Patel, Raj - Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System
I found this to be very eye opening, but I also don't know much about global agriculture or environmental justice, so YMMV. I admit that I've been a bit skeptical of various environmental movements before, not because they're wrong, but because there are way too many examples of privileged white people espousing environmentalism while culturally
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One thing I took away from this book and others I've been reading (ex. Conquest, Dragon Ladies) is the power of bottom-up movements, how important it is for movements to focus on the people who are the most oppressed and have the least power in the system, because it generally seems easier to start there and end up with solutions that benefit everyone, whereas going from top-down tends to generate solutions that help those on top, but overlooks those on the bottom, particularly people who suffer more than one oppression.
Yes! I completely agree with this, and also think that bottom-up movements are the most likely to be dismissed or trivialized or ignored in mainstream media and education, just because of the way hierarchies work.
He notes that he prefers this term over "developing countries" or "third-world countries." I have the same problems he does with the prior two terms, and I like that "Global South" does not sound like it is passing judgment, but I think it may overlook countries in the Northern hemisphere that also suffer the effects of colonization.
Somewhat of a digression - I can never figure out which of these to use, but the main problem I have with all of them is that they reduce things to binaries. Like you said, countries in the northern hemisphere that suffer effects of colonization, and Australia, and also, I feel like they all derive from an attempt at determining what countries should be and what they shouldn't, since the modern/developed/etc world seems to have no place for things such as Native American reservations or poor inner-city neighborhoods or immigrants, instead it's images of things like skyscrapers and large corporations and malls and neat suburban neighborhoods. So, yeah, I feel like these terms are more brands rather than reflections of reality (though that doesn't stop me from using them, because how else can we talk about things such as this without endless disclaimers?).
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And I'm very with you on terminology! And how "first" world nations have "third" world problems, like you cite, and just... yeah. And yet, I don't know what to do except footnote excessively, otherwise there is no vocab for discourse.
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