North – South? Pitfalls of dividing the world by words

Abstract

The phrase ‘North – South divide’—as well as variations such as ‘North – South gap’ or ‘North – South cleavage’—has become well established in public discourse and scholarly writing. The phrase, however, is highly problematic, as it is simplistic and as there is a substantial danger of misapprehending it for ‘reality’ as such. The indiscriminate usage of the phrase ‘North – South divide’ overlooks the ways in which words create and shape our understanding of the world, on which we, in turn, base our judgements and decisions. The aim of the present paper is to point out specific ways through which this linguistic distinction—as much as any other—shapes our conception of (social) reality. The paper is in two parts. In the first we will initially draw out some pitfalls that inhere in the notion of a ‘North – South divide’qua notion, and then point to other pitfalls that relate to the usage of the expression. In the second part two case studies are presented to illustrate our arguments: one of them deals with China, the other with intellectual property rights.

Notes

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Convention of the International Studies Association in San Diego on 25 March 2006. Our arguments have further profited from many comments and criticisms—especially those offered by our colleagues at the Institute for Political Science at the University of St Gallen. We are indebted to all of them.

1 D Horowitz, Hemispheres North & South: Economic Disparity Among Nations, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1966. Horowitz, however, does not explicitly mention the phrase ‘North – South divide’. The Oxford English Dictionary also points to the year 1966 and lists a work by Franz Schurmann as the earliest source applying the notion ‘North – South gap’ to a global perspective. See F Schurmann, Ideology and Organization in Communist China, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1966.

2 Horowitz, Hemispheres North & South, pp vii, 6.

3 See, for instance, the 2006 Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, entitled ‘The North – South Divide and International Studies’. The conference, which inspired authors to link almost any topic to some kind of ‘North – South divide’ and has thus further encouraged its inflationary and indiscriminate usage, has, in turn, also provoked this paper. See International Studies Association, ‘Call for Papers and Proposals: The North – South Divide and International Studies’, 14 December 2005, at http://www.isanet.org/sandiego/call_for_papers.html, accessed 30 January 2006.

4 That ‘nations’ in the title refers to the political entities of ‘nation-states’ or ‘countries’ and not to ethnically, religiously or tribally constituted ‘peoples’ can be inferred from many passages throughout the book and also from the back cover, where the synopsis speaks of a ‘growing gap between the rich and poor countries’.

5 See, for example, J Derrida, Of Grammatology, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

6 J Derrida, ‘Differance’, in Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1982, p 17.

7 Derrida, Of Grammatology, pp 13 – 14.

8 E Laclau & C Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, London: Verso, 2001, pp xi, 112.

9 R Jakobson, ‘Two aspects of language and two types of aphasic disturbances’, in K Pomorska & S Rudy (eds), Roman Jakobson: Language in Literature, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1987, pp 98 – 99, 109 – 110. See also G Lakoff & M Johnson, Metaphors we Live by, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1980, p 36.

10 For instance, as Logde points out, metaphor and metonymy in Jakobson's scheme may be said to constitute a binary opposition. See D Lodge, The Modes of Modern Writing: Metaphor, Metonymy, and the Typology of Modern Literature, London: Edward Arnold, 1977, pp 73 – 74. Needless to say, we do not want to suggest such an understanding.

11 See, for a vivid illustration, ‘An explanation of the “What's up? South!” World Map’, 2002, at http://www.diversophy.com/whatsupsouth.pdf, accessed 12 September 2006.

12 The Oxford English Dictionary mentions that in the 18th century, ‘too far north’ was used to state ‘too clever, too shrewd’; a colloquial expression still in use is ‘north of’ meaning ‘higher than, in excess of’.

13 One must distinguish between an absolute (in the north) and a relative (north of) use of these geographical notions, for a change of one's own position on the globe certainly matters in the latter case.

14 Logde, The Modes of Modern Writing, p 76.

15 See T Brennan, ‘The cuts of language: the East/West of North/South’, Public Culture, 13 (1), 2001, p 39.

16 Horowitz, Hemispheres North & South, p 102.

17 We do not draw a strict distinction between academia and the public. To reality as a social construction both scholarly debates and public discourse contribute. Thus, for our purposes academic texts are empirical data, too.

18 See, for example, R Reuveny & WR Thompson, ‘World economic growth, Northern antagonism, and North – South conflict’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 46 (4), 2002, p 484; DM Malone & L Hagman, ‘The North – South divide at the United Nations: fading at last?’, Security Dialogue, 33 (4), 2002, p 399; and International Studies Association, ‘Call for Papers and Proposals’.

19 Laclau and Mouffe emphasise the constitutive role of frontiers and antagonisms for politics. In order to account for the erection and dissolution of these frontiers they introduce two interwoven logics: the logic of difference and the logic of equivalence. While the latter, in its most extreme version, will lead to a splitting of social space into two opposing camps (through the establishment of chains of equivalence among elements that, in turn, constitute the individual poles), the former leads to an expansion of a system of differences (through a dissolution of such chains of equivalence). Laclau & Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, pp 127 – 134.

20 This link has been prominent since the first (documented) usage of the term ‘North – South gap’ in Schurmann's Ideology & Organisation in Communist China (see note 1). Schurmann writes on page 79: ‘The world is concerned today over the growing north – south gap between industrialized and nonindustrialized countries’.

21 See, for example, J Kasteng, A Karlsson & C Lindberg, Differentiation between Developing Countries in the wto , Swedish Board of Agriculture, International Affairs Division, June 2004, at http://www.sjv.se/webdav/files/SJV/trycksaker/Pdf_rapporter/ra04_14E.pdf, accessed 5 January 2006.

22 The Human Development Index, for example, classifies countries in four ways: by human development level, by income, by major world aggregates, and by region. While the first three classes tend to be based on an implicit ‘North – South divide’ from the outset, not even the classification by region is suitable for a differentiation among ‘developed countries’ since it is only conducted for ‘developing countries’. Human Development Programme (undp), Human Development Report 2005: International Cooperation at a Crossroads: Aid, Trade and Security in an Unequal World, 2005, pp 212, 363 – 368, at http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2005/pdf/HDR05_complete.pdf, accessed 30 January 2006.

23 See, for example, the dispute between India and the European Union over the differentiation among developing countries. While the European Union defended its differential treatment of seriously drug-affected countries, India claimed that this type of differentiation among developing countries violated wto rules. European Commission, ‘wto India – gsp: wto confirms differentiation among developing countries is possible’, Europa: Gateway to the European Union, 7 April 2004, at http://europa.eu.int/comm/trade/issues/bilateral/countries/india/pr070404_en.htm, accessed 30 January 2006.

24 Bull conceives of great powers as central social institutions of international society whose responsibility it is to uphold international order. See H Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002, pp 194 – 222.

25 The so-called Enabling Clause, as one example, authorises ‘developed countries’ to give differential and more favourable treatment to ‘developing countries’. The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (trips), as another, provides longer transition periods for ‘developing countries’ (Part VI). See World Trade Organization (wto), ‘Decision of 28 November 1979 (L/4903)’, Differential and More Favourable Treatment, Reciprocity and Fuller Participation of Developing Countries, 1979, at http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/enabling1979_e.htm, accessed 16 March 2006; and wto, ‘Part VI: Transitional Arrangements’, Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, at http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/27-trips_08_e.htm, accessed 16 March 2006.

26 See European Commission, ‘wto India – gsp’; and Kasteng et al, Differentiation between Developing Countries in the wto .

27 For a good overview of the various issues and arguments that have been raised in the debates over reform of the unsc, see M Fröhlich, K Hüfner & A Mäker, Reform des UN-Sicherheitsrates: Modelle, Kriterien und Kennziffern (Reform of the UN Security Council: Models, Criteria, and Parameters), Berlin: Deutsche Gesellschaft für die Vereinten Nationen, 2005.

28 The Human Development Report explicitly lists aid, debt relief, and trade as ‘rich country responsibilities’. Human Development Programme, Human Development Report 2005, pp 278 – 279.

29 Hobson and Sharman find similar historic patterns of intervention in ‘backward’ areas of the international system. See JM Hobson & JC Sharman, ‘The enduring place of hierarchy in world politics: tracing the social logics of hierarchy and political change’, European Journal of International Relations, 11(1), 2005, p 88.

30 B Stallings, ‘The new international context of development’, in Stallings, Global Change, Regional Response: The New International Context of Development, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp 360 – 361.

31 The English language version of the German online magazine Spiegel Online reported extensively on the matter and invited readers to comment on the conflict. See their link collection, ‘Hurricane Katrina and its wake’, which extends over several pages and also documents the controversy. Spiegel Online, 31 August 2005, at http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,k-6787-2005-243,00.html, accessed 4 September 2006.

32 See, for example, Human Development Programme, Human Development Report 2005; and Kasteng et al, Differentiation between Developing Countries in the wto .

33 M Kahler, ‘The state of the state in world politics’, in I Katznelson & HV Milner (eds), Political Science: The State of the Discipline, London: WW Norton, 2002, p 66.

34 AD Smith, ‘Nationalism and classical social theory’, British Journal of Sociology, 34 (1), 1983, p 26.

35 See SS Kim, ‘China and the Third World: in search of a peace and development line’, in Kim, China and the World: New Directions in Chinese Foreign Relations, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989, p 148.

36 P Snow, ‘China and Africa: consensus and camouflage’, in TW Robinson & D Shambaugh (eds), Chinese Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, pp 286 – 288.

37 Ibid, p 288.

38 Kim, ‘China and the Third World’, p 155.

39 Snow, ‘China and Africa’, pp 302 – 303.

40 Ibid, p 292.

41 Ibid, p 293.

42 Ibid, p 294.

43 Ibid, p 297.

44 H Harding, ‘China's co-operative behaviour’, in Robinson & Shambaugh, Chinese Foreign Policy, p 317. More recently, the PRC has frequently voiced its opinion at the UN together with ‘Third World organisations’, as in common statements issued by the new ‘Group of 77 and China’.

45 Snow, ‘China and Africa’, p 299.

46 Ibid, p 306. In Snow's opinion this reshape of the relationship amounted to a ‘retreat from commitment’ and mainly served to propel China's domestic modernisation. See also Kim, ‘China and the Third World’, pp 160 – 161, where China is said to have softened its ‘North – South’ antagonistic rhetoric.

47 Cited from Snow, ‘China and Africa’, p 309.

48 Ibid, p 316.

49 Kim, ‘China and the Third World’, p 148.

50 Ibid, p 149.

51 China's hdi value is 0.755. Low human development is characterised by a value below 0.5, medium by a value between 0.5 and 0.799, and high by a value above 0.8. See Human Development Programme, Human Development Report 2005, p 212.

52 The World Bank classification ranges from low income countries, below $825, to lower middle income countries, from $826 to $3255, to upper middle income countries, from $3256 to $10 065, and to high income countries, above $10 066 (data for the year 2004). See World Bank, ‘World Bank analytical classifications', at http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/OGHIST.xls, accessed 13 December 2006. Reveuny and Thompson offer a different monetary categorisation, directly distinguishing between ‘Southern’ and ‘Northern’ countries: a country is ‘Northern if its real gross domestic product (gdp) per capita is equal to or larger than 25% of the highest real gdp per capita in the [international] system. Otherwise it is classified as Southern.’ See Reuveny & Thompson, ‘World economic growth’, p 494.

53 C Thomas & P Wilkin, ‘Still waiting after all these years: “the Third World” on the periphery of international relations’, British Journal of Politics & International Relations, 6 (2), 2004, p 243.

54 F Nuscheler, Lern- und Arbeitsbuch Entwicklungspolitik (Study and Exercise Book on Development Policy), Bonn: Dietz, 1995, pp 100 – 107. Mohammed Ayoob and Matthew Zierler discuss the divide similarly under the headers of ‘Economics’ as well as ‘Politics and Security’. See M Ayoob & M Zierler, ‘The unipolar concert: the North – South divide trumps transatlantic differences’, World Policy Journal, 22 (1), 2005, p 37.

55 See, for example, Malone & Hagman, ‘The North – South divide at the United Nations’; and RJ Langhammer, ‘China and the G-21: a new North – South divide in the wto after Cancún?’, Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, 10 (3), 2005, pp 339 – 358.

56 The University of Oslo, for example, has an International Research Cooperation Programme that states its cause as follows: “It is a reality that the greater part of the world's academic resources are to be found in the industrialised countries. Institutions and academics in the North therefore face a continuous challenge to contribute towards a more equal distribution of knowledge and research between the North and the South’. See University of Oslo, ‘North – South catalogue 2005’, International Research Cooperation, 2003, at http://www.uio.no/english/research/international/catalogue/index.html, accessed 16 May 2006.

57 MHA Hassan, ‘Small things and big changes in the development world’, Science, 309 (5731), 2005, pp 65 – 66.

58 P Zhou & L Leydesdorff, ‘The emergence of China as a leading nation in science’, Research Policy, 35 (1), 2006, pp 83, 100.

59 Hassan, ‘Small things and big changes’, p 65. Interestingly, Hassan draws attention to an emerging ‘South – South gap’: ‘Although increased investments in a number of developing countries have narrowed the North – South nanodivide, such investments have widened the South – South divide. Today, the environment for research and development in nanoscience and nanotechnology in Brazil, China, India and South Africa bears closer resemblance to the research environment in Europe, Japan, and the United States than it does, for instance, to the research environment in the Dominican Republic, Laos, or Rwanda’. Ibid, p 66. Nonetheless, this does not prompt Hassan to question the adequacy of the concept of a ‘North – South divide’ in the first place.

60 Nuscheler, Lern- und Arbeitsbuch Entwicklungspolitik, p 102.

61 If calculated according to the ‘household register’ (huyi renkou), Shanghai boasts a gdp per capita of RMB 55 307, on the basis of ‘permanent residents’ (changzhu renkou) of RMB 44 727. See Shanghai Statistics, Shanghai Statistical Yearbook 2005, at http://www.stats-sh.gov.cn/2004shtj/tjnj/tjnj2005.htm, accessed 1 March 2006.

62 P Deng, ‘Foreign investment by multinationals from emerging countries: the case of China’, Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 10 (2), 2003, p 113. However, the Chinese government still controls the economy: Deng reports that, of ‘the top 500 Chinese firms—the dominant source of Chinese outward fdi, only one is privately owned and 25 are collective firms’. Ibid, p 120.

63 See Haier, ‘About Haier: corporate profile’, Welcome to Haier, 2005, at http://www.haier.com/abouthaier/corporateprofile/index.asp, accessed 16 May 2006.

64 Works that touch upon these issues include E Penrose, ‘International patenting and the less-developed countries’, Economic Journal, 83 (331), 1973, pp 768 – 786; SK Sell, Power and Ideas: North – South Politics of Intellectual Property and Antitrust, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998; Sell, ‘Multinational corporations as agents of change: the globalization of intellectual property rights’, in C Cutler, V Haufler & T Porter (eds), Private Authority and International Affairs, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999, pp 169 – 197; P Drahos, ‘Thinking strategically about intellectual property rights’, Telecommunications Policy, 21 (3), 1997, pp 201 – 211; and ‘Dossier on “intellectual property”’, The Courier ACP – EU, (201), 2003, pp 22 – 41.

65 Proponents of patents in this area spoke of ‘patents on computer-implemented inventions’, whereas its opponents favoured the phrases ‘computer patents’ and ‘software patents’. We put all of them into quotation marks in order to recall their contested status.

66 SK Sell & C May, ‘Moments in law: contestation and settlement in the history of intellectual property’, Review of International Political Economy, 8 (3), 2001, pp 467 – 500.

67 LG Kastriner, ‘The revival of confidence in the patent system’, Journal of the Patent and Trademark Office Society, 73 (1), 1991, p 6.

68 Sell, ‘Multinational corporations as agents of change’, p 175.

69 J Enyart, ‘A gatt intellectual property code’, les Nouvelles, 25 (2), 1990, p 54.

70 The Intellectual Property Committee (USA), Keidanren (Japan) & unice (Europe), ‘Basic Framework of gatt Provisions on Intellectual Property: statement of the views of the European, Japanese and United States business communities’, in F-K Beier & G Schriker (eds), gatt or wipo ? New Ways in the International Protection of Intellectual Property, Weinheim: vhc Verlagsgesellschaft, 1989, pp 355 – 402.

71 T Cottier, ‘The prospects for intellectual property in gatt’, Common Market Law Review ( cmlr ), 28 (2), 1991, pp 388 – 389.

72 Rainer Faupel, a German government employee who was involved in the gatt/wto process, gives a nuanced account of the negotiations, emphasising the role of central players (industry and the USA on the one hand, India and Brazil on the other) and reports on the actual variety of conflicts. R Faupel, ‘gatt und geistiges Eigentum: Ein Zwischenbericht zu Beginn der entscheidenden Verhandlungsrunde’ (gatt and intellectual property: an interim report at the beginning of the decisive round of negotiations), Gewerblicher Rechtsschutz und Urheberrecht: Internationaler Teil ( grur Int), 39 (4), 1990, pp 255 – 266. Similarly, Thomas Cottier argues: ‘Negotiations were not, and could not be, limited to what sometimes, in a simplified manner, are depicted as North – South problems’. Cottier, ‘The prospects for intellectual property in gatt’, p 389.

73 The following factors might have helped to assert common interests and to make the ‘North – South’ framework a plausible explanation of the conflict. First, earlier conflicts could have served as an ‘interpretative framework’. Some of the previous international conflicts over intellectual property law had also been organised along a ‘developed’/‘developing’ cleavage; an example would be the talks over a revision of the Paris Convention on the Protection of Industrial Property, which ended in deadlock in the first half of the 1980s. See Sell, Power and Ideas, pp 107 – 108. Second, the complementary social roles ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ country were well established in the gatt/wto framework since previous agreements had already contained special provisions for developing countries. Third, other issue areas—notably agriculture—were also claimed to be following a ‘North – South divide’. As package deals and issue linkages offer possible solutions in moments of deadlock, the cleavages in varying issue areas spill over into each other.

74 CJ Hermes: trip s im Gemeinschaftsrecht: Zu den innergemeinschaftlichen Wirkungen von wto -Übereinkünften (trips in European Community Law: On the Intra-communal Implications of wto Agreements), Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2002, p 35.

75 There was just one small exemption: the term of protection for patents that had been registered with the patent office of the German Democratic Republic had to be extended. See Deutscher Bundestag, Gesetzentwurf der Bundesregierung: Entwurf eines Gesetzes zu dem Übereinkommen vom 15 April 1994 zur Errichtung der Welthandelsorganisation (Federal Government Bill: Draft Law concerning the Agreement of 15 April 1994 on the Establishment of the World Trade Organization), Drucksache, 12/7655 neu, 1994, p 345.

76 Hermes, trip s im Gemeinschaftsrecht, p 35.

77 Intellectual Property Committee, Keidanren & unice, ‘Basic Framework of gatt Provisions on Intellectual Property’, p 373. See also Enyart, ‘A gatt intellectual property code’, p 55.

78 wto, ‘Part II—standards concerning the availability, scope and use of intellectual property rights’, Uruguay Round Agreement: Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, at http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/27-trips_04c_e.htm#5, accessed 23 February 2006.

79 D Schiuma, ‘trips und das Patentierungsverbot von Software als “solcher”’ (trips and the prohibition of patents on software ‘as such’), grur Int, 47 (11), 1998, pp 852 – 858.

80 For example, in a meeting of the Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, Germany answered the question from the USA on whether the exclusion of computer programmes from patentability under its patent law would be in accordance with trips in the affirmative. See wto, ‘Review of legislation on patents, layout-designs (topographies) of integrated circuits, protection of undisclosed information and control of anti-competitive practices in contractual licences: Germany’, Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, IP/Q3/DEU/1, 1997, p 4.

81 European Commission, ‘Promoting innovation through patents: Green Paper on the Community Patent and the Patent System in Europe’, COM(1997)314final, 24 June 1997, at http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/indprop/docs/patent/docs/pat_en.pdf, accessed 24 February 2006.

82 The European Union is not a contracting party to the epc. Since all EU member states are, however, signatories of the epc and dominate the European Patent Organisation, the steps taken by the European Union are likely to have a decisive impact on the epc.

83 European Commission, ‘Promoting innovation through patents: the follow-up to the Green Paper on the Community Patent and the Patent System in Europe’, COM(1999)42final, 5 February 1999, at http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/indprop/docs/patent/docs/8682_en.pdf, accessed 24 February 2006, p 14, emphasis in the original.

84 For a detailed discussion of this conflict, see Julian Eckl, ‘Die Auseinandersetzungen über die EU-“Softwarepatent” Richtlinie als Testfall für demokratische Beteiligungsmöglichkeiten an der Gestaltung der internationalen politischen Ökonomie' (The struggle over the EU ‘software patents’ directive as a test case for democratic participation in the design of the international political economy), paper presented at the open meeting of the section on international relations of the German political science association, Mannheim, 7 October 2005, at http://www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/konf/dvpw2005/Papers/Julian_Eckl.pdf, accessed 16 May 2006.

85 unice argued ‘that present restrictions to patent software-related inventions are harmful for European companies and that any EU proposal on this subject should simply adopt the wording of Article 27(1) trips’. unice, ‘Patentability of computer-implemented inventions: consultations paper by the European Commission: unice comments’, 15 December 2000, p 1, at http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/indprop/docs/comp/replies/unice_en.pdf, accessed 23 February 2006, emphasis added.

86 See, for example, PbT Consultants, ‘The results of the European Commission consultation exercise on the patentability of computer implemented inventions’, 2001, at http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/indprop/docs/comp/softanalyse_en.pdf, accessed 27 February 2006.

87 See, for example, the debates during the first reading. European Parliament, ‘Patentability of computer-implemented inventions’, Debates: Tuesday 23 September 2003—Strasbourg, at http://www.europarl.eu.int/omk/sipade3?PUBREF=//EP//TEXT+CRE+20030923+ITEM-002+DOC+XML+V0//EN&LEVEL=4&NAV=S&L=EN, accessed 27 February 2006.