[discuss] "Global South" (was Re: Just Net Coalition...)

Fri Mar 7 15:27:20 UTC 2014

S Moonesamy <sm+1net at elandsys.com> wrote:

> At 02:01 07-03-2014, Norbert Bollow wrote:
> >In the context of the Global North / Global South divide which as
> >Wikipedia correctly notes [1] is primarily a socio-economic and
> >political divide, I would count the participants on the basis of
> >country affiliations as follows: 37 from Global South countries
> >(Brazil, Ecuador, India, Phillipnes, Uruguay, Bangladesh, Thailand,
> >Kenya) as opposed to 13 from Global North countries (USA,
> >Switzerland, France, Ireland, Germany, South Korea, Canada).
> >[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North%E2%80%93South_divide
> 
> It is strange to say that India, Bangladesh, 
> Thailand, etc. are part of the South.  I don't 
> usually hear people from the Southern Hemisphere 
> using the term "Global South".

I'll immediately admit that this use of the term "South" only very
roughly has anything to do with the direction... it isn't quite as bad
though IMO as denoting parts of the earth as “West” and “East” which as
absolutes really doesn't many any sense on an earth where traveling to
the East from the “Far East” (e.g. Japan) will take you to the “West”.

Despite its shortcomings, I think the “Global South” / “Global North”
terminology is preferable to talking of “developed” vs. “developing”
countries, which seems to me to say something about the “developing”
countries having a need to change to overcome problems like widespread
poverty (which is undeniably true) while the “developed” countries are
not in need of similarly profound change (which I think in view of the
climate protection problem is absolutely false).

Greetings,
Norbert

  Anyway, it is 
> mentioned that it is shorthand used before the (current) internet.
> 
> >It is true that the geographic distribution was not perfect. Among
> >Global North countries, "Estern"_ perspectives were underrepresented
> >in relation to "Western"_ perspectives (in regard to what I call
> >"Eastern Global North"_ perspectives we had only one participant from
> >South Korea, but e.g. no-one from Japan), and within the set of
> >Global South perspectives, not only as you noted the Southern
> >hemisphere was relatively underrepresented, but also e.g. we had
> >no-one from China. So there is indeed room for improvement in this
> >regard. This problem is related to a significant extent to the issue
> >of travel related challenges, in particular the issue of costs, but
> >getting a visa for traveling to an international meeting can be a
> >challenge also quite independently of the aspect of cost.
> 
> I am interested in the public views a person 
> argues for or against.  It is encouraging to see 
> that you have been transparent about the source 
> of funding.  It is not possible to assess the 
> perspective(s) the person will provide when the discussions are not
> open.
> 
> Regards,
> S. Moonesamy 
> 