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

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.