Beyond Geography: Deconstructing the Global South as a Family Resemblance Concept in Academic Discourse

Introduction: The Global South as an Intellectual Puzzle

The term "Global South" has proliferated across academic disciplines, policy documents, and media discourse, yet its conceptual boundaries remain remarkably fluid. Unlike conventional geographical categories that denote fixed spatial coordinates, the Global South functions as what critical geographers term a "metageographical category"—a concept that organizes knowledge about the world while simultaneously obscuring its own constructed nature. A 2025 study by Wang Ya from HSE University (Moscow) provides a systematic framework for analyzing this conceptual ambiguity, employing an adapted semantic triangle model to dissect the term's multiple meanings (Source 1: Wang Ya, 2025, HSE University).

The study's core finding, derived from surveying English- and Russian-language scholarly publications from approximately 1995 to 2025, identifies inequality as the hidden economic logic binding diverse interpretations together. This analysis reframes the Global South not as a fixed geographical region but as a Wittgensteinian "family resemblance" category—a set of related concepts sharing no single defining feature but connected through overlapping similarities, with inequality serving as the conceptual nucleus.

The Semantic Triangle: How Meaning Maps onto Geography

Wang Ya's methodological contribution lies in adapting the semantic triangle model—originally developed by C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards in The Meaning of Meaning (1923)—to analyze metageographical categories. The adapted framework consists of three components:

• Symbol: The linguistic signifier "Global South" itself
• Referent: Actual socioeconomic conditions, power relations, and material inequalities
• Thought: Interpretive frameworks shaped by theoretical traditions, disciplinary conventions, and ideological positions

This triadic structure illuminates why the same term generates divergent meanings across scholarly communities. The symbol remains constant, but the referent and thought components vary systematically depending on whether analysts emphasize economic metrics, postcolonial critique, or relational power dynamics. Critical geography and orientalism theory inform the analysis by challenging the assumption that geographical categories are neutral descriptors. Instead, they are understood as discursive formations that simultaneously reflect and reinforce power asymmetries (Source 1: Wang Ya, 2025).

The study's temporal scope—spanning three decades of scholarship—allows for tracing how the term's semantic field has expanded. Originally emerging in the late 20th century as a post-Cold War replacement for "Third World," the Global South has accumulated new layers of meaning through engagement with globalization theory, postcolonial studies, and world-systems analysis.

The Four Meanings: From State-Level Economics to Relational Power

Wang Ya's typology identifies four principal meanings of the Global South, each with distinct referents and interpretive frameworks:

Meaning 1: A Cluster of Economically Disadvantaged States

This is the most conventional usage, rooted in development economics and international relations. The Global South here denotes a collection of nation-states characterized by lower GDP per capita, industrial development levels, and human development indices relative to the Global North. This meaning relies on aggregate statistical classifications, typically derived from World Bank or UN datasets.

The limitations of this approach are well-documented: it reproduces state-centric thinking, assumes internal homogeneity within nations, and cannot account for pockets of wealth in poor countries or poverty in rich ones. As Wang Ya's analysis demonstrates, this meaning foregrounds economic inequality as a measurable, quantifiable phenomenon—but reduces it to national-level aggregates.

Meaning 2: The Global Subaltern Marginalized by Neoliberal Capitalism

Drawing on postcolonial theory and dependency frameworks, this interpretation transcends national borders. The Global South becomes a category of structural marginalization within the global capitalist system, encompassing social groups, regions, and communities that bear the costs of neoliberal economic policies regardless of their geographical location.

This meaning shifts the referent from states to populations, and the thought framework from economics to political economy. Inequality here is not merely statistical disparity but a product of historical exploitation, uneven accumulation, and systemic exclusion. The "global subaltern" exists within all nations, including those classified as Northern.

Meaning 3: Social Theories from Southern Perspectives

Epistemological concerns dominate this third meaning. The Global South becomes a site of knowledge production, challenging the assumption that theoretical frameworks developed in Western institutions have universal applicability. Scholars such as Raewyn Connell and Boaventura de Sousa Santos have argued for "Southern theory"—knowledge generated from and responsive to non-Western experiences.

This meaning foregrounds epistemic inequality: the asymmetrical power relations that determine which knowledge is validated, circulated, and institutionalized. The referent shifts to intellectual traditions and methodological approaches, while the thought framework draws on sociology of knowledge and decolonial theory.

Meaning 4: A Relational Metaphor for Context-Dependent Power Asymmetries

The most abstract usage treats the Global South as a heuristic device for analyzing power relations that vary by context and scale. A community may be "Southern" in relation to national economic centers, a region may be "Southern" in continental terms, and a nation may be "Southern" in global hierarchies.

This meaning emphasizes the relational and scalar nature of inequality. The same entity can occupy multiple positions depending on the frame of reference. It is not fixed geography but a tool for tracing how power asymmetries operate simultaneously at local, regional, and global levels.

The Hidden Economic Logic: Inequality as the Semantic Core

Wang Ya's central analytical contribution is demonstrating that despite their diversity, all four meanings share a common axis: inequality. This is not a superficial similarity but the logical precondition for the term's continued relevance. Without inequality, the Global South loses its explanatory power and rhetorical force.

The analysis identifies two axes of variation across the four meanings:

Substance of inequality: Ranges from purely economic (GDP, income) to multidimensional (economic, epistemic, political, cultural). Meaning 1 emphasizes economic metrics; Meaning 3 extends to epistemological dimensions.

Geographical scope: Ranges from state-centric (fixed national boundaries) to deterritorialized (transnational populations, relational networks). Meaning 1 is nation-state bound; Meaning 4 is entirely scalar and relational.

These axes generate a conceptual space within which specific usages occupy different positions. The term "Global South" functions as a family resemblance category because any given usage shares some features with others, but no single feature is common to all. The overlapping similarities—mediated by the concern with inequality—create coherence without requiring a singular, essential definition.

This finding has significant implications for academic discourse. It suggests that debates about whether a particular country "belongs" to the Global South are conceptually misguided. The category is not a membership list but a framework for articulating and analyzing inequality. The question is not where inequality exists—it exists everywhere—but how specific forms of inequality are produced, maintained, and challenged within particular configurations of power.

Implications for Knowledge Production: Beyond the North-South Binary

The semantic triangle analysis reveals that the Global South's polysemy is not a weakness to be resolved but a feature to be recognized. Attempts to fix a single, authoritative definition would undermine the concept's utility as a tool for identifying and critiquing inequality across multiple dimensions and scales.

This reframing has consequences for how scholars approach global knowledge production:

• Methodological implications: Research employing the Global South as a category must specify which meaning is operative and justify its selection. Unreflexive usage that collapses all four meanings produces analytical confusion.
• Political implications: The deterritorialized meanings (2, 3, and 4) challenge the state-centrism of international relations and development discourse. They foreground transnational solidarities and structural inequalities that cross borders, potentially disrupting the nation-state framework that dominates policy-making.
• Epistemological implications: The recognition that the Global South is a constructed category, not a natural geographical division, opens space for examining how categories themselves reproduce power relations. This aligns with critical geography's longer tradition of analyzing the politics of cartographic representation.

Conclusion: Future Trajectories

The Wang Ya study provides a robust analytical framework for understanding the Global South's conceptual complexity, but its implications extend beyond academic taxonomy. Three future trajectories can be anticipated:

First, as global economic multipolarity increases—with the rise of China, India, and other formerly "Southern" economies—the state-centric meaning (Meaning 1) will face increasing pressure. The category's explanatory power will depend on its ability to accommodate these shifts without collapsing into incoherence.

Second, the deterritorialized meanings (2, 3, and 4) will likely gain prominence as scholars and activists respond to transnational challenges—climate change, pandemic response, digital inequality—that do not respect national boundaries. The Global South as a relational metaphor for context-dependent power asymmetries may prove more analytically productive than fixed geographical classifications.

Third, the family resemblance framework suggests that the Global South will remain contested precisely because inequality itself is contested. Different theoretical traditions, political projects, and material interests generate different interpretations of what inequality means, how it should be measured, and what should be done about it. The term's polysemy is not resolvable through better definitions but is inherent to its function as a site of political and intellectual struggle.

For scholars and policy analysts, the practical implication is clear: the Global South must be treated not as a geographical given but as an analytical tool whose meaning requires specification in each context. The value of the concept lies not in its precision but in its capacity to organize inquiry into the persistent and evolving forms of global inequality.