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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.

In this paper, we present a descriptive review of the foundational components of transformation—the starting places and gaps—in a move toward synthesizing current works into a Community Psychology Transformative Praxis. This review focuses on published work identified in North American Community Psychology journals (namely two United States based journals)—a review from the belly of the neoliberal and imperial beast. We reviewed and categorized seven foundational dimensions for beginning and sustaining transformative praxis and which represent how Community Psychology (CP), in the United States publishing context, is engaging in transformative efforts. In Part 1, we present three dimensions of transformative process, focused on early and iterative practices that develop and enact shared (1) values, (2) visions of a just world, and (3) critical problem frames. In part 2 we present four additional dimensions of transformative action; the considerations that inform action in a given transformative process or intervention including (4) planning for the long‐term nature of transformation, (5) targeting multiple levels of analysis, (6) engaging in solidarity with those most impacted by injustice, and (7) identifying and resisting power holders and/or power structures that prevent transformation and maintain the status quo. In Part 3, we review the relationship between process and action, where processes can be understood as driving, directing, and bounding the types of actions or interventions taken or imagined in a particular transformative intervention. We close the paper with critical reflections and calls to action to further develop the transformative potential of CP praxis and name the tendency of settling for ameliorative solutions to problems needing transformative solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue collects articles, which aim to re-envision integration, dislodging the previously monodirectional conceptual flow sourced in the Global North. Jointly, the articles pursue a critical scholarship contributing to multicentric knowledge production, disrupting binaries of integrated/nonintegrated, inclusion/exclusion, citizen/non-citizen, or indeed self/other. They evidence ambivalent subject positions, neither fully-included nor fully-excluded, and engender forms of belonging to the places immigrants are momentarily located in, albeit without a steadfast position granting them rights. The collected articles also emphasize the various scales of integration, be it wider global or regional flows, as well as more localized, zoomed-in, and ephemeral manners of integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen a growing contestation of the liberal international information order and an increasingly aggressive pushback by Global North governments. The pushback has been accompanied by burgeoning research on the contentious politics of international political communication. Reviewing this research, I find and critique that it fails to embed the Global North's war against disinformation in the global matrix of the coloniality of knowledge. I elaborate Mignolo's conceptual couplet dewesternisation/rewesternisation in relation to political epistemology to develop the claim that braided into the Global North's counter-disinformation campaigns are discursive practices that entrench international epistemic privilege anchored to the global geopolitical hierarchy of knowledges. To substantiate my argument, I zoom in on the European Union's counter-disinformation campaign against Russia. I end by reflecting on the broader take-away of my paper for decolonial thought and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the fourth year of my exploration of studies and readings on the process known as decolonisation. When I reflect on this journey, several instances have reminded that there is a semblance of a journey (movement) in the discourse of decolonisation, although things are largely static. From the perspective of the Global South, I observe that all major grant makers and investors are located in the Global North. The Global North also houses important knowledge-certifying institutions and significant universities that receive research grants to study the Global South. Furthermore, Institutional Review Boards in the Global North define and mainstream ethics derived from their own cultural sensibilities. These factors contribute to the dominant influence of colonisation, which can be seen as clouds roaring from the top and affecting the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how designer-led co-making and civic pedagogy can increase urban learning and resilience through transversal relationalities. We explore two case studies in which designers work with communities to run civic pedagogical projects, using co-making as a tool: Collective Design Practice, in Mumbai, India, co-produced with Muktangan school; and the Eco Nomadic school, situated in Europe. We use theories of agency, correspondence and care to compare the roles of designers and identify the particular moments (or "knots") where resilience is created. Situated in the Global South and North, respectively, we identify, compare and discuss the research methods and processes used. The research asks how pedagogically supported and designer-led co-making can increase resilience in different parts of the world, particularly when it relates to everyday life. We propose that the civic pedagogy of co-making can be powerful: through it people can have more agency to improve social relations and politics of place; it can make tangible and more understandable political statements and make physically evident the benefits of practice; it can build civic practices of resourcefulness and resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on international research, this article examines and navigates through the existing social gerontological and ethnogerontological literature to assess how Filipino aging is understood within Global North societies. A scoping review was conducted in 2018 and in 2022 to offer key insights into how Filipinos age in both the ancestral homeland and increasingly within Global North diasporas. While the existing literature on Filipino aging does mirror existing ethnogerontological literature, which heavily focuses on indicators of cognitive, physical and mental health, and access and provision to formal services, the Filipino-specific literature calls attention to emerging dynamics distinctly related to transnational aging, and renegotiated caring dynamics within intergenerational Filipino families and kinship networks. This paper considers a future research agenda of the growing realities for aging Filipino communities across Global North contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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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.

Recently, climate change discussions have taken a distinct turn, with industrialised nations resolutely advocating a "just transition". However, how does that work when industrialised nations have not delivered on their $100 billion pledge to the global South? At COP26, many hoped for a climate fund to compensate poorer countries. In lieu of providing dedicated funds, rich countries requested more dialogue. This viewpoint discusses how this "active inaction" has led to a moral problem in the face of climate change. The viewpoint also explains how the global North is just as dependent on the global South, if not more when it comes to development. It provides a better understanding of the need for rich countries to create a separate loss and damage finance unit incorporating risk reduction, risk transfer, and social safety nets. The purpose of this viewpoint is to increase awareness that it is in the world's interest to protect poorer nations from climate change and that just transition and loss and damage should not be tradeoffs. Rather, loss and damage should precede a just transition. For a just transition to be possible, climate reparation needs to come first. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article builds on the contributions of anthropologists of Europe in discovering, tracing and explaining the neo‐nationalist ascendancy of the last 20 years. It picks up on earlier publications to make a succinct case for a decidedly anthropological class analysis of this worldwide and world‐shaking phenomenon, with a view mainly on Europe and the United States. It suggests the usefulness of a notion of 'double devaluation' in understanding and explaining recent rightward shifts in popular politics in the Global North, encompassing both rural and urban spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Open education and the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) have almost become buzz words in the educational sector. OER have been cited to improve equality in education by improving access and decreasing costs, and therefore, having an improved economic redistribution. The current research shows many gaps in this hoped for result. So, how can we as educators improve the access, development, utilization, and sharing of OER more effectively? This interactive workshop will begin with a brief review of the current literature on the issues related to the use and development of OER. It will explore the use of Creative Commons Licenses in the development of OER to assist in increasing access to these resources as well as the "5 Rs" of OER (reuse, revise, remix, retain, and redistribute). Using hands on exercises, participants will learn strategies to find and curate OER to illustrate how they may be used in the classroom to engage students as open knowledge creators. The workshop will model the use of the open strategy by delivering the workshop, in part, using a Pressbook (Srivastava, 2021) and interactive H5p activities (Srivastava, 2023), which were developed as part of a capstone project for the University of British Columbia's (UBC) Program for Open Scholarship and Education (POSE). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need to deal with complexity is getting increasingly attention in research for development projects implemented through transboundary research partnerships between organisations from the Global North and the Global South. However, less is known about aspects beyond the systems under study that still affect complexity in the research project. We conducted an experience capitalization of five transboundary research partnerships undertaking research in 14 countries in the Global South. We found that the combination of multiple contexts, the cultural and disciplinary diversity of the transboundary research partnerships, and the set of rules and proceedings from the funding mechanism affect the levels of complexity. We further identified that a transdisciplinary approach and several related practices, like intercultural communication or integrative partnerships, are promising ways of dealing with complexity. Current structures in research for development need to improve in order to fully use the potential of transdisciplinarity for sustainability transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the trade-energy literature by examining the effect of export product diversification on the energy demand of 30 countries located in the Global North over the period 1980–2014. A nonparametric time-varying coefficient panel data model with fixed effects is employed for its ability to produce robust outcomes in the presence of parameter instabilities, nonstationarity, regime shifts, and time variations. As a second step, the paper also utilizes the nonparametric fixed effects extension of Driscoll and Kraay, which is robust to spatial/cross-sectional dependence, as well as to autocorrelation and heteroscedasticity. The results indicate that export diversification lowers overall energy demand in the Global North, and the size of the impact has been on a gradual increase over the years. The paper concludes that if a conscious effort is made to ensure that product diversification is towards energy-efficient goods, export product diversification can serve as a useful strategy for managing energy consumption and mitigating its negative environmental effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In shaping the employment relationship internationally, the ILO initially reproduced the Western normative narrative of the standard employment relationship (SER). When the global South and women gained a stronger voice within the ILO, a contrasting egalitarian narrative emerged, challenging the SER hegemony and creating a layering of narratives. Combining historical institutionalism and structuration theory, the authors follow the development of these narratives and consider how the resultant legal and normative conflicts between them can be explained by focusing on the composition of ILO membership and the representation of women in International Labour Conferences over time. The authors draw a number of legal‐political conclusions from their findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The enactment of online learning in higher education is not a new phenomenon and, although having been used more in the Global North developed countries, the adoption has been slower in the Global South. The onset of Covid-19 drove countries globally to consider replacing face-to-face learning with online learning in ensuring that scholarship continued. This conceptual paper looks at the implementation of online teacher education in the Global North and Global South context. The aim of this paper is to assess the extent to which online learning could be considered a reality or a utopian ideal in delivering education in the Global North and Global South context. The conceptual paper uses Sen's capabilities approach to assess whether education as both a capability and a functionality achieved its ideal of enabling individuals to 'be and do' in their quest to achieve their aspirations. It draws from existing literature on Global North-South divide and teacher education. The findings reveal the asymmetries that exist between the two global divides that render online education more of a reality for the former while for the latter it remains utopian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 article attempts to empirically identify how the concept of Indigenous refusal helps us understand growing Palestinian political discourse and practices. It aims to develop Critical Indigenous Studies' potentialities vis à vis the study of historic Palestine. The article puts a particular emphasis on new visions of Palestinian resistance that take aim at the different ways the Global North has tried to impose specific models and narratives on the Palestinian cause through liberal politics of recognition. Those spatio-political arrangements are enmeshed in the so-called 'Oslo paradigm' but also concern the portrayal of Israel as a liberal multicultural society, as well as the neoliberal dynamics that continuously shape the different fragments of the Palestinian people. In this regard, Indigenous Palestinian refusal also presents an international dimension that has progressively led to the articulation of anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist imaginaries that would contribute to shaping radical Palestinian – and transnational – futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education is an essential aspect of any society in the world. As such, it has been a topic studied by many sociologists since the origins of the discipline. Today it is one of the most common subjects in sociology, in part because it has been recognised as a crucial environment for the (re)production of inequalities. This article explores the role of education in the (re)production of social inequalities and its potential to challenge such inequalities. In addition, the article presents some of the distinctions between research in the Global South and North, both in geographical and metaphorical terms. Since this article is the introduction to the special issue Education and the Production of Inequalities: Dialogues from the Global South and North, a synopsis of the published articles is presented at the end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an age of increasing digitalization, it is imperative for policymakers and researchers to grasp the profound impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) on poverty. This paper investigates the relationship between ICT poverty and the absolute poverty index across the Global South and North from 2012 to 2022. Furthermore, it assesses the influence of ICT poverty on the risk of poverty or social exclusion in various geographic areas—cities, suburbs/towns, and rural regions—across 28 European countries. Employing a range of panel models, such as fixed/random effects and the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM), the study uncovers significant positive associations between ICT poverty and absolute poverty and the risk of poverty or social exclusion across all geographic areas. Our research indicates that policies aimed at reducing ICT inequality—commonly known as the "digital divide"—are more effective in alleviating poverty than those solely focused on promoting ICT development. Additionally, the study introduces a new policy framework, the ICTs-PGI Triangle, which offers a roadmap for policymakers to mitigate ICT poverty in both the Global South and North. The empirical results highlight the importance of providing equitable digital access and literacy, particularly in rural and marginalized areas, for sustainable poverty reduction. Therefore, this study provides valuable insights into the intricate interplay between digitalization and poverty alleviation strategies, addressing a significant gap in the current literature. • We explored ICT poverty's link to absolute poverty from 2012 to 2022. • ICT poverty raises poverty risk across cities, towns, and rural areas in Europe. • Policies reducing the digital divide help alleviate poverty more than ICT promotion. • We introduced the ICTs-PGI Triangle policy to tackle ICT poverty globally. • Equitable digital access and literacy are key to reducing poverty in rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

In this article, we engage in a critical conversation with scholars of neurodiversity. We emphasize the transformative role neurodiversity has in creating a crucial space for scholarship to emerge within the academy centering autistic voices. Despite this advancement, research addressing neurodiversity has overlooked and failed to engage with important issues of geography (Global South) and intersectionality (racialized neurodivergent other in the Global North). The first issue of geography relates to the marginalization of Global Southern epistemologies in the neurodiversity scholarship. We ask, why has neurodiversity failed to acknowledge Indigenous and Southern epistemologies and consider the evolution of relatively new Northern scholarship as the epicenter of knowledge production? Second, we highlight how intersectional experiences of the racialized other within the Global North are underrepresented and excluded from the neurodiversity scholarship. Homogenization of neurodiversity as “White Neurodiversity Movement” destabilizes the social justice and emancipatory goals of the movement. In highlighting these issues, we call attention toward knowledge systems that exist within the Global South, marginalization of scholarship and voices within neurodiversity scholarship and accentuate the need for this academic community to commit to a serious scholarship rooted and the intersectional experiences of racialized neurodivergent individuals.Scholarship addressing neurodiversity has made enormous progress in challenging and providing alternative narratives to the dominant frameworks of medical model. Although this is a necessary and important development, scholars need to think and act beyond the immediate local context of theory generation (Global North—mainly the United Kingdom and the United States) and examine its impact on the racialized neurodivergent individuals of the Global Majority. This article will provide a decolonial framework that has been missing in the neurodiversity scholarship. The arguments presented in the article aligns well with the goals of critical autism studies and will further inform the knowledge in this area. Through a decolonial lens, this article brings the crucial issue of knowledge production outside of Global Northern countries, specifically, knowledge systems from the Global South that have parallels with neurodiversity. The article frames neurodiversity as part of an interconnected knowledge continuum rather than considering Global North alone as the only loci of knowledge production. Furthermore, it highlights the lack of focus on the intersections between racialisation and neurodivergence and the implications of this for the racialized neurodivergent individuals of the global majority. The article provides new avenues for theoretical discourses to emerge within the academy. It will have important research implications in relation to how neurodiversity will be viewed and framed outside Global Northern countries. The article highlights the importance of engaging in intersectional and interdisciplinary research and establishing a critical link with the scholars of neurodiversity, critical autism studies, and disability critical race studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• First comprehensive cross-country comparison of circular economy missions. • Policy instruments, sectors, materials and R Strategies analysed for 58 countries. • Low variance identified between Global North and Global South missions. • Strong influence of Global North path-dependencies in Global South policy choices. • CE missions show adaptability to adjacent national development objectives. The Circular Economy (CE) is promoted as a sustainable model of economic growth and a quintessential example of a "sustainability mission." Despite expected co-benefits in job creation, waste reduction and poverty alleviation, the Global South is largely missing from both missions and CE literature. Employing cross-disciplinary insights from environmental policy and the geography of sustainability transitions, this paper documents the diffusion of CE missions and compares CE policy development between the Global North and Global South. Analysing 61 national-level CE strategic policy documents, we focus on the policy levers, CE strategies, materials and sectors. We show that CE mission development is widespread in the Global North and developing in the Global South. Despite linkages to other national-level social and sustainability agendas, CE policy instrument choice shows limited place-sensitivity and geographical variation. Where the Global South is replicating the Global North's CE trajectory, the transformative potential of circularity missions is threatened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]