Global North and Global South: Meaning, Assumptions, and Implications

In this episode, Christian Noumi, and Ruheena Sangrar take a deep dive into two terms frequently used in research, global health and international development: Global North and Global South. We explore some underlying biases and assumptions that have shaped general understandings of these terms and how these biases are portrayed in research from funding to knowledge translation and dissemination.  

For the full transcript, Biographies and other resources, please check out the podcast page:  https://inclusiveresearchwithpirl.buzzsprout.com/ 

Where to find us:

Youtube:  https://inclusiveresearchwithpirl.buzzsprout.com/ 

Website: https://oticlab.utoronto.ca/research-projects/pirl/about-the-pirl-project/ 

Email: PIRL@utoronto.ca

Speakers’ Bios:

Christian Noumi is originally from Cameroon and holds a PhD in Higher Education (University of Toronto, Canada), an MA in Higher Education Research and Development (University of Kassel, Germany), a BA in History and a Teacher’s Diploma (both from the University of Yaounde, Cameroon). He is currently a Bilingual Project Coordinator at Ryerson University (Canada). He is also the Vice-Chair Finance and Research at ICDR-Cameroon. He has extensive experience teaching and conducting research in several African countries, including Senegal, Ghana and Cameroon.

Ruheena Sangrar, PhD OT Reg. (Ont.) is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, in the Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy at the University of Toronto (Canada). She completed her doctoral training in the School of Rehabilitation Sciences at McMaster University. Her research and teaching interests are aimed at developing interdisciplinary interventions that reduce barriers to community mobility, participation, and belonging in later life, particularly at the intersection of health, social, and transportation sectors.

Transcript

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Lesley Sikapa: Welcome et Bienvenue to the “Inclusive research with PIRL” podcast. I am Lesley Sikapa and I will be your host for this episode. Today we are joined by two amazing guests, Ruheena Sangrar and Christian Noumi to talk about the Global North and the Global South. Quite often, especially in research we hear these terms and have a general understanding of what they are. But do we really take the time to think about what they mean or where they come from? And more importantly, do we think about some of the biases and assumptions that shape our understanding of these terms? Join in for this insightful conversation, but before we get started, I would like to remind you that the full transcript is available in the show notes linked below. On that note, let’s dive into it.

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Lesley Sikapa: Hello Ruheena, Hello Christian. It's such a great pleasure to have the two of you here today and just before we get started into our discussion topic, I would like to give the both of you a chance to introduce yourselves.

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Christian Noumi: Hi everyone, Thank you, Lesley, Thank you Ruheena. My name is Christian Noumi. I’m originally from Cameroon. I used to be a high school teacher for History, Geography and Civics. I’ve worked on several projects, research projects over the years, with researchers from Canada, the US, Europe, and Africa. Most recently I completed a Ph.D. at the University of Toronto in comparative higher education, governance and policy. My dissertation compared Senegal and Ghana in the participation of higher education stakeholders in higher education policymaking. I’m currently a bilingual project coordinator at Ryerson University and I’m joining from Toronto.

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Lesley Sikapa: Thank you so much, Christian. Ruheena, you can go ahead as well.

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Ruheena Sangrar: Thank you Lesley and thank you, Christian. So my name is Ruheena Sangrar and I am an occupational therapist by training. I have completed my education, mostly in the Greater Toronto Area and as an occupational therapist but also worked in Northern Ontario in the hospital setting mostly and I completed my Ph.D. at McMaster University and the topic was actually around transportation and driving in older adulthood. And, most recently I’ve just joined on in the department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy at the University of Toronto as a teaching stream assistant Professor.

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Lesley Sikapa: Thanks so much Ruheena it's really awesome to hear what the both of you are doing and it's definitely some interesting work. I’m really sure that as we go into the discussion and the topic we will have more opportunities to see your expertise come through. Moving on to the discussion, in the development sector, in global health, as well as in academia, we often hear these words Global North and Global South. So I want us to start just by talking about what exactly they mean, what do they represent? where do these terms come from?

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Christian Noumi: Oh, I can start. Those are very complex concepts to define, it's very also difficult to pinpoint where it all started. But I will say that for the most part, it's geographically based. But then when you dig a little bit deeper, you will start to realize that some countries that are considered Global North, are actually not in the northern hemisphere, so to speak. For example, Australia and New Zealand are typically considered part of the global north, but obviously, they are in the deep south on the planet.

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Christian Noumi: But for me at that I think really it tends to be based on the level of economic development. Some will argue capitalist economic development because some countries that are developed, may not be part of the Global North. China, for example. If you look at the  Chinese economic indicators, relatively comparable to many countries that are considered to be part of the Global North, and yet they are not in the list of Global North countries.

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Christian Noumi: And it's also, obviously, talking about Chinese is also obviously a political division between Global Northern countries which some will also argue are part of the American empire, so to speak. I will say yeah it's a very difficult concept to define, but I will say when you talk about Global North and Global South, most people tend to, I would say at least researchers, they tend to agree or have an idea of what you imply, but getting into the details, it becomes complex.

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Ruheena Sangrar: Yeah, I completely agree with Christian’s assessment that when it comes to conversations between researchers for the most part we don't really need to explain our definitions, but there is this common understanding of what we mean and I've been trying to do a little bit of research, and you know dig a bit deeper to try to find out why these different terms have been used more recently, and sometimes you think that's just the most common or politically correct term to use, but where is it coming from? and why did that come up? So I've been thinking about it in relationship to the other terms that we've used previously right? So Western versus non-Western countries or the First World versus Third World.

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Ruheena Sangrar: And then even critiques around developed and developing versus underdeveloped and what I’ve seen in people who are talking about this is this idea that there's a hierarchy created in the other terms that are used, that implies that countries that are lower-income or of different political, have different political and historical context are lesser than the countries that are more Western or you know, considered First World countries. So the notion of the Global North and Global South as Christian said it's very complicated how these words came about, but it tries to remove that level of hierarchy in naming the countries and really just focuses on recognizing the fact that there is a political, historical context that we need to keep in mind for this group of countries that we're talking about that do tend to be predominantly in the southern hemisphere.

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Ruheena Sangrar: But also have this shared history of colonization and oppression that you know between countries in the Global South or even just population groups that are considered to be within the Global South can almost find these commonalities between them. Shared vulnerabilities in a way.

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Lesley Sikapa: Thanks a lot to the both of you and definitely I would say that makes a lot of sense. It’s very common like in this field to always say, oh Global North, Global South, we know what that is, without actually trying to dive deeper into exactly where did these come from or what are we trying to say when we are talking about those two places. And as you were both talking Christian clearly said that while this is geographically defined there are some underlying assumptions and also Ruheena also kinda pointed to that about like you know, just this whole idea of we say we know what it is, without really knowing what it is. So I just wanted to explore what exactly some of those assumptions could be. 

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Lesley Sikapa: What do we assume? beyond that geographical separation, what do we think of those two places and since we are really talking in this context of research, I wanted to explore specifically how do these assumptions also affect the approach that we take to whether it's initiating a research project or actually the approach that we take as we are conducting a research project.

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Christian Noumi: Yeah, I mean, for me, as a researcher, I know, yeah, when we talk about Global North and Global South, we're not really talking about the individual countries but for me, it still carries with it an assumption of power imbalance. Ruheena has already addressed that a little bit. Rich versus Poor, Developed versus Developing, some sort of a moral superiority at least when you look at international politics.

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Christian Noumi: And if there is a reference to Global North and Global South, there's a tendency to consider that whatever is done in the Global North is some sort of, somehow morally superior. And, and the way it affects research in many ways, for example, we tend to believe that the methodology used by researchers in the north to some extent is superior to the methodology that are used by researchers in the Global South. If they are, if at all, they recognize a specific methodology used by researchers from the Global South. You have that power imbalance.

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Christian Noumi: And also what is acceptable knowledge? If you are from the Global South, there are certain things that are not considered acceptable that might not be considered acceptable knowledge in the Global North. It's quite unfortunate and as a researcher who is originally from quote-unquote the Global South interacting with researchers from both regions, it's sometimes a little bit of a challenge but I mean we can probably discuss that later.

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Ruheena Sangrar: Yeah and I love the term that you used moral superiority, that notion of we just know better, and I think that to your question Lesley, that's the most harmful assumption that comes with the use of the terms Global North and South, especially if you don't understand the context of why these phrases were developed basically, right? like the idea that the term Global South came to be so that you're centering the countries that are in, in this predominantly the geographical South but there's a really nice definition of who it includes that I always go back to. 

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Ruheena Sangrar: So it's groups that fall under this and it's considered an analytic group, who include migrants, people seeking refuge, indigenous populations, low-income communities or people with a disability. so it's also a lot more encompassing to find the similar groups within who we would consider to be or countries that we would consider to be Global North, right. So what are those communities that we usually impose our ways of thinking and our knowledge upon? and that's going back to what Christian was saying. It’s imposing knowledge structures, imposing policies and procedures and expecting that to be just this one way of living life, of understanding what a good life is, for example, and I come to that, from a place of you know, in occupational therapy, we always try to envision okay what's a meaningful existence to you?

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Ruheena Sangrar: And a huge critique in our profession actually has been that the fact that all of our theories and the way that the research is done imposes what we mean by a good life in more western ideologies upon the rest of the world that maybe doesn't, doesn't define a good life in the same way. And so, that sort of this idea that our way of thinking and information that we prioritize, our way of building relationships, finding problems and solving problems individually, together, all of that, which is the crux of research  gets impacted when we go into communities that have a different way of thinking than us. I don't know if I ventured too far away from your question Lesley? 

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Lesley Sikapa: Not at all, your response was right on point and it's very interesting to see when both of your responses really align with each other. And I definitely wanted to follow up on the point that Christian started about how our understanding of Global North and Global South affects the interaction between researchers and I think, to a large extent it's also very much related to what you were talking about, both of you were talking about.

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Lesley Sikapa: This idea of imposing certain ways of thinking unto others. So in your experience, how exactly do these different understandings of these two places affect these interactions within research teams or among researchers?

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Christian Noumi: I think I will talk about what we have been trying to do with Lynn at ICDR. So we realized that research funds would tend to flow from the Global North to the Global South. But we didn't want the ideas to flow that way. So we have tried, and it's been a challenge to be honest. We have tried to make sure that, the ideas developed for research collaboration will stem from our collaborators from the south. 

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Christian Noumi: Even basic things as organizing meetings, we try not to take the lead in organizing like zoom meetings. We want those things to come from our partners from the Global South because we recognize this power imbalance and to a large extent, it goes back to funding.

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Christian Noumi: You might say that there's been a slight improvement, I would say in recognizing that there are, for example, methodologies and ways of knowing from the global south that are equally valid, some would argue even more valid than methodologies and ways of knowing from the Global North but the funding still flows largely from the Global North.

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Christian Noumi: But we try to make sure that we involve and we let our partners take the lead as much as possible. But, but I would say it's also a challenge for our partners to embrace that. To understand that it’s okay to take the lead on many of those things because they’re also not used to it.

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Ruheena Sangrar: Yeah, And I think from, I agree. The funding perspective is quite, is the foundation of it, because if you don't have funding you can't do the research right and, and also the element of who decides to provide that funding and our role as allies in justifying those methodologies in those applications, sometimes I find as like, how do we phrase what we're trying to achieve with different methodologies?

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Ruheena Sangrar: It's almost this case, trying to go from a very quantitative research world into integrating more qualitative like that was sort of one struggle that existed to justify a different way of knowing and thinking. But another thing that I have found really interesting is also just the logistics are so challenging at times right. So we've talked about technology, but logistics around knowledge translation and knowledge implementation.

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Ruheena Sangrar: So from a health care profession, specifically, we talk a lot about evidence-based practice, and you know, we want to use randomized control trials, or guidelines and one of the biggest challenges I find is that, they're, those guidelines those theories they're developed in completely different populations with completely different contexts and do not translate into other communities.

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Ruheena Sangrar: So the recommendations those clinicians were making in these other communities, they're, they're just not relevant and you can almost sometimes see as clinicians are talking on a zoom screen or making recommendations for practice, it falls on I guess it doesn't go anywhere it doesn't get picked up in communities in the Global South.

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Ruheena Sangrar: Because not only do they have the resources to do it, but it just doesn't fit with the systems and the structures and the resources that are available in those communities as well.

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Ruheena Sangrar: So I feel that a lot of the times, you know these, for example, stroke guidelines or you know guidelines for long Covid, things like that that are being developed in the, in countries that are in the Global North don't necessarily always translate into these other settings and so it's really important to involve researchers, practitioners, community-based stakeholders that understand the context in that, that process of looking at the literature, critically analyzing it and then looking to see how we can be implemented if it can in any way.

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Christian Noumi: Oh and yeah and, if I can add to that so, even the basic things as obtaining ethics approval from your institution here.  There is a big piece of it that talks about informed consent, and very often you obtain that informed consent by getting a signature, something which is not quite common in the Global South.

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Christian Noumi: Someone might agree to participate in your research, but then obtaining a signature is going to be a struggle and I’m not sure our Institutions in the Global North especially North America have taken that into consideration enough, that there are many ways to obtain consent, without getting a signature. So yeah 

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Lesley Sikapa: So, so from what I see, it is very much around like the logistics just being like one-sided. 

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Lesley Sikapa: And still related to this idea, and also something that was mentioned before, I think it was Christian who brought that up around when you actually take that step back to give the opportunity to your partners in the Global South to take the lead, it can also be challenging to make that happen, so what would be some of your recommendations actually, to address the discomfort that partners might have in taking on this quote-unquote new role that they’ve not been used to before?

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Christian Noumi: One thing I can say to that is I will go back to my Ph.D. dissertation. It is one thing that I noticed while I was thinking about what to write on even my research topic, was, in the literature, there is also that hierarchical division that, international institutions, mainly dominated by northern countries will impose certain policies on the Global South.

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Christian Noumi: but my experience was that it was more complex than that, including the agency of actors in the Global South. So that's why at one point, I decided to take on a different theoretical framework like post-colonialism. Which sort of gives, I mean it provides room for national actors in the Global South to express their agency, but also to discover even that they have agency.

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Christian Noumi: Because when you talk to some researchers in the Global South, they might also embrace that, or repeat that discourse about the power imbalance that they have and the policy that are imposed on them from the Global North, but when you dig deeper, you ask them questions you realize they come to also realize that well they have agency.

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Christian Noumi: There's one example, during my dissertation where I asked them, how do you influence policies in higher education? They, when, and then they think about it, they reflect and then they start to list ways that they were able to change policy, or at least alter the initial policy from the government, sometimes imposed by international actors, international donors, which has sort of changed the outcome of many policies. In, for example, in the early 90s in many African countries, there was this idea that, that students should contribute to their education at, in higher education and universities, many countries imposed, implemented a tuition fee, but many other countries resisted that.

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Christian Noumi: So it's not widespread. When countries like Senegal, where they try to do that, but they face strong resistance from local actors. But it's not something that the national actors necessarily remember you need to probe and give them the space to reflect on what they've done and what they have actually been able to achieve.

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Christian Noumi: So, it's basically to answer your question it starts with as a researcher, probably reflect on the type of theoretical approach you have in doing research. Some approaches will, will give my agency to people from the Global South than others. 

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Lesley Sikapa: Okay, so I hear like recommending like a postcolonial approach in the work. And back to Ruheena, since you were talking about knowledge translation itself, do you have any practical recommendation when it comes to like knowledge translation to actually make this process with Global North and Global South partners more equitable if I can put it that way?

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Ruheena Sangrar: Yeah, No it's such a good question and I’m also listening to Christian’s contributions from a lens of not having done as much research within other settings but thinking about where I sit within the Global North and how my exposure to different partnerships across different Global North, Global South countries and what worked, what hasn't worked and in terms of practical recommendations, what I’ve seen that has been really valuable is being that support system for researchers who are attempting to take on that agency.

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Ruheena Sangrar: So even things like, how do you navigate the publishing world? How do you, what are the different pathways? Can you create templates for cover letters that you can use as a support? Can you provide suggestions on how to frame papers that, that you know, that the dialogue with reviewers is a little bit smoother and going back and forth

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Ruheena Sangrar: And thinking about specifically knowledge translation and implementation, the biggest part of that is the fact that the researchers on the ground understand their communities the best. So they know that you know, in the Global North, handing out pamphlets, we know that there's not very good evidence from a health, health literacy perspective, but that is a strategy that we use.

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Ruheena Sangrar: What's the strategy that work in those communities is it WhatsApp groups? Is it, door to door, visiting people and sharing information? So really understanding the communities and being able to support researchers through that process. So there are models and frameworks of knowledge implementation that have been created to actually support organizations and knowledge brokers, is the term, within those organizations, to take research evidence and turn into policy and disseminate it within different structures and make that behaviour change happen to some degree, what could that actually look like In these different settings?

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Ruheena Sangrar: Like to me that's what's really interesting and I know it's not a concrete example, but it's really thinking in that way. How do we enable people to be able to create systems and structures that are embedded within their own communities that can interpret and apply and yeah I think that's sort of the direction that I’m going in is more of like creating system-level frameworks.

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Lesley Sikapa: Yes, so like just making, you know, creating those enabling structures to actually allow researchers in different spaces to be able to engage as much as others. So since we are running out of time I’m just going to like throw in just this question.

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Lesley Sikapa: If you were to summarize and just give that one thing, for researchers trying to engage in international work particularly researchers both in the Global North or Global South trying to engage with each other, what would be that one recommendation on how to go about it?

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Christian Noumi: Very difficult to come up with a one recommendation, but I will say listen to people in the community you're trying to do your research in. They might not embrace that responsibility at first, but you need to provide that to them and take time to explain how important it is for them to take the lead.

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Ruheena Sangrar: Thank you. My, my takeaway is very similar, it's relationship building and trust and communication, and I think that the crux of how some of this work can be successful, is not just rushing into collaboration and assumed expectations and imposing roles and imposing deadlines and doing so in a way that we traditionally do research in the Global North but looking to see what's feasible within the context that we're actually hoping to make an impact within and building, building the connections with them. 

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Lesley Sikapa: Thank you so much to the both of you. Building relationship, building trust in this type of work, very essential. So thank you so much for being here today, and it was great having you.

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Ruheena Sangrar: Thank you so much it was great being here.

Christian Noumi: You're welcome. Thank you.

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Lesley Sikapa: Global North, Global South! While they are often presented as developed versus underdeveloped, rich versus poor, providers versus receivers, well, it’s not always such a clear cut. As we heard today even within the Global North there exist groups or circumstances that are often stereotypically used to characterize the Global South. It’s important to reflect on some of these assumptions that we impose on people or countries because of their membership to the Global North or the Global South and think about how these influence our practices, our ways of thinking, and what we consider as acceptable or not. 

These are just some things to reflect on following today’s conversation and on that note, I would like to thank you all for listening. Be sure to check out our show notes for transcripts, and other resources and remember to follow and subscribe to our podcast on your favourite podcast listening platform.

Did you check out the previous episode? You should definitely do that and If you have any questions or would like to join the PIRL network to stay up to date with our work, feel free to reach out to us through our email address P-I-R-L pirl@utoronto.ca.

Thank you so much take good care of yourselves. Bye

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