What Makes A Country Third World?

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Even when it was still used in textbooks, I never liked the term The Third World very much

. It sounded demeaning on the one hand, and on the other I don't think anyone ever really knew what it meant. I guess when pressed, one might say the first world was the democratic (or free- whatever that meant) world, the second the communist world, and the third was all the rest.

These days the term is defunct, politically speaking, but people still use to refer to any country not belonging to the wealthiest developed nations. Our image when using the term now is of poverty, dirt roads, and overcrowded ghettos full of hunger- not really descriptive of most of the world really, though such conditions do continue to blight our societies.

So is China Third World? I don't know, you tell me. I hear Hooters just opened in Beijing; I imagine that must count for something! They are also becoming really strong militarily. And I suppose as a great communist country they always held second world status anyway (though we never heard that term or first world either thrown about in lectures). How about Argentina? They're pretty well off I think. And India I suppose is third world despite their possessing nuclear weapons and being computer geniuses. What about Australia?

Anyway, the trend these days is to lump all non-European and North American (and, oh, Japan, Australia and New Zealand) into the developing nation or underdeveloped nation groups. A great example of a developing nation would be Malaysia (most Asian countries are), which is practically developed as far as I can tell aside from some human rights issues (which everyone ignores except the victims and their families). Thailand is not far behind, and heck, even the wild and wooly Cambodia is developing (at a rapid pace in fact).

A good example of an underdeveloped country, to me, would be Mali. Most of the people there live in dwellings made from mud and eat the goats they herd. Other people look to massive poverty and hunger as their yardstick for underdevelopment. To me, we live in one world and some places are more affluent than others. I've been to a lot of places, but I haven't been to a place I didn't like or didn't felt welcome yet. I don't think there is such a thing as a third world.

What Makes A Country Third World?

By: Dinah Jackson

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