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This article examines Haitian migration to Santiago, Chile, with a particular focus on the primary transit routes taken by this group and the challenges they face upon arrival. Many Haitians subsequently re-emigrate with new migration plans aimed at reaching the Global North. The study adopts a qualitative methodology, including fieldwork conducted from 2015 to 2023 in communes within Greater Santiago. It incorporates in-depth interviews with Haitian residents in these areas, alongside an analysis of national and international digital media and other documentary sources. The findings reveal two main migration routes: an aerial route leading to Santiago, Chile, and Quito, Ecuador, and an overland route from Quito to the northern Peru-Chile border, culminating in Santiago. Initially, many Haitians viewed life in Chile as a “salvation” from socioeconomic challenges. However, this perception often deteriorates over time due to widespread discrimination, which redirects their migration journey. Anti-Haitian policies, marked by both institutional and everyday racism, leave this group grappling with precarious, low-wage jobs and substandard housing in stigmatized areas. In these environments, evangelical churches have emerged as critical spaces, providing both symbolic meaning and opportunities for building and strengthening migration networks. An important finding is that, from the outset, many Haitians perceive Chile as a transit country, using it as a stepping stone for overland migration to the northern border of Mexico and the United States. Despite their aspirations for better job opportunities, they increasingly face similar challenges, such as precarious living conditions, difficulties in regularizing immigration status, and systemic racism, mirroring those in the Global South.

The exploratory study sought to present a review of scholarly literature and synthesise academic insights encompassing the span of 2010 to 2020, to shed light on the contemporary state of knowledge pertaining the intersection of destination branding and social media. The convergence between destination branding and social media has emerged as a pivotal component within the tourism industry, garnering heightened attention from practitioners and researchers. The methodology implemented was quantitative, using a Systematic Quantitative Literature Review to investigate how researchers study destination branding and social media within tourism literature. Data collection, drawing from a diverse array of scholarly articles sourced from prominent literature databases such as Emerald, Web of Science, Scopus, and Web of Science, was used. Data analysis included descriptive statistics, followed by a Cluster analysis to describe current research. Two types of articles emerged, clearly indicating the disparities between Global North and Global South in terms of the social media and branding dimensions studied, as well as the methodologies employed. Findings show polarisation of the research attention with majority focus on destination case studies from the Global North perspective. This study highlights important existing research gaps and presents a roadmap for future research endeavors.

Irresponsible production and consumption are the root causes of the Earth Crisis, and the Global North is primarily at fault. As a matter of urgency, the Global North must accept responsibility for the injustices caused and make reparations. I have argued elsewhere that art, craft, and design education is uniquely placed to address Earth Crisis issues, because it powerfully combines both effective and affective modes of communication. Here, as a degrowth advocate, I will consider how degrowth thinking can inform art, craft, and design education in the Global North, giving special attention to the theme of (ir)responsible production and consumption.

Abstract Since the late twentieth century, the global fashion industry has been increasingly embracing the business model known as fast fashion. Characterised by rapid production cycles, fleeting trends, low-cost garments and large-scale production, fast fashion seems to meet consumer demand for affordable and trendy clothing. However, its environmental impact as a major polluter poses significant challenges to sustainability and circularity initiatives. This article presents the results of a systematic literature review, exploring the unsustainable consequences of fast fashion, focusing on both demand and supply side, from a geographical perspective. Using a Global North–Global South framework, it explores differences in socio-economic structures, consumption and production patterns, access to resources and environmental impacts. The analysis suggests that a fair and equitable transition towards a sustainable and circular fashion industry will require the links between business, society and nature to be reconsidered, to avoid perpetuating the inequalities associated with the global linear capitalist economy. The findings highlight the importance of both markets and institutions in sustainable growth. In the Global North, the most frequently discussed topics relate to investment and research and development with respect to new technologies or system innovations often with the support of well-structured political guidance. Conversely, in the Global sustainable initiatives tend to be scattered, country-specific and intricately tied to particular socio-economic and cultural contexts.

Sociology in today's world often seeks to internationalise research and globalise problem solving. However, the so-called ‘global sociology’ is far away from being actually global as it involves in the discussion only specific regions and communities. The voice of other regions, as a rule, is not heard in the established system of connections and positions, and the regions themselves act as passive objects of (re)positioning, which is determined by the needs of specific research carried out by the nominally ‘global’ sociological community. The goal of the current study is to position one of the excluded sociological communities – post-soviet sociology – in global sociology using the North-South analytical framework that is frequently applied in discussions of global academic inequalities. The findings suggest that post-soviet sociology is positioned closer to the Global South, though significant country-based differences are observed. Post-soviet sociology functions as fragmented and disconnected, and this is facilitated by its orientation towards the ‘northern’ standards of knowledge production, which is professed even to the detriment of originality and independence.

Most social innovation research in scientific literature focuses on cases in the Global North, where basic needs have already been met. However, examining the Global South, where institutional failures and gaps pose a more complex challenge and require innovative solutions to promote territorial development, is crucial. Our study analyses how social innovation with territorial impact has been institutionalised in Global South countries, contrasting these experiences with Global North countries. The most pressing needs addressed by social innovation in the Global South are food, poverty and health, with a higher emphasis on service and process innovations. These innovations create socio-environmental value through governance processes and attention to basic needs, particularly in rural and peri-urban areas. The various experiences in institutionalising social innovation in the Global South have given rise to multi-faceted innovation referred to as territorial–institutional innovations in contrast to the Global North, combining bottom-up and top-down approaches to institutionalising social innovation through governance structures and policy support to promoting territorial development.

Abstract We show how the dire state of the Earth's rivers entangles intimately with ‘thingifying’ processes at the heart of colonial modernity. Known in many precolonial and Indigenous contexts as person‐like kin, we describe how rivers the world over have been re‐done primarily as thing—amoral, controllable, a potential commodity like anything else. We develop and work with a provisory concept of kin as those constituents of environments that reciprocally nurture, and contribute to the substance of, one another's life and wellbeing. We show how kinship with rivers figures centrally in primarily Indigenous‐led struggles in various regions of the globe for the recognition and enforcement of river personhood and rights. This is partly because people are motivated to fight passionately for their kin. With some careful caveats, we argue that associating river kinship exclusively with Indigenous worlds undermines its potential for global impact. Thus, as an apposite case study, the latter part of the paper focuses on some of the social–ecological trends which we suggest are opening up the possibility for the re‐establishment of ‘riverkinship’ in the United Kingdom. We reflect on the potential for riverkinship to help cultivate political constellations fitting to the challenges of the Anthropocene. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

BackgroundHealth care for women with Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) in the Global North is often described as sub-optimal and focused on maternity care. Specialist FGM/C services have emerged with little empirical evidence informing service provision. The objective of this scoping review is to identify the key features of FGM/C specialist care.MethodsThe review was conducted in accordance with JBI methodology. Participants: organisations that provide specialist FGM/C care. Concept: components of specialist services. Context: high-income OECD countries. Eligibility criteria included primary research studies of any design from 2012 to 2022, providing a comprehensive description of specialist services. Seven bibliographic databases were searched (MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, Web of Science, SCOPUS, Cochrane Library and MIC). The components of “specialist” (as opposed to “generalist”) services were defined and then applied to an analysis of FGM/C specialist care. FGM/C specialist provision was categorised into primary (essential) and secondary features. Data were extracted and analysed descriptively through charting in tables and narrative summary.ResultsTwenty-five papers described 20 unique specialist services across eleven high income countries. Primary features used to identify FGM/C specialist care were:—(i) Named as a Specialist service/clinic: 11/20 (55%); (ii) Identified expert lead: 13/20, (65%), either Midwives, Gynaecologists, Urologist, or Plastic Surgeons; (iii) Offering Specialist Interventions: surgical (i.e., reconstruction and/or deinfibulation) and/or psychological (i.e., trauma and/or sexual counselling); and (iv) Providing multidisciplinary care: 14/20 (70%). Eleven services (in Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, France, Belgium, and USA) provided reconstruction surgery, often integrated with psychosexual support. No services in UK, Norway, and Australia offered this. Six services (30%) provided trauma therapy only; 25% sexual and trauma therapy; 15% sexual therapy only; 30% did not provide counselling. Secondary features of specialist care were subdivided into (a) context of care and (b) the content of care. The context related to concepts such as provision of interpreters, cost of care, community engagement and whether theoretical underpinnings were described. Content referred to the model of care, whether safeguarding assessments were undertaken, and health education/information is provided.ConclusionOverall, the features and composition of FGM/C specialist services varied considerably between, and sometimes within, countries. Global guidelines advocate that specialist care should include access to deinfibulation, mental health support, sexual counselling, and education and information. The review found that these were rarely all available. In some high-income countries women cannot access reconstruction surgery and notably, few services for non-pregnant women mentioned safeguarding. Furthermore, services for pregnant women rarely integrated trauma therapy or psychosexual support. The review highlights a need for counselling (both trauma and psychosexual) and culturally-appropriate sensitive safeguarding assessments to be embedded into care provision for non-pregnant as well as pregnant women. Further research is needed to extract the features of specialist services into a comprehensive framework which can be used to examine, compare, and evaluate FGM/C clinical specialist care to determine which clinical features deliver the best outcomes. Currently a geographical lottery appears to exist, not only within the UK, but also across the Global North.

Many modern Christian scholars are united behind the opinion that the center of Christianity has immensely shifted from the global north (Europe and North America) to the global south (Africa, Asia and Latin America). Such dynamics have led to the decline of Christianity in the global north and the western world whilst a proportionate increase in Christianity has been a trend of the global south in the last decade. This article asks the question: is it time for the global south to re-evangelize the global north? As the western world becomes increasingly secular, it has become consequently evident that Christianity is currently post-Christian. Moreover, due to the global north’s economic superiority, it has become a major immigrant destination for the global south citizens. This has led to an influx of high number of immigrants into the global north. This article points out the contributions of the global south in western Christianity by using African immigrants as a case point.

The state-of-the-art quantum technologies leverage the unique principles of quantum mechanics, which include quantization, uncertainty principle, interference, entanglement and decoherence, to produce useful devices and scientific advancements not possible with classical technologies. As a result, quantum technologies, in particular, offer specific advantages that make communications networks secure and unbreakable and devices with unprecedented levels of accuracy, responsiveness, reliability, scalability and efficiency than classical emerging technologies. These capabilities can contribute significantly to addressing energy, agriculture, climate change, national security, healthcare, education and economic growth challenges. Unfortunately, these developments in these areas have not been evenly distributed between the Global North and the Global South, inadvertently creating a societal and economic gap. Closing this gap is critical to creating a more inclusive and sustainable future for all, thus delivering key sustainable goals. Therefore, to close this gap, this article proposes a quantum diplomacy framework as a means to deliver science diplomacy. Moreover, we discuss how emerging quantum technologies could profoundly impact all 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. We consider this work a timely and vital intervention to prevent the gap from increasing.

Since its introduction, the concept of “nature-based solutions” has gained much attention, drawing public funds and private investments. Nature-based solutions conceptualise the use of nature in planning as a cost-efficient and sustainable means to address societal, economic, and ecological challenges. However, this “triple win” premise tends to conceal potentially resulting injustices, such as displacement through green gentrification. While these injustices have attracted the attention of environmental justice scholars, as exemplified by the “just green enough” approach, links to the “nature-based solutions” concept are mostly implicit. Further, the concept of environmental privilege, questioning who benefits from created natural amenities, has rarely been taken up. This article, therefore, argues that environmental justice should be linked closely to nature-based solutions. Supported by a theoretical perspective, the article aims at exploring who benefits from, and who loses out on, urban nature-based solutions processes. It builds on a qualitative literature review of the scholarly landscape on environmental justice and urban greening while linking to nature-based solutions, adding perspectives of environmental privilege. In this, it attempts to offer three important contributions to the current academic discussion. First, the article provides an overview of the debate on urban greening, (in)justice, and environmental privilege. Second, it relates the concept of nature-based solutions to the debate on environmental justice, opening nature-based solutions up for critique and conceptual refinements. Third, it outlines a way forward for reframing nature-based solutions through the lens of environmental justice and privilege. Thus, this article provides a starting point for further discussions on the implementation of just nature-based solutions in cities.

Mònica Pons-Hernández reviews Criminalization of Activism: Historical, Present, and Future Perspectives by Valeria Vegh Weis (Editor)

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education is increasingly viewed as a vehicle for global dominance and a panacea to economic downturns, environmental challenges, and food security. However, divergences in STEM education agendas at regional and national levels imply disparities in policy formulation and implementation in the Global North and Global South. This study sought to explore what informs the drivers of STEM education in the two geo-economic blocks with a view to understanding contextual factors that inform practice. A focus on STEM education in the Global North and Global South becomes necessary, given the widespread calls for collaborative work, for example, shared interests in addressing sustainable development goals, and research on the COVID-19 pandemic. A theoretical approach, based on a review of relevant literature, was adopted. Ideology critique informed the analysis and was used to make sense of the salient themes. In the Global North, STEM education is historically driven by ambitions of political dominance, the need to curb economic slumps and address critical skills shortages, and growing desire for extra-terrestrial colonization. Within this context we argue that a neoliberal agenda drives the STEM education enterprise. In the Global South, massification with equity dominates policy formulation and implementation as countries battle to redress past colonial imbalances. The Global South countries generally sign up to regional and global STEM education agendas but financial constraints compounded by an unabated brain drain result in stagnation at policy adoption at vocational level. Convenient partnerships are increasingly fashionable as countries in the Global North seek to exploit the geographical advantage of those in the Global South in order to fully utilise the extra-terrestrial space, resources for biomedical science and indigenous natural resources, among others. Collaboration endeavors between the Global North and Global South need to be mutually beneficial. The Global North needs to redistribute the aspects of power it holds in relation to STEM to move towards more equitable policies and practices across these geopolitical realms. We recommend greater vocationalisation of STEM education hinged on STEM integration with the humanities in the Global South and balanced, mutually beneficial STEM collaboration endeavors with the Global North countries.

Background: The Mpox outbreak awakened countries worldwide to renew efforts in epidemiological surveillance and vaccination of susceptible populations. In terms of Mpox vaccination, various challenges exist in the global south, which impede adequate vaccine coverage, especially in Africa. This paper reviewed the situation of Mpox vaccination in the global south and potential ameliorative approaches. Methods: A review of online literature from PubMed and Google Scholar concerning Mpox vaccination in countries belonging to the ‘global south’ category was done between August and September, 2022. The major focus areas included inequity in global vaccine distribution, challenges impeding vaccine coverage in the global south, and potential strategies for bridging the gap in vaccine equity. The papers that met the inclusion criteria were collated and narratively discussed. Results: Our analysis revealed that, while the high-income countries secured large supplies of the Mpox vaccines, the low- and middle-income countries were unable to independently access substantial quantities of the vaccine and had to rely on vaccine donations from high-income countries, as was the case during the COVID-19 pandemic. The challenges in the global south particularly revolved around inadequate vaccine production capacity due to lack of qualified personnel and specialized infrastructure for full vaccine development and manufacturing, limited cold chain equipment for vaccine distribution, and consistent vaccine hesitancy. Conclusion: To tackle the trend of vaccine inequity in the global south, African governments and international stakeholders must invest properly in adequate production and dissemination of Mpox vaccines in low- and middle-income countries.

Background: Health diplomacy is one of the emerging avenues for academics where foreign policy dynamics and global health meet. Its relevance has augmented especially after the COVID-19 pandemic that brought the world to a halt. International organization and national entities that are responsible for health governance as well as its socio-economic determinants have been increasingly involved in the negotiations for a collective action towards a better health infrastructure and preparedness. However, the approach to health diplomacy seems to vary with whether health is looked through diplomacy lens or vice versa. Thus, inculcating adequate and appropriate competencies of both fields to conduct negotiations for health while keeping national interests and international commitments intact is imperative. Methods: This study investigates 50 programmes/courses that have been currently offered around the globe to understand the competencies that have been identified as essential for a health diplomat. We examined four aspects: i) geographical distribution of programme/course (ii) the type of global health diplomacy programme being offered and their duration (iii) mode of teaching and (iv) cross-cutting themes that the programme offers. Results: We found that the courses/programmes have been mostly provided by the countries of the Global North who play a key part in international negotiations. Although there were diverse types of certifications identified, they can be classified into two groups - core health diplomacy and inclusive health diplomacy programmes. The health diplomacy training is preferred to be provided in-person due to the nature of the work. Conclusions: While competencies for health governance and international relation have been dominant among the current programmes, other cross-cutting themes such as economics, politics, law, public policy, crisis management, environment and public health have been considered essential. The article concludes with a proposal of a framework to streamline the sectors and the competencies that is required in health diplomats.

“Female genital mutilation/cutting” (FGM/C) refers to procedures that involve altering the external female genitalia with the aim of reinforcing gendered body norms. The literature has consistently shown that, like various forms of discrimination, the practice is rooted in systems of gender inequality. As a result, FGM/C has increasingly come to be understood in terms of social norms that are by no means fixed. And yet, in the Global North, interventions remain primarily medical in nature, with clitoral reconstruction having emerged as a common means of dealing with related sexual issues. And although treatments can vary greatly depending on the hospitals and physicians involved, sexuality tends to be considered from a gynecological perspective, even when multidisciplinary care is offered. By contrast, gender norms and other socio-cultural factors receive little attention. In addition to highlighting three critical shortcomings in current responses to FGM/C, this literature review also describes how social work can play a key role in overcoming the associated barriers by (1) adopting a holistic approach to sex education, one capable of addressing those aspects of sexuality that lie beyond the scope of a medical consultation; (2) supporting family-based discussions on matters of sexuality; and (3) promoting gender equality, especially among younger generations.

Nations in the global South tend to embrace ideas, practices, and trends from the global North as the standard. This is in many instances at the expense of their suitability in the current situation and environment of the global South. For instance, issues revolving around the Fourth Industrial Revolution is a typical example. In recent times, the adjustments in the education and other sectors in the Global North to accommodate practices of the Fourth Industrial Revolution are beginning to flood the Global South where many basic and necessary infrastructures are lacking. Issues such as curricular review are being raised and considered, while conferences, workshops, seminars, amongst others are being organized to ensure that learning institutions are positioned to suit the demand of Fourth Industrial Revolution. For instance, coding is fast becoming a major subject to be considered even from primary schools, though not necessarily meeting the local demands.

The article examines the strategies of the states of the Global South in the field of digital development in the context of technological rivalry between the United States of America and China. The main peculiarities of the U.S.-Chinese technological rivalry at the present stage are characterized. The U.S.-Chinese technological rivalry is considered as a factor influencing the development and implementation of national digital development strategies by the states of the Global South, which provide for the intensification of international cooperation in priority areas. The international political aspects of the implementation of digital development strategies of the most significant dynamically developing states of the Global South located in important international regions (Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America) are studied. Attention is paid primarily to such strategic areas of digital development of the considered states of the Global South, as digital data processing and storage systems, digital data transmission systems, new generation mobile communication technologies, space programs, digital commerce, integrated “smart city” technologies, technologies cybersecurity. The paper explores the strategic approaches of the considered countries of the Global South in relation to digital cooperation with the United States and China. The interaction of the considered states in the digital sphere with technologically advanced countries acting as alternative technological partners (Japan, leading European countries, the Republic of Korea, Israel, Russia) is analyzed. The study identifies and characterizes the most significant digital projects of foreign corporations implemented jointly with the countries under consideration. The features of international cooperation in the digital sphere between the key countries of the Global South within the international regions defined in the study, as well as at the transregional level are analyzed. Particular attention is paid to promising regional international technological projects in the digital sphere. As a result of the study, the main priority areas of foreign policy activities of the key states of the Global South are determined from the point of view of more effective implementation by these states of their digital development strategies. The specific features inherent in the strategies of digital development of the considered states of the Global South are revealed. The author comes to the conclusion that these states, in the context of the U.S.-Chinese technological rivalry, seek to diversify their international ties in the digital sphere, strengthen the technological potential of national digital companies, strengthen national “digital sovereignty,” use their competitive advantages to attract foreign investment in the digital segment of national economies, activate their transport and logistics potential through the introduction of technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, expand digital cooperation with other countries in their international regions, as well as at the transregional level.

Social movement studies are an interdisciplinary, multifaceted, and broad field transversal to different social and human sciences, which has been growing and consolidating since the late 1970s. Since then, and concurrent with the intensification and pluralization of protests and protestors around the world, the recognition and establishment of social movement studies inside different areas has accompanied the recognition of social movements as legitimate social and political actors. This variety and diversification of perspectives and object of study has helped to include some 'hidden' forms of protest which are particularly relevant outside Europe and USA, and specially in authoritarian and semi-democratic countries. Despite this, the field of social movement studies – especially in sociology and political science – still shows difficulties in integrating and dialoguing with other approaches to the study of conflict and resistance. Moreover, dialogue with other epistemological sources and particularly with the Global South's knowledge about social movements is still hesitant. If we look at the other side of the coin, many studies on resistance, protest and social movements in the Global South reject what are sometimes considered hegemonic – or Eurocentric – social movement theories, which is also problematic. In front of this, and acknowledging the asymmetries in epistemic power relations, in our view, it is not a matter of opposing canter and periphery, or North and South, but of understanding, promoting and developing multiple activist and conceptual entanglements and collaborations. Against this background, thus, this special issue aims to contribute to the dialogue between conceptual perspectives, approaches and fields in the Global North and South around social movements and protest.

Infrastructure in several economies in the Global South has rapidly undergone financialization, aided and abetted by governments opening-up their infrastructure assets to global institutional investors in search of stable, predictable revenue streams. This account of financialization could be the end of the story were it not for the fact that Christophers (2015) and others have shown that institutional investors are not simply in the game of ‘finding’ value or ‘harvesting it’ from obliging states, rather they actively construct it. What often catches the eye, however, are the more overt forms of financial engineering (Ashton et al., 2012), whereas what tends to go unnoticed are the ways in which infrastructure assets are routinely ‘worked’ to generate value over time. Here, we draw attention to a slower-paced financialization of infrastructure assets where, following Chiapello (2015, 2020), investors are engaged in a continual process of evaluation and revaluation of their assets to add value over and above prevailing benchmarks. Taking the example of Canada's Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP) and its extensive investments in Chilean water infrastructure, this article considers how a global investment fund draws on financial practices developed in the advanced economies to add value to long term infrastructure assets in the Global South. Such practices, we argue, enact a routine form of financial subordination which does not match the familiar image of wholly subservient and dominated dependent economies. Rather, the power asymmetries involved equate less to a zero-sum game and more to a game where the benefits are unequally shared between asset managers in the Global North and states in the Global South, where effectively the latter cooperate in their own submission in ways that are not always acknowledged as such.

The article reflects the results of research in the North-South Group focused on the development of the polycentric, personalized and mobile Universe, while the ensemble of interconnected influential concepts (postmodernity and postcoloniality) had been analyzed. The current view on globalization as a political and economic cohesion of the modern world, contrasts the view on global restructuring as a consequence of the crisis of institutions of world bureaucracy, collectivist ideo-party totality, others unifying administrative and sociocultural mechanics. Attention is drawn to the trends of individuation and privatization, substitution of subordination by subsidiarity, which reflects the crisis of the national statehood format. The complex reality that arises in the bosom of modern culture, implements its own polycentricity, based not on the etatist symphony, but on a distributed set of diasporas, corporate or personal sovereignty. Postmodernity, denying the former world order, reproduces the semblance of a post-colonial situation, which allows us to turn to the experience of countries that have gained political sovereignty and mastered their new status in its various versions. Coloniality is understood as the result of hegemony, which goes beyond the prevailing interpretation of colonialism, but as a repressive emanation of the hegemonic world, offering subaltern other two modus of behavior: submission or subjugation assimilation, denying the legality of alternative self-realization or resistance. Pathos of post-modern, post-imperial and post-colonial positions declares the right of the individual and the communities to realize their original identity, dissimilation of former loyalties and sovereign search for alternatives. The universal quest is for political, sociocultural and semantic counter-hegemony, which also denies the current world to be an instrument of the modal-assimilation complex knowledge - power. The urgency of this problem was confirmed by the riots that broke out in the United States and other parts of the world in 2020.

The role of hyperlocal media is of increasing relevance as traditional local journalism experiences a decline due to centralisation and consolidation. The affordances of Internet and digital technologies also enable hyperlocal initiatives to enhance civic engagement in localities and serve as a place and resource for local deliberative processes. This study examines how the aims, perceptions and practices of hyperlocal media vary in three countries of the Global North—Sweden, Finland and Russia—and what implications this has for connectedness and civic engagement in local public spheres. The context of different media systems and local political regimes help to explore possibilities and limitations of hyperlocals as agents of place-oriented civic engagement. The data includes interviews with practitioners and analysis of selected hyperlocal media. Our results indicate that hyperlocal media practitioners in all three countries aim to provide local people and communities with a voice, and to enhance resident engagement in local life. We reveal three civic roles of hyperlocal media: (i) information provider, (ii) community builder, and (iii) civic mediator. Practices of civic engagement used by hyperlocal media range from relying on civic journalism to fostering civic debates and can be classified in two main categories: civic information and civic debate and interaction. The perceptions and practices of these hyperlocal media are, to some extent, similar because of comparable changes and challenges regarding the local media and public spheres. At the same time, the perceptions of civic roles vary, reflecting both the developments and differences in the countries’ media spheres and political regimes. This research raises a critical question about hyperlocal practitioners’ understanding of their own roles and aims, and in addition, how differences in media cultures and local regimes affect their performance as agents of local public spheres.

Abstract Background The objective of this paper is to outline and compare the regulation of paid healthcare professions and associated support workers in international context, bringing out the lessons to be learned as appropriate. Modern neo-liberal societies have sought to enhance healthcare through greater professional regulation, albeit in different ways and at variable pace. This general trend is illustrated with reference to medicine in the UK. However, although such reforms have helpfully cascaded to other health professions, government policy in high-income countries has not yet adequately regulated the interrelated group of non-professionalised health support workers who form the largest and least recognised part of the workforce. Nonetheless, in low- and middle-income (LMIC) countries—aside from the greater need for regulation of health professions—there is even more of an imperative to regulate the disparate, largely invisible support workforce. Methods With reference to existing studies of the medical and wider health professions in the UK and selected other higher income societies, the importance of health professional regulation to the public is underlined in the Global North. The larger gap in the regulation of support workers in modern neo-liberal countries is also emphasised on a similar basis, with an increasingly ageing population and advances in healthcare. It is argued from the very limited patchwork of secondary literature, though, that policy-makers may want to focus even more on enhancing regulation of both the professional and non-professional workforce in LMIC societies centred mainly in the Global South, drawing on lessons from the Global North. Results/conclusions Efforts to reform health professional regulatory approaches in more economically developed countries, while needing refinement, are likely to have had a positive effect. However, even in these societies there are still substantial shortfalls in the regulation of health support workers. There are even larger gaps in LMICs where there are fewer health professional staff and a greater dependence on support workers. With higher rates of morbidity and mortality, there is much more scope here for reforming health regulation in the public interest to extend standards and mitigate risk, following the pattern for healthcare professions in the Global North.

The article defines characteristics and relations between sociology from the Global South and the Global North, depicted in the literature. Despite the variety of research on the topic, studies of Northern and Southern sociology lack definite description of regional sociologies and their (unequal) relations as well as clear indicators used to assign countries to either region in terms of sociology that still uses classical geopolitical division. On the basis of research of knowledge production and academic relations between Southern and Northern sociology, the author defines main issues of discussion and specific characteristics of these regional sociologies and systematises them under one model. The model reflects four main areas of confrontation between sociology from the North and the South: origin and historical development; research orientation and capabilities; recognition and influence on the global scale; research cooperation and flow of knowledge. In addition, the article presents the alternative model for the recently emerged resistant Southern sociology. In the further research the model can be used to define understudied issues, (re)assign countries concerning sociology and investigate the actual characteristics of Southern and Northern sociology in comparison to the ones presented in the research.

Citizen science (CS) is a diverse practice, with projects emphasizing scientific and/or democratization goals. While the integration of both goals is advocated for sustainability transitions, this implies contextualized methodological choices. This contribution presents an instrument to explore methodological choices in relation to project goals and context, linking these patterns to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). By way of a PRISMA scoping review, case studies implemented in the Global North (GN) or Global South (GS) were selected and categorized using the instrument to identify notable patterns. GN projects are generally published by GN authors and can predominantly be linked to productivity goals relating to SDGs on biodiversity (SDGs 14, 15). In contrast, GS projects are commonly associated with diverse co-author groups that focus on democratization and/or productivity, and prioritize SDGs on agriculture, health, sustainable communities, and climate change (SDGs 2, 3, 11, 13). The analyzed case studies could contribute directly to three SDG indicators and indirectly to 22. Methodological choices regarding project goals and themes translate into variations in participant selection and recruitment, contribution types, and project outcomes. Further, project design and outcomes can be linked to co-authorships, with larger teams typically associated with co-created projects which in turn focus on democratization or democratization and productivity goals, and produce a wide diversity of outcomes. Qualitative information extracted from the investigated papers was used to contextualize the relevance of combining productivity and democratization goals as well as the related challenges of harmonizing different interests and of resource limitations as well as other project constraints.

The concept of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) has been developed in the Global North with little reference to what RRI or RRI-like practices mean in the context of the Global South. We discuss the contextual factors driving the emergence of responsible innovation practice and ways in which they can inform efforts to develop an inclusive and global conceptualization of RRI. Findings show that some activities in the Global South are comparable to those of the Global North, although important differences exist in motivations and structures. We go beyond prior framings to propose a reconfigured, inclusive theoretical framework that accounts for trans-regional differences by looking at three cases to illustrate international differences and to demonstrate an RRI continuum. Netherlands represents a more Global North concept of RRI; Malawi a Global South RRI concept and Brazil sits between these two extremes and assimilates RRI concepts from both ends of the continuum.

Objective: The COVID-19 virus disrupted the international system and trade patterns, resulting in panic and public health crises throughout the globe. The COVID-19 epidemic sparked a financial catastrophe with far-reaching consequences that outstripped the global financial crisis. The goal of this research is to see how the changes brought on by the COVID-19 epidemic affect global inflation and the jobs of individuals causing unemployment. This article is divided into two sections, considering inflation and unemployment the COVID-19 globally. Methodology: The methodology adopted for this study is empirical documentary research selecting first-hand research produced by international governmental and non-governmental organizations, newspapers, research articles of all categories as well as research published in scholarly journals available at online databases such as Taylor and Francis and JSTOR. The analysis has been done by applying the technique of content analysis. Findings: According to estimates, the virus slowed global economic growth in 2020 to roughly -3.2 percent on an annualised basis, with a recovery of 5.9 percent expected in 2021. Implications: According to consensus projections, the economic slump in 2020 will be less severe than previously anticipated, thanks in part to the fiscal and monetary policies implemented by governments in 2020.

Abstract Evidence from 184 countries over the span of 25 years is gathered and analyzed to understand North–North, South–South, and North–South international migration flows. Conceptually, the analysis borrows from network theory and Migration Systems Theory (MST) to develop a model to characterize the structure and evolution of international migration flows. Methodologically, the Stochastic Actor-oriented Model of network dynamics is used to jointly model the three types of flows under analysis. Results show that endogenous network effects at the monadic, dyadic, and triadic levels of analysis are relevant to understand the emergence and evolution of migration flows. The findings also show that a core set of non-network covariates, suggested by MST as key drivers of migration flows, does not always explain migration dynamics in the systems under analysis in a consistent fashion; thus, suggesting the existence of important levels of heterogeneity inherent to these three types of flows. Finally, evidence related to the role of political instability and countries’ care deficits is also discussed as part of the analysis. Overall, the results highlight the importance of analyzing flows across the globe beyond typically studied migratory corridors (e.g., North–South flows) or regions (e.g., Europe).

Universal access to safe drinking water is assumed to be a defining characteristic of cities in the Global North. This article documents the daily challenges facing working class women in Flint, Michigan, when the promise of modern water infrastructure cracks. In 2014, in order to reduce costs, Flint’s drinking water source was switched from Lake Huron to the Flint River. This change, and specifically the way it was managed, resulted in contamination of the water supply with lead and pathogens. While the experience of Flint is now an emblematic case of water insecurity in the Global North, it is not unique. Through a case study developed in the context of a community-based participatory research project, this article details how water insecurity transferred the burden of clean water provisioning back to individual households, and specifically to women. Rather than being able to rely on the labour and technical expertise that have rendered water safe in the modern city, Flint residents were abruptly made responsible for ensuring their own water security. We detail how the Flint water crisis brought about a 'new normal'; we consider the ways in which it gave rise to a new relationship to potable water that was characterised by a (re)turn to bottled or filtered water (from tap water) and a shift in who is responsible for the labour necessary to render water safe. The women’stestimonies that we present here illustrate how, when modern uniform water fails, people begin to see heterogeneous waters.

This work proposes a review and systematization of feminist research focused on exposing “the hidden feminized other” in the androcentric economic discourse. To this end, we review both the history of Western economic thought (from antiquity to the neoclassical approach of the 20th century), and the history of economics. Our intention is to recover women as objects of study, paying special attention to the private/domestic sphere, but also as epistemological subjects by rendering visible the contributions and criticisms of historically silenced women economists. Both areas of knowledge will be explored interrelatedly, in order to find common ground with the developments of feminist economics and to contribute to the construction of the genealogy of this current of thought.

Dominant electricity systems are inevitably transitioning into new forms in terms of power generation mix, mode of energy system governance and vested interests, the extent of state and consumer/citizen participation in the energy system, and energy justice expectations in different geographies in the Global North and Global South. In this editorial to the thematic issue entitled Politics and (Self-)Organisation of Electricity System Transitions in a Global North–South Perspective, we discuss politics and (self)-organisation of (just) energy transitions to expose how messy, convoluted, and fluid future electricity system transitions can be in both the Global North and Global South.

Living in urban areas is the wish of many people. However, with population growth in those areas, quality of life has become a concerning element for achieving sustainable cities. Because quality of life is influenced by the built environment, the state of the latter is a fundamental issue for public policies. This research expands on previous research on the perceived pleasantness of built environments by presenting a large-scale case study of the urban layout pleasantness in the central area of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, a typical global south city, and correlating pleasantness scores with socioeconomic factors to understand whether people do in fact live where the urban layout is more pleasant and how pleasantness and socioeconomic factors relate and contribute to one’s choice of living location. A comparison with the city of Coimbra, Portugal, representative of the global north, was also carried out. The findings showed that pleasantness tended to correlate negatively with urban density and positively with income. Possible explanations for these results and their generality are advanced.

Ontological and epistemic tolerance refers to the respect for ways of being and knowing, for the worldview, language and knowledge of actors in different worlds. Respect for the standards of existence and coexistence of the actors of the Global South and of the Global North, and the freedom of the latters to imagine possible worlds (freedom of worldification; multi-world logic) to contain the unimondist ontology imposed by the West or to resist against ‘’the mono-ontological occupation of the planet“ are also part of this form of tolerance. In contrast, ontological and epistemic intolerance refers to manifesting a disrespectful, contemptuous, and sometimes violent attitude towards others’ worldview and knowledge (for example, magico-religious knowledge). This form of intolerance can manifest itself in the form of social exclusion, destruction of local and indigenous knowledge, ways of thinking and acting, and identity, culture, physical, psychological or other forms of destruction. The relevance, and the stake, of an epistemic and ontological tolerance education project resides in the fact that this represents a tool capable of contributing to the reduction of the ravages of all kinds of ontologico-epistemic intolerance in the Global North and Global South.

This special issue is the product of a workshop on innovations in policing and preventing gender violence in the Global South, hosted by Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Centre for Justice 3-4 December 2019. The event was attended by scholars from Brazil, Pacific Island communities, Bangladesh, Argentina, and several Australian jurisdictions. Hence the articles in this special issue reflect the diverse nationalities present at the event. A central aim of the workshop realised in this special issue is the stimulation of innovation in understanding the policing and prevention of gender violence through novel international collaborations and cross-fertilization. It reverses the assumptions that underpin the epistemic injustice of the social sciences, that innovations generally flow only from the Global North to the Global South. This special issue shows that it can be the other way round.

Climate change is a reality recognized globally. Although global efforts are accelerating, there are fears in the underdeveloped world regarding the erosion of their sovereignty through climate change action and response mechanisms. Remedial actions taken at various levels are not a compensating reflection of this reality. There is a need to establish a well-thought-out mechanism and support fast-track climate change action and responses. This study, therefore, highlights the impact of climate change action on state sovereignty through in-depth analysis by interviewing climate experts and officials. It reckons that the issue revolves around interference in internal policies through the prism of climate change action incorporating world organisations. It concludes that developing states may have fears regarding the overreach of developed states in their remedial actions, as seen in the Global South and Global North divide. Bibliography Entry Shafi, Khalid Mahmood, Arif Ullah Khan, and Rafaqat Islam. 2021. "Climate Change Action and State Sovereignty." Margalla Papers 25 (2): 98-108.

Abstract Co-creation principles have become prominent in the scientific disciplines that aim to respond to global sustainability challenges especially in the global south. This paper analyses a co-creation pilot of global change research in the novel context of a Nordic country, Finland. The pilot was organised to learn how to create a future agenda for a complex and transdisciplinary research field of global change. This paper analyses its conceptualisation in Finland, how did the series of engagement events increase the capacities of participants and how did the process contribute to a change towards a new, societally responsible way of co-creating global change research. The study found that co-creation suits well for the translation of important societal questions into global research agendas and for networking actors to co-creation activities. Based on the study, we argue that co-creation offers a socially acceptable approach to address socially critical topics to design transdisciplinary social and sustainability research.

Abstract The term “externalization” is used by a range of migration scholars, policy makers and the media to describe the extension of border and migration controls beyond the so-called ‘migrant receiving nations’ in the Global North and into neighboring countries or sending states in the Global South. It refers to a wide range of practices from controls of borders, rescue operations, to measures addressing the drivers of migration. The ambition of this Special Issue is to contribute to the mapping of the responses to externalization dynamics. The different articles in this volume are chosen to exemplify some of these processes at different levels of analysis. Through diverse disciplinary perspectives, the authors show how practices of externalization are being confronted, succumbed, modified and contested by individual (would-be) migrants, civil society actors and the host states’ institutions in different parts of the globe. In an effort to move away from a sole focus on border zones in the Global North, the Special Issue contributes to emerging literature shifting the locus of analysis to places in the Global South, which are conventionally understood as “transit” or “sending” countries in Africa, America as well as within Europe itself.

This paper investigates the physical and metaphorical meanings of nausea in Michel Houellebecq’s The Possibility of an Island. Through the trope of cloning, Houellebecq likens the human body to a ship, and conflates existential nausea with nausea caused by inhabiting a body. The future clones of the narrator Daniel inhabit a world of ‘neohumans’ that are clones like themselves, and old-style, barbaric humans. Neohumans change their bodies through cloning, which after a while give them ship-sickness, or nausea. Daniel’s nausea is shaped by his relationship with the Mediterranean throughout. The novel asks the question ‘What happens to human consciousness when the body keeps changing and the white male body is propagated into the future?’ Thus, the novel works as an allegory for the way the Mediterranean functions today both as a curative and lethal space for European endeavor.

The design and deployment of green amenities is a way to tackle cities' socio-environmental problems in the quest for urban sustainability. In this study, we undertake a systematic review of research published in international peer-reviewed journals that analyzes environmental justice issues within the context of the deployment of urban green amenities. Since most studies focus on the Global North, where this scholarship first emerged, our goal is to link the literature focused on the North and the South. This study aims to outline similarities and differences regarding the nexus of justice and the greening of cities in both contexts as well as to identify knowledge gaps in this scholarship in the Global South. “Green infrastructure” and “nature-based solutions,” as the leading concepts for cities' greening agendas, are used as descriptors in combination with “justice” and/or “green gentrification” in searches undertaken of two bibliographic databases. Our results show there is a need to better delineate a research agenda that addresses such issues in a heterogeneous Global South context while gaining insights from advances made by research on the Global North.

With the realisation that institutions of higher learning may play a powerful role in transforming the world, research partnerships between institutions in the Global South and North have gained popularity. These partnerships are meant to empower and strengthen the contribution of higher learning institutions and bridge the North/South knowledge divide. Considering the limited access to research resources in the Global South, it is anticipated that these partnerships will create research opportunities for scholars. However, while it can be acknowledged that the research partnerships can be of benefit to African institutions and economy, there are practical challenges that limit the success of most research partnerships. Using the authors’s experience this article explores and describes issues that surround research collaborations between institutions of higher learning in the Global South and North.

With the realisation that institutions of higher learning may play a powerful role in transforming the world, research partnerships between institutions in the Global South and North have gained popularity. These partnerships are meant to empower and strengthen the contribution of higher learning institutions and bridge the North/South knowledge divide. Considering the limited access to research resources in the Global South, it is anticipated that these partnerships will create research opportunities for scholars. However, while it can be acknowledged that the research partnerships can be of benefit to African institutions and economy, there are practical challenges that limit the success of most research partnerships. Using the authors’s experience this article explores and describes issues that surround research collaborations between institutions of higher learning in the Global South and North.

With the realisation that institutions of higher learning may play a powerful role in transforming the world, research partnerships between institutions in the Global South and North have gained popularity. These partnerships are meant to empower and strengthen the contribution of higher learning institutions and bridge the North/South knowledge divide. Considering the limited access to research resources in the Global South, it is anticipated that these partnerships will create research opportunities for scholars. However, while it can be acknowledged that the research partnerships can be of benefit to African institutions and economy, there are practical challenges that limit the success of most research partnerships. Using the authors’s experience this article explores and describes issues that surround research collaborations between institutions of higher learning in the Global South and North.

The coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic is imposing an extraordinary threat to global health. Consequently, fear has been raised in that the COVID-19 pandemic could disproportionately affect lowincome countries. Low-income countries are mainly concentrated in the Global South of the tropics with a high diversity of pathogens, and a considerable proportion of people living under chronic poverty. All these risks might have made Southern people develop a sort of herd immunity and resilience against a broad range of infections. The analysis of the COVID-19 Worldometers data by using country-, territory-, or conveyance-wise summarized in Global North (64 countries) and Global South (147 countries) suggested the high incidence of COVID-19 infection in the North world countries. However, this should be treated with caution given the low testing and contact tracing, and presumably reporting capacity, by the South World countries. Nevertheless, Southern people are living under minimal healthcare, consequently, their relative wellness amidst the COVID-19 crisis could not be overlooked. The observed differences in infectivity, however, might not be ethnically-biased but most likely they could be due to the differences in the living standard, healthcare systems as well as the lifestyle of Global North versus Global South countries.

This book provides a good variety of diverse and critical perspectives on open access (OA) issues. There are fifteen contributors to the thirteen chapters, one preface, and one introduction. Part One contains six chapters covering global issues, and Part Two contains seven chapters on North/South issues. This book focuses on the viewpoints of researchers, librarians, information professionals, publishers, and library users in the Global South. Many of the chapters, the preface, and the introduction are available online. See https://scidecode.com/en/open-divide-critical-studies-on-open-access/ provided by Mr. Herb. Individual chapters are licensed CC-BY-NC 4.0, but not the book as a whole.

Maintaining a proper distance with respect to Eurocentric tradition is the equivalent of being aware of the fact that the diversity of human experience in the world is inexhaustible, and thus no single general theory can explain it. Sustaining such a distance allows for what I call the twofold transgressive sociology of absences and the sociology of emergences. Such a transgressive sociology is, in fact, an epistemological step which consists of contrasting the epistemologies of the South with the dominant epistemologies of the global North.

Though international migration is sometimes suggested as having the potential of propelling economic development and promoting multiculturalism in the world, there exists a certain ‘sedentary bias’ against the ‘irregular’ kind of international migrants. This is reflected in the increasing adoption of restrictive immigration policies by countries in the global North, as well as a discernible rise in anti-immigration attitudes among the populace of these countries. Many of these anti-migration attitudes are grounded in myths peddled by the media which feed into negative popular perceptions about immigration in the North. This article discusses how development education (DE) can challenge these myths and throw light on the realities of migration in the global South. From a world-systems’ perspective, the article goes on to explore how neoliberal globalisation and historical colonialism have contributed to creating the conditions that generate migrant flows from the global South to the North. Further situating the discussions within a DE discourse, the author uses critical and postcolonial theories to highlight how anti-immigration stereotypes and prejudice can be tackled in the global North.

Opening paragraph: Do foodies need to know about capitalism? Every­body trying to change the food sys­tem—farmers, farmworkers, chefs, people fighting to end hunger and diet-related disease—all of us need to know about capitalism. Why? Because we have a capital­ist food system. After all, you wouldn’t start farm­ing without knowing something about growing plants, or start a website without knowing some­thing about computers, or fix the roof on a house without knowing something about carpentry. I know, most of us are too busy trying to solve prob­lems within the food system to sit around analyzing the food system as a whole. We concentrate on one or two issues—healthy food access, organic agriculture, GMO labeling, pesticide poisoning, seed sovereignty… The list is long. On top of that, we don’t really talk about capitalism in capitalist countries. Before the 2008 financial crash, it was awkward even to mention the term ‘capitalism.’ But the truth is our food and capitalism have co-evolved over the last 200 years. If we want to know about our food system, we have to know about capitalism. That way, we can change it.

Through a narrative synthesis of existing literature on research partnerships, the paper underscores four core values championed in public policy and practice: equity, empowerment, transformational leadership, and treating mental health research as a cooperative inquiry. Building on these values, the author maps the challenges before mental health researchers in forging resilient, egalitarian, and committed Global North-South partnerships within the context of current global development agenda. Reports appraising the UN Millennium Development Goals lament how the goal of developing global partnerships to combat health, gender, and economic inequities has remained under-realized. Emphasis has been placed on the great need to augment Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in ways where partnership processes would drive development and human rights agenda for the most afflicted, under-resourced, and marginalized in the world. Global North-South partnerships result in fewer lasting benefits to Global South-a regressive trend that is critically analyzed. The need for Global North to adopt ethical and responsible stances while creating/curating new knowledge is discussed. Being responsible is not only imperative for Global North researchers; it is imperative for both North and South researchers to adopt a dialogical approach in clarifying and sharing roles, responsibilities, access, and leadership in developing scholarship and praxis in mental health. The importance of de-centering hierarchies, valuing reciprocity in one another, improving communication, demonstrating empathy, and sharing resources and benefits are found to be key components in the narrative synthesis towards achieving greater empowerment and equity. The paper reflects on the potential problems in engagement and development of de-centered and transformational leadership in partnerships and implications for research ethics in the context of lower-and-middle-income countries. Lastly, the author in a bid to encourage global partnerships suggests that engaging in transparent and bi-directional conversations regarding these issues and realigning research priorities along the four core values will contribute to greater success in research collaborations (across cultural contexts) and more so in the global mental health field.

First paragraph: In The Politics of Food Sovereignty: Concept, Practice and Social Movements, editors Annie Shattuck, Christina Schiavoni, and Zoe VanGelder bring together some of the seminal contributions of the Yale McMillan Center Agrarian Studies Program’s 2013 conference focused on food sovereignty (“Food Sovereignty: A Critical Dialogue”). These proceedings were originally published in a special issue of the journal Globalizations (volume 12, issue 4, 2015). This book is valuable in general as it dis­cusses the upcoming challenges and contradictions of food sovereignty, a rising concept and political movement in the Global South and North. Con­trasting with the food sovereignty literature to date, which has mainly focused on the Global South (from which food sovereignty movements have emerged), this book shows how the original idea has expanded to encompass the Global North and urban communities. This book includes cases studies from the U.S., Canada, Russia, Peru, and Venezuela, demonstrating that many types of sovereignties may exist and coexist at different scales, which is a big challenge....