For a critical appraisal of the concepts “Global South” and “South-South Cooperation”

Abstract

The article proposes a history of the concepts of “Global South” and “South-South Cooperation” and suggests that it has been progressively moving away from critical meanings and promises of transformation of the world system and the international arena. A fashionable concept in the international debate and of vague geographical/geopolitical origin, “Global South” has been associated or sharing space with other ideas that are even vaguer than it, such as “developing countries” and “emerging countries”. To make this brief history of the concept, it will be interesting to map ideas throughout a global history (since it began to exist) that have served to name roughly the same geographical space that today corresponds to the Global South. The article defends the thesis that, among all the alternatives that have already been developed, the notions of “center/periphery” and “dependency” are the ones with the greatest critical and emancipatory potential.

Keywords

• global south; south-south cooperation; global periphery; international relations
• history of the concepts