ABSTRACT
The ideological operation of dominant cultural institutions, including the Church and language differences, promotes prejudices against Southern people and descriptions of them implying inferiority, which did not escape Gramsci's attention. Dominant elites from the beginnings of the crisis, addressing European and national audiences, constructed a narrative that framed as causes of the crisis only Southern Europeans who "live beyond their means" and "their" governments who systematically cheat EU institutions. In the mediation, powerful actors played key roles, such as the mainstream media, politicians, bureaucrats and European, national and international institutions, bankers and think tanks. Measuring development distance between nations and regions through such indices became the new dogma and "South" in general became the new international prototype of backwardness. Since then "South" in economics and development theories has become synonymous with underdevelopment and this has resulted in two major theoretical problems, with devastating effects until today.
