Up South

A few weeks ago, I wrote in one of the many newsletters associated with this magazine about Global North-South partnerships and the change that’s taking place in their direction. In one draft, I ended up falling over my own feet trying to explain the Global North, the Global South, the East and the West and how they’re related.

A point I was trying to make was that to a certain degree, the Global North is often understood as also meaning Western. However, geographic reality shows that this isn’t entirely true. Japan and Korea, for example, are in the Global North, but are Eastern. Australia and New Zealand, meanwhile, are geographically in both the Southern and Eastern Hemispheres, but are considered part of the Global North and Western.

This is where I really started to trip myself up.

Latin America is geographically South and also part of the Global South (with the exception of French Guiana). It is, however, Western.

There’s an important point to raise. We should be mindful of what’s being centred when we use relational descriptors for a place. For example, as an Australian, I found it frustrating to be called antipodean — the literal Latin translation means “with feet opposite”, but we would understand it as meaning to be on the direct opposite side of the world. Relative to me, those calling me that — i.e. the British — were antipodal.

My Australian example, of course, is exceptionally benign. But if we shifted that relational descriptor to a person, we very quickly see the problems it creates. There are countless examples of headlines in which a person’s achievements are attributed to them only as someone else’s spouse — this happens most often with women.