Introduction: Shaping a Global Horizon, New Histories of the Global South and the UN

Abstract:This introduction lays out the agenda for this special issue. We argue for more inclusive histories of the UN system which incorporate the role of the Global South in shaping its past and present. In general, we ask: how have the Global South actors and coalitions/formations critiqued, interrogated, nuanced, and advanced the principles and practice of liberal world order? In order to set up the conceptual context for the essays in the collection, we argue that the “Global South” is neither a place nor a project. Instead, our methodological engagements with this idea ought to configure it as an assemblage of multifarious actors, motives, methods, and means.