Why, when and how the global south became relevant

Abstract

In the planning stages of this handbook this essay was to be called "who, what and where is the global South" It was conceived to provide a neat, definitive overview of how we go about determining whether a country or region is in the Global South or, alternatively, in the Global North. This logic, of placing places in their place, misses the relevance of the Global South, a concept that is not primarily about pinpointing or labeling pieces of the earth. The Global South cannot be observed when looking down on our planet from outer space; it has been forged through history rather than the location of pieces of land. Instead of trying to establish how to categorize places hemispherically, the global South should be grappled with through the question posed by Levander & Mignolo (2011, p. 3) in the epigraph: "for whom and under what conditions" does the Global South become relevant?