Barry K. Gills

South–South cooperation and the rise of the Global South

Abstract In this introductory article we examine the recent resurgence of South–South cooperation, which has moved once again onto the centre stage of world politics and economics, leading to a renewed interest in its historic promise to transform world order. We provide an overview of contemporary debates surrounding this resurgence, noting in particular the division between those who are optimistic with regard to the potential of Southern economic development and the project of liberation from Northern domination, and the more pessimistic critics, who see this very success of the South as being subsumed within the existing global capitalist development paradigm.

Overturning ‘Globalization’: Resisting Teleology, Reclaiming Politics

The term ‘globalization’ has served as an arresting metaphor to provide explanation, meaning, and understanding of the nature of contemporary capitalism, though not all of the processes that currently come under the rubric of globalization are new.1 It is meant to suggest a number of analytically distinct phenomena and developments within the international system, while combining them into a single overarching process of change. Considerable attention centres on the application of new (often information based) technologies to the production process, and parallel changes in management, organization, and communications at corporate, societal, and state levels.

Toward Transversal Cosmopolitanism: Understanding Alternative Praxes in the Global Field of Transformative Movements

Abstract This article critically reflects on theoretical dilemmas of conceptualizing recent ideological shifts and contention among global transformative movements. Some studies conceptualize these movements as ideologically mature and coherent, while other inquiries highlight disorganization, fragmentation, disillusion, and dispute. The former line of argument suggests that underlying emerging global solidarities—to the extent they genuinely exist—there are some identifiably coherent cosmopolitanist, or globalist, values. The latter claim that existing global justice and transformative movements lack an effective ideological position for uniting the masses behind a global (political) project for transforming global capitalist social relations. By drawing upon an interpretive review of empirical studies conducted throughout the last decade, the article delineates four modalities, defined in terms of their orientations toward cosmopolitanist values. Among these modalities is a new and promising one, termed here as ‘transversal cosmopolitanist’ (‘transversal’ here understood as a process verb, indicating a new form of cosmopolitanist praxis). This approach assumes the possibility of creating a common ground for fruitful dialogue, constructive collective learning, progressive hybridization, and active political cooperation among diverse identities and ideological visions of contemporary global transformative movements, against existing capitalist social relations and structures of domination.

The Future of Development from Global Crises to Global Convergence

The twenty-first century carries huge potential to be radically different from the nineteenth and twentieth. In this new global era, humanity possesses extraordinary material means as well as unprecedented degrees of reflexive knowledge and global communication. The challenge is to overcome legacies of the past and fully to realize today’s positive potentialities, to reverse present trends towards ‘global dystopia’ and nurture sustainable progressive trends towards a future ‘global utopia’. I start with the proposition that ‘globalization’ – or, more particularly, ‘neoliberal economic globalization’ as the driving paradigm shaping current global development – is failing. This paradigm cannot successfully expand or reproduce itself into the future without causing deeper crisis tendencies and systemic failures. Neoliberal economic globalization has reached its historic limits. Thus, radical transformations of the present global status quo – including of the conception of ‘development’ itself – offer the most effective and realistic way forward to address impending global crises of the twenty-first century. Fortunately, there is an ongoing historical dialectic of ‘crisis and conscientization’: between an increasing popular awareness of the serious nature of global crises, on the one hand, and a reflexive process of introspection and consequent personal and cultural change, on the other. This dialectic provokes widespread cultural learning and social change, and the internalization of new attitudes towards ‘development’. This trend holds in both Global North and Global South. Indeed, the past several decades have brought real change in the global structure inherited from the colonial era. The position of the Global South in this global framework has altered, and much potential now exists for the Global South to play an even greater role in shaping the future of the world community. We have indeed entered a new global era. Economic and political institutions bind virtually all countries into a common framework, deciding upon common rules and accepted norms and practices. It is a nascent ‘world society’, including also elements of a ‘world polity’.

Global Development in the Anthropocene

Abstract In this brief essay I will address a few key concepts, and make an argument concerning how I think they relate to one another, and how their combination will affect the future of our understanding and practices of Development. The principal concepts I will discuss are Global History and Global Crises, Global Development, Sustainable Development, and The Anthropocene.

Theorizing alternatives to capital: Towards a critical cosmopolitanist framework1

We are living in an era of multiple crises, multiple social resistances, and multiple cosmopolitanisms. The post-Cold War context has generated a plethora of movements, but no single unifying ideology or global political program has yet materialized. The historical confrontation between capital and its alternatives, however, continues to pose new possibilities for social and systemic transformations. Critical analysis of ideological divisions among today’s diverse emancipatory and transformative movements is important in order to understand past and present shortcomings, and many continuing difficulties in imagining crisis-free alternative futures. Inspired by a multiplicity of responses from the Global South and the Global North, and by furthering Delanty’s critical cosmopolitanist approach, this article aims to create a new framework for interpreting ‘transformative visions’ that challenge systems of domination embedded in capitalist social relations. The framework is designed to enable the evaluative analysis of such visions, as well as the exploration of embedded ideological obstacles to dialogue and collaboration among them.

Interview with Boris Kagarlitsky

Abstract In this interview Boris Kagarlitsky discusses the significance of contemporary ideas surrounding South–South Relations, the continuities and discontinuities between the ‘global South’ and previous notions of the ‘Third World’, and whether such changes in the world economy of over the past half a century can be understood as a form of hegemonic transition. Kagarlitsky also addresses the role of the various social forces and movements of the global South within these emerging South–South relations. Finally, he addresses the question of the role of the Russian Federation in the world system following the global crisis.