In the globalizing international relations (IR) debate, the “West” and “Global South” have conventionally been presented as fundamentally different categories. This has disguised any interconnectedness between the two categories and variation within them. What does this mean for the quest for “Global South theorizing?” In order to address this binary logic in the globalizing IR literature, I analyze the case of human security as an example of Global South theorizing. First, I disentangle the Western/Global South origins and inflection of the human security concept and find that there is Global South agency related to its conceptual development, but also Western inflections. Second, I examine and compare the apparent rejection of the concept in two regions of the Global South—Southeast Asia and Latin America—and find both similarities and differences in their disinterest in engaging with the concept. Curiously, the similarities lie in the positionality of these regions and their difference to the West. In this way, the article points to the danger of using these categories in a manner that reemphasizes binary logics and their constitutive effects, and it exposes the complexity regarding what we consider Global South and Global South theorizing.

中文翻译：

---

模糊边界：调查人类安全的西方/全球南方认同

在全球化的国际关系 (IR) 辩论中，“西方”和“全球南方”通常被视为根本不同的类别。这掩盖了两个类别之间的任何相互关联以及它们内部的变化。这对“全球南方理论化”的探索意味着什么？为了解决全球化 IR 文献中的这种二元逻辑，我将人类安全案例作为全球南方理论化的一个例子进行分析。首先，我解开西方/全球南方的起源和人类安全概念的变化，发现有与其概念发展相关的全球南方机构，但也有西方的变化。第二，我检查并比较了南半球两个地区（东南亚和拉丁美洲）明显拒绝该概念的情况，并发现他们对参与该概念的兴趣既有相似之处，也有不同之处。奇怪的是，这些地区的相似之处在于它们的位置以及它们与西方的差异。通过这种方式，本文指出了以再次强调二元逻辑及其构成效应的方式使用这些类别的危险，并暴露了我们认为全球南方和全球南方理论化的复杂性。