Global

Article

Towards a new paradigm of global development? Beyond the limits of international development

Rory Horner University of Manchester, UK and University of Johannesburg, South Africa

Abstract An international development framing is increasingly ill-fitting to a 21st century characterized by inter- connected globalized capitalism, the challenge of sustainable development, as well as the blurring of North– South boundaries. While the term global development is increasingly employed, and appears more suited, it is used with different implicit meanings and is often conflated with international development. This article explores the potential of an emerging paradigm of global development as applicable to the whole world. A relational global development approach is advocated here, acknowledging the need for critical attention to the enduring tensions between universalization and geographic variation.

Keywords global development, Global North, Global South, international development, scope

I Introduction

Often associated with a North–South binary, the

term ‘international development’ seems

increasingly inappropriate for encompassing

the various actors, processes and major chal-

lenges with which our world engages in the

early 21st century. The era, if it ever truly

existed, is long past where inter-state actions

under big ‘D’ development intervention,

through aid from Northern countries to the

South, could be considered most crucial in shap-

ing development outcomes. Little ‘d’ processes

of ongoing economic transformation, often

involving civil society and firms, as well as

states, have long been argued to be the essence

of development/under-development and to

shape uneven processes of progress and well-

being (e.g. Hart, 2001). Across a number of

different dimensions, whether it be in terms of

income (UNDP, 2013), wealth (OECD, 2010),

middle classes (Sumner, 2016), poverty

(Kanbur and Sumner, 2012), inequality (Bour-

guignon, 2015; Milanovic, 2016) or develop-

ment cooperation (Mawdsley, 2017, 2018),

various new geographies of development can

be identified over the last decade (Horner and

Hulme, 2019a). The universality of the Sustain-

able Development Goals (SDGs) (agreed in

September 2015) and the Paris Climate Agree-

ment (December 2015), as well as the necessity

of confronting ‘planetary boundaries’ for

human development (Steffen et al., 2015), high-

lights the limitations of the North–South divide

Corresponding author: Rory Horner, University of Manchester, Arthur Lewis Building, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK. Email: [email protected]

Progress in Human Geography 2020, Vol. 44(3) 415–436

ª The Author(s) 2019

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of international development. That the blurring

of the boundaries between ‘developed’ and

‘developing’ countries is now formally recog-

nized is evident in the World Bank announce-

ment of April 2016 that it will no longer

distinguish between the two groups in its annual

World Development Indicators.

While there have been earlier shifts in the

approach to (e.g. modernization, dependency,

neoliberalism), and understandings of (e.g.

economic growth, human development, sustain-

ability), development, a potentially paradig-

matic contemporary geographic shift is

emerging. In preference to the rather outdated

idea of international development, the term glo-

bal development can be increasingly regarded

as more fitting for the contemporary map of

challenges facing our world (Horner and

Hulme, 2019a, 2019b). While some earlier calls

were made for such an approach (e.g. Hettne,

1995; Pieterse, 1996), a ‘global development

paradigm’ (Gore, 2015) has been given further

emphasis more recently (see also Kaul, 2017).

Increasingly various English-language research

centres/higher education institutes, 1

degree pro-

grammes/specializations 2

and think-tanks/orga-

nizations 3

incorporate ‘global development’

into their name. Since 2010, the OECD has pub-

lished a series of reports called Perspectives on

Global Development. A popular website and

blog in the UK is The Guardian Global Devel-

opment series, and #globaldev is a widely used

hashtag on Twitter. Yet the term global devel-

opment is often conflated with international

development, 4

is sometimes used with different

implicit understandings, and has not been sys-

tematically unpacked. So, what does global

development refer to and how might it be dis-

tinct from international development? This

question is of profound importance for what is

prioritized as a key development issue, and also

for understanding the causal processes shaping

development, and for related strategic action.

This article offers a systematic unpacking of

global development and its significance as a

contemporary shift in the geography of devel-

opment research and practice. Three major rea-

sons for moving beyond North–South framings

of international development are identified

(Section II): the interconnectedness of globa-

lized capitalism, the challenge of sustainable

development (especially as a result of climate

change) and the blurring of North–South bound-

aries. Each factor is argued to have had earlier

iterations, but to have been augmented in the

21st century. The question of what is global

development is then explored (Section III), with

particular attention given to the potential of an

understanding focused on its geographic scope

in relation to the whole world, rather than ‘just’

the Global South as in international develop-

ment. Yet while global development offers the

prospect of a paradigm shift, the term/framing is

open to various interpretations and deploy-

ments, some of which may amount to a mere

relabelling from international development.

Two vignettes (Section IV) illustrate tensions

between universalization and geographic varia-

tion in framings of global development. It is

concluded (Section V) that the formulation of

a relational global development fitted to con-

temporary, 21st- century development issues is

both an exciting opportunity and a continuing

challenge.

II Beyond North–South international development

‘International development’ is often loosely

used as an umbrella term for development

research and practice, combining two words

which do not necessarily fully reflect all that

is associated with their domain. The origins of

the term ‘international’ are dated to Jeremy

Bentham, who coined the word in the late 18th

century in relation to the law governing the rela-

tions between states (Suganami, 2009: 231).

‘International’ gained popularity in a 19th-

century context of rising nation-states and

cross-border transactions. Meanwhile, the term

416 Progress in Human Geography 44(3)

‘development’ can be variously used to refer to

an idea, objective and/or activity, often interre-

lated, and often with considerable ambiguity or

looseness (Kothari and Minogue, 2001; Corn-

wall, 2007). Nevertheless, an important distinc-

tion can be made between big ‘D’ or imminent

development as intentional practice or willed

action, and little ‘d’ or immanent development

as underlying processes of capitalist develop-

ment (Cowen and Shenton, 1996; Hart, 2001;

Bernstein, 2006).

The term international development is often

associated with actions designed for, and

research relating to, poor countries (Sumner and

Tribe, 2008; Mönks et al., 2017), including for-

eign aid (Currie-Alder, 2016: 7). But it is impor-

tant to distinguish between the relevant imminent

processes of active intervention and those imma-

nent processes of development that are widely

noted as particularly significant in shaping out-

comes (Hart, 2001; Mohan and Wilson, 2005).

Many key development actors, such as those

from the United Nations system, major develop-

ment banks or official development assistance

agencies, are linked to the inter-state system. Yet

the term international can arguably suggest an

over focus on exchanges between country units

(Scholte, 2002), and thus imminent or big ‘D’

development. Various elements of immanent

development, the non-state networks that cross

multiple countries, as well as spaces and commu-

nities within countries (Perkins, 2013: 1003), can

then be overlooked. Indeed, much of the empiri-

cal challenge for 21st-century development, in its

research and practice, and especially in relation

to immanent or little ‘d’ processes, falls outside

the boundaries of a narrowly-conceived interna-

tional development focus on big ‘D’ develop-

ment that is designed by the North and oriented

around transfers (aid, institutions, policies, tech-

nologies) to the South.

While the conceptual and policy approaches

have varied, the geographic focus for interna-

tional development – in study, research and

practice – has continued to be largely centred

on the Global South (or in earlier terminology,

the Third World, or geographically Asia,

Africa, Latin America and the Pacific). Inequal-

ities between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’

countries have been given prominence (e.g.

Brandt, 1980), in accordance with a macro-

scale geography of a world divided into two

(in relation to which the former Soviet bloc –

as the Second World – has always sat awk-

wardly positioned). The Millennium Develop-

ment Goals, for example, were a clear

manifestation of this, being overarchingly

designed by ‘developed’ countries who set tar-

gets for ‘developing’ countries (Hulme, 2009).

The consistent association of development,

both in study and practice, with just the Global

South has nonetheless long been questioned. A

long tradition of interest in studying develop-

ment and comparative social change pre-dates

and goes well beyond the North–South bound-

aries of development studies. Many of the foun-

dations of modern social science were centred

on social change across space, and thus on

development in the sense of the dynamics of

accumulation, its institutional conditions and

social implications (e.g. the interpretations of

Smith, Marx, Weber) (Bernstein, 2006; see also

Peet and Hartwick, 2015, for an excellent over-

view). Various approaches to and models of

development were subsequently advocated.

Seers (1963), among many others, pointed to

distinctive developing country conditions and

therefore a need for an associated distinctive

body of development economics research. In

contrast, Hettne (1995) and Pieterse (1996)

challenged such perspectives, arguing for an

integrated historical social science that was

focused on challenges of transformation and

change (rather than just being defined by partic-

ular countries), and relevant globally, including

in the so-called ‘industrial countries’. Poverty

and social exclusion were identified as issues

resonating across both the Global North and

South (De Haan and Maxwell, 1998; Gaventa,

1998; Maxwell, 1998; Therien, 1999). In a

Horner 417

statement that is even more prescient now, a

host of common challenges were outlined:

If ‘development studies’, by induction, is what

students of development do, then many current

themes are relevant to both North and South:

restructuring the state; poverty reduction and live-

lihood; political development and governance;

gender inequality; social capital; agency and par-

ticipation . . . the list goes on – and of course includes social exclusion. (Maxwell, 1998: 25–6)

Similar sentiments were expressed by Jones

(2000), who questioned why it is alright to do

development ‘over there’, but not over ‘here’

(in the UK or, more widely, the Global North),

and by Potter, who argued that those ‘inter-

ested in development must endeavour to

encompass issues and policies of development

wherever they occur’ (2001: 425). Willis

(2005: 16) also critiqued the idea that ‘devel-

opment’ was something that was only relevant

to the Global South:

This distinction fails to recognise the dynamism

of all societies and the continued desire by popu-

lations for improvements (not necessarily in

material goods). It also fails to consider the

experiences of social exclusion that are found

within supposedly ‘developed’ countries or

regions.

Post-colonial and post-development approaches

have also long questioned the North–South (or

Western/non-Western) binary, examining

in detail the geographical constructions of

difference involved and their implications

(Said, 1979). What became known as post-

development thinking famously highlighted the

social construction of much of Asia, Africa and

Latin America as ‘Third World’, arguing that a

new mode of thinking was being created about

life in those countries as well as in Western

economic practices, and was ultimately becom-

ing a powerful apparatus of control (Escobar,

1995). Representations of a ‘developed’ West

and a ‘developing’ rest were invoked to justify

intervening to help others (Kothari, 2005). In

addition to deconstructing this binary, such

scholarship has also pointed to the contingency

of North–South relations, and the need to

include the Global North as an important site

of development studies research (Radcliffe,

2005; Lawson, 2007). The Eurocentrism in clas-

sical social science approaches has been reso-

lutely questioned (Chakrabarty, 2000),

confronting various parochialisms, including

assumptions of the superiority of the West

(Lawson, 2007).

In addition to such long-embedded frustra-

tions, three major factors, which each have ear-

lier lineages that have become amplified in the

21st century, support moving beyond a geogra-

phy of international development focused solely

on the Global South: first, the relational inter-

connectedness of globalized capitalism; second,

the global challenge of sustainable develop-

ment, especially climate change; and third, the

accelerated blurring of the North–South bound-

ary. It is important to acknowledge that these

broader issues are not necessarily entirely new

nor completely independent of each other. Yet

they have been amplified considerably this cen-

tury – consequently challenging hitherto domi-

nant framings of development and warranting

(as outlined in Section III) a relational global

development approach.

1 Global interconnectedness

The relational interconnectedness of globalized

capitalism involves processes through which

development outcomes in one place are shaped

through linkages with other places, and is too

easily overlooked in the North–South, ‘devel-

oped’/’developing’ binary. A problem is

thereby posed which has become augmented

in light of increased interconnectedness under

contemporary globalization. Relational

approaches critique those explanations of pov-

erty or underdevelopment that are all too fre-

quently framed as a residual problem or lack

418 Progress in Human Geography 44(3)

of ‘something’ (e.g. markets, technology, glo-

balization) and so are disconnected from the

processes and structures which generate wealth

and prosperity. Rather than being viewed as a

relational problem in accordance with incor-

poration into global economic and social rela-

tions (Therien, 1999; Kaplinsky, 2005), the

causes of underdevelopment are then consid-

ered as located in a ghettoized Third World or

Global South (Saith, 2006).

Relational perspectives pay attention to pro-

cesses of adverse incorporation and social

exclusion (Hickey and Du Toit, 2007), includ-

ing historical economic and political relations

(Mosse, 2010), and how they cut across conven-

tional geographical divides (Roy and Crane,

2015; Elwood et al., 2017; Lawson et al.,

2018). In an empirical sense, development out-

comes have long been recognized as influenced

by wider systems, most notably processes of

capitalism and colonialism (e.g. Ghosh, 2019).

The mid-20th century dependency (e.g. Frank,

1969 [1966]) and world systems theorists (e.g.

Wallerstein, 1979) firmly conceptually located

the (under-)development of particular regions

and countries within their incorporation into

broader trading relations and the capitalist

world-economy. However, despite the recogni-

tion of a potentially more dynamic semi-

periphery, the North–South binary deployed in

the framework of a Northern core and Southern

periphery was susceptible to somewhat crude

simplification and structural rigidity.

The accentuation of late 20th and early

21st-century global interconnectedness has

prompted more widespread questioning of

understandings of development as an endogen-

ous process within the Global South. Various

earlier periods of economic globalization have

been cited, especially the late 19th century

period of relatively ‘free trade’ (O’Rourke and

Williamson, 2002). Yet facilitated by economic

liberalization and information and communica-

tion technologies, globalization from the late

20th century onwards, through flows of capital,

goods, services, people, ideas and knowledge,

has involved much greater functional intercon-

nectedness (Castells, 1996; Dicken, 2015).

While globalization was often initially framed

in North–South terms, a more multi-polar glo-

balization (The World Bank, 2011) has emerged

as part of an East-South turn (Pieterse, 2011)

with a substantial growth of South-South trade

(Horner, 2016), cooperation (Mawdsley, 2017;

Kragelund, 2019) and other relations (Fiddian-

Qasmiyeh and Daley, 2018) during the 21st

century.

The interconnected nature of global public

goods, including in such arenas as health (against

infectious diseases), environment, and global

financial stability (Alonso, 2012), also raises

questions for those approaches which see devel-

opment as solely shaped by actors in, or as a

challenge just for, the Global South. Public goods

are those that are ‘fully or partially non-rival and

non-excludable’ in terms of their consumption

(Kaul, 2017: 143). For global public goods, the

public element can also comprise the spatial

dimension (across several regions or even reach-

ing to a worldwide span), impact (beyond

national jurisdictions) and temporality (long-

term effects) (Kaul, 2017: 143). Thus, these are

public issues which transcend the capabilities of

individual states to effectively address. Global

public goods (GPGs) are very significant collec-

tive challenges for the whole world (e.g. Sumner

and Tiwari, 2010; Sachs, 2012; Kanbur, 2017),

not just the Global South or any individual coun-

try. Crucial issues across the three domains of the

economic, human and environmental aspects of

development include financial stability and taxa-

tion cooperation (e.g. Zucman, 2015; see also

International Centre for Tax and Development,

Tax Justice Network), treatments for serious glo-

bal diseases, and the mitigation of carbon emis-

sions and adaptation to climate change (Alonso,

2012; Leach, 2015; IPCC, 2018). Successfully

addressing the issue of global public goods is

an important benefit for all countries. Kaul has

consequently argued the need for a notion of

Horner 419

global development that comprises attention to

‘the health of the planetary system as a whole’,

something which must include ‘development in

and of GPGs’ (2017: 143).

Contemporary globalized capitalism thus

involves processes and presents challenges

which go beyond a North–South international

development logic. Two particular dimensions

of contemporary globalized capitalism warrant

discussion in their own right – first, the environ-

ment as a global commons, especially climate

change, with wider dimensions of sustainable

development; second, the growing share of con-

temporary global inequalities (across various

indicators) that cannot be captured along

North–South lines.

2 Sustainable development, especially climate change

Sustainable development is a huge challenge

for the whole world, overshadowing and

rendering meaningless any association of so-

called rich countries having achieved develop-

ment and of transformation only being required

in the Global South. Environmental sustain-

ability has been debated for a considerable

time, yet more recently it has grown in promi-

nence both as an empirical challenge and as a

focus of scholarly and policy interest. From the

Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth (Meadows

et al., 1972) to the ecological challenges incor-

porated in the notion of ‘risk society’ (Beck,

1992) to the environmental movement and the

various Earth Summits, awareness of the envi-

ronmental and climatic challenge facing global

society has been building for decades. Many of

the earlier policy approaches were framed

around the binary of Global North and South.

Our Common Future (the Brundtland Report)

of 1987 pointed to particular challenges of

developing countries and was framed in the

binary of the ‘developed’ and the ‘developing’

world (Perkins, 2013: 1005). In relation to cli-

mate, the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, following

the Common But Differentiated Responsibil-

ities (CBDR) principle agreed as part of the

United Nations Framework of the Convention

on Climate Change (UNFCC) at the Rio Sum-

mit in 1992, placed responsibilities for reduc-

ing carbon emissions on higher-income

(Annex I) countries.

The shift towards development having a

universal frame of reference is most drama-

tically expressed in the SDGs, which were

agreed in 2015. Their wide range of develop-

ment goals include but expand well beyond

the environmental agenda. In contrast to the

earlier Millennium Development Goals

(MDG), largely set by ‘developed’ countries

and almost exclusively involving targets for

‘developing’ countries, the 17 Global Goals

of the SDGs are about what all countries

can do. Initial attempts to create indexes of

progress towards the SDGs show that,

although the extent and nature varies, all

countries face significant challenges. As well

as climate change (SDG 13), ecosystem con-

servation (SDG 14 and 15) and sustainable

consumption and production (SDG 12), other

issues where OECD countries have been

found to fall short include agricultural sys-

tems (SDG 2), malnutrition (related to obe-

sity) (SDG 2), development cooperation

(SDG 17), jobs and unemployment (SDG

8), and gender equality (SDG 5). Of course,

the SDG Index and Dashboards also show

huge basic needs challenges for low-income

countries – in relation to poverty (SDG 1),

hunger (SDG 2), health care (SDG 3), edu-

cation (SDG 4), water and sanitation (SDG

6), jobs (SDG 8) and infrastructure (SDG 9)

(Sachs et al., 2016).

A significant spatial shift is embedded not

just in the target but also in the formation of the

SDGs. These new global goals evolved out of

discussion of what would replace the MDGs and

also as part of the process leading up to and

following the Rioþ20 conference on sustain- able development in 2012. The G77 (an

420 Progress in Human Geography 44(3)

informal collective of the UN’s 130 ‘developing

countries’), and Brazil, in particular, were espe-

cially active in their formation (Hulme, 2015;

Bhattacharya and Ordóñez Llanos, 2016;

Fukuda-Parr and McNeill, 2019), at a time of

‘rapid blurring of boundaries between the devel-

oped and developing contexts in terms of rising

inequities and poverty’ (Tiwari, 2015: 314).

According to a commentary by Death and

Gabay, the goals challenge one of the main

tenets of much development policy and

research, ‘that development is something for,

and occurs in, the “developing world”’ (2015:

598). They suggest that the SDGs ‘might do

more to challenge the labels of “developed” and

“developing” than decades of academic cri-

tique’ (2015: 600).

While we can recognize that ‘climate change

has always been inherently “global”’ as a pro-

cess and in terms of its implications (Büscher,

2019), greenhouse gas emissions have reached

unprecedented levels (IPCC, 2018) and climate-

specific policy targets have shifted geographi-

cally. Mitigation and adaptation efforts are

required within most countries if dangerous cli-

mate change is to be avoided (Anderson and

Bows, 2011). As planetary boundaries are

recognized to provide the only feasible biophy-

sical limits for ‘a “safe operating space” for

global societal development’ (Steffen et al.,

2015), the need for a general, global-scope

response is also being emphasized. Although

retaining the CBDR principle, the Paris Agree-

ment on climate change (agreed in December

2015) has removed the binary of Annex I and

non-Annex countries, and requires some com-

mitments by all countries. Nevertheless, meet-

ing the 2�C temperature increase mitigation target has substantial equity considerations as

it is largely unfeasible without considerable

change towards low-carbon infrastructure in big

emitting nations, including those such as China,

India and others in the Global South, as well as

major emitters in the Global North (Larkin

et al., 2018).

3. The ‘blurring’ North–South divide and shared challenges

Another argument in favour of a universal con-

sideration of development relates to shifting

patterns of global inequalities under contempo-

rary globalized capitalism, including some

‘blurring’ of the North–South divide. Again,

earlier iterations have been made of this point,

with particular attention to the transformation of

East Asian economies. In light of the growth of

the four Asian Tigers – Hong Kong, Singapore,

Taiwan and South Korea – Harris (1986) and

others have argued that the idea of the Third

World has ceased to be a useful analytical cate-

gory. Also in response to patterns of East Asian

development, Frank (1998) argued that the

world was experiencing a pivot back towards

Asia, and that the rise of the West was a blip

in the long sweep of an Asia-centred history.

During this century, yet further geographic

shifts have led to an increasing questioning of

the contemporary relevance of the North–South

boundary.

Following two centuries when the income

gap between those in the Global North and in

the Global South was widening (Pritchett,

1997), the last two decades have produced some

fall in income inequalities between countries

(Bourguignon, 2015; Milanovic, 2016). Such a

trend is driven by the rising powers, especially

China, but also India and a number of other

countries whose policy frames have differed

from the Washington Consensus-type market-

oriented approaches which had been so domi-

nant during the 1990s and early 2000s.

Although relative poverty remains persistent

and has increased in recent decades according

to some measures (Chen and Ravallion, 2013),

the absolute numbers living in extreme poverty

(albeit a very low threshold) have fallen while

many countries previously classified by the

World Bank as low-income have ‘graduated’

to middle-income status (Sumner, 2016). More-

over, gaps in average mortality rates, life

Horner 421

expectancy, educational enrolment and carbon

emissions between the Global North and South

have fallen. Yet during the same time, within

many (but not all) countries in both the Global

North and South, many measures of economic,

human and environmental inequality have

increased. Such patterns of ‘converging diver-

gence’ (Horner and Hulme, 2019a) – involving

some convergence between countries (espe-

cially between North and South) alongside

divergence within countries – now more clearly

than ever raise issues about a division of the

world into a rich North and a poor South. Eco-

nomic benefits in an era of globalization have

been shared very unevenly, with under-

development in some parts of the Global North

found to bear a strong resemblance to parts of

the Global South (e.g. OHCHR, 2017). Rising

middle classes have emerged in the Global

South while simultaneously others in the Global

North have gained little (Milanovic, 2016).

Although inequalities between countries are

still vast across many indicators, and substantial

‘citizenship premiums’ remain (Milanovic,

2016), these trends give further reason to ques-

tion an exclusive focus of development on the

Global South (Horner and Hulme, 2019a).

Across a whole variety of different dimen-

sions of development, places and people in both

the Global North and South have been observed

as facing many shared (sustainable), although

clearly not homogenous, development chal-

lenges. In addition to those issues of relative

poverty and inequality that have been recog-

nized for a considerable time as relevant to both

Global North and South (De Haan and Maxwell,

1998; Chen and Ravallion, 2013), other chal-

lenges are represented by urban issues (Robin-

son, 2011; Parnell, 2016), precarious work

(Siegmann and Schiphorst, 2016), local and

regional development, and socio-spatial

inequality (Pike et al., 2014). A host of common

challenges facing the third sector (i.e. non-prof-

its/non-governmental organizations) in North

and South have also been identified, for

example, accountability, resource mobilization,

legitimacy, effectiveness, etc. (Lewis, 2015).

Northern approaches to social justice that have

learnt from the Global South include the exam-

ples of participatory approaches to grassroots

action, microfinance, and social protection

through conditional cash transfers (Lewis,

2017). In short, concepts for the study of, and

practices addressing, social change apply to

both ‘poorer countries’ and other countries

(Sumner and Tribe, 2008: 1). Across various

sub-fields, these observations resonate with

calls to move beyond those North–South bound-

aries which cut off certain forms of learning or

foci of study, to move towards thinking about

comparisons, convergences, connections (Max-

well, 1998), and translation (McFarlane, 2006).

Appeals to move beyond macro-scale,

North–South spatial categorizations of develop-

ment are no longer just the domain of critical

development scholars who may point to

‘Souths’ in the ‘North’ and vice versa (Sheppard

and Nagar, 2004) and argue that the old North–

South vision of an ‘international curtain of pov-

erty’ is outdated (Therien, 1999). Such calls are

now echoed by many others with very different

backgrounds. Justin Lin, when World Bank

Chief Economist, observed that: ‘Development

is no longer about the old paradigm of aid

dependency or charity, or about the North teach-

ing the South. It is about an investment in a

stable and inclusive future’ (World Bank,

2008), whilst Robert Zoellick, when president

of the World Bank, argued that the term Third

World was no longer relevant in the context of a

more multipolar world economy (World Bank,

2010). The World Bank’s announcement in

April 2016 of its removal of the classification

of ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries in the

World Development Indicators is a further

response to this blurring boundary. Widespread

agreement appears to exist that new ‘maps of

development’ are emerging, raising questions

about the demarcation of whole world regions

on the basis of their levels of development and

422 Progress in Human Geography 44(3)

requiring more ‘nuanced maps’ (Sidaway,

2012).

One provocative argument has suggested that

many Northern countries may actually be evol-

ving southward, thereby upending the develop-

mentalist trajectory of countries in the South

playing catch-up to those in the North. Comar-

off and Comaroff have argued that ‘contempo-

rary world historical processes are visibly

altering received geographies of core-and-

periphery, relocating southward not only some

of the most innovative and energetic modes of

producing value, but [operating as] the driving

impulse of contemporary capitalism as both a

material and cultural formation’ (2012: 7). They

have suggested that Africa, as imagined in

Euro-America, is becoming a global condition.

While such a proposition may be somewhat

overstated, based on a relational understanding

of North/South it is difficult to argue with their

claim that ‘there is much South in the North,

much North in the South, and . . . . more of both to come in the future’ (2012: 46).

Within the sphere of development coopera-

tion, Mawdsley (2017: 108) has observed ‘an

unprecedented rupture in the North–South axis

that has dominated post-1945 international

development norms and structures’. Such a

change has been further driven by the growth

of South-South development cooperation, as

well as by the response of the traditional donors

to a changing global context (Mawdsley, 2018).

The shift is evident in the 2011 Busan proposals

for ‘partnership for effective development

co-operation’ which seek to replace donor-

recipient relationships with an approach empha-

sizing multi-stakeholder global partnership

(Eyben and Savage, 2013). With greater wealth

in parts of the Global South, the number of

countries who are highly dependent on aid

has fallen significantly. A new prospect of

multi-directional cooperation now beckons

(Janus et al., 2015), and is being fuelled further

by major new initiatives, such as China’s

unveiling in April 2018 of a new International

Development Cooperation Agency, which fol-

lowed quickly on the heels of the launches of

both the BRICs New Development Bank and

the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The

idea of development cooperation as overwhel-

mingly a Western, postcolonial project, charac-

terized by a moral geography of charity, clearly

does not fit. Moreover, the North–South ima-

ginaries which have dominated research on

volunteering and international development,

often characterized by the idea of the South as

a place that hosts volunteers from the North,

have been challenged. Instead, more flattened

topographies of rhythms, routines and biogra-

phies that cross North and South have been

demonstrated, making visible some of those

previously obscured, including Southern inter-

national NGOs and South-South volunteering

(e.g. Hossain and Sengupta, 2009; Laurie and

Baillie Smith, 2018; Baillie Smith et al., 2018).

In sum, building on various long-standing

misgivings with the North–South development

binary, the augmented 21st-century challenges

of interconnected globalized capitalism, climate

change and sustainable development, and a

blurring North–South boundary warrant going

beyond the dominant geographical imaginaries

that have formerly characterized international

development. A reframing around global devel-

opment seems more apposite, yet what this term

encompasses and how this will reshape thinking

and action has yet to be explicitly articulated.

This article thus next interrogates recent inter-

pretations of global development, outlining crit-

ical challenges to be addressed within that

agenda, and arguing for the potential of rela-

tional global development.

III What is global development?

The term global development seemingly has

substantial merit behind it. As outlined above,

there are good reasons for moving beyond the

outdated North–South international develop-

ment framing to consider development issues

Horner 423

facing all parts of the world. Moreover, such a

position is supported by various empirical

observations and positionalities, including more

recently by major international organizations.

Crucially, a wide range of often critical theore-

tical persuasions also lend their backing to such

a stance, ranging from some of the foundational

work in modern social sciences to research on

the environment and approaches to critical

development, including post-colonial theory

and world-systems theory. A global develop-

ment framework and terminology can better

reflect and respond to major challenges our

world faces in the 21st century and can help

move beyond an association of ‘development’

with international aid and can focus on under-

lying processes shaping outcomes.

Taking ‘global development’ in this sense as

scope may be viewed as an overarching focus

that considers development in relation to the

whole world and as part of a ‘global develop-

ment paradigm’ (Gore, 2015; Scholte and

Söderbaum, 2017). Most notably it includes a

departure from the dominant orientation of

20th-century international development

towards ‘poor countries’ and ‘poor people’. As

noted above, we live in a world where many of

the causes of development cannot be segmented

along North–South or national boundaries. A

‘one-world’ approach has long been advocated

(Wallerstein, 1979; Singer, 2002; Mehta et al.,

2006; Sumner, 2011), but with little in-depth

elaboration in relation to development studies

(cf. Hettne, 1995, in an earlier era) – an issue

which this article now addresses by substan-

tially elaborating on brief initial sketches (Hor-

ner and Hulme, 2019a, 2019b).

Taking global development as scope fits with

long-standing calls for a new geographic fram-

ing for development. Relational approaches to

development offer considerable prospects for

addressing the limitations of international

development outlined above and are well suited

to global development. Lawson, for example,

has argued that ‘a critical, relational approach

can build an accountably positioned develop-

ment geography that breaks down North–South

dualisms, focuses on relations between places

and includes Western sites and people as sub-

jects of development studies’ (2007: 27). As

briefly noted above, relational approaches seek

to move beyond residual explanations of the

causes of (under-)development that are con-

fined within countries in the Global South.

These residual approaches often emphasize fail-

ure to engage with the global economy or focus

on individual characteristics of poor people or

poor countries. Relational approaches focus on

wider economic and social relations, inter-

twined with cultural processes, and situate

wealth and privilege in relation to poverty and

vulnerability as part of normal processes of fun-

damentally uneven capitalist development

(Kaplinsky, 2005; Massey, 2005; Lawson,

2007; Mosse, 2010). Such relational work,

adopting both material and discursive

approaches, reimagines relations and estab-

lishes interconnections between places via

wider systems. It has flourished in a number

of sub-fields, informing research on poverty

(e.g. Roy and Crane, 2015; Elwood et al.,

2017; Lawson et al., 2018), cities (e.g. Robin-

son, 2002), and economic development within

global production networks (e.g. Yeung, 2005;

Coe and Yeung, 2015).

Research on relational global development

can also extend to a wider range of issues. A

global development paradigm may encompass

collective challenges of global public goods,

and shared (sustainable) development chal-

lenges that countries and regions anywhere in

the world face. For both the global public goods

and shared challenges noted above, similar pro-

cesses related to the uneven development of

capitalism may be at play in different parts of

the world. This approach can be more inclusive

of research on the Global North and its role, as

well as involving greater comparative research

across Global North and South.

424 Progress in Human Geography 44(3)

Any move towards relational global develop-

ment faces several critical challenges. Rather

than a group of experts from one place telling

a subordinate group from another what to do, a

charge often raised within and against interna-

tional development, a global development per-

spective augments the need for greater mutual

learning, and associated collaborative action,

across and within the Global North and South

(McFarlane, 2006; Mehta et al., 2006; Sumner,

2011; Leach, 2015). Mehta et al. (2006) have

argued that development research should focus

on both rich and poor countries, forging new

relationships, including between Northern and

Southern researchers. More recently, Leach

points to the potential of mutual learning in rela-

tion to sustainability ‘across and between low-

income countries, emerging economies and

richer, declining economies on a world stage –

about how such transformational alliances can

be forged and operate’ (2015: 830). Of course,

the challenge for mutual learning across North

and South, and thus for a programme of ‘plane-

tary development studies’, is clearly in the

enactment (McFarlane, 2006; Halvorsen, 2018).

Although the Sustainable Development

Goals involved significant Southern participa-

tion (Bhattacharya and Ordóñez Llanos, 2016),

the emerging research institutes and centres, as

well as those degree programmes with global

development in their name (in the English lan-

guage) which were noted in the introduction to

this article, are almost exclusively based in the

Global North. In some respects, a move to glo-

bal development for research organizations rep-

resents a reframing within the Global North – a

response of development institutes and organi-

zations in the North to a changing world, includ-

ing in relation to its relate to domestic as well as

far-away populations. Yet inequalities and tra-

jectories within the North can have serious

repercussions elsewhere, as recent develop-

ments in relation to trade policy, immigration,

and climate change have all indicated (Horner

and Hulme, 2019b: 2), meaning that there can

be benefits of a global scope approach to the

Global South. Again, long-called for (e.g.

Hettne, 1995) genuinely global understandings

of development are warranted.

Relational global development framings,

which connect development issues across Glo-

bal North and South, can also be invoked for

various (including, at times, spurious) reasons

which go beyond those advocated here. For

example, linkages of development with various

security or anti-terrorism agendas (Duffield,

2014) could continue. In some political dis-

courses, zero-sum relational geographies of glo-

bal development can strategically create

particular trade-offs of domestic inequalities

versus between-country inequalities. For exam-

ple, despite evidence to the contrary, immigra-

tion from lower-income countries is invoked in

some media as a reason why there is not enough

social support domestically in some countries in

the North (UNDP, 2009). Other relational geo-

graphies of global development are invoked

when aid to places in the Global South is justi-

fied on the basis that it will reduce migration to

the Global North. Clearly the various issues and

causes which can be strategically invoked in

accordance with different framings of global

development must be critically interrogated.

Considerable ambiguity exists in relation to

the meaning of global development. The term

may be used simply as a fashionable relabelling,

yet with little substantive difference from inter-

national development (e.g. Crawford et al.,

2017). Indeed, some of the degree programmes

and research centres noted in the introduction

only have brief statements about ‘global’ –

referring, for example, to ‘all parts of the world’

(e.g. Tufts Global Development and Environ-

ment Institute 5 ) – while some have no explana-

tion at all and few elaborate. Path dependency

creates challenges for adaptation towards global

development, whether in the research of devel-

opment, related to how people’s expertise and

networks may adapt, or in development prac-

tice. Some degree of institutional retrenchment

Horner 425

from North–South lines is needed in interna-

tional organizations (e.g. Kanbur, 2017), non-

governmental organizations (e.g. Lewis, 2015)

and in university and development research

institutes.

A key concern relates to an understanding of

global development as scale, 6

rather than as

scope as advocated above, and consequent sug-

gestions that the ‘international’, ‘national’ and

other scales are implicitly downplayed. For

example, Bangura interprets global develop-

ment as a ‘single world’ global approach repla-

cing lower-scale categories (Bangura, 2019:

12). He associates global development with

issues such as global public goods, and ‘what

the world will look like and can do if there is a

global government’ or if countries reduce

national-self interest in global development

policy-making, yet rightly says this has not hap-

pened and is unlikely to. Polanyi-Levitt has also

objected to the terminology of global develop-

ment, arguing that ‘when you have global, what

disappears is the nation’ (in interview with

Fischer, 2019: 22). Such scale-based perspec-

tives resonate with Scholte’s (2002) notion of

‘global as supraterritorial’.

With an interpretation of global as scale,

and as outlined by Currie-Alder (2016), glo-

bal development can thus be viewed as one

strand within development studies, operating

in parallel with other streams of international

development (foreign hotspots) and national

development (sovereign decisions over

improving the human condition at home). In

that elaboration ‘global development’ relates

closely to what is covered by the field of

global studies, which is most readily associ-

ated with globalization and understanding the

global (Scholte, 2014; Pieterse, 2013). In

contrast with the scope understanding, such

a framing of global development can involve

a focus only on actors, such as major organi-

zations and on processes, which are associ-

ated with the ‘global’ scale.

For some, the issue may be less with the

‘international’ or ‘global’ than with the whole

idea and terminology of ‘development’. Rist has

suggested that if ‘development is at the root of

the problems besetting the world, then we

should give it up – and certainly not replace it

with a new development programme claiming

universal validity’ (2008: 58; see also Ziai,

2019), whilst Moore (2015) has proposed mov-

ing away from development as an organizing

framework towards ‘global prosperity’.

Another growing movement and body of work

advocates ‘degrowth’ (e.g. D’Alisa et al., 2015).

Sumner and Tribe (2008) observe that a possible

response to framing ‘development’ as global,

i.e. in relation to the entire planet, has been to

regard it as another way to impose the values of

industrialized countries on developing coun-

tries. However, they argue that would be a very

narrow view (2008: 20), associating ‘develop-

ment’ largely with the imminent form, and over-

looking many aspects of transformation that

continue to take place. This perspective serves

as a valuable warning that global development

cannot automatically be taken to be inclusive,

and that there may be various interpretations.

Consequently, although there are important

reasons for moving beyond an international

development understanding towards a paradigm

of global development as scope in relation to the

whole world, for which a relational approach

offers substantial potential, critical attention is

needed regarding how global development is

operationalized, in both research and practice.

The following section now elaborates on one

particularly important challenge for global

development.

IV A key tension in global development: Universalization vs. geographic variation

For understanding both the nature of global

development challenges and their underlying

causal processes, a key dialectic is present

426 Progress in Human Geography 44(3)

between tendencies towards universalization

and understanding geographic variation. Two

vignettes are now offered to illustrate some of

the varying implications from thinking of global

development. These focus on the empirical

claim that ‘we’re all developing countries now’,

and on the more theoretical domain of universal

development processes.

1 ‘We’re all developing countries now?’

A key aspect of recognizing global develop-

ment as scope is to consider all countries as

sites of development challenges, yet critical

attention is required to the varying ways such

a claim or insinuation is invoked and to the

purposes it serves. A different geography must

be involved from that of international develop-

ment; otherwise shortcomings such as those

outlined in Section II are likely to be ill-

fitting to the 21st century. Key issues such as

the transformation that needs to take place in

the Global North and by elites, for example

reduced carbon emissions, may be all too eas-

ily overlooked. The argument that ‘we are all

developing countries now’ has been explicitly

advocated by Raworth (e.g. 2018), proponent

of doughnut economics, to highlight that no

country both 1) meets its people’s essential

needs, and 2) falls within the earth’s biophysi-

cal boundaries. Degrowth proponents also

highlight countries in the Global North as

‘developing countries’ or under-developed,

vis-à-vis biophysical boundaries.

In recognition of the blurring of North–South

boundaries, it has become increasingly common

to advocate eschewing the terms ‘developed’/

’developing’, etc. (Mönks et al., 2017). This is

evident in the re-labelling in the World Bank

World Development Indicators (Fantom and

Khokhar, 2016), and in the writings of popular

development scholars such as Hans Rosling and

colleagues (2018) and philanthropists such as

Bill Gates (Brueck, 2018). The Overseas Devel-

opment Institute, a London-based think-tank,

has stated that it ‘will transition from using

terms such as “developing” and “developed”

that create false distinctions between countries,

communities and the universal challenges we all

face’ (2018: 8).

Yet, paying attention to geographical varia-

tion in development challenges is a must in

order to challenge both flat-world claims and

one-size-fits-all, universal solutions. Claims

along the lines of ‘we’re all developing (coun-

tries) now, so we’ll look after ourselves’ (see

Angus Deaton’s (2018) op-ed in The New York

Times for an argument in this vein) could be

used to justify a withdrawal from development

assistance, and, perhaps even more crucially,

from climate commitments or preferential trade

access. Focusing on global development should

not be an argument for ending development

cooperation. It must be recognized that in donor

countries government assistance to poor people

domestically dwarfs that to foreign poor (Kenny

and Sandefur, 2018).

Attention must also be given to a much wider

range of global development challenges and

practices that go beyond those typically consid-

ered as subject to aid financing (see also Hulme,

2016; Janus et al., 2015). Although varying

degrees of scepticism exist as to their influence

(Bangura, 2019; Horn and Grugel, 2018; Liver-

man, 2018; Fukuda-Parr and McNeill, 2019),

the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

may serve as a trigger mechanism in this regard.

Even if they are somewhat blurring, North–

South inequalities are vast for the most part,

especially at the per capita level, and require

continued attention in research and practice. A

potential danger lies in swinging from one

extreme to the other, with the obscuring of

severe and still-widespread deprivations such

as acute absolute poverty, or other issues which

may be more distinct to countries in the Global

South. Recognition of the sizeable geographic

variation in the nature and degree of develop-

ment challenges is vital. As Bjorn Hettne

Horner 427

eloquently noted in his argument for global

development:

To others the notion of interdependence suggests

a common predicament for the peoples of the

world (‘we are all in the same boat’). This inter-

pretation conveniently disregards the fact that the

passengers of the boat (if we may continue the

maritime metaphor) do not travel in the same

class, nor do they have the same access to life-

boats. (1995: 105)

Inequalities between countries remain sub-

stantial and there are considerable citizenship

premiums for those in the North (Milanovic,

2016). The Global South still warrants a key

focus. What Collier (2007) called the planet’s

bottom billion – or less than 750 million by

2015, if measured according to extreme

income poverty (World Bank, 2019) – exclu-

sively live in the Global South in the most

severe deprivation. In terms of assessing the

severity of challenges, somewhat arbitrary

lines of division in classifications can produce

situations where people who have escaped

from income/consumption poverty can be

overlooked, despite still being seriously vul-

nerable. A more graduated classificatory

approach calibrated to degrees of severity is

necessary. Moreover, taking seriously the chal-

lenge of climate change and environment puts

considerable onus on the Global North and on

elite populations. If the 2015 Paris Agreement

on climate change is to get close to meeting its

targets, it will need significant commitment by

those who might be considered relatively devel-

oped in a North–South international develop-

ment context, but who nevertheless remain

considerably underdeveloped in a global sustain-

able development context. Caution is needed

both about moving too little towards global

development, thereby losing sight of some of the

most pressing contemporary challenges, and

moving too far, obscuring and even deepening

embedded inequalities.

2 Universal global development processes?

Rather than necessarily producing ‘universal

laws’, a key task for research on global devel-

opment is to question claims to any universality

or global generalization which may be made on

the basis of unduly narrow theorization and evi-

dence bases, such as a restriction to certain parts

of the world. Global perspectives have long

been accused of acting as a camouflage for

Western visions characterized by historical and

geopolitical amnesia (Slater, 1995: 367). A glo-

bal scope in development research also runs ‘the

risk of recentring the West, which is not the

goal’ (Lawson, 2007: 205). Deepak Lal (1983)

(in)famously argued for a turn away from devel-

opment economics, back toward monoeco-

nomics, understood as the Northern paradigm

of neoclassical economics, with its neoliberal

emphasis. Neoliberalism’s prescription of a par-

ticular market logic everywhere has been criti-

cized for its universal set of prescriptions for

‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries alike

(Cammack, 2001). At the same time, some crit-

ics of neoliberalism have been critiqued for

their hegemonic focus on it at the expense of

alternative ideas and processes (Parnell and

Robinson, 2012). Countering, and in an earlier

argument for global development, Hettne

argued instead for ‘an authentic universalism

in contradistinction to the false universalism

that characterized the Eurocentric phase of

development thinking’ (1995: 15): He advo-

cated development theorists pursuing a more

genuine universalization process which

‘reflects the specificity of development’

(Hettne, 1995: 260). Such intent arguably reso-

nates with Chakrabarty’s (2000) questioning of

the assumed universalism of Western scholar-

ship, and Robinson’s (2003) call to move

beyond the ‘production of parochial universal-

isms’. This aspect of a global perspective has

been crucial for postcolonialism in its response

to dominant forces and offers potential for the

428 Progress in Human Geography 44(3)

current and future global development era (Sid-

away et al., 2014).

Urban studies is one field where vibrant and,

at times, acrimonious debates have emerged

related to the tension between universalization

and geographic variation. Considerable efforts

have been made to move beyond theoretical

claims to global applicability which inade-

quately address the realities of Southern cities

(McFarlane, 2008; Roy, 2009; Parnell and

Robinson, 2012; Gillespie, 2016; Robinson,

2016). Such efforts have sought to re-orientate

theory production in relation to cities away from

a Euro-American centre and towards a more

global and situated appreciation of urbaniza-

tion, offering both specificity and generalizabil-

ity. For example, telling work in this regard has

provincialized Euro-American notions of urban

transformation (Ghertner, 2015). Moreover,

arguments which point to ‘planetary urbanism’

as a worldwide condition (Brenner and Schmid,

2015), have been critiqued for their potential

occlusion of difference (Schindler, 2017; Rud-

dick et al. 2018). The value of these debates is in

fostering a conversation and drawing lessons

about urban processes across Global North and

South.

Relational accounts can help situate the expe-

rience of particular places within wider eco-

nomic, social and political systems, yet they

must also go beyond structural inevitability to

explore geographic contingency. Development

theory has been characterized by excessive

endogenism, especially in modernization

approaches, as well as excessive exogenism

of the ‘classical or “vulgar” dependencia

approach’ (Hettne, 1995: 130). Relations with

other places and interconnected processes of

global development must be considered (Law-

son, 2007: 144), but they are not always inevi-

table and must be open to geographic variation.

As well as highlighting geographical and his-

torical specificities, relational comparison pro-

vides insights into interconnections and

mutually constitutive processes. Such an

approach facilitates case comparison and offers

ways to see how places are integrated in globa-

lized processes (Hart, 2002, 2018). Root causes

are thereby identified. For example, Katz (2004)

demonstrated connections between social

reproduction, disinvestments and economic

restructuring in a village in rural Sudan and New

York City. Interconnected trajectories have

been explored in the domains of urban studies

(Ward, 2010) and middle-class poverty politics

(Lawson, 2012), whilst Roy and Crane’s (2015)

global historical approach to poverty across the

uneven Global North and South has sought to

move beyond personal failure or structural

inevitability. The opportunity afforded by glo-

bal development as scope is to draw compara-

tive lessons across both Global North and South,

addressing either, or both, within-country and

between-country inequalities within various

domains.

In sum, while a global development (as

scope) approach may be most fitting for the

21st century and the contemporary geography

of development, significant challenges must be

addressed to deliver on its potential. The two

vignettes outlined are reminders of the enduring

tensions between universalization and geo-

graphic specificity.

V Conclusion: Constructing and critiquing global development

Compared to the second half of the 20th cen-

tury, development studies, research and practice

in the 21st century are now positioned in a very

different context. A series of intensifying issues,

most notably the interconnectedness of contem-

porary global capitalism, the universal chal-

lenge of sustainability (especially in

consequence of climate change) and the con-

temporary blurring of the North–South bound-

ary now significantly compromise the hitherto

dominant geographical orientation of interna-

tional development. While the term global

development appears to be more fitting and

Horner 429

growing in prominence, considerable ambiguity

remains as to its interpretation.

A global development as scope framing has

intuitive attractiveness in terms of offering

opportunities for exploring and addressing both

collective issues (e.g. climate change, finance,

health, etc.) and the shared challenges in both

Global North and South in the 21st century. It is

more fitting to the wide range of actors and

practices which shape contemporary global

development outcomes, which go far beyond

those narrowly conceived through an associa-

tion with big ‘D’ development intervention. A

relational approach, incorporating an agenda of

construction, has been advocated here to help

interpret the nature of contemporary global

development. In breaking through some of the

boundaries of international development, a tran-

sition to global development also requires crit-

ical attention as to what may unfold, especially

regarding the tensions between universalization

versus geographic variation. Even if many of

the key ‘development’ issues we face in the

world today are truly global in scope, the reali-

ties of the meanings, framings and relational

geographies of global development will very

likely range widely across research and

practice.

A substantial agenda thus awaits, requiring

constructive and critical research engagement

with global development. Opportunities for new

lessons emerge across a whole variety of

empirical sub-fields, including those focusing

on inequality, jobs, relative poverty, social pro-

tection, the urban arena and, of course, climate

change. This is an agenda where various theo-

retical approaches, including but not limited to,

critical modernization, neo-Marxian, or postco-

lonial, can each shape debate surrounding rela-

tional global development. As much depends on

how global development is interpreted and

enacted, merely switching from international

to global development is not inevitably an

advance. Yet the argument for a global devel-

opment paradigm appears increasingly

persuasive, both for research and practice with

greater potential to successfully understand and

address substantive 21st-century problems that

our world faces.

Acknowledgements

I’m grateful to the participants at various confer-

ences (Regional Studies Association Annual Confer-

ence, Dublin, June 2017; RGS-IBG Annual

Conference, Cardiff, August 2018), workshops

(‘Rethinking development: From international to

global’, Manchester, June 2017; ‘Rethinking devel-

opment cooperation’, German Development Insti-

tute, Bonn, September 2018), and seminars

(Newcastle University, February 2018; Centre for

Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram January

2019; Central University of Tamil Nadu, January

2019) for their comments and feedback. Special

thanks go to both Sam Hickey and David Hulme for

intellectual support in the construction of this paper,

including close readings of earlier drafts. I’d also

particularly like to thank the four anonymous

reviewers and the editor, Nina Laurie, who each

reviewed the paper twice and provided both critical

and constructive comments which substantially

improved the manuscript. Any limitations are, of

course, my sole responsibility.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of inter-

est with respect to the research, authorship, and/or

publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following

financial support for the research, authorship, and/

or publication of this article: This research was sup-

ported by the University of Manchester Hallsworth

Research Fellowship and an ESRC Future Research

Leader Award (grant number ES/J013 234/1).

ORCID iD

Rory Horner https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8730-

2014

Notes

1. E.g. Aberdeen, Brandeis, Boston, Cork, Leeds, Man-

chester, Notre Dame, Reading, Tufts, York.

430 Progress in Human Geography 44(3)

2. E.g. Aberystwyth, Australian National, Bath Spa, Ber-

gen, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Carleton,

Copenhagen, Derby, East London, Fraser Valley, Geor-

gia Tech, Griffith, Palm Beach Atlantic, Queen’s Uni-

versity at Kingston, Queen Mary University of London,

Saint John’s, Sheffield, Sussex.

3. E.g. Center for Global Development, Global Develop-

ment Network, Initiative for Global Development.

4. In a limited, but perhaps illustrative example, the Wiki-

pedia definition conflates the two: ‘International devel-

opment or global development is a wide concept

concerning level of development on an international

scale’ (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interna

tional_development, accessed 19 January 2019).

5. Its website states: ‘We use the word “Global” to indi-

cate that we are concerned with the linkages between

Development and Environment in all parts of the world.

There are important differences – as well as some

important similarities – between the meaning and the

consequences of those linkages in the North and in the

South’ (http://ase.tufts.edu/gdae/, accessed 24 May

2018).

6. This is a wider issue noted in the literature on scale,

which has often been associated with verticality (Mar-

ston et al., 2005; Jones et al., 2007), and used in terms of

a hierarchical ladder, from local to global or vice-versa

(Herod, 2008: 226). Howitt has observed that ‘in many

social science settings, careless use of notions of scale

as level, often leaves the spatial extent of an issue invi-

sible’ (2002: 305). Building on Howitt’s observation,

Marston et al. (2005: 420) also noted confusion

between the meaning of scale as a vertical, hierarchical

ordering, and a meaning of horizontal ‘scope’ or

‘extensiveness’.

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Author biography

Rory Horner is a Senior Lecturer at the Global

Development Institute, University of Manchester,

UK and a Research Associate at the Department of

Geography, Environmental Management and

Energy Studies, University of Johannesburg, South

Africa. His research focuses on the changing geogra-

phies of global development, globalisation, trade and

industry.

436 Progress in Human Geography 44(3)