Thirding North/South: Mexico and Turkey in international development politics

Sebastian Haug

International development politics has traditionally been shaped by a fundamental set of binary imaginaries: the ‘developed’ and dominant ‘North’, on the one hand, and the ‘developing’ and marginalised (and recently more vocal) ‘South’, on the other. While empirical realities have always been more complex than the inter-state distinction between ‘North’ and ‘South’ suggests, the North/South binary has remained a major reference for how international development is thought about and practiced. In this dissertation, Mexico and Turkey take centre stage as countries that have long been at odds with North/South assignations. Building on insights from queer studies and Edward Soja’s spatial theory, I develop the Thirding Lens as a heuristic to examine how Mexico and Turkey are positioned in and engage with international development politics, and how they contribute to reproducing, challenging and transforming North/South. Based on 18 months of fieldwork and more than 250 interviews, I develop the notions of Either/Or approximation, Both/And simultaneity and Neither/Nor emancipation as conceptual tools to approach and make sense of phenomena that do not fit with binaries. With reference to the expanding literature on South-South cooperation and the changing contours of international development, I argue that a detailed engagement with empirical evidence beyond the mainstream focus on major ‘Northern’ donors and the most visible ‘Southern’ providers offers valuable insights for understanding broader dynamics in the field. As a conceptual contribution, the Thirding Lens offers a framework for a systematic analysis of complexity, in international development and beyond.