History
North-South Divide
The North-South Divide refers to the economic and social differences between the developed, industrialized countries of the Northern Hemisphere and the less developed countries of the Southern Hemisphere. This divide has its roots in colonialism and has been perpetuated by factors such as unequal trade relationships, debt, and lack of access to resources and technology.
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6 Key excerpts on "North-South Divide"
- Paul N. Balchin(Author)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
None of the above definitions, however, fully offer the possibility of intelligibly examining current north-south disparities, or of considering whether or not the North-South Divide is widening or narrowing. In order to use accessible economic and social data to make clear comparisons between the north and the south, the boundary between these two parts of Britain must, first, avoid dissecting standard regions and, second, divide Britain into two parts that are broadly compatible with people's perception of the terms 'north' and 'south'. To reiterate, it is a nonsense to suggest that whereas Devon is 'northern', Derbyshire is 'southern'. For these reasons it is assumed throughout this book that 'the fault line of [Britain] ... remains, as it has always been, a boundary drawn between the Severn and the Wash' (Osmond, 1988, p. 12). To the south of this line are the standard regions of the South East, South West and East Anglia, and to the north are the other standard regions of England, together with Scotland and Wales (Figure 1.1). It is remarkable that, taking the boundary as defined above, Britain, in the late twentieth century, divides into two contrasting parts 'in which economic and social factors show a highly consistent pattern and are mutually reinforcing in their effects' (Martin, 1988, p. 401). In the north there are the decaying and comparatively low-income cities of the Industrial Revolution previously dependent upon coal, textiles, metal industries and mechanical engineering, and in the south there is a concentration of economic and political power in the capital and an array of affluent new towns and country towns geared to the growth of high-technology industry and decentralized services. Perpetual imbalance While undoubtedly the north became disproportionately disadvantaged by the depression of the 1930s, most of the northern regions have always been the poorest parts of Britain.
- Rafael Reuveny, William R. Thompson, William R. Thompson, Rafael Reuveny, William R. Thompson, Rafael Reuveny(Authors)
- 2009(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
Chapter 1 Observations on the North–South Divide Rafael Reuveny and William R. Thompson This volume on the North and South in world politics encompasses a sample of papers delivered at the 2006 annual meeting of the International Studies Association (ISA) in San Diego, California. 1 Our intention is not to catalogue exhaustively all of the aspects of this structured dimension of international relations. Nor do we seek to resolve the issues at risk. Rather, our thesis is that North–South issues have already become prominent and are likely to become even more so in the future. We would all do well to recognize them more explicitly and to focus more analytical attention on North– South questions as they move toward the center of the world stage. Even when these North–South questions are not manifested in obvious ways, they tend to be all-pervasive – not unlike the way the old Cold War used to work. Indeed, it seems likely that just as the “East–West” rift dominated much of the second half of the twentieth century, North–South issues are likely to dominate much of the twenty-first century. Yet one question that remains very much open is whether we will recognize the common North–South denominators. With the old Cold War, paranoia helped to see connections everywhere – even when they were not there. Yet in the North–South divide, some Northerners still wonder why many Southerners hate Northerners. Even the terminology seems obscure. Ask typical Americans what they know about the North–South gap and the response is just as likely to have some puzzled reference to the Mason–Dixon line as it is to have something to do with development and inequality. The Context Economic history is not destiny but it has been a powerful factor in shaping the nature of international relations over the past several centuries. Precisely where one
- Shawkat Alam, Sumudu Atapattu, Carmen G. Gonzalez, Jona Razzaque(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
part i History of the North–South Divide and Global Environmental Governance 2 History of the North–South Divide in International Law: Colonial Discourses, Sovereignty, and Self-Determination M. Rafiqul Islam 1. introduction International law is a product of an evolutionary process that has been in effect since the dawn of history. An examination of its historic origin, subsequent devel- opment, and contemporary manifestation reveals the decisive influence of asym- metric power and economic inequality in shaping its normative standards and direction. It is this quest for power and economic clout that has resulted in conflicts of competing interests dubbed variously over history as “civilized” and “primitive,” “west” and “east,” “developed” and “developing,” and “clash of civilizations.” This division is currently called the North–South divide, in reference to geostrategic and economic power imbalances, including the digital divide in the context of tech- nology. The “North” is a group of developed, industrialized, and technologically advanced states, often known as the First World, and the “South” represents developing, least developed, and technologically impoverished states, also called the Third World. International relations are littered with conflicts of interest between these two groups. The root of this North–South divide lies in the very creation, nature, features, and orientation of international law from its antiquity to the present context. This chapter is an historic account of the genesis, conceptual justification, and metamorphosis of the North–South divide in a number of areas of international law, including international environmental law. It highlights certain historic international events and features that have contributed to the skewing of inter- national law toward the North.
eBook - PDFJokey Horse-Jockey North-South Rapport
Diagnostic-cum-Prognostic-Academic Perspectives on Who Truly Depends on Whom
- Nkwazi Mhango(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Langaa RPCIG(Publisher)
1 Chapter One North-South Link to Conflict, Poverty and Underdevelopment i) Introduction In other words, the North-South conflict also means a cultural division of the world’s societies. It is the division that was defined during the 18th and 19th centuries by opposing terms such as ‘civilization’ and ‘savagery/barbarism’; later they were substituted by the binomials ‘development’ and ‘underdevelopment’, ‘modernity’ and ‘tradition’, ‘domination’ and ‘dependency’, ‘metropolis’ and ‘periphery’, ‘globalism’ and ‘localism’ Krotz (1997: 239 cited in Oliveira 2011). The above quote, apart from being self-explanatory, suffices to answer the question about the origin of the terms of the relationship between the Global North and Global South dwelling on economic matrices and synergies between the twosomes. Therefore, too, from the quote one can grasp the spirit and the intentions of the formulation of these two terms whose major aim, inter alia , is for one side to belittle, discriminate against, dwarf and exploit another while for the other is an insult. Due to its self-explanatory nature, the quote above delivers the message forthrightly. Hence, this volume will not dwell on redefining or elaborating more on such terms because the provided reading goes even deeper and further as far as the etymology of the terms are concerned. Importantly however, some of the terms found in the defining quote above will feature in this volume. However, we can add something in that the creation, and partly, the conceptualisation of the terms, seems to be more stereotypical, xenophobic and fabricated than logical. All depends on the lenses one uses to view and analyse them. This is why this volume avoids of using such terms stereotypical and xenophobic terms by taking them easily and applying them blindly without underscoring the ambiguities and the toxicity hidden behind them. Primarily, the
eBook - PDFTranscultural Realities
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Cross-Cultural Relations
- Virginia H. Milhouse, Molefi Kete Asante, Peter O. Nwosu(Authors)
- 2001(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
Long victimized by northern elements, these scholars tend to view the south-north divide as a natural con-sequence of historical efforts by northern Arabs to subjugate and dominate the south. Specifically, they relate the current communal divide to the 19th century’s practices of such men as Al Zubair Pasha Raham and other jallabas (Arab slave traders), who enslaved southerners in great numbers. This group’s views are perhaps best repre-sented by Dunstan Wai (1981). A southern historian, Wai argues that the communal di-vide and militant separatism in the south are largely the product of a continual assault by successive northern governments on cultural diversity in postindependence Sudan. This school of thought argues that forcible efforts by successive northern governments to unify and integrate postcolonial Sudan have re-sulted in policies that threatened the southern African, non-Muslim identity. That is so be-cause, according to Wai, successive northern regimes had a tendency to impose Arabic and Islamic values forcibly on the south, “giving the system an internal colonialist character” (Wai, 1981, p. 26). Subsequently, subordinate ethnic groups in the African south were pres-sured to accepted their north-determined lot at the bottom of the social pyramid. Threatened by the prospect of losing their ethnocultural identity, southerners not surprisingly opted to resist this cultural colonialism and to seek south self-rule, Wai argues. Terming this tendency a “basic feature of northern cosmology,” Wai (1981) quotes a former prime-minister, Sadiq El Mahdy, who stated in 1966 that “the dominant feature of our nation is an Islamic one and its over-whelming expression in Arabic” (p. 34). In light of such attitudes on the part of one of the north’s most conciliatory leaders, Wai and others who share his view argue that it is hardly surprising that the communal divide between north and south has continued to widen.
eBook - PDFThe Political Economy of Poverty, Vulner
Building Bridges of Resilience, Entrepreneurshi
- Munyaradzi Mawere(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Langaa RPCIG(Publisher)
39 Chapter 3 Poverty and the Discourses about the Global North’s Playing of the Global South Nkwazi Mhango The North-South conflict also means a cultural division of the world’s societies. It is the division that was defined during the 18 th and 19 th centuries by opposing terms such as ‘civilization’ and ‘savagery/barbarism’; later they were substituted by the binomials ‘development’ and ‘underdevelopment’, ‘modernity’ and ‘tradition’, ‘domination’ and ‘dependency’, ‘metropolis’ and ‘periphery’, ‘globalism’ and ‘localism’ (Krotz 1997: 239 cited in Oliveira 2011). Introduction The above quote, apart from being self-explanatory, suffices to answer the question about the origin of the terms of the relationship between the Global North and the Global South dwelling on economic matrices and synergies between the two. So, too, from the quote one can grasp the spirit and intentions of the formulation of these two terms whose major aim is for one side to discriminate against, dwarf and exploit another. Due to its self-explanatory nature, the quote above delivers the message forthrightly. Therefore, this corpus will not dwell on redefining or elaborating more on such terms due to the fact that the provided reading goes even deeper and further as far as the etymology of the terms are concerned. Importantly, some of the terms found in the defining quote above will feature in this chapter. Nevertheless, we can add something in that the creation, and partly, the conceptualisation of the terms, seems to be more stereotypical, xenophobic and fabricated than logical. It all depends on the lenses one uses to view and analyse them. This is why this chapter suggests that such terms should not be taken for granted so as to be applied blindly without underscoring the ambiguities and the toxicity hidden behind them. Primarily, the corpus takes a 40 deconstructionist slant of scholarship (Jobson 2010) in order to scrutinise; and thereby contribute how these terms can be made right.
Index pages curate the most relevant extracts from our library of academic textbooks. They’ve been created using an in-house natural language model (NLM), each adding context and meaning to key research topics.
