print

In search of the Global South:
an analysis of contemporary academic discourse

Wang Ya.,

HSE University, Moscow, Russia, yavan@hse.ru

ORCID: 0009-0008-7534-8091 |

Article received: 2025.07.13 11:05. Accepted: 2025.11.14 11:05


DOI: 10.17976/jpps/2026.01.02
EDN: APKGXG

Rubric: Theme of the issue: The Global South as a subject of political research

For citation:

Wang Ya. In search of the Global South: an analysis of contemporary academic discourse. – Polis. Political Studies. 2026. No. 1. https://doi.org/10.17976/jpps/2026.01.02. EDN: APKGXG (In Russ.)

Abstract

This article systematically analyzes competing interpretations of the Global South concept in contemporary academic discourse. It introduces an original theoretical framework, adapted from the “semantic triangle” model, to examine metageographical categories. Drawing on critical geography, symbolic politics, and orientalism theory, the author argues that the polysemy of such categories–including the Global South–stems from dual contestations: the symbolic content of the concept and its spatial referent. Employing this framework alongside systematic review methodology, the study surveys key conceptualizations of the Global South in English- and Russian-language scholarly publications over the past three decades. Findings reveal that “inequality” forms the shared semantic core across diverse interpretations. Variations along two axes–the substance of inequality (ranging from purely economic to multidimensional and intersectional) and its geographical scope (from state-centric to transnational and deterritorialized) – yield a typology of four principal meanings of the “Global South”: (1) a cluster of economically disadvantaged states; (2) the “global subaltern,” marginalized by neoliberal capitalism; (3) social theories and knowledge produced from Southern perspectives; and (4) a relational metaphor capturing context-dependent power asymmetries. The article concludes that the Global South emerges as a Wittgensteinian category of “family resemblance,” unified by a shared concern with inequality, which serves as both its conceptual nucleus and the root of its polysemy.

 

Keywords

Global South, inequality, metageography, symbolic politics, conceptualization, systematic review, academic discourse.

Armillas-Tiseyra, M., & Mahler, A.G. (2021). Introduction: new critical directions in global south studies. Comparative Literature Studies, 58(3), 465-484. https://doi.org/10.5325/complitstudies.58.3.0465

Artner, A., & Yin, Z. (2023). Towards a non-hegemonic world order–emancipation and the political agency of the Global South in a changing world order. Third World Quarterly, 44(10), 2193-2207. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2023.2251422

Berger, T. (2021). The ‘Global South’ as a relational category–global hierarchies in the production of law and legal pluralism. Third World Quarterly, 42(9), 2001-2017. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2020.1827948

Brenner, N. (2011). The space of the world: Beyond state-centrism? In D. Palumbo-Liu, N. Tanoukhi, & B. Robbins (Eds.), Immanuel Wallerstein and the Problem of the World: System, Scale, Culture (pp. 101-137). Durham: Duke University Press.

Buchowski, M. (2006). The specter of Orientalism in Europe: from exotic other to stigmatized brother. Anthropological Quarterly, 79(3), 463-482. https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2006.0032

Bull, B., & Banik, D. (2025). The rebirth of the Global South: geopolitics, imageries and developmental realities. Forum for Development Studies, 52(2), 195–214. https://doi.org/10.1080/08039410.2025.2490696

Collins, P.H. (2015). Intersectionality’s definitional dilemmas. Annual Review of Sociology, 41(1), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-073014-112142

Comaroff, J., & Comaroff, J. (2011). Theory from the South: Or how Euro-America is evolving toward Africa. London: Paradigm Publishers.

Connell, R. (2007). Southern theory. The global dynamics of knowledge in social science. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Dainotto, R. (2017). South by chance: Southern questions on the Global South. The Global South, 11(2), 39-53. https://doi.org/10.2979/globalsouth.11.2.03

Davies, T. (2024). World order transformation from the grassroots: Global south social movements and the transcendence of established approaches to international change. International Political Sociology, 18(1), olad023. https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olad023

Dirlik, A. (1994). The postcolonial aura: Third World criticism in the age of global capitalism. Critical Inquiry, 20(2), 328-356. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429495953-3

Freeman, A. (2024). The geopolitical economy of international inequality. Development and Change, 55(1), 3-37. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12812

Funk, K. (2015). The Global South is dead, long live the Global South! The intersectionality of social and geographic hierarchies in global capitalism. New Political Science, 37(4), 582-603. https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2015.1089031

Gallie, W.B. (1956). Essentially contested concepts. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 56(1), 167-198. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4544562

Go, J. (2023). Thinking against empire: anticolonial thought as social theory. The British Journal of Sociology, 74(3), 279-293. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12993

Gupta, A., & Ferguson, J. (1992). Beyond “culture”: space, identity, and the politics of difference. Cultural Anthropology, 7(1), 6-23. https://doi.org/10.1525/can.1992.7.1.02a00020

Gyuris, F. (2014). The political discourse of spatial disparities: Geographical inequalities between science and propaganda. Cham: Springer.

Harvey, D. (2005). The sociological and geographical imaginations. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 18, 211-255. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-006-9009-6

Haug, S., Braveboy-Wagner, J., & Maihold, G. (2021). The ‘Global South’ in the study of world politics: examining a meta category. Third World Quarterly, 42(9), 1923-1944. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2021.1948831

Hoerning, J. (2023). Dividing the ‘world’: Spatial binaries in global perspective. In K.R. Cox, & H. Jöns (Eds.), Considering Space, Place and Time: An Introduction to Thinking Geographically (pp. 113-135). London; New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003194098-9

Jung, C. (2023). Revisiting antisystemic movements in the Global South: Struggles against exclusion and struggles against exploitation. 36597.2022.2106208 Third World Quarterly, 44(10), 2227–2245. https://doi.org/10.1080/014

Kleinschmidt, J. (2018). Differentiation theory and the Global South as a metageography of international relations. Alternatives, 43(2), 59-80. https://doi.org/10.1177/0304375418779624

Laponce, J.A. (1975). Spatial archetypes and political perceptions. American Political Science Review, 69(1), 11-20. https://doi.org/10.2307/1957881

Lazar, M.M. (2020). Politics of the ‘South’: discourses and praxis. Discourse & Society, 31(1), 5-18. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926519886126

Lees, N. (2021). The Brandt Line after forty years: the more North–South relations change, the more they stay the same? Review of International Studies, 47(1), 85-106. https://doi.org/10.1017/s026021052000039x

Lentz, C. (2020). Doing being middle-class in the global South: Comparative perspectives and conceptual challenges. Africa, 90(3), 439-469. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0001972020000029

Lewis, M.W., & Wigen, K. (1997). The myth of continents: A critique of metageography. Berkeley: University of California Press.

López, A.J. (2007). Introduction: the (post) Global South. The Global South, 1(1), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.2979/gso.2007.1.1.1

López, A.J. (2021). Intentions, methods, and the future of Global South studies. Comparative Literature Studies, 58(3), 485-508. https://doi.org/10.5325/complitstudies.58.3.0485

MacKinnon, D. (2011). Reconstructing scale: Towards a new scalar politics. Progress in Human Geography, 35(1), 21-36. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132510367841

Menon, D.M. (2018). Thinking about the Global South. In R. West-Pavlov (Ed.), The Global South and literature (pp. 34-44). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108552553.004

Müller, M. (2020). In search of the Global East: thinking between North and South. Geopolitics, 25(3), 734-755. https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2018.1477757

Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2023). Beyond the coloniser’s model of the world: Towards reworlding from the Global South. Third World Quarterly, 44(10), 2246-2262. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2023.2171389

Ogden, C.K., & Richards, I.A. (1923). The meaning of meaning. A study of the influence of language upon thought and of the science of symbolism. New York; London: Harcourt, Brace and Co.; Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co.

Petticrew, M., & Roberts, H. (2006). Systematic reviews in the social sciences: a practical guide. Oxford: Blackwell.

Pinheiro, C. (2024). From the Third World to the Global South: definitions of moral geographies of inequality in anti‐colonial intellectual traditions. Sociology Compass, 18(8), e13262. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.13262

Prashad, V. (2012). The poorer nations: A possible history of the Global South. London: Verso Books.

Robinson, W.I. (2007). Beyond the theory of imperialism: global capitalism and the transnational state. Societies Without Borders, 2, 5-26. https://doi.org/10.1163/187188607x163176

Rosa, M.C. (2014). Theories of the South: Limits and perspectives of an emergent movement in social sciences. Current Sociology, 62(6), 851-867. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392114522171

Said, E.W. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.

Santos, B. de S. (2014). Epistemologies of the South: Justice against epistemicide. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers.

Schneider, N. (2017). Between promise and skepticism: the Global South and our role as engaged intellectuals. The Global South, 11(2), 18-38. https://doi.org/10.2979/globalsouth.11.2.02

Smith, N. (1984). Uneven development: Nature, capital and the production of space. Oxford: Blackwell.

Solarz, M.W. (2012). North-South, commemorating the First Brandt Report: Searching for the contemporary spatial picture of the global rift. Third World Quarterly, 33(3), 559-569. https://doi.org/10.1080 /01436597.2012.657493

Sud, N., & Sánchez-Ancochea, D. (2022). Southern discomfort: interrogating the category of the global south. Development and Change, 53(6), 1123-1150. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12742

Tlostanova, M. (2011). The South of the poor North: Caucasus subjectivity and the complex of secondary “Australism”. The Global South, 5(1), 66-84. https://doi.org/10.2979/globalsouth.5.1.66

Trefzer, A., Jackson, J.T., McKee, K., & Dellinger, K. (2014). Introduction: the Global South and/in the Global North: Interdisciplinary investigations. The Global South, 8(2), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.2979/ globalsouth.8.2.1

Waisbich, L.T., Roychoudhury, S., & Haug, S. (2021). Beyond the single story: ‘Global South’ polyphonies. Third World Quarterly, 42(9), 2086-2095. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2021.1948832

Westen, P. (1990). Speaking of equality. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Kislenko, I.Yu. (2020). On the role of the “Global North–South” notions in global sociology. Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Sociology, 13(2), 116-128. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu12.2020.201

Malinova, O.Yu. (2012). Simvolicheskaya politika: kontury problemnogo polya [The symbolic politics: contours of the research field]. In Simvolicheskaya politika [Symbolic Politics]. Vol. 1 (pp. 5-16). Moscow: INION RAS. (In Russ.)

Malinova, O.Yu. (2016). Sotsial’noye voobrazheniye prostranstva kak simvolicheskaya politika [Social Imagination of Space as Symbolic Politics]. In Simvolicheskaya politika [Symbolic Politics]. Vol. 4 (pp. 7-14). Moscow: INION RAS. (In Russ.)

Rastol’tsev, S.V. (2018). “Global’nyy Yug”: proiskhozhdeniye i evolyutsiya termina [“The Global South”: origin and evolution of the term]. In “Global’nyi Yug” v politsentrichnom miroporyadke [“The Global South” in a Polycentric World Order] (pp. 5-10). Moscow: IMEMO RAS. (In Russ.)

Shelekpaev, N., & Chokobaeva, A. (2020). An East within “the East”? Central Asia between the “strategic essentialism” of global symbols and a “tactical essentialism” of national narratives. Russian Sociological Review, 19(3), 70-101. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.17323/1728-192x-2020-3-70-101

Yakovlev, P.P. (2021). Global South: conceptual approaches and socio-economic processes. Outlines of Global Transformations: Politics, Economics, Law, 14(2), 6-27. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.23932/2542-0240-2021-14-2-1

Zamyatin, D.N. (2004). Metageografiya: Prostranstvo obrazov i obrazy prostranstva [Metageography: The Space of Images and the Images of Space]. Moscow: Agraf. (In Russ.)

See also: