ABSTRACT
Mainstream understandings of the ‘South’ treat it as a collection of nation-states with relatively low per capita incomes. Such perspectives ignore the struggles that the term South has historically evoked, and eschews key dimensions of power, inequality and oppression. It is true that some of the national hierarchies that first prompted the North–South conceptual divide are very much alive today, as proved by the distribution of voting power in key international institutions, aggregate per capita wealth disparities between developed and developing economies, and military strength and legitimacy for intervention, to name just a few important issues. An intersectional perspective reveals the overlapping and mutually reinforcing forms of oppression that the global South faces in its daily struggles. Postcolonial societies carry with them heavy domestic legacies of economic, geographic, gender and racial inequalities that do not just fade away within the context of ‘South–South’ relations.
