Talk:Global South

Is this self-criticism?

Hi Theo,

obviously there are objections to the term (and from my limited knowledge about previous discussions, it seems that no one is a big fan of it and it just stuck around as the least worst option, because the objections to the alternatives were even bigger). However, I find the strong opinions you express in this essay a bit surprising, given that you seem to have used the term "Global South" quite frequently yourself in the past, without any hint of objection or irony. Examples:

• Signpost, August 2010 ("The Foundation will focus on the Global South to achieve its growth in readership for the next decade—particularly India, Brazil and the Middle East.")
• Foundation-l, September 2011 ("There are homogeneous language groups and communities, I never disputed that but there are so many of them. It has something to do with sociology, why certain type of individuals or groups gravitate towards certain things. I think you know, but others might not, I am from the Global south. There is something different that attracted me towards the projects. It is and was open for me to join, as I am sure it was for anyone in my part of the world ...")
• Foundation-l, January 2012 (" this might be one of those international issues where perceptions might differ based on the culture and nationality of someone. I know my position on this might be naive or flawed, but I know others who feel the same way. ... Strictly from a global south perspective, ...")

Was there anything in particular that prompted your change of opinion?

Also note that the article en:Global South (Anglican) says basically the opposite of what the esssay claims it says:

"The term Global South was originally simply a general description of what was formerly referred to as the Third World, which is primarily in the Southern Hemisphere. It was applied, specifically, to Christian churches only in 2003"

The Google Books usage statistics (found by Bence) confirm that "Global South" was on the rise long before 2003, and continued to rise sharply during the 2000s, way before it was used in the Foundation's 2010-15 strategic plan, which you helped create.

Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 23:34, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Do you know what Official communications from WMF means? or the difference between an organization and an individual. Your logic here seems to be, you used the term in the past so why should we stop? Do you believe that is a justified reason? every racial-epithet would be justified by that measure. This is bordering on racist at this point when privileged, primarily white anglo-saxon individuals refuse to vacate the term referring to non-whites, even after non-whites repeatedly object to it, just because few of them might have used it in the past. The offended people's feelings be damned it was used in the past and that is all you need? Just to be specific, its your logic and refusal that is making this racist, which I didn't think at first.

There are a lot of subtle differences that might be alluding you between my usage and WMF's, so I'll take the opportunity to explain, lest you accuse another Global Southerener. Those 3 links don't prove anything, I dont deny to its usage then or even now. Either way,you quoted me twice on a mailing list and once on a news story which you edited, over a period of 2 years - the evidence seems damning. My opinion never changed, you see, a long time ago, well before you joined WMF, there existed a world on its own. With opinions and discussions about words like this one, that you might not have been privy to. I'm not the first one to object to its usage, nor are my feelings as strong as others, but rest assured the objections are noted for the record. It was Osmar and Carlos' reaction that prompted me to write this. Anyway, about 2 years ago, soon after Asaf joined WMF, Asaf and Abbas found a swahili word to replace Global South and said WMF and GD dept. in specific, would make an effort to avoid its usage. If you spend enough time with Foundation-l or internal archives, you might even find me complaining about the usage of the term somewhere. Then, there were mentions with Barry, and Moka, again, long before you came along, feelings on the usage of that word weren't secret. But I suppose you knew all that, and as I said, my feelings werent even that strong to begin with but were noted on several occasions.

• My entire point lost in your red herring, was the usage of term in an OFFICIAL CAPACITY from WMF. The term is around, I don't like it, others hate it even more. It is clearly offending some individuals, and your reaction would be to accuse them of using it in the past? Yes, I have used the term, because I tried to communicate with people who I dont know, where that official communication is the only link between me and them. So, if I start calling it the "colored world" or the "non-white world", or just "Savagelands" they might not understand the context. This was especially necessary for the Signpost and Foundation-l.

• By your logic, I can hold you solely responsible for proliferating the usage of the term since your usage would be 100 times more than mine on the Signpost, and you were the editor who should have corrected others. If you notice I didn't single out Mr. Bayer at any point but WMF, again this goes back to the first 2 questions at the beginning. Then there is the other part of the argument, I am from the global south, you are not, this dichotomy was what I found interesting, that people not from the Global south prefer to use that term, while people from it, object and they go ignored.

• My objections to the word are noted, but they were never as strong as how Carlos and Osmar expressed it. I was prompted to write this from reading their opinion and how it was still being ignored and marginalized by you. This was supposed to be a light humorous thing, prompted after noticing the divide on your survey page. I was going to expand and add a humorous tag on top at some point. But you have prompted me to take a more serious approach from now on, I'm going to call it the Savagelands, and see if I can expand it better. My feelings weren't strong to begin with, you might have just made them.

• Actually the line I used is exactly from the article, as is the one you are quoting. I saw it in Carlos' comment originally. You can ask someone to check for you that they both exist within the same article. As for the geographic south, you should see which hemisphere India lies in, and which hemisphere Australia lies, while still being considered part of the Global North. Its usage was odd to begin with, there was the NY times article where they referred to it with quotes, as "Global South" when they quoted Sue, there might be several dozen more reputed publications where this word was found to be an odd choice. And as far as the strategy plan goes, you might be confusing me for Achal, I worked solely on Financial sustainability in the strategic plan, I was very new at that point, and worked with what I knew.

Theo10011 (talk) 09:33, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

As I corrected a link above, let me note that I believe this tells a more complete story: [1] or even [2]. Pretty much every new euphemism has been superseded? --Nemo 19:28, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

New countries included

intend to focus on the following countries and the main language communities associated with them: Argentina and Mexico (Spanish), Brazil (Portuguese), Egypt (Arabic), India (Indian languages and English), Indonesia (Bahasa Indonesia and English), Philippines (English and Tagalog), Turkey (Turkish), and Vietnam (Vietnamese). We arrived at this list through a combination of factors that we believe indicate strategic potential for our movement, including the Wikipedia active and very active editor count in those

[3] --Nemo 22:38, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Malaysia might use English, but Indonesian doesn't officially use English. ✒ Bennylin 13:56, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

There is now more discussion about this at List of countries by regional classification and elsewhere. --Nemo 06:16, 15 June 2015 (UTC)