Article Differentiation Theory and the Global South as a Metageography of International Relations Jochen Kleinschmidt 1 Abstract In this article, I argue that while the Global South has replaced the Third World as the prevalent term for describing structural global inequalities in International Relations, little research is directed at its theoretical implications. I discuss the conceptual evolution of the term from the Third World narrative, interpreting the literature as an implicit rejection of myopic ontologies relying on eco- nomic, cultural, or political hierarchies. I then suggest connecting the terminology to the theory of functional differentiation. By avoiding forms inherited from classical social theory, the Global South can be conceptualized in a more productive way that is better attuned to contemporary theoretical discussions. Keywords Global South, political geography, differentiation theory, Third World, IR theory Academic search engines such as Google Scholar reveal quantitative increases in the academic usage of the words “Global South” after the Cold War. The first usage in the title of a peer- reviewed journal article appears to occur in 1994 with “End of history, or its continuation and accentuation? The global South and the ‘new transformation’ literature” by Bahgat Korany (1994), which examined roles for the Non-Aligned Movement in the post–Cold War world. Other early examples include Walden Bello’s nongovernmental organization “Focus on the Global South” as well as other organizations, 1 yet a definitive moment of terminological authorship cannot be specified. 2 During the rest of the 1990s, the Global South terminology was employed only in a handful of article and book titles each year. Afterward, an exponential growth in frequency occurred—from 5 titles in 2000 to 73 in 2009, 158 in 2013, and 362 in 2017, thereby overtaking the stagnant occurrence of “Third World” in academic publication titles. 3 At the time of the writing of this article, this gap has stabilized at a ratio of 2:1. In other languages, similar developments have occurred, it is not just a phenomenon inherent to literature in English—in Spanish, for example, the ratio is now 3:2, after a process that seems to repeat the dynamic observable in English. Equivalent tendencies are observable in Portuguese and German, though not in French, which might reflect the oft-diagnosed particularity and comparative 1 Universidad del Rosario, Bogota ´, Colombia Corresponding Author: Jochen Kleinschmidt, Universidad del Rosario, Calle 12C No. 6-25, Bogota ´ 110110, Colombia. Email: jochen.kleinschmidt@urosario.edu.co Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 1-22 ª The Author(s) 2018 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0304375418811191 journals.sagepub.com/home/alt