Given all my threads get moved here, I just started this question here.
The question is so simple, but come with strings attached… 
Define Third World. What countries are part of the Third World and what aren’t?
There are many delicious inconsistencies that arise, quite soon. For instance, the poor immigrant neighbourhoods of France, Britain and the U.S., are part of the Third World? :dubious: Is Korea part of the Third World? Or is it China?
Anyways. Definitions, please.
In the 1950s, there was a French historian/geographer named Alfred Sauvy, and he said the Cold War world could be divided into “three worlds”; the First World, meaning the US and its democratic capitalist allies (like W. Europe), the Second World, meaning the Soviet Union and it’s satellites (like E. Europe), and the Third World, meaning all the other countries, where the actual Cold War would be fought, with the US and Soviets competing for influence and control. So the Third World is any nation that isn’t First or Second World.
The problem is that today the world is not like in 1950, and still the term is in use.
Eh. Word meanings change. So what? You got the origin, and now it generally means somewhere that’s “poor” and/or undeveloped. But that’s subjective.
Define “ugly”.
It’s obvious from your OP that you want to take a gratuitous swipe at the so-called First World. Yawn.
So, what is the first world, then, and what it isn’t.
The Third World is Vanaheim (after Midgard and Asgard).
There are no clear definitions anymore of what’s first world, second world, and third world, except the habit formed from their use 50 years ago when it was much more clear. They are defined now by historical usage, and that historical usage was defined as Captain Amazing says.
If Freyr were still active, I believe he would take umbrage at being defined as “Third World.”
I have heard that said as a metaphor or hyperbole to illustrate a point, but never as part of some kind of scholarly definition. Under any usage you’re likely to find, France, the U.K. and the U.S. are first world. In terms of development I think South Korea is considered a first world nation at this point. I can’t remember hearing China being discussed in (current) first/second/third world terms. I do hear it frequently referred to as an emerging market, which isn’t necessarily a separate thing.
While it’s not necessarily synonymous with the Non-Aligned Movement, “Third World” and NAM generally overlap. Reference and map of the Non-Aligned nations.
It’s the world between the second and forth, obviously. Or, if you are counting down to throw your Holy Hand-Grenade, you count One, Two, Four…no THREE!! and toss.
Or, it could be what others have said…originally defined as countries not aligned with either the US or Soviet Union during the Cold War, now it’s used to “denote nations with the smallest UN Human Development Index (HDI) in the world, independent of their political status”.
-XT
Nobody seriously uses “third world,” anymore. People tend to talk about high, high-middle, low-middle and low income countries. They may also refer to advanced emerging economies, newly industrialized countries, and failed states.
Things like theHuman Development Index try to give a more nuanced view than simply focusing on GDP can.
Obviously no small set of generic categories is going to catch the nuances of a single country, much less all of them. But it is sometimes useful to say things like “We plan to market this in countries roughly like Guatemala, Malawi and Laos and not countries roughly like Sweden, Canada and Japan.”
“Developed” vs “Developing” is also popular nowadays too.
In my geography classes we use core, periphery, and semi-periphery.
Whatever isn’t 2nd or 3rd World.
“Developed/Developing” is falling out of favor as it implies that development is a single linear process in which countries follow a sort of inexorable march of progress down a set path towards a single goal (i.e. become as much like the United States, etc. as possible.) It’s a big arrogant to assume that everyone’s goal is to become just like us, and even if they wanted to, there are not enough resources to go around for it to work. In any case, development involves a complex system of relationships, and the whole idea that some countries are just “catching up” doesn’t really capture that right.
In practical terms, many countries are not actually developing. Some are sliding into chaos, peacefully stagnating, rotting, taking wacky paths to god knows where (North Korea, I’m looking at you), creating their own path to development without following our precedent or advice (China,) barely actually existing as countries (CAR- your number is up!) or otherwise just doing something totally different.
I think Yes, Minister explained it best:
Jim: Well anyway, why are we having an official visit from this tin pot little African country?
Sir Humphrey: Minister, I beg of you not to refer to it as a tin pot little African country. It’s an LDC.
Jim: A what?
Sir Humphrey: Buranda is what was used to be called an under-developed country, however this term was largely regarded as offensive, so they became known as developing countries and then as less developed countries or LDC’s. We are now ready to replace the term LDC with HRRC.
Jim: What’s that?
Sir Humphrey: Human resource rich countries.
Jim: Which means?
Sir Humphrey: That they’re grossly over-populated and begging for money.
Absolutely.
The real advantage of the term “Third World” is really just what you accuse it of — it has no meaning. The trouble is, the political models used in describing the two types are often different, so you have to make a distinction between two types of countries somehow or another. If we want to avoid talking about LDC/MDC’s, or developed/developing, or core/periphery, since all those terms have ideological baggage, we can just talk about the “Third World” and recognize that we’re using an intentionally silly term. I personally use “third world country” instead of LDC/whatever for just that reason.
Classify countries according to the level of income. As simple as that. There are poor countries, middle class countries, rich countries, and obsenely rich countries.
The term “Third world” means nothing simply because some “developed” countries are getting poorer, and some “developing” countries are getting richer. The term industrilized countries, means not much either, considering how much “industry” countries like the Europeans and the U.S. has lost to Asia.
Anyways.