Global South Redux

The idea of the Global South has been re-surging since the onset of the Ukraine War. Yet its renewed form is not a re-run of its twentieth century original. It draws from multiple bloodlines of anti-imperialist struggles, bureaucratic regimes of development, and the promise of capitalist markets. Once a name for the global ‘other’, the concept has been reconfigured as self-identification of an emerging geopolitical force by a coalition of postcolonial nations. It simultaneously captures the dreams of multipolarity as well as contradictions of great political and economic shifts rearranging the postcolony. What makes the Global South a durable sign that can be repurposed time and again, is its flexibility: the capacity to not only encompass multiple lineages sometimes at odds with each other but also continuously absorb contradictions and new meanings. This introductory essay to the special forum traces the historical conditions within which the Global South redux emerged, and its manifold futures that lay ahead

Bureaucracy · Futures contract · Geopolitics · Global South · International relations · Politics · Redux · Decolonial Thought and Epistemologies · Globalization and political ideologies · Tourism, Volunteerism, and Development