Institute of International Studies UGM

Jl. Sosio-Justisia No.1 Bulaksumur Yogyakarta

iis.fisipol@ugm.ac.id

+62-274-563362 Ext. 115

Institute Of International
Studies

Faculty of Social and Political Sciences
Universitas Gadjah Mada

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GO SOUTH 2025

In April 1955, twenty-nine Asian and African leaders, representing more than half of the world population living in the Global South, gathered for the historic Bandung Conference. They kickstarted waves of decolonisation collective anti-colonial projects known as the Bandung Spirit, defining their position amidst the Cold War rivalries. Yet, this global emancipatory project fell short due to massive pressures from imperialist powers, internal frictions, and most notably, the debt crisis, which threw newly independent countries into a permanent situation of dependence and austerity. The fall of “Third World projects” paved the way for the universalisation and globalisation of neoliberal agendas as the dominant world order since the late 1970s to the present day.  We are now witnessing a stagnation. Neoliberal hegemony and unipolarity are in crisis, but viable alternatives have not yet consolidated. The “end of history” turned into unprecedented levels of inequalities, precarisation, political violence, humanitarian catastrophes, and democracy crisis. Current geopolitical contests, articulated through wars, military competition, and weaponised economies–dubbed by scholars as the new Cold War–have not only put the world on the brink of great wars but also reversed the waves of globalisation, where countries now prioritise more on strategic competition and alliance over cooperation and openness. Such trends exacerbate the already devastating impacts of climate change and humanitarian crises. How have the Global South countries dealt with these dynamics? How can they establish collective projects amidst the current world order crisis?   70 years after the Bandung Conference, material conditions of the Global South countries have changed and new global-regional powers have emerged. Various reports (e.g. OECD, 2010) show how the world’s geo-economy has effectively shifted, as engines for economic growth moved from the West/North to the so-called emerging economies. The unipolar world order is being challenged by various collective endeavours such as BRICS+, invoking a renewed “Bandung Spirit,” although it is too premature, if not misleading, to conclude that the latter would be a viable alternative. The Bandung Spirit is indeed a political project, with achievements and limitations of its own, through which identities and interests of the Global South are politically nurtured in the postcolonial global political-economic structure. Its complex practices, from the 1950s to the  1980s, have manifested in diverse initiatives, politics of knowledge production, as well as domestic and regional dynamics underpinning the rise and fall of so-called Third World projects. Amidst the pluriversality of meanings attached to the Bandung Spirit, how can a global emancipatory project be reinvigorated? How can imaginaries of the Bandung Spirit be expanded, to project ideas for a just and peaceful world order amidst current geopolitical turmoils?   The 2025 Annual Convention on the Global South is organised by the Institute of International Studies (IIS), Universitas Gadjah Mada. Initiated from the “Bandung Conference and Beyond” in 2015, IIS has committed to contributing to Global South studies by hosting the Annual Convention of the Global South since 2019. The upcoming forum aims to provide platforms for vibrant discussions and debates on the dynamics of the Global South from various perspectives and salient issues. Comprehensive studies of the Global South in geopolitical turmoil are needed to comprehensively analyse the challenges, opportunities and complexities of the situation.

Revisiting Bandung Spirit: Theories and Practices

The Bandung Spirit has put in motion political projects of Global South countries. Since the 1950s, the transnational networks of state and non-state actors have consolidated across various issues, with constituencies expanding  beyond Asian and African countries. Amidst the grand scenario of challenging the dominant world order and redefining positions in the postcolonial world order, these practices and legacies have also evolved into complex contestations and contradictions at domestic, regional, and international levels. How have these practices shaped world and regional politics? How have these practices been differently theorised, especially in IR and area studies? How are these praxis-theory relevant to the current settings?  

Global South and the Politics of Knowledge Production

Knowledge production is always political and takes place within distinct socio-political settings. Consciousness and acknowledgement of  non-Western identities, partly triggered by the Bandung Conference and colonial experiences, gave birth to critical and emancipatory lenses, such as dependencia theory, as well as gender, queer, postcolonial, and decolonial studies. The premise here is that emancipatory projects are predicated on critical interrogation of coloniality at home and in the global structure. How have the politics of knowledge production taken place and how has it shaped the power-knowledge nexus? How do we decolonise knowledge and make this an emancipatory theoretical-political project? What are the challenges?

Global Divide and Inequalities: Development, Climate, and Beyond

Neoliberal globalisation, as the dominant global economic order, has produced an unprecedented level of global inequality and the worsening of working conditions. While some Global South countries can catch up in their economic development, these are frequently followed and buttressed by domestic inequalities and the dominance of state-business alliances. Digital transformation, while claimed as a shortcut to bridge these disparities, often creates different manifestations of inequality, precarious conditions, and marginalisation. Meanwhile, organised around climate crisis narratives, energy transition projects discourse has put many critical resource-rich countries of the Global South in strategic positions within new global commodity chains. This, however, has also resulted in climate paradoxes where unsustainable development is defended and legitimised through discourses of the energy transition-nationalism nexus. How have these contradictions of global developments experienced differently in the Global South? How have the Global South countries dealt with these dynamics?  

In Defense of Humanity and Democracy: Violence, Oppression, and Exclusion

Geopolitical contests have produced endless political violence and humanitarian crises in various regions. They have not only resulted in instabilities but also the division of humanity– human suffering in one setting is taken seriously while the same suffering in other settings are neglected and normalised. Recent developments in military technology, such as the Automatic Weapon System (AWS), potentially exempt human beings from being held accountable in the eyes of humanitarian laws. The state-capital nexus in Global South countries, perpetuates exclusion and marginalisation against citizens, with indigenous people as well as ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities taking the biggest blow. How have current global-regional dynamics resulted into persistent practices of oppression and exclusion? How can collective efforts and struggles in the name of humanity and democracy  be effectively advanced?

Power Shifts: Repositioning the Global South

The current transformation of world order has changed how global politics is organised. Following the dominant discourse of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), identity became a central feature in power contests in the past two decades. Geopolitical turmoils reshape states’ security-strategic calculations, forcing them to weaponise of economic collaborations and partnerships. The lexicons of cooperation and openness, propagated by proponents of neoliberal globalisation, are now replaced by strategic competition over resource control.  With massive economic, social, and technological transformations, the relatively strong material basis of the Global South has made them into regional and global players. There have been many initiatives in place through which the redefinition of their regional and global roles is reformulated and contested.  How have such collective initiatives shaped global political dynamics? What are the contradictions and challenges of these projects?