My friend and I were wondering where teh term 3rd world country came from. Is there some official criteria?
Are there second world countries? If so, why have I never heard the term “second world county” used? Also, are there any examples of which countries fall into which.
ohlssonvox
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/General/ThirdWorld_def.html
THIRD WORLD
Gerard Chaliand - author
The economically underdeveloped countries of Asia, Africa, Oceania, and Latin America, considered as an entity with common characteristics, such as poverty, high birthrates, and economic dependence on the advanced countries. The French demographer Alfred Sauvy coined the expression (“tiers monde” in French) in 1952 by analogy with the “third estate,” the commoners of France before and during the French Revolution-as opposed to priests and nobles, comprising the first and second estates respectively. Like the third estate, wrote Sauvy, the third world is nothing, and it “wants to be something.” The term therefore implies that the third world is exploited, much as the third estate was exploited, and that, like the third estate its destiny is a revolutionary one. It conveys as well a second idea, also discussed by Sauvy, that of non-alignment, for the third world belongs neither to the industrialized capitalist world nor to the industrialized Communist bloc. The expression third world was used at the 1955 conference of Afro-Asian countries held in Bandung, Indonesia. In 1956 a group of social scientists associated with Sauvy’s National Institute of Demographic Studies, in Paris, published a book called Le Tiers-Monde. Three years later, the French economist Francois Perroux launched a new journal, on problems of underdevelopment, with the same title. By the end of the 1950’s the term was frequently employed in the French media to refer to the underdeveloped countries of Asia, Africa, Oceania, and Latin America.
From the same site which answers another part of your question:
The First World is the developed world - US, Canada, western Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, etc… The Second World was the Communist world led by the USSR. With the demise of the USSR and the communist block, there is no longer a Second World. The Third World is the underdeveloped world - agrarian, rural and poor. Many Third World countries have one or two developed cities, but the rest of the country is poor, rural and agrarian. Eastern Europe should probably be considered Third World. Russia should also be considered a Third World country with nuclear weapons. China, has always been considered Third World, and still is. In general, Latin America, including Mexico, Africa, and most of Asia are still considered Third World. The Asian tigers - South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, except for their big cities, their maquiladora-type production facilities, a small middle class and a much smaller ruling elite should probably be considered Third World countries as well, since their populations are overwhelmingly rural, agrarian and poor.
To simplify it all the way…
1st world = industrialized West
2nd world = Soviet-led nations
3rd world = everyone else
I don’t know where the offical designation came from, but I read somewhere that “2nd world” was coined to refer to the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries.
Yup, while at the beginnig of the 1990s the Eastern European states and the Balkans were called “2. world countries”, people now prefer the term “emerging market economies” (or “emerging democracies”, but that´s a little outdated already).
By the way, the group of third world countries (they tend to avoid this term nowadays) is divided now, too - into the “developing countries” and the so-called “LDCs”, or “least developed countries” (with no or only few natural resources).
Wait, you are forgetting 4th world = 3rd world countries with no hope in hell of ever modernizing.
China is a dualistic classification, as are many countries. While largely 3rd world, the eastern seaboard (and 100-200 million population) could be considered first world. Same holds for India.
Another term that is commonly used (at least in the charity world) is that of “two-thirds world” - to indicate that two-thirds of the world is considered as “third world”
Grim
One really odd aspect of the old 2nd/3rd world designation was that Castro declared Cuba a 3rd world country, even though it was obviously 2nd world. He became a major leader of the third world political movement (which in turn caused it to be largely ignored).
Gee, and I thought I knew the answer to this one.
I always believed that it was this phrase was coined in the early sixties at an infamous meeting in SE Asia at a place called Bandung.
And I always thought it meant;
1st World = Free world (democracy)
2nd world = Communist world
3rd world = Developing World
4th world = though rarely used, dead in the water nations which would include many nations in Africa and S America were it not politically incorrect.
I love to learn new stuff!
Some countries that are usually considered “Third World” have made a lot of progress over the last few years. For instance, Chile has higher standards of living than most of the ex-Communist countries in central Europe, and some of the Asian “Tigers” such as Thailand and Malaysia are also rapidly developing.
I think the use of the term “Third World” is pejorative and rather antiquated.
China Guy has it…
My bona fides include a degree and some post-grad world in developing world history (20th Century Decolonization) and 2 years working for USAID.
I was certainly taught that it came from:
1st world = Old World
2nd world = New World
3rd world = Developing World
4th world = Screwed World (PJ O’Rouke defined this as ‘those parts of the world that are completely screwed’)
That’s how we used them in school and at USAID.
Geography teacher here.
The term third world has, IIRC, been attributed to Kennedy. Third world countries were the developing countries where the battle between communism and capitalism would be fought.
The posters that said that 1st world countries were basically NATO nations and 2nd world countries were Communist Bloc nations were correct. Remember that these adjectives have a western/capitalist bias b/c of Cold War hostilities. Of course the Communist World would not accept being “second world”.
The common terms for third world countries in the politically correct climate of today are developing countries and emerging markets, though I agree with previous posters that many developing countries will never actually develop. Why they will never develop, IMHO, is GD material.
Investment bankers in the 1980’s coined “emerging markets” instead of third world. Sounds better to sell debt (bonds) in emerging markets rather than third world markets.