Global South Studies Center Erfurt

Relations, (Dis)Connections, Ruptures: On the Futurability of a Globalized World

The Global South Studies Center Erfurt aims to bundle, facilitate and internationalize research on the Global South at University of Erfurt. The disciplines involved are Cultural, Social and Religious Studies, History, Theology, as well as Political and Communication Science. The geographical focus is on West Asia, South Asia, Africa and Latin America. In addition to the Near and Middle East, it also includes the (Global) East, i.e. the post-Soviet and postsocialist world, where the Center is also situated. These perspectives make it unique in Gemany.

Global South Studies are a rather recent, vibrant and interdisciplinary research field. Global South is understood here in its relation to the Global North and Global East, as a relational concept. The term first appeared officially in world politics in 1980 with the report of Willy Brandt’s North-South Commission (1977-79), entitled North-South: A Programme for Survival, but "Global South" was used since the 1960s.
The concept of the Global East has recently been introduced into the discussion in order to include the post-Soviet and postsocialist spaces, the former “Second World”, liminally positioned between Global South and Global North. Global South, North and East are not to be understood as geographical descriptions, but rather as deterritorialized concepts used to describe and analyze transregional, transnational and translocal relationships, spaces and movements within the global economic and political order. Thus, there is “South” to be found in the “North” and "East" (and vice-versa). Through related experiences of subaltern positions of marginalization (and often alienation), the concepts Global South and East are also used to both express and analyze powerful social and political Imaginaries that have been able to transcend the contradictions and disjunctions of the societies and politics involved.