This fourth volume analyses the recent global transformation that heralded the supposed demise of "Third World" and the emergence of the "Global South". Essays in this collection explore whether the distinction between "Global South" and "Global North" is useful for understanding the current global constellation. It does so by casting a wide exploratory net, not limiting itself to the dominant politico-economic meaning, but addressing historical transformations of world-interpretation as well as wider cultural-intellectual meanings. It draws on analyses in global history, conceptual history, comparative literature, social and political theory, political philosophy and social history to develop a comprehensive inter-disciplinary perspective on the uses of "South" and "North".
Peter Wagner is Research Professor of Sociology at the Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) and at the University of Barcelona.

Peter Wagner is Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies Research Professor at the University of Barcelona. His publications include The Trouble with Democracy (Edinburgh University Press, 2016), African, American and European Trajectories of Modernity (Edinburgh University Press, 2015), Modernity as Experience and Interpretation (Polity Press, 2008), A History and Theory of the Social Sciences (Sage, 2001), Theorising Modernity (Sage, 2001) and A Sociology of Modernity (Routledge, 1994).

Acknowledgements; Illustrations; Contributors; 1. Finding one's way in global social space, Peter Wagner; 2. Does the world have a spatio-political form? Preliminaries, Gerard Rosich; 3. The BRICS countries: time and space in moral narratives of development, Cláudio Costa Pinheiro; 4. Russia between East, West and North: Comments on the history of moral mapping, Maxim Khomyakov; 5. Digging for class: thoughts on the writing of a global history of social distinction, Jacob Dlamini; 6. North-South and the question of recognition: a constellation saturated with tensions, À. Lorena Fuster; 7.On spaces and experiences: modern displacements, interpretations and universal claims, Aurea Mota; 8. The South as exile, Nathalie Karagiannis.