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witnessed the demise of thesecond world,
the rise of the USA as the dominant econo-
mic, ideological and military power, and the
hegemony of neo-liberal economic discourse
(see neo-liberalism). East–West rivalries
have been replaced bynorth__southtensions
around such issues as the power and role of
theworld trade organization, the United
Nations and international finance institutions,
globalcivil societyand donor-driven NGOs,
mobility of labour versus that ofcapitaland
commodities, and public health crises related
to AIDS (Sheppard and Nagar, 2004).
However, Mamdani’s (2004, p. 250) point
that ‘the Cold War was largely not fought in
Europe but in what came to be called the Third
World’serves as an important reminder that the
East–West politics have been at all times
North–South politics. Not surprisingly, then,
while the post-9/11 ‘anti-terrorism’ discourse
is couched in terms of West versus radical
Islam, the US war on terror has simultaneously
metamorphosed into an offensive imperial
war, in which southern nations are denied the
right to defend theirsovereigntyas well as the
right to reform (Mamdani, 2004, p. 260).
Two noteworthy fissures in the concept of
the South have emerged in this environment.
First, with the emergence of the so-called
newly industrializing countries (NICs), such
as Taiwan and South Korea, and growing
impoverishment, particularly inafrica, the
countries of the South have become increas-
ingly differentiated. Second, whereas East–
West rivalries predominantly played out at
thenation-statescale, North–South tensions
operate on multiplescales. As political and
economic elites in most countries of the Third
and erstwhile Second Worlds accepted the
tenets of neo-liberalism, they repositioned
themselves ideologically and materially along-
side the more wealthy residents of the First
World. At the same time, ongoing socio-
economic polarization within the industrial-
ized world (reinforced by post-9/11 reforms),
together with the devolution of responsibilities
for citizens’ welfare from nation-states to
regions and cities, has meant that livelihood
possibilities in marginal localities within the
former First World become more similar to
those of the less well off in the former Second
and Third Worlds than to the elites in their
own countries. In addition, multilateral and
supra-national agencies became increasingly
influential proponents of the neo-liberal
agenda of the global North, shaping develop-
ment geographies within states (Sheppard and
Nagar, 2004).In concert, donor-driven NGOs have facili-
tated the co-optation of radical left and femi-
nist politics, even as they have helped to
popularize the concepts of empowerment and
equity in limited but critical ways. Not surpris-
ingly, then, the proliferation of UN confer-
ences on women in the post-Cold War era
has ‘undermin[ed] nation-specific resistance
in the name of international solidarity’,
while simultaneously creating ‘‘‘the new
subaltern’’ – the somewhat monolithic woman
as victim who is the constituted subject of
justice under (the now-unrestricted) inter-
national capitalism’ (Spivak, 2000, p. 305).
Thus, the global North is constituted
through the pathways of transnational capital
andnetworksof political and economic elites
spanning privileged localities across the globe
(Castells, 1996a; Mohanty, 2003). By contrast,
the global South, which theoretically inhabits
the ‘margins’, is to be found everywhere.
But this does not make all Souths ‘equal’.
Movements against neo-liberalism are
reminders of the ways in which convergences
and divergences on issues such as livelihood
alternatives shape the agendas of actors oper-
ating in multiple Souths, whose visibility, in
turn, is shaped by complex politics of socio-
geographical locations (Glassman, 2002;
Hardt, 2002; Sparke, Brown, Corva, Day
and Faria, 2005). rnsovereign power A philosophical concept
arguing thatpoweris the control over individ-
ual life. The concept is a challenge to estab-
lished ideas ofsovereigntythat concentrate
upon political authority over territory.
Sovereign power focuses attention to the
scaleof thebody, the authority to classify
individuals in a particular way to grant them
life or death. The roots of the concept lie in the
work of Michel Foucault and his discussion of
biopower, regularization and biopolitics.
Foucault’s analysis of nineteenth-century
medicine and sexual behaviour described the
way in which individual bodies and sexual
practices were classified bystateinstitutions
as healthy/good and unhealthy/bad. The man-
ner in which this was done led to the regula-
tion of individual behaviour, or biopower,
through classification and control, to the clas-
sification of groups of people (in terms of
race,nation,sexuality,genderetc.), the
political implication being that classification
of people as, say, sexually deviant can be used
in arguments limiting their politicalrights.
Usage of the concept ‘sovereign power’ has
been promoted by the work of GiorgioGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_S Final Proof page 705 1.4.2009 3:23pmSOVEREIGN POWER