is often used interchangeably with developed countries. Likewise, the
term Global South is often used interchangeably with developing countries.

What Is The North-South Divide?

The north-south divide is more metaphorical than it is geographical.

The North-South Divide is a socio-economic and political categorization of countries.

The Cold-War-era generalization places countries in two distinct groups; The North and
the South. The North is comprised of all First World countries and most Second World
countries while the South is comprised of Third World countries. This categorization
ignores the geographic position of countries with some countries in the southern
hemisphere such as Australia and New Zealand being labeled as part of the North.

History
The origin of dividing countries into the North-South Divide arose during the Cold War of
the mid 20th century. During this time, countries were primarily categorized according to
their alignment between the Russian East and the American West. Countries in the East
like the Soviet Union and China which became classified as Second World countries. In
the west, the United States and its allies were labelled as First World countries. This
division left out many countries which were poorer than the First World and Second
World countries. The poor countries were eventually labeled as Third World countries.
This categorization was later abandoned after the Second World countries joined the
First World countries. New criteria was established to categorize countries which was
named the North-South Divide where First World countries were known as the North
while Third World countries comprised the South.
The North (First World Countries)
The North of the Divide is comprised of countries which have developed economies and
account for over 90% of all manufacturing industries in the world. Although these

countries account for only one-quarter of the total global population, they control 80% of
the total income earned around the world. All the members of the G8 come from the
North as well as four permanent members of the UN Security Council. About 95% of the
population in countries in The North have enough basic needs and have access to
functioning education systems. Countries comprising the North include The United
States, Canada, all countries in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand as well as the
developed countries in Asia such as Japan and South Korea.

The South (Third World Countries)

The South is comprised of countries with developing economies which were initially
referred to as Third World countries during the Cold War. An important characteristic of
countries in the South is the relatively low GDP and the high population. The Third
World accounts for only a fifth of the globally earned income but accounts for over
three-quarters of the global population. Another common characteristic of the countries
in the South is the lack of basic amenities. As little as 5% of the population is able to
access basic needs such as food and shelter. The economies of most countries in the
South rely on imports from the North and have low technological penetration. The
countries making up the South are mainly drawn from Africa, South America, and Asia
with all African and South American countries being from the South. The only Asian
countries not from the South are Japan and South Korea.

Criticism
The North-South Divide is criticized for being a way of segregating people along
economic lines and is seen as a factor of the widening gap between developed and
developing economies. However, several measures have been put in place to contract
the North-South Divide including the lobbying for international free trade and
globalization. The United Nations has been in the forefront in diminishing the North-
South Divide through policies highlighted in its Millennium Development Goals.

Benjamin Elisha Sawe

August 1, 2017

First coined by progressive social activist Carl Oglesby in 1969, the Global South is a
synonym for terms such as developing countries, least-developed
countries, underdeveloped countries, low-income economies, or the out-of-favor third
world countries. Like these related terms, Global South is used to describe countries
whose economies are not yet fully developed and which face challenges such as low
per capita income, excessive unemployment, and a lack of valuable capital. However,
few socioeconomic terms are as widely debated, as potentially divisive, or as frequently
misinterpreted.

The challenge of defining the "Global South"

Afghanistan Algeria Angola
Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Bahamas
Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados
Belize Benin Bhutan
Bosnia and
Bolivia Botswana
Herzegovina
Brazil Brunei Darussalam Burkina Faso
Burundi Cape Verde Cambodia
Central African Republic Chad Chile
China Colombia Comoros
Congo (Dem. Rep.) Congo (Republic of) Costa Rica
Côte d'Ivoire/Ivory Coast Cuba Djibouti
Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador
Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea Eswatini Ethiopia
Fiji Gabon Gambia
Ghana Grenada Guatemala
Guinea Guinea-Bisseau Guyana
Haiti Honduras India
Indonesia Iran Iraq
Jamaica Jordan Kenya
Kiribati Kuwait Laos
Lebanon Lesotho Liberia
Libya Madagascar Malawi
Malaysia Maldives Mali
Marshall Islands Mauritania Mauritius
Micronesia Mongolia Morocco
Mozambique Myanmar Namibia
Nauru Nepal Nicaragua
Niger Nigeria North Korea
Palestine (limited
Oman Pakistan
recognition)
Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay
Peru Philippines Qatar
Rwanda Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia
Saint Vincent and the
Samoa São Tomé and Príncipe
Grenadines
Saudi Arabia Senegal Seychelles
Sierra Leone Singapore Solomon Islands
Somalia South Africa South Sudan
Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname
Syria Tajikstan Tanzania
Thailand Timor-Leste Togo
Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia
Turkmenistan Uganda United Arab Emirates
Uruguay Vanuatu Venezuela
Vietnam Yemen Zambia
Zimbabwe
The term "Global South" is often misused and misunderstood. The inclusion of "South"
causes many users to mistakenly assume the term is meant to be geographical. It is
not. Although the

Majority of Global South countries are indeed located in the tropics or the Southern
Hemisphere, the term itself is strictly economic (hence the fact that Australia is "down
under" but not part of the Global South).
What's more, because there are no clear guidelines for what constitutes the Global
South (as compared to World Bank's very clear guidelines for what is or is not a low-
income economy), there exist many different theories on which countries qualify as part
of the Global South—or its wealthier counterpart, the Global North. Finally, because the
term identifies countries that are less well-off financially, it could be interpreted as
implying that "South" is synonymous with "poor"—a connection that many people regard
as both insensitive and inaccurate.

What is the Global South?

The Global South has multiple definitions. The Global South has traditionally been used
to refer to underdeveloped or economically disadvantaged nations. These countries are
those who tend to have unstable democracy, are in the process of industrializing, and
have historically frequently faced colonization by Global North countries (especially by
European countries). The second definition uses the Global South to address
populations that are negatively affected by capitalist globalization. Based on either of
these definitions, the Global South is not the same as the geographical south. Still, to
avoid confusion, inaccuracy, and possible offense, many scholars prefer to use the
terms “developing countries” or low-income economies.

Benefits of the use of the term Global South

One positive development stemming from the use of the term Global South is that it has
emerged as a unifying identity for many of the countries it encompasses. This
unification has led to the United Nations' South-South Cooperation, a coalition of Global
South countries whose main goal is to help solve mutual challenges such as poverty,
population growth, war, disease, and border issues. Countries involved in the SSC
become more self-reliant, strengthen their technological capabilities, and become better
able to participate in the global economic marketplace.

China is among the best examples of how the SSC has worked. Often touted by the
U.N. as a model for developing countries, China has lifted 700 million people out of
poverty, gained a bigger influence than most countries in the West, and become one of
the largest economic powers in the world.

List of Global South Countries (United Nations)

The United Nations' Finance Center for South-South Cooperation maintains arguably
the world's most reputable and reliable list of Global South countries. As of early 2022,
the list includes 78 countries in all, which are referred to as the "Group of 77 and
China."

THE GLOBAL NORTH: INTRODUCING THE REGION

Lara Braff and Katie Nelson

What is the Global North? The Global North does not refer to a geographic region in
any traditional sense but rather to the relative power and wealth of countries in distinct
parts of the world (figure 15.1). The chapters in this section explore the construction and
complexity of gender within the Global North: particularly, the United States, Canada,
and Belgium. To do so, we first consider how the Global North and South divide came
to exist in the popular imagination. However, we should note that although the Global
North is on the whole powerful and wealthy, it is not monolithic. Societies within it are
internally stratified and diverse such that not everyone in the Global North is rich and
powerful.
Figure 15.1. The Global North (in blue) includes many countries in the Northern
Hemisphere and also some, such as Australia and New Zealand, that are located in the
Southern Hemisphere. The Global South (in red) includes many countries in the
southern hemisphere and some in the northern hemisphere. Kingj123/Public Domain.

Attempts to categorize the world order have been based more on politics and
economics than geography. These include East and West; developed and developing
nations; and the First, Second, and Third Worlds. For example, if East/West were
geographic entities, then all nations west of the Prime Meridian (i.e., the United States,
Canada, and Latin America nations) would be grouped together, while all nations to the
east (i.e., countries of Europe, Africa, and Asia) would be grouped together. But this is
not the case. Rather, the “West” is meant to refer to countries—particularly European
nations and the United States—that benefited from the exploits of colonialism, achieving
a higher quality of life and more power than the East. Similarly, the terminology of
“developed” and “developing” nations indexes a power differential along with the
ethnocentric assumption that all countries follow a singular idealized trajectory.
Anthropologists and social theorists have critiqued this notion, insisting that societies
change over time, proceeding along varied developmental paths.

The First, Second, and Third World terminology developed in the mid-twentieth century
during the Cold War to categorize nations based on their participation in the conflict
between the democratic United States (and its allies) and the Communist Soviet Union
(and its allies). The First World was said to include economically developed, high-
income, politically stable capitalist nations. The Second World comprised Communist
nations that despite stable incomes and decent social conditions were viewed by the
First World as economically and politically unstable due to their totalitarian
governments. The Third World referred to previously colonized nations (nonaligned) that
both the United States and the Soviet Union were trying to incorporate into their
respective political-economic orders. Third World leaders have critiqued this schema,
asserting that they were not just pawns in the US-Soviet conflict; rather, they were
actively engaged in improving their own social conditions, creating stable national
identities, and participating in the global community (e.g., in the 1960s, some Third
World countries joined the United Nations for the first time).
In the late twentieth century, the Global North and South terminology replaced previous
descriptors of the global order. It was generally agreed that the Global North would
include the United States, Canada, England, nations of the European Union, as well as
Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and even some countries in the southern hemisphere:
Australia, and New Zealand. The Global South, on the other hand, would include
formerly colonized countries in Africa and Latin America, as well as the Middle East,
Brazil, India, and parts of Asia. Many of these countries are still marked by the social,
cultural, and economic repercussions of colonialism, even after achieving national
independence. The Global South remains home to the majority of the world’s
population, but that population is relatively young and resource-poor, living in
economically dependent nations.

Like prior attempts to characterize nations, the Global North/South distinction simplifies
the world order, ignoring internal variation within both the North and South, while
negating commonalities that exist between these large and diverse entities. Further,
there are outliers that muddy the attempt to specify a clear North/South divide. For
example, where do China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia fit? In terms of their economies
and power, they resemble the North, but their political and social organization can also
resemble the South. All global terminology systems discussed here are historically
situated, politicized attempts to organize nations into a straightforward world order that
is, in fact, quite complicated and increasingly interconnected.

The World Economy

A rapidly globalized economy has highlighted the imagined divide between the North
and South. According to Wallerstein’s world systems theory, a global capitalist system
separates countries into the core (the North), semiperiphery, and periphery (the South)
based primarily on their economic participation (Wallerstein 1974). His theory is largely
influenced by Karl Marx, who saw the economy as the foundation of society that
determined all cultural phenomena. According to Marx, under capitalism, societies are
composed of the bourgeoisie (the owners who control the means of production, e.g., the
factories) and the workers (who labor and produce goods in exchange for wages). The
owner’s motive to maximize profit is achieved by exploiting the workers, who are paid
less than what their labor is worth and who grow alienated from themselves, other
people, and their labor. Despite the ideological attempts of the owners to obscure
exploitation, Marx believed that the workers would eventually realize the systemic
injustices of capitalism, rise up, and replace it with Communism.

For Wallerstein, similar actors and structural inequalities operate within the global
capitalist system. The core nations of the Global North act like the owners, controlling
multinational corporations that extract raw material and exploit labor from peripheral
nations of the Global South. The core nations thereby amass profit that benefits them,
hardening the divide between the haves and have-nots. Thus, core nations remain
wealthy, politically stable, and culturally dominant, while peripheral nations remain
economically dependent, politically unstable, and at the mercy of cultural trends. The
 semiperipheral nations are said to be in transition from the periphery to the core (see
figure 15.2)

Figure 15.2. The world systems theory explains global inequality by emphasizing the
extraction of natural resources (and low-skilled, labor-intensive goods) from countries in
the periphery and semiperiphery and the exportation of (high-capital and high-skilled)
finished goods from the core. Katie Nelson.

Like all binaries, the division of the world into core and periphery, North and South, is
overly simplistic and assumes these are fundamentally different and unequal entities.
Yet, we are not a world indelibly marked as wealthy or poor, producers or consumers,
powerful or powerless. For many anthropologists, the world order is far more complex
and interrelated. They consider, for example, the process of glocalization, whereby
people around the world alter globalized goods, ideas, and practices to fit their own
lived experiences. This is not the passive, wholesale adoption of Global Northern
lifeways but the active adaptation of them into culturally relevant forms.
Similarly, globalization does not just flow from the North to the South. From food to
clothes to music and media, people in the Global North also consume and adapt the
cultural products of the Global South.

Arjun Appadurai addresses this complexity by describing several global “scapes”: social
and cultural flows that move around the world in multiple directions, affecting nations
and people in diverse ways. As he puts it, the “new global cultural economy has to be
seen as a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order” (Appadurai 1996, 32). This order
comprises five “scapes”:

● ethnoscape (the movement of people)

● financescape (the movement of money)
● technoscape (the movement of technologies)
● mediascapes (the movement of media)
● ideoscapes (the movement of ideas)

These globalscapes are interlinked. Take, for example, cell phones: as objects, they are
part of the technoscape that people use to access the mediascape through which they
engage with the ideoscape. This idea of globalscapes helps us see the dynamic nature
of people, things, and ideas that interact to defy any simplistic static division of North
and South.