n.
- The developing nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin American.
- Minority groups as a whole within a larger prevailing culture.
Third World
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Dictionary:
Third World (thûrd'wûrld') adj. |
also third world
n.
n.
| 5min Related Video: Third World |
| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: third world |
For more information on third world, visit Britannica.com.
| Financial & Investment Dictionary: Third World |
Name for the less-developed countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
| Idioms: third world |
Underdeveloped or developing countries, as in The conditions in our poorest rural areas resemble those in the third world. This expression originated in the mid-1900s, at first denoting those countries in Asia and Africa that were not aligned with either the Communist bloc nations or the non-Communist Western nations. Because they were for the most part poor and underdeveloped, the term was transferred to all countries with those characteristics, and later still to poorer groups within a larger prevailing culture.
| US Military Dictionary: Third World |
Usually the Third World the developing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Etymology: first applied in the 1950s by French commentators who used tiers monde to distinguish the developing countries from the capitalist and Communist blocs.See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.
| Political Dictionary: Third World |
The precise historical origins of the term are disputed, but during the Cold War it was applied to the less developed countries that belonged to neither the advanced industrial capitalist West (First World) or the Soviet socialist bloc. The Third World, mostly former colonies, was politically non-aligned. It denoted the poor countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (also referred to as the South), distinguished from the North largely on economic, not ideological grounds.
Always liable to mislead, the term has outlived its usefulness. It suggests a uniformity among countries that are extremely varied economically as well as culturally, socially, and politically. They all share an objection to colonization, and to foreign domination generally (see also imperialism), but they hardly constitute a cohesive political force (see also non-alignment). The demise of the Second World following the end of communism there also renders the term anomalous.
— Peter Burnell
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Third World |
Third World, the technologically less advanced, or developing, nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, generally characterized as poor, having economies distorted by their dependence on the export of primary products to the developed countries in return for finished products. These nations also tend to have high rates of illiteracy, disease, and population growth and unstable governments. The term Third World was originally intended to distinguish the nonaligned nations that gained independence from colonial rule beginning after World War II from the Western nations and from those that formed the former Eastern bloc, and sometimes more specifically from the United States and from the former Soviet Union (the first and second worlds, respectively). For the most part the term has not included China. Politically, the Third World emerged at the Bandung Conference (1955), which resulted in the establishment of the Nonaligned Movement. Numerically, the Third World dominates the United Nations, but the group is diverse culturally and increasingly economically, and its unity is only hypothetical. The oil-rich nations, such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Libya, and the newly emerged industrial states, such as Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore, have little in common with desperately poor nations, such as Haiti, Chad, and Afghanistan.
Bibliography
See 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).
| Politics: Third World |
The nonaligned nations — which are often developing nations — of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. They are in a “third” group of nations because they were allied neither with the United States nor with the former Soviet Union.
| Quotes About: Third World |
Quotes:
"The Third World is not a reality but an ideology."
- Hannah Arendt
"History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it."
- Walter Bagehot
"Remember the rights of the savage, as we call him. Remember that the happiness of his humble home, remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan, among the winter snows, is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God, as can be your own."
- William E. Gladstone
"People in places many of us never heard of, whose names we can't pronounce or even spell, are speaking up for themselves. They speak in languages we once classified as exotic but whose mastery is now essential for our diplomats and businessmen. But what they say is very much the same the world over. They want a decent standard of living. They want human dignity and a voice in their own futures. They want their children to grow up strong and healthy and free."
- Hubert H. Humphrey
"The great battleground for the defense and expansion of freedom today is the whole southern half of the globe... the lands of the rising peoples. Their revolution is the greatest in human history. They seek an end to injustice, tyranny and exploitation. More than an end, they seek a beginning."
- John F. Kennedy
"To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators."
- Lewis H. Lapham
See more famous quotes about Third World
| Wikipedia: Third World |
For other uses, see Third World (disambiguation).
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned or neutral with either capitalism and NATO (which along with its allies represented the First World) or communism and the Soviet Union (which along with its allies represented the Second World). This definition provided a way of broadly categorizing the nations of the Earth into three groups based on social, political, and economic divisions. Although the term continues to be used colloquially to describe the poorest countries in the world, this usage is widely disparaged since the term no longer holds any verifiable meaning after the fall of the Soviet Union deprecated the terms First World and Second World. While there is no identical contemporary replacement, common alternatives include developing world and Global South.
Contents |
Etymology
French economist and demographer Alfred Sauvy, in an article published in the French magazine L'Observateur, August 14, 1952, coined the term Third World, referring to countries particularly in the Middle East, South Asia, Central and South America, Africa, and Oceania, that were unaligned with either the Communist Soviet bloc or the Capitalist NATO bloc during the Cold War. His usage was a reference to the Third Estate, the commoners of France who, before and during the French Revolution, opposed priests and nobles who composed the First Estate and Second Estate. Sauvy wrote, "Like the third estate, the Third World has nothing, and wants to be something," He conveyed the concept of political non-alignment with either the capitalist or communist bloc.
The growing use of the term Third World led to a growing sense of solidarity among the nations of the so-called Third World to unite against interference from either major bloc. In 1955, leaders of 29 countries from Asia and Africa met at the Bandung Conference to discuss cooperation. The First Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, notably said the following: "I have no doubt that an equally able disposition could be made on the part of the other bloc. I belong to neither [the First or Second World] and I propose to belong to neither whatever happens in the world. If we have to stand alone, we will stand by ourselves, whatever happens...
We do not agree with the communist teachings, we do not agree with the anti-communist teachings, because they are both based on wrong principles."[1]
Nehru's speech led several delegates to call for India to lead a 'third bloc' composed of the nations of Africa and Asia, however he declined and no other state chose to fill the proposed role.[2]
In addition, Mao Zedong, the Chairman of China Communist Party, in February 22, 1974 with the President of the Republic of Zambia Kenneth Kaunda had said: "I think the United States and the Soviet Union was the first world. Centrist, Japan, Europe, Australia, Canada, is the Second World. We are the Third World. "This definition, basically according to human development index, with the first popular -- Cold War framework focusing on the difference between patterns that subconsciously -- take a completely different point of view.
| Developed 0.950 and Over 0.900–0.949 0.850–0.899 0.800–0.849 | Developing 0.750–0.799 0.700–0.749 0.650–0.699 0.600–0.649 0.550–0.599 0.500–0.549 | Under-developed 0.450–0.499 0.400–0.449 0.350–0.399 under 0.350 not available |
Are commonly considered "Third World" the following world regions:
Africa (except South Africa and Seychelles) , Latin America (except Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay) , Asia (except Japan, Israel, South Korea, Brunei, Singapore,Hong Kong,Russia, India, Malaysia and Thailand)
History
A number of Third World countries were former colonies and with the end of imperialism many of these countries, especially the smaller ones, were faced with the challenges of nation and institution-building on their own for the first time. Due to this common background a lot of these nations were for most of the 20th century, and are still today, "developing" in economic terms. This term when used today generally denotes countries that have not "developed" to the same levels as OECD countries, and which are thus in the process of "developing". In the 1980s, economist Peter Bauer offered a competing definition for the term Third World. He claimed that the attachment of Third World status to a particular country was not based on any stable economic or political criteria, and was a mostly arbitrary process. The large diversity of countries that were considered to be part of the Third World, from Indonesia to Afghanistan, ranged widely from economically primitive to economically advanced and from politically non-aligned to Soviet- or Western-leaning. The only characteristic that Bauer found common in all Third World countries was that their governments "demand and receive Western aid" (the giving of which he strongly opposed). Thus, the aggregate term "Third World" was challenged as misleading even during the Cold War period.
General Description
The Third World is the majority of national powers on the planet. These countries represent a modern society, but in the process of potential development as recognized continental representatives of the world community today. The majority among this group, comprises of many moderately wealthy, but militarily effective governments. To include to this, many Third World nations (especially in Africa), are affected drastically by political problems, or bad geographical conditions, such as droughts and non-fertile soil. These problems are not the least of it in some Third World countries. Famines, shortages, regional wars, and etc., have all caused much instability and no hopes of restoration in the public in Third World nations. Today, the First World, and the Second World, come forth to bring aid and civil support to bring about strong foreign relations, and bring them into any of their collective orbits'. Superpowers, whether asked or self-intended, charitably feed their resources and benefacted commodities to these types of Third World powers, ostensibly as a form of idealistic friendship, though the financial institutions through which this "friendship" is extended (e.g., the IMF and World Bank) have been heavily criticized for creating, rather than alleviating, poverty and economic dependence[citation needed]. Many members of the Third World state of national powers, are of course nonaligned with any global significance (like the United States of America), and squander on their various economic or political concerns in regional affairs.
Further reading
- 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)
- Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures. (1992)
- A. Escobar, Encountering Development. The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. (1995)
- P.T. Bauer, Equality, the Third World, and Economic Delusion. (1981) ISBN 0-674-25986-6.
- Whaites, Alan, States in Development, UK Department for International Development, London 2007, [3]
See also
References
External links
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