Racialised Representations and the Global South: Insights from Critical Race Studies

Abstract

Explicit representations of race have played a major role in shaping world order since the era of colonialism. Although overt/explicit racisms have retreated in the wake of anti-racism advancements globally, the legacies of historical racial signification continue. Racialised representations have shifted from explicit notions of biological difference to notions of essentialised and primordialised social difference (wherein biological determinism remains implicit), employing seemingly more neutral and acceptable proxies for race, including culture’, ‘ethnicity’ and ‘religion’. Drawing insights from an eclectic body of works loosely termed ‘critical race studies’, we show how ‘racialisation’ as a representational process organises, structures and produces assumptions about race in mainstream Global North (GN) scholarly, policy and influential media representations of the Global South (GS). ‘Racialisation matters’ not because observers in the GN are necessarily racists, but because the legacies of historical racial significations are so deeply embedded structurally and institutionally. ‘Representations matter’ because they continue to inform the lived experiences of people in the GS, producing real physical effects on them as racialised subjects and on the material conditions of their existence. Revelation of the racialised dimensions of representations of the GS is necessary to reclaim the dignity, identity and agency of the racialised.

Keywords

Racialisation representation Global South Global North critical race studies

Introduction

Not so long ago, explicit representations of race played a major role in shaping world order. They helped give effect to and legitimise European imperial expansion and colonial domination from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries and played a significant role in both the First and the Second World Wars (Anghie, 1999; Vitalis, 2000). Combating the racisms that fuelled colonial expansion and fascist aggression was a key element in the construction of the post–Second World War international political, legal and normative order beginning in 1945 with the UN Charter and the 1948 Genocide Convention. Decolonisation in Asia and Africa after 1945 also spurred a series of important anti-racism initiatives in various international forums. These included UNESCO’s four Statements on Race (1950, 1951, 1959 and 1967), the UN’s Declaration (1950) and Convention (1973) against apartheid and the UN Declaration (1963) and Convention (1965) on eliminating racial discrimination. Since then, several UN-sponsored world anti-racism conferences and meetings (1978, 1983, 2001, 2009 and 2011) have produced several important statements on race. The need to update the various international anti-racism statements and instruments is an admission of the continuing salience of race in world affairs; a ‘post-racial world’ is yet to be realised (Vucetic, 2011, p. 417).

Yet, compared to other social categories such as ‘nation’, ‘class’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘culture’, ‘gender’ and ‘religion’, race received much less attention in mainstream academic literature, and this omission extends to mainstream ‘international representations’¹ of the Global South (Henderson, 2013; Persaud & Walker, 2001; Vitalis, 2000).² Race was a key subject of study when International Relations (IR) first emerged as an academic discipline in the early twentieth century, and racial lenses and significations strongly influenced its development into the early post–Second World War period (Vitalis, 2005, p. 163). From the 1950s onwards, however, the explicit study of race disappeared from mainstream IR scholarship, implying that the anti-racism initiatives that accompanied formal decolonisation had solved the race problem in international affairs (Hobson, 2007, p. 104–105).

Drawing insights from an eclectic body of works loosely termed ‘critical race studies’ (CRS), we show that this ‘willful amnesia on the question of race’ (Krishna, 2001, p. 401) masks the reproduction and perpetuation of racial lenses and significations in contemporary representations of a historically constituted Global South (GS), albeit in modified less obvious forms. Focusing on ‘racialisation’ as a representational process, we unmask and interrogate how assumptions about race are organised, structured, produced and received in mainstream Global North (GN) scholarly, policy and influential media representations of the GS with particular reference to sub-Saharan Africa. Since all representations are a manifestation and perpetuator of power relations with political, social and economic repercussions, the revelation of the racialised dimensions of representations of the GS is necessary to reclaim the dignity, identity and agency of the racialised.

We argue that although overt/explicit racisms retreated in the wake of anti-racism advancements globally the legacies of historical racial significations continue. Racialised representations have shifted from explicit notions of biological difference to notions of essentialised and primordialised social difference (wherein biological determinism remains implicit), employing seemingly more neutral and acceptable proxies for race including ‘culture’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘religion’ and so on (Hobson, 2007, pp. 103–105).³ This facilitates the imputation of racial meanings (to people, countries, continents, events and phenomena) without appearing to talk about race. Hence, the category of the ‘other’ continues albeit defined in new taxonomies. This surreptitious adaptation ensures that the same people continue to be the racialised other/subject—yesterday’s (biologically determined) race is one of today’s (essentialised and primordialised) cultural/ethnic/religious groups. Thus, the underpinnings of the race discourses remain relatively stable as the GN retains the power to fix meanings.

Contemporary racialisations are more insidious and elusive, infusing GN scholarly, policy and media representations of the GS through two related processes—racialised objectification/subjection and the naturalisation/normalisation of whiteness. Because representation is ‘meaning-making’, power is central to these racialisation processes, which (a) generate particular kinds of knowledge; (b) constitute categories of subjects and impose choices on them; (c) uphold certain values and practices as the preferred standard while simultaneously denigrating and devaluing others. They render race invisible in certain contexts and visible in others while masking and obscuring racialised privileges. Represented/through institutionalised and systemic power differentials, the effects of racialisation processes are as damaging as overt racism.

We begin with a brief discussion of representation as a social process and outline the contributions of CRS to understanding race as a historically situated construct and racialisation as a social phenomenon entailing representational processes. We then outline our approach to understanding racialisation as entailing processes of ‘objectification/subjection’ and the ‘naturalisation/normalisation of whiteness’ and provide examples of these racialisations in mainstream GN scholarly, policy and media representations of the GS.

Representation, Critical Race Studies and Racialisation

Representation is the production of meaning through language and practice. ‘Things’ do not have ‘objective’ independent meanings; we construct meaning using representational systems, which include both the language used to ‘make sense’ of the world and the practices effected by and effecting those meanings (Foucault, 1980; Hall, 2013). Although explicit discussion of race is not at the centre of his analysis, Said’s (1978) study of ‘orientalism’ as a system of representation inspires our interest in exploring racialised representations of the GS. Like Said, our interest is in the unequal power relations⁴ between observers and observed that generate particular kinds of knowledge based on the production of racialised differences/otherness. This power imbalance skews heavily in favour of GN observers since they dominate knowledge production about the GS (Acharya, 2014; Odoom & Andrews, 2017; Shilliam, 2011), and the observed in the GS see themselves through the lenses of the observers.

CRS encompass a wide body of social, political, legal and educational research that examines the various representations of race in the organisation of society historically and in the contemporary period.⁵ CRS note the historical invention of the race concept to justify and legitimise European imperial expansion and colonial domination (Fanon, 1967), and cite three historical encounters as decisive in shaping notions of racial difference: the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism and more recent migrations into Europe and North America (Hall, 2013). Early race discourses located differences among humans in biology and represented these differences hierarchically with lighter-skinned people at the top and those with the darkest pigmentation at the bottom (Barot & Bird, 2001). Advances in the sciences and genetics discredited these views but race did not disappear from political, policy and popular discourse or the social, health and human sciences (AAPA, 1996; Fullwiley, 2007). Race continues to inform the lived experience of people.

CRS see race not as a biological fact but as a socially and historically situated construct that emerged and has changed in response to social, economic and political changes (Winant, 2006) and articulate a critical realist approach to race. Although constructed, race has a ‘definite ontological status’ (Carter, 2000, p. 4) because of its tangible physical and material effects on the production of groups. Since race is a stratifying practice, it is impossible to ‘completely disentangle the biological from the social’ (Duster, 2001, p. 221). While treating race as a distinct ontological and analytical category, CRS do not reify race. Employing notions of ‘multidimensionality’ and ‘intersecting’/‘interlocking’ identities CRS note how particular identity markers or signifiers become interwoven (e.g., skin colour, class, gender, and age) becoming sites for multiple and simultaneous oppressions (Frankenberg, 1993; Mutua, 2000).

Racialisation and Racism

CRS alert us to the relationship between racism and racialisation; although distinctions between them are not always in practice clear-cut, they are useful for analytical purposes. With racism, signifying practices represent social differences as stratified/hierarchical resulting in discrimination, prejudice, bigotry and intolerance, and the unjust allocation of social values and resources among designated racial groups (Winant, 2006). Racism can occur at the individual/group, institutional and systemic/structural levels that embed racist beliefs of a dominant group in social structure, societal values, language, symbols, media and so on (Dei, 1996). ‘Racialisation’, first used by Fanon (1967), is a broader concept that addresses how assumptions about race influence particular ways of representing others and ourselves. Because all essentialised constructions of identity and difference occur within discursive fields involving power imbalances (Hall, 1996), and because racial representations have historically entailed superiority and inferiority, understanding the role of power by interrogating ‘who defines whom and for what purpose’ is central to analyses of racialisation. We focus on two interrelated and overlapping dimensions of racialisation identified by CRS where power plays a crucial role.

First, racialisation occurs when intentionally or otherwise discursive signifying practices extend racial meanings to previously racially unclarified relationships, social practices, groups, issues or events—that is, ‘seeing issues in racial terms’ (Malik, 1996, p. 33). Here, CRS employ a Foucauldian lens to view racialisation as a power/knowledge relationship entailing representational processes of ‘objectification’ and ‘subjection’. This dimension of racialisation occurs when observers employ essentialised notions of difference and implicitly imbue the observed differences with hierarchically valuated racial meanings. Although such significations occur at various levels, they have their greatest impact through the institutionalisation and systematisation of power differentials between observers and observed, granting the former authority to fix meanings. The second dimension of racialisation entails the naturalisation and normalisation of ‘whiteness’ and devaluation of ‘brownness’/ ‘blackness’ in social contexts. Here, CRS employ a Gramscian lens to view whiteness as an essentialised hegemonic construct that constitutes individual/group identity, enables systemic racialised privilege/devaluation and provides a discursive framework for producing knowledge and organising meaning that gives some groups the authority to speak/write about/for others and exclude other voices.

We conclude our brief review of CRS with two observations. First, racialisation is not synonymous with racism. While all forms of racism involve racialisation, not all racialisations necessarily involve racism; one can racialise without being racist or engaging in racist behaviour.⁶ Second, racialisation occurs not only on the part of dominant groups but also within and among subordinated/marginalised groups. Among groups subordinated in a racial hierarchy, racialisation is a ‘positioning’ process to change the meaning of racialised identities and categories to assert difference, confront discrimination, prejudice and injustice, compete for power in the established racial hierarchy, and/or challenge that hierarchy (Anthias, 2008). When racialisation occurs from the outside, the signification processes reflect the political, economic and social power of groups dominant in the racial hierarchy. Our focus in the second section is on representations of the GS by such ‘outside’ observers located mainly in the GN.

Racialised Representations of the Global South

Historically, elaborate representations of European racial superiority provided moral, intellectual and substantive justification for slavery, colonialism and the bifurcation of the world into ‘civilised’ and ‘uncivilised’. In the contemporary period, the word ‘race’ is no longer used in its explicit form largely because of the development of an extraordinarily rich and complex vocabulary to represent the GS in terms that appear natural, neutral, universal and uncontroversial (Anghie, 2006, p. 125). Below, we employ CRS lenses to develop a critical-analytical framework to examine influential GN scholarly, policy and media representations across a range of international issue-areas/topics in/or affecting the GS and in the relationship between the GS and GN. Because representation includes language and practice, we focus on the meanings conveyed, and the organised activities effected by and effecting those meanings, to unmask how racialised ‘objectification/subjection’ and the ‘naturalisation/normalisation of whiteness’ continue to inform the lived experiences of people in the GS.

Racialised Objectification/Subjection

Objectification is the production of knowledge about a topic/issue by ‘experts’ and those granted authority—policy makers, academics, scientists, journalists and so on—to fix meanings. Objectification is performative; it makes racialisation exist (Fassin, 2011). Objectification occurs via privileged narratives, discourses, theories, concepts, classifications and so on, which govern what is knowable, sayable and even thinkable about a topic/issue (Hall, 1996). Objectification goes together with subjection: the act of defining an object creates particular categories of people (subjects) with attributes ‘ascribed’ to them by the representation of knowledge about the topic at that time. Subjection, therefore, personifies and embodies a discourse (Fassin, 2011; Foucault, 1980). Such racialised ascription often involves a negative valuation of the racialised subject. Not only is difference historically constructed but so also are the social signifiers and the systems of (de)valuation associated with that difference (Fanon, 1967; Goldberg, 1993). By imposing particular identities on people and defining, directing and limiting their choices and actions, subjection denies their agency—that is, their capability for historical and ongoing reflection, decision-making and action vis-à-vis broader social structures that embed them (Leask, 2012).⁷

Racialised objectification/subjection historically entailed the identification by dominant groups of certain attributes and markers as indicative of racial difference and the use of these essentialised interlocked markers to represent in a way that emphasised difference and otherness (Goldberg, 1993). In the contemporary period, a CRS lens reveals a racialised ‘sanitization’ of international discourses involving the use of seemingly neutral concepts as proxies for race, particularly essentialised and primordialised notions of culture, ethnicity, civilisation and religion. Contemporary racialisations thus tend to represent racial differences in terms of existing social categories rather than biology by conflating ethnic, cultural, religious and other differences, infusing them with racial meanings. Thus, a discursive shift has occurred through which notions of essential primordial cultural, ethnic and religious difference have assumed the classificatory rule once played by biological notions of racial difference (Balibar, 1991). Assumptions about ethnicity and cultural difference have emerged as the fundamental and immutable basis of identity, belonging and differentiation (Silverstein, 2005, pp. 365–366). Grosfoguel (2004, p. 334) describes this as ‘global coloniality’ in which racial and ethnic identities do not exist as different forms of identity but operate as ‘racialized ethnicities’ and ‘ethnicized races’.

We apply these insights below to unmask evidence of racialised objectification/subjection in representations of the GS in contemporary narratives, discourses and discursive practices on ‘national’/‘international’ security, and in the securitisation of new issues including environmental degradation, population growth, international migration and religion. We expose racialised objectification/subjection in the denial/erasure of GS agency in international affairs, and the pervasive use of concepts, classifications and categories that devalue and pathologise GS polities, economies, societies and peoples. We also interrogate pervasive racialised paternalism and subjection in international discourses on ‘corruption’ and discursive practices in international development, global public health and environmental conservation.

Racialised Security Discourses and Racialised Securitisation

The discursive shift from biological to sociological notions of racial difference was most evident in the sudden ‘discovery’ in the immediate post–Cold War period of ‘ethnicity’ (often pejoratively called ‘tribalism’) as the new ‘master variable’ to explain violence and warfare in Africa and other GS regions (Busumtwi-Sam et al., 2004; Zolberg, 1992). Yet, problems of violence and warfare had plagued the GS throughout the post-independence period and did not suddenly emerge with the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. During the Cold War, mainstream international scholarship either ignored most of the armed conflicts in the GS or viewed them mainly through the lens of superpower competition and proxy (Holsti, 1999).

Such representation of conflicts in Africa and elsewhere in the GS as ‘ethnic’ or ‘tribal’ wars fuelled by ‘ancient tribal hatreds’ ignored the history of these societies and obscured important social relations and modes of social differentiation that defined how affected groups stood in relation to each other. Consciously or otherwise, such characterisations established new bases of differentiation globally that further marginalised and isolated those regions, and endogenised and localised issues. They also downplayed the legacies of colonial violence and the influence of contemporary global political–economic structures and relations in generating and sustaining ‘ethnic’ conflicts (Busumtwi-Sam, 2002, 2004). Since nineteenth-century colonial rule racialised ‘the colonized into a majority of natives’ and subsequently in the twentieth century fragmented this racialised majority into so many ‘ethnic minorities’, the contemporary institutional and political crises in African states cannot be understood without addressing how the colonial discourse created categories of race and ethnicity (Mamdani, 2005, p. 278).

Racialised objectification is also seen in discursive rearticulations of ‘national security’ discourses, which have always entailed identifying ‘others’ who threaten the core values and interests of Western states (Busumtwi-Sam, 2002), evident in the extension of security doctrines, policies and practices to new areas. The reconstruction of the colonial era narrative of a ‘barbaric’/‘savage’ other (GS) and a ‘civilised’ self (West/GN) framed the securitisation of new issues and led to the discursive rearticulation of the ‘security-development’ relationship in the post–Cold War era. The earlier articulation of this relationship at the beginning of the Cold War envisaged defending the core values of Western states against the threat of communist expansion by promoting ‘development’ in the GS via an elaborate system of foreign aid reinforced by a liberal multilateral trading system (Busumtwi-Sam, 2002; Pettiford & Curly, 1999). In the post–Cold War era, the reconfigured security–development relationship located the primary sources of insecurity and threat (to the GN) in the GS. The GN states’ security alignment is premised not merely on the putative shared culture of democracy but on the ‘racialised peace’ fabricated by former colonial powers (see Vucetic, 2011).

One prominent area where such racialised securitisation has occurred is GS-to-GN migration. The early 1990s saw the publication of influential academic and media accounts including Kaplan (1994) and Brimelow (1995) of a GN besieged by migration from the GS. In the contemporary period, apocalyptic narratives about ‘migration crises’ in Europe, the United States and elsewhere in the GN are dominant reflecting the rise of right-wing populism and nationalism (Busumtwi-Sam, 2019). Contrary to these narratives, data from the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) 2024 report reveal a growing international ‘mobility inequality’. Between 1995 and 2020, the stock of international migrants in the GN from low and medium income GS countries increased, but only slightly. The overwhelming majority of international migration occurred between higher-income GN states to the exclusion of lower-income GS states, reflecting the tightening in many GN states of immigration restrictions and closure of pathways for migrants from the GS (McAuliffe & Oucho, 2024, pp. 10–11). Immigration policies of many GN states are sites of racialised securitisation and criminalisation through expressions of essentialised and primordialised cultural and religious difference, with particular reference to Islam (Duffield, 2006; Garner, 2007; Huysmans, 2000; Lazaridis, 2016). If, as Duffield argues (2006, p. 71), the immigrant—the embodiment of cultural difference in motion—became the first iconic figure of socio-cultural racism, increasingly ‘the Muslim’ is also constructed as the enemy, the outsider to whom Western culture and ‘democratic values’ are entirely alien and from whom they must defend themselves.

Racialised securitisation has also occurred with other issues including population growth, environmental degradation and resource scarcity and competition—problems considered endemic to GS regions (Homer-Dixon, 1994). For example, Kaplan’s influential ‘Coming Anarchy’ (1994) article led to West Africa ‘becoming the symbol of worldwide demographic, environmental and societal stresses’ (Urdal, 2005, p. 418). Others proclaimed that ‘greed’ for profit from the sale of valuable natural resources such as diamonds by ‘warlords’ is the primary cause of armed conflict in Africa and other GS regions (Collier, 2000). The racialised representations of ‘African guilt and responsibility’ were widely received in Western academic and policy circles as they neatly fit into pre-existing ethnocentric narratives (Busumtwi-Sam, 2002) that obscured the role of GN corporations and states (in mining and the unregulated global arms trade) in generating and sustaining armed conflicts.

Racialised Negation, Devaluation and Paternalism

Racialised objectification-subjection is also evident in the negation of GS agency in international affairs that has shown remarkable historical continuity since the emergence of Western-dominated international law and organisation in the late sixteenth century (Anghie, 2004). Racialised negation entails outright ‘denial’ of GS agency via externally imposed structures, and/or ‘erasure’ of GS agency via devaluation, invisibilisation and/or appropriation.

Thus, although the GS has made significant contributions to the ideational, normative/legal and institutional evolution of international law and organisation in the post-decolonisation era GN observers downplay and devalue the significance of these contributions (Acharya, 2014; Okafor, 2006). An example is the international human rights discourse where GN international law practitioners and theorists often catalogue ‘economic and social rights’ (e.g., food and shelter) championed by the GS as mere social or moral claims. By contrast, they classify so-called civil and political liberties (e.g., free speech and association) championed by the GN as proper (and compulsory) human rights (Bedjaoui, 1987; Grovogui, 2001).

Historically, the GN’s appropriation of knowledge, technology, arts and so on from the GS occurred without acknowledgement/compensation and often entailed expropriation/forceful dispossession. Appropriation continues in the contemporary period in less obvious ways. A prominent example is the ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P) construct. Mainstream GN accounts credit the origin of R2P to the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) established by the Canadian government with the support of the UN Secretary General in 2000 (Bellamy, 2008; MacFarlane et al., 2004). While the 2001 ICISS report was the first formal elaboration of R2P, its intellectual and normative roots lie in notions of ending ‘absolute and exclusive sovereignty’ (Boutros-Ghali, 1992, 1992–1993), ‘sovereignty as responsibility’ (Deng, 1995; Deng et al., 1996) and ‘two concepts of sovereignty’ (Annan 1999). Prominent African diplomats and statespersons and African and Africanist scholars developed these approaches to redefining sovereignty largely in the African context (Acharya, 2014, 2016; Geldenhuys, 2012). Indeed, the African Union (AU) has been a significant ‘norm entrepreneur’ in redefining sovereignty in the African regional context, and it incorporated a version of R2P into its Constitutive Act in 2002, well before the UN General Assembly endorsed R2P at the World Summit in 2005 (Busumtwi-Sam, 2005/06; Coe, 2015; Souare, 2014).

The discourse on international development assistance displays a related context of agency erasure via racialised paternalism (Baker & Fitzgerald, 2012; Easterly, 2006; Sachs, 2005). The representation by aid sceptics and supporters of GS aid recipients as ‘corrupt’ and incapable of using aid wisely led to the emergence in the 1990s of a racialised paternalistic form of ‘disciplinary neoliberalism’ (Soss et al., 2011, pp. 141–152). This argument was used to justify the imposition—on stringently selected aid recipients—of harsh donor-defined conditionalities underpinned by the so-called Washington Consensus enforced by IMF and World Bank adjustment programmes, and conditional forms of ‘partnership’ to ensure ‘aid effectiveness’ (Duffield, 2001). In this new framework, GN discursive development assistance practices combined a neoliberal economic rationality emphasising GS states’ responsibility for ‘good governance’, ‘ownership’ and ‘sound economic management’ with a militaristic security rationality emphasising their ‘responsibility to protect’ their citizens from armed violence. Failure to fulfil these ‘responsibilities’ led to a GS state either being shunned or facing unprecedented types/levels of intervention (albeit highly selective and inconsistent) (Duffield, 2001). This governance of GS populations via official agencies and NGOs in or controlled by the GN is a contemporary version of the ‘white man’s burden’ (Easterly, 2006) and a new form of trusteeship legitimised by the UN (Ayoob, 2004).

Racialised objectification/subjection is also evident where representations of the subject eclipse its positive dimensions. The GN discourse on Africa, for example, depicts it as a ‘hopeless continent’ and ignores the achievements made in ‘democratic consolidation and constitutional rule, home grown regional efforts in preventive diplomacy’ (Francis, 2006, p. 1). Racialised subjection permeates the use of terms such as ‘warlordism’, ‘rogue states’ and ‘regime’ that pathologise GS polities, societies and peoples—terms never used to describe similar phenomena in the GN. The term ‘warlord’, for example, is frequently applied to African and Arab/Muslim leaders but never to Western leaders who wage war. The sheer number of pejorative adjectives—‘quasi-states’, ‘failed states’, ‘collapsed states’, ‘predatory states’, ‘shadow states’, ‘prebendal politics’, ‘the politics of the belly’, ‘kleptocracies’ and so on—invented to describe the African state and politics is remarkable (Grovogui, 2001; Wilsner et al., 2005). These pathologies are represented as endogenous to African states and peoples; observers fail to historicise the observed pathologies as products of colonial violence that ushered in European ‘modernity’ (Grovogui, 2001; Mamdani, 1996), and the inequalities, inequities, deprivations and dispossessions integral to contemporary neoliberal globalisation (Harvey, 2003).

The devaluation of GS polities, economies and societies via racialised objectification/subjection is also evident in the international discourse on ‘corruption’. While the ‘corruption’ concept is often articulated in seemingly neutral and universalistic terms, a strong subtext of racialised paternalism attributes ‘corruption’ in the GS to moral deficiencies in the cultures and peoples in these regions (Apat, 2018). A ‘peripheral corruption scenario’ (Hobson, 2007, pp. 94–97) establishes a racialised asymmetry between the GN and GS where levels of ‘corruption’ are supposedly higher in the latter (Lodge, 2002). Is this really the case? In addition to noting the shortcomings in the dominant ‘corruption’ measures and indices (see Maria, 2008), we also note that the international ‘corruption’ discourse tends to focus on the use of ‘public resources for private gain’ (Caiden, 2001) and overlooks ostensibly ‘private’ activities such as the use of shell companies and offshore tax havens, trusts, charities and foundations, tax avoidance and goods/services mispricing and transfer pricing by GN multinational corporations and wealthy individuals.

The release of the Panama Papers in 2016 and Paradise Papers in 2017 revealed the scale of these ‘private’ activities (Hira et al., 2019). In terms of monetary value these activities, which are legal in many GN jurisdictions and not included in the international ‘corruption’ discourse, dwarf the kind of ‘fantastically corrupt’ activities attributed to political leaders and public officials in the GS. Also omitted from the international ‘corruption’ discourse is the fact that Western states are the beneficiaries (e.g., via tax loopholes and property/real estate purchases) of a sizeable portion of the unrecorded/illicit wealth flowing out of the GS. According to the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), for example, between 1970 and 2008 the continent lost between $854 billion and 1.8 trillion in unrecorded capital flight (with an average annual loss between $50 and 148 billion), which meant that Africa was a net creditor to the world rather than a net debtor (ECA, 2012, 2014).

A similar subtext of racialised objectification/subjection also occurs in the realm of public health, particularly in reference to disease prevalence. Although evidence shows the prevalence of certain diseases correlates with broader social, economic and environmental conditions, attempts to link diseases to race by reference to ‘biological (genetic) predispositions’ and/or racialised stereotypes and essentialised notions of ethnic and cultural difference continue (Duster, 2001; Fassin, 2011; Fullwiley, 2007). A good example is the racialised representation of the global AIDS pandemic where the high incidence of HIV infection in parts of Africa compared to other world regions has been attributed to sexual promiscuity of African populations explained by reference to their ‘genetic predispositions’ and/or ‘cultural traditions’ (Fassin, 2011). Such attempts to link disease prevalence and race do not account for how genes become associated with health outcomes that are the bodily consequences of living as racialised subjects (Ossario & Duster, 2005, p. 116). Contemporary epidemic and pandemic narratives, including COVID-19, have been marked by ‘racializing origin stories of viruses’, which conceal the role of GN corporations in deforestation and ‘the associated emergence of diseases such as SARS, the H1N1-variant of 2009, Ebola Makona, Zika, H5N2 and H5Nx’ (Monson, 2017; Schinkel, 2021, p. 108).

Racialised objectification/subjection is also evident in environmental conservation where conservation movements and NGOs in the GN are accused of ‘conservation apartheid’—that is, placing ‘wildlife’ conservation in certain GS areas above the lives/livelihoods of people and communities in those areas (Newell, 2005). This occurs through, for example, advocating the creation of ‘protected areas’ and collaborating with elites who force community displacement, withhold compensation and expose disadvantaged communities to a disproportionate share of environmental costs and risk (Duffy, 2014; Newell, 2005, p. 79). ‘Biopiracy’—‘the process of taking indigenous peoples’ knowledge without compensation’ (Reid, 2010, p. 77)—is a related issue. Here, GN corporations and scientists ostensibly motivated by the goal of advancing ‘scientific knowledge’ and the logic of free market entrepreneurism (albeit protected by a highly restrictive WTO-enforced intellectual property regime) contribute to the erasure of GS agency via the appropriation and expropriation of ‘traditional knowledge’ and resources (Shand, 2000).

Naturalisation/Normalisation of Whiteness

In addition to racialised objectification/subjection, we examine the naturalisation/normalisation of whiteness in representations of the GS. Whiteness is naturalised when norms, values, practices and symbols that provide a framework of knowledge and a system of privilege conferred on those classified as white, become embedded systemically/structurally and institutionally such that they acquire a ‘taken for granted’ quality. The normalisation of whiteness goes together with its naturalisation and occurs when specific procedures/processes, measures and patterns of thought and activity become standardised and routinised within the broader context of naturalised norms, values and practices. Naturalised/normalised whiteness is simultaneously invisible and visible.

When invisible, whiteness provides the context for organising meaning. Here, whiteness is like the factory-installed ‘default setting’ on computer operating systems, programmes and applications. By contrast, brownness/blackness are marked visible racial categories and departures from the whiteness norm. Because of this invisibility, the role of whiteness as an organising principle in social relations is often unacknowledged and not treated in racial terms, which can lead to the reification and perpetuation of racial inequalities (Dyer, 1997; Lipsitz, 1998). Although unacknowledged and made to seem natural, universal/generic and invisible, whiteness confers symbolic (e.g., preferred standards of beauty and intelligence) and material (e.g., wealth and education) privileges on people classified as white, and simultaneously marginalises and excludes others classified as non-white Devaluation of brownness/blackness is integral to the operation and maintenance of systemic white privilege. Whiteness, however, becomes visible when it supplies the preferred standards/yardsticks for valuating all others and/or when white privilege is (perceived to be) challenged or threatened. Here, whiteness operates as an exclusive ‘members-only’ club to which select non-whites may be ‘admitted’ (at a junior status) if they meet certain preferred standards (Frankenberg, 1993; Giroux, 1997).

We apply these insights below to reveal how whiteness infuses representations of the GS through narratives/discourses/concepts/classifications, which, although expressed seemingly neutrally, employ essentialised notions of difference and implicit hierarchies that are racialised to the extent that characteristics associated with whiteness are accorded a higher value than, and indeed defined in opposition to, characteristics associated with non-whiteness.

Whiteness and Meaning Making

Whiteness shapes knowledge about how the world works or ought to work and provides the context for meaning making not necessarily because the observers are racists but because purposefully or otherwise key concepts, theories and methods, which aspire to universality, privilege knowledge produced in the GN according to standards developed in the GN (Arowosegbe, 2014; Grovogui, 2001). This is evident in GN liberal accounts of history that emphasise only the benign aspects of the ‘progress’ achieved by the GN through ‘modernization’ and ignore the horrific violence, including genocides, slavery and colonialism enacted upon the GS that were integral to that ‘progress’ (Chowdhry & Rai, 2009). From a CRS perspective, however, the very notion of ‘modernity’ is racialised to the extent that modernity equates with ‘white, Christian and European’ (Hesse, 2007). Contrapuntal analyses reveal the ‘darker side of modernity’ (Mignolo, 2007; Quijano, 2007). They show the inextricable links between the teleological logic of ‘progress’ underpinning modernity/modernisation and the logic of oppression and exploitation underpinning ‘coloniality’. Grovogui (2001) further notes the ‘whitening of history’ that privileges historical events in or affecting the GN over those in or affecting the GS. Thus, the American (1775–1776) and French (1787–1789) revolutions are heralded as historically significant in advancing rights and liberties, but the Haitian revolution (1791–1804) and the decolonisation struggles in Asia and Africa receive no such recognition.

Whiteness informs the variety of spatial and sociopolitical dichotomies used to represent and characterise politics in the GS as for example in ‘Zone of Peace v. Zone of War’ (Keohane, 1995), ‘Positive Sovereignty’ v. ‘Negative Sovereignty’ (Jackson, 1990) and ‘Civic Nationalism’ v. ‘Ethnic Nationalism’ (Smith, 1991). Although appearing neutral, observers accord a higher value to characteristics associated with the GN (the first in each binary); characteristics defined in exclusion of characteristics associated with the GS (Brubaker, 1999). There are good reasons to question the validity of these dichotomies. For example, GN liberal modernisation thinking had long held that ethnic/tribal forms of social organisation and relations associated with ‘traditional’ societies would give way to (non-ethnic/tribal) civic/civil forms of social organisation as societies ‘modernised’ (Almond & Verba, 1989; Brubaker, 1999; Ignatieff, 2003). However, the rise of so-called white nationalism that fuelled the election of Donald Trump as US President in 2016 (and 2024) and the UK ‘Brexit’ vote also in 2016, and the rise of right-wing populism across western Europe over the past decade, showed this assumption to be false—‘modern’ white people in the West are just as ‘tribal’ as ‘traditional’ brown/black people in the Rest (Hobfall, 2018).

Whiteness is also evident in the use of racialised geopolitical metaphors. In the perceptions of liberalism’s ‘triumph’ in the immediate post–Cold War era, the West (whiteness) came to exemplify all that was ‘good’ and ‘desirable’ politically, economically, socio-culturally and technologically, and the Rest (brownness/blackness) became symbols of international dysfunction or threat. Hence, the slogans ‘West is best’ and ‘white is right’ (White, 2006, p. 58). Examples include representations highlighting the inherent superiority of the West, as in the ‘end of history’ (Fukuyama, 1992); and those depicting the Rest as a threat, as in a coming ‘clash of civilizations’ (Huntington, 1993), a ‘coming anarchy’ (Kaplan, 1994), a ‘Jihad v. McWorld’ (Barber, 1995) or in the ‘unpeaceful rise of China’ (Mearsheimer, 2006).

The Invisibility and ‘Hyper-visibility’ of Whiteness

Whiteness is simultaneously invisible and ‘hyper-visible’ in contemporary GN conventional development discursive practices, underpinned by the logic of ‘progress’ and ‘modernization’ outlined above, and supported by a complex set of theories based explicitly or implicitly on Western models (Rist, 2008; Sachs, 1999). The ‘whiteness of development’ (Wilson, 2013) became invisible because ‘development’ processes seemed to occur in all living organisms, thus making it seem natural and neutral and lending it scientific authority. The terms ‘developing’ and ‘less developed’ to represent GS states emerging from colonialism were preferred in this discourse because they seemed more neutral than ‘uncivilised’ (Escobar, 1995). Conventional development’s whiteness became hyper-visible with the emergence of the racialised paternalistic disciplinary neoliberalism in the 1990s, where as a component of the assertion of liberalism’s ‘victory’ in the immediate post–Cold War period noted above, the major Western aid donors became more selectively interventionist.

The visual landscape of GN foreign aid has reinforced conventional development’s whiteness. The professional development establishment located in the GN, consisting of official bilateral and multilateral aid donors and their NGO and academic partners, is overwhelmingly white, while those receiving aid are non-white (Loftsdóttir, 2009, pp. 6–7). The global discourse on poverty produced by this professional development establishment has been silent on the global ‘racialization of hunger and poverty’ despite what is glaringly obvious: The majority of the world’s poor are non-Western and non-white (Wilson, 2013). Somewhat paradoxically, despite this silence, the prolific use of images of poor non-white children in the GS by GN NGOs to induce sympathy and raise funds for their humanitarian and development agendas reinforces the visual representation of racialised global hunger and poverty. Such racialisation reduces poverty to an endogenous ‘condition’ that afflicts GS peoples and countries and eclipses any consideration of poverty resulting from an exogenous ‘relationship’—the colonial legacy and the contemporary inequities embedded in the global political economy. Thus, like political instability and armed conflict, poverty in the GS is attributed to endogenous (cultural, political, etc.) factors.

Hence, despite the rhetoric of ‘good governance’, ‘partnership’ and ‘ownership’, the GN professional development establishment retains its historical position at the apex of agency, knowledge and resources about and for international development (Kothari, 2006). This reveals the differential exercise of power and generation of resources by actors positioned differently as agents of development. As the space for alternative discourses and approaches to development shrinks, becoming ‘developed’ is in effect like joining an exclusive club, membership of which requires meeting certain prerequisites defined by the GN, thereby continuing the historical differentiation between ‘civilised’ and ‘uncivilised’ and denial/erasure of GS agency. It will be interesting to see what happens to the ‘whiteness of development’ as China, India and other GS states continue to rise and become major players in international development.

Privileges of Whiteness

White privilege fuels a twenty-first-century variation of the colonial ‘white man’s burden’ that has been termed the ‘white saviour industrial complex’ or ‘white saviourism’, evident in a surge in humanitarian and human rights activities by GN NGOs, and celebrities (Cole, 2012; Mutua, 2001). Contemporary ‘white saviourism’ is generated and sustained by a narrative that constructs a moral relationship among three characters—‘saviours’ (white people), ‘victims’ (brown/black women and children) and ‘savages’ (brown/black ‘warlords’ and ‘Islamic terrorists’) (Mutua, 2001). A related dimension of this ‘white saviourism’ infuses the international volunteer industry led by GN-based NGOs, which places youth from the GN in a variety of ‘development’ and ‘humanitarian’ projects and contexts in the GS. While not discounting the capabilities and commitments of individual ‘volunteers’, systemic white privilege drives this volunteer industry as a whole—after all, brown/black youth from the GS do not have the privilege of ‘volunteering’ in the GN.

Another area where whiteness provides a context for meaning is the discourse on global population and sustainability, which masks and obscures racialised privilege and generates racialised subjects. By the 1980s, a strong current of neo-Malthusianism blamed high rates of population growth in the GS as the prime cause of environmental degradation (Karkal, 1994). Rajeswar (2000) notes a 1991 United Nations Fund for Population Activities publication that claimed that the ‘bottom billion’ people in the GS caused greater environmental harm than the rest of the world put together. Perhaps the most extreme version of this neo-Malthusianism to enter public discourse was Hardin’s (1974) infamous ‘lifeboat ethic’, which argued that the poor and the weak (in the GS) should be allowed to die for the planet’s survival.

Although the contemporary discourse has softened neo-Malthusianism, the emphasis on population size and growth rate as the most relevant in the context of sustainability continues to be reflected in the goals of ‘demographic transition’ and ‘population control/stabilization’ (Ratner, 2004). However, in a world of profound inequality globally and nationally, these goals are too narrow to fit divergent experiences and conditions, and thus discussions on population and sustainable development must pay attention to differential consumption patterns and levels (Mata et al., 2012). For example, the average per capita energy use of the ~17% of the world’s population living in the GN is 5–10 times higher than the average per capita energy use of the ~ 83% living in the GS. To bring the GS up to the current levels of the GN would require global consumption and waste production to increase by at least 2–5 times (Lawrence et al., 2013; Motessharrei et al., 2016). By ignoring consumption, the population and sustainability discourse renders invisible the culpability of wealthier GN populations that consume disproportionately more resources and generate disproportionately more waste/pollution and transfers the burden of adjustment onto GS populations (Giljum et al., 2009). The racialised interlocking of class, race and gender in this discourse represents poor non-white women in the GS as ‘irresponsible’ for having too many children.

Masked white privilege (underpinned by class) also informs the unequal distribution of environmental quality and exposure to environmental risks/harms internationally. Wealthier people in the GN generally enjoy better environmental quality (e.g., access to ‘clean’ air, water and sanitation) compared to poorer people in the GS even though the former is the greater source of environmental harm (Newell, 2005). Conversely, deprived populations in the GS suffer disproportionately from exposure to environmental risks/harms. This is most evident in the areas of climate change and hazardous waste movement/pollution.

The contemporary climate change discourse masks a ‘triple inequality’—that is, inequality in responsibility for climate change, inequality in vulnerability to climate change impacts, and inequality in the ability to adapt to those impacts (Paavola & Adger, 2006; Timmons & Parks, 2008). The notion of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ (CBDR) in the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a corrective equity principle championed by the GS, explicitly recognised this ‘triple inequality’ and enshrined a clear divide between those most responsible (GN) and those most impacted by climate change (GS). However, the erosion of CBDR in the 2015 Paris Agreement lets the GN ‘off the hook’ and puts unfair and unjust pressure on GS states (Clémençon, 2016). The Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2023) provides evidence across a range of issues (e.g., freshwater scarcity, sea-level rise, extreme weather events, changes in precipitation and desertification), showing that although the GS has contributed much less to climate change, it is shouldering a greater share of the burdens and costs of mitigation and adaptation.

The literature on ‘environmental justice’ and ‘environmental racism’ has shown that in many GN states, deprived communities of colour suffer disproportionately from hosting hazardous wastes and from the effects of those wastes (Newell, 2005). Similar racialised processes and patterns are evident in the international movement and disposal of hazardous waste (including e-waste), where despite the 1989 Basel Convention and its 1995 Ban Amendment, the GS continues to be the dumping ground for hazardous waste (of industries that ensure the economic, military and political dominance) of the GN (Lepawski, 2015). GN states and industries take advantage of deprived and dispossessed GS populations by offering them a false choice of ‘no jobs and no development’ versus ‘risky low-paying jobs and pollution’ (Bullard, 2015, p. 89).

Conclusion

Our analysis shows that the ‘imperial culture’ noted by Said (1993) continues to grant GN scientific, scholarly, policy and influential media communities the authority to fix meanings. The scholarly, policy and media narratives and discursive practices discussed above are a small sample of some of the more prominent areas where racialisation infuses ‘international’ representations of the GS. The racialised representations interrogated here are influential representations that leave lasting impressions. ‘Racialisation matters’ not because observers in the GN are necessarily racists, but because the legacies of historical racial significations are so deeply embedded structurally and institutionally that they continue to permeate contemporary representations of the GS, albeit in less obvious ways. ‘Representations matter’ because they continue to inform the lived experiences of people in the GS, producing real physical effects on them as racialised subjects and on the material conditions of their existence. The task of CRS-inspired research is to expose, interrogate and challenge these racialised representations.

In opening our eyes to the varied representations of race, a CRS lens alerts us to the ways race intersects/interlocks with other identities (class and gender). This suggests that observers of international affairs should pay more attention to race and confront the kinds of racialisations outlined in this article. The complex and contested character of race itself and the discrediting of the construct on scientific grounds do not justify the silence on race. The onus is on those who do race-related research to problematise race in its varied representations and instantiations, not all of which amount to racism. CRS also stress the need to interrogate essentialism and primordialism in constructions of ethnic, cultural and religious identity and difference, particularly when those constructions entail a power imbalance between observers and observed.

To be clear, we are not suggesting that racialisation exists in all works on ethnicity and culture in the GS produced in the GN. We take issue only with those representations where racialised objectification/subjection in the ways described in this article is evident. Racialised objectification/subjection is a process of symbolic domination and subordination (Fassin, 2011, p. 425). It imposes ‘truths’ on people who have no say in how they are represented, denies them agency and deprives them of possible alternative ‘states of being’ and choices. Alternative approaches are needed that recognise peoples’ agency and allow them space to define themselves and determine the conditions of their own existence. This requires taking seriously the perspectives of ‘the poor, the disadvantaged, the voiceless, the unrepresented, the powerless’ (Said, 1994, p. 84). It also opens the possibility of ‘subversive’ or ‘counter-hegemonic’ observations whereby marginalised voices in the GS discard the GN’s racialised gaze(s) upon them and adopt their own racialisations to confront, resist, challenge and disrupt international inequalities, inequities and injustices.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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