Third World

For other uses, see Third World (disambiguation).

"Global South" redirects here. For the association of Anglican provinces, see Global South (Anglican).

The Third World is a term used, along with First World and Second World, to broadly categorise the nations of the Earth to three social, political, and economic divisions. It is also known in some academic contexts as the Global South.

Origin of the term

The "Three Worlds" of the Cold War (between 30 April and 24 June 1975)

  First World: Countries aligned with the Western Bloc (i.e., NATO and allies), led by the United States

  Second World: Countries aligned with the Eastern Bloc (i.e., Warsaw Pact, China, and allies), led by the Soviet Union

  Third World: The Non-Aligned Movement, led by India and Yugoslavia, and other neutral countries

The economist and demographer Alfred Sauvy, in an article published in the French magazine L'Observateur, August 14 1952, coined the term Third World in referring to countries currently called either "developing" or "under-developed", especially in Latin America, Africa, Oceania, and Asia, that were unaligned with either the Communist Soviet bloc or the Capitalist NATO bloc during the Cold War (1945–1989). Today, Third World is synonymous with all countries in the developing world, regardless of their political status.

Third World was a reference to the Tiers État, the (Third Estate), the commoners of France before and during the French Revolution — opposed to the priests and nobles who composed the First Estate and the Second Estate. Like the third estate, wrote Sauvy, the Third World has nothing, and "wants to be something", implying that the Third World is exploited (as was the third estate) and that its destiny is revolutionary. Moreover, it conveyed the second concept of political non-alignment with neither the industrialised Capitalist bloc nor the industrialised Communist bloc.

The problematic definition of "The Third World"

In academic circles, the countries of the Third World are known as the "Global South", the "developing countries", and the "under-developed countries"; and are called, by economic development workers, the "Two-thirds World" and "The South". Some developers disapprove of the "developing countries" term, because it implies that industrialization is the only progressive way.

History of Third World countries

The economically under-developed countries of Africa, Asia, Americas, and Oceania considered as an entity with common characteristics, such as poverty, uncontrolled high birthrates, and economic dependence upon the advanced countries tended to be former European colonies.

After World War II, the capitalist Western and the communist Eastern blocs fought to expand their spheres of influence to the Third World. The military and intelligence services of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. worked secretly and publicly to influence Third World governments, with relative success.

The term Third World became popular usage during the Cold War when many poor nations adopted it in describing themselves as aligned with neither N.A.T.O. nor the U.S.S.R., but instead composed an unaligned Third World. In that context, the First World denoted the U.S. and its anti-Communist allies, concomitantly, Second World denoted the "Eastern Bloc" — the U.S.S.R. and its communist and socialist allies.

Originally, the Third World bloc comprised the countries of Yugoslavia, India, and Egypt. Many believed they could successfully court the Communist and Capitalist blocs into economic partnerships without directly falling into the respective sphere of influence. Fearing they would align with the enemy bloc, they were exploited and undermined by the First World and Second World superpowers.

The Third World's economies are distorted by dependence upon exportation of primary products, to the First and Second worlds, in return for finished products. After liberation from colonial rule in the 1950s - 1970s, many Third World nations were illiterate, over-populated, and politically unstable. This was particularly true of Africa, where nation-states were artificially created by European colonial powers in order to control populations by imposing local, minority-rule governments, indifferent to local social and cultural reality.

For the most part, Third World did not include China. Politically, the Third World emerged at the Bandung Conference (1955), which established the Nonaligned Movement. Numerically, the Third World dominates the United Nations, but is so culturally and economically diverse that its political cohesion is hypothetical. The petroleum-rich countries (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, etc.) and the new industrial countries (India, Malaysia, Brazil, etc.) have little in common with poor countries (Haiti, Chad, Afghanistan, etc.).

Criticism of the term

The term Third World remains in common usage despite criticism that it is inaccurate, outdated, colonialist, and a type of Other category; more because it is an ideology rather than a reality. .

In general, Third World countries are not as industrialized or technologically advanced as OECD countries, and consequently developing nation is the current term in use in academia. Terms such as Global South, developing countries, less economically developed countries (LEDC), least developed countries, and the Majority World have become more popular in circles where the term third world is regarded to have derogatory or out-of-date connotations. Other synonymous terms include the two-thirds world (because two-thirds of the world is underdeveloped) and The South. Some theorists, such as Andre Gunder Frank and Walter Rodney have used the term underdevelopment or underdeveloped world, to indicate the active process by which the global South has been locked out of development by imperialism and the post-colonial policies of the richer nations.

See also

• List of countries and territories by fertility rate
• Developing country
• Human Development Index
  • List of countries by Human Development Index

External links

• Search engine where you can save lives
• Hans Rosling at TED 2006

References

• A. R. Kasdan, The Third World: A New Focus for Development (1973)
• E. Hermassi, The Third World Reassessed (1980)
• H. A. Reitsma and J. M. Kleinpenning, The Third World in Perspective (1985)
• J. Cole, Development and Underdevelopment (1987).