Special Issue of The Global South
Publication Date: Fall 2024
Call for Proposals
The Far North and the Global South
In the inaugural issue of The Global South, Arif Dirlik notes the fundamental instability of the journal’s core concept: “like all geographical designations of ideological and political spaces and projects,” the geography of the Global South “is much more complicated than the term suggests, and subject to change over time.” “[T]he ‘South’ of the contemporary world,” Dirlik reminds us, “may be significantly different in its composition and territorial spread than the South” of past historical moments. The “Inui[t],” he observes, “are practically on the North Pole.”[1] By referencing the Far North as a potentially Global Southern space, Dirlik highlights what many scholars have subsequently acknowledged: the Global South is not a fixed region; the Global South can be anywhere. Nevertheless, the geographical resonance of the term continues to direct the focus of the field toward some regions and away from others. Despite its increased prominence in the political and environmental crises of the twenty-first century, the peripheralized Far North remains largely absent from Global South studies, an omission that unwittingly reproduces outdated notions of the Arctic as a kind of terra nullius, a region outside both the Global North and the Global South, devoid of people and history. As the effects of climate change continue to undermine perceptions of the Arctic as a region isolated from the modern world, this special issue seeks to explore the relationship between the Far North and the Global South. How might concepts of the Global South prove generative in relation to the histories of the Far North? Conversely, how might greater attention to the Far North introduce new challenges, questions, and insights within the field of Global South studies, further complicating binaristic formulations of space across a range of disciplines, including literary and cultural studies, anthropology, economics, and history?
Possible topics include:
· Indigenous methodologies, activism, and resistance
· Histories of environmental exploitation/resource extraction
· Histories of labor exploitation and interconnections of global capitalism
· Experiences of colonialism, including post-, neo-, and green-
· Tourism and militarization
· Hierarchies of race, gender, class, and sexuality
· Connections grounded in literature, film, music, visual and performance art
· Experiences of immigrants and refugees
· Archipelagic and Oceanic approaches
Please submit a proposal of up to 500 words and a brief biography to Ryan Charlton at rmc0017@auburn.edu and Jenna Sciuto at j.sciuto@mcla.edu by May 15th, 2022.
[1] Dirlik, “Global South: Predicament and Promise,” 13.