GEOG 2400 GEOGRAPHY OF WORLD DEVELOPMENT

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GEOG 2400 - GEOGRAPHY OF WORLD DEVELOPMENT

• The Nomenclature of Development
• Why do we call it the Third World and should we?

Spring 2002
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The Third World

• "Third World" is an inexact and misunderstood
  term for the emerging/growing/developing nations
  of the world.
• The French economist and demographer Alfred Sauvy
  coined the term in 1952 with the objective of
  capturing the notion that many nations of the
  world were at once both excluded from the worlds
  riches and aspiring of greater economic
  opportunity.
• He said that "The Third World has, like the
  Third Estate ("Tiers Etat" of the French
  Revolution-the class of commoners), been ignored
  and despised and it too wants to be something."
• Sauvy saw the Third World ("Tiers Monde") as a
  modern parallel to the Third Estate of the French
  Revolutionary period that rebelled against the
  French monarchy.

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Does the Third World Exist?

• Many say not really it is a group of nations
  with tremendous variations (see HDR), more
  defined by what they were not/are not, rather
  than what they were/are.
• Third World - not industrialized, and not
  communist - in 1950s when the term was first
  popularized.
• Never really allowed for categorization of the
  oil nations - rich, but non-communist and not
  advanced industrially.
• This was taken by many to be a pejorative term -
  third and last place in world order.
• The category has been strained by relative growth
  of Newly Industrializing Countries (NICs) like
  Brazil, Argentina, Korea, Thailand and the mixed
  character of nations like Israel, South Africa
  and Portugal (neither heavily industrialized nor
  poor).

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So, Why Classify Nations?

• Academics, particularly economists, like to
  classify or define things.
• When Third World term was coined, the world was
  divided globally into axes (1st and 2nd) with
  their allies and the neutral nations.
• The Marshall Plan and Bretton Woods sought to
  rebuild the world after WWII with the focus on
  economic development as a key to future peace and
  thus needed a framework to view the world.
• Post-war changes thus gave birth to the new field
  of development studies, intensified by the
  parallel processes of the spread of socialism
  (study of comparative systems) and decolonization
  (study of the process of nation building, etc.)

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Classification Systems

• Must be based on recognizable similarities and
  differences and requires consensus.
• Weakened by excessive complexity or simplicity.
• Three-category system gained dominance.
• Economic criteria for First v. Third Worlds,
  geopolitical criteria for First v. Second Worlds.
• Economic criteria tended to dominate when it came
  to socialist Third World e.g. Tanzania, Angola
  socialist, but very much Third World.
• Second World was more or less confined to
  contiguous, East European region USSR and its
  allies in Europe.
• Terminology gained acceptance because it was
  clearly felt to be generally useful and
  understandable.

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Alternatives That Have Been Used

• North - South - popularized by Brandt Report
  (1980) based on rough geographical logic
  determined by global pattern of poor countries
  mostly found in S. Hemisphere.
• Core and Periphery - derived from world-system
  type dependency theories that identify the core,
  industrial nations and the peripheral poorer
  nations supplying them with cheap raw materials
  to fuel their economies.
• Do we use the Third World is it useful or
  anachronistic? derogatory or descriptive?
• Is it better to say less developed country
  LDC?
• How about developing country or
  under-developed country.
• So what to call the richer nations more
  developed countries, developed countries,
  over-developed, industrialized?

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Summing Up The Views of Experts

• According to the publishers of Third World
  Resources, the main alternatives are
• 1.To use no common term at all for the countries
  of Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean,
  and the Middle East this signifies that they do
  not have anything significant in common.
• 2.To use only cold, clinical, technical terms
  like "low income countries," "countries of low
  human development, etc. these euphemistic terms
  have been chosen by international agencies and
  are meant to carry little more than a
  descriptive, statistical meaning e.g. categories
  for grouping HDI ranks.
• 3.To use the terminology of North-South...but
  this contains the danger of converting a social,
  economic, and political division into a
  geographical one.
• 4.To use the terms "center" (or core") and
  "periphery they carry considerable analytical
  force but are too academic for many observers.
• 5.To continue to speak of the Third World, which,
  for all its ambiguities and problems, suggests
  that the countries included have something in
  common this arises particularly out of an
  historical analysis stressing their colonial
  experience and their separation from power in the
  modern world. It is in widespread use among
  peoples of those countries themselves, and
  contains the positive ideas that they are a
  "world," a vast and living social organism."

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Other Alternatives

• Why not nine or more? e.g. Lewellen (1995) -
  Fourth World (Low Income), Lower Middle Income,
  Upper Middle Income (Highly Unequal), Upper
  Middle Income (More Equal), Upper Income,
  Communist Countries, Wealthy Oil Producers,
  Former Second World, First World.
• Now the UNs more politically-correct,
  economic/socially-based index of human
  development the HDI dividing nations into
  High HD, Medium HD, and Low HD.
• Seems more acceptable/objective/rigorous, but how
  does one get agreement on the variables to use,
  where does one establish cut-offs, how do
  countries feel about this kind of soccer league
  ranking in which they can be promoted or
  relegated?

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Conclusion

• Different people have their favorites.
• You cant please all the people all the time.
• Anecdotally? Most representatives from
  non-industrialized nations seem to prefer the
  term Third World nation (it seems to have been
  reclaimed to mean, for many people, a positive
  and not a put-down).
• If not Third-World, then Developing nation
  seems to come a close second since it connotes an
  active, positive, forward-moving process.
• Most people do not like Less Developed or
  Under Developed nation, believing them to be
  dismissive and demeaning terminologies and too
  static.