chat

There's definitely a euphemism treadmill effect going on here. "Third world" became outdated after the collapse of the Soviet Union but remained in use mainly to insult exploited countries for being poor, so they came up with terms like "Global South" to mean the same thing. In any case, it's really just avoiding naming imperialist oppression and exploitation as the common factor among the countries it is attempting to describe.

It's not offensive (AFAIK) and it's also not a strict geographical boundary. It's just because most of the "North" is north of most of the "South" AFAIK.

Tricontinental uses the term

Outside the 49 countries of the Global North imperialist camp, making up the vast majority of the world’s population, are 145 countries that constitute the Global South.

The use of the term ‘Global South’ has primarily been a loose, imprecise reference. The actions over the last four years of the now fully aligned and integrated US-led Military Bloc have, however, created a large group of countries that are the ‘Rest of the World’. The ‘Rest of the World’ are thus aligned initially by ‘negative unity’, i.e., all its members are excluded. Consequently, they have become a negation of the imperialist camp. These countries include Russia and Belarus, which are not developing countries but are heavily targeted for regime change and subjugation.

The Global South includes mainly so-called ‘less developed’ or ‘developing’ countries, geographically associated with countries in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania. It implicitly refers to countries that have been historically marginalised in the global economic system and are all grappling with the legacies of colonialism and imperialism. These countries were often called the Third World

From: https://thetricontinental.org/studies-on-contemporary-dilemmas-4-hyper-imperialism/#toc-section-4-2

It is a term used in anti imperialists circles. But that may be completely missing the point as to whether it is offensive or not and should be replaced. The phrase is definitely clunky, and the above authors admit that too. But they do define it via imperialism so there is a coherent concept lurking behind it.

I'm interested what better word may come about.

no

The euphemism treadmill still rollin' on I see

My understanding is that it's less offensive than "third world" but I am curious to see if others think that makes it a good enough term or not because I honestly don't know

I've never heard of it being offensive, although it does come off as kinda academic sounding since it is mostly a label for a concept of how the global order works in practice/history.

I guess I'd be interested in alternative terms. Imperial core, imperial periphery mostly describe the global north, but I don't recall similar terms for the global south.

I prefer to use imperial core and periphery, it feels more descriptive than north/south.