Definitions - Third World

Encyclopedia Britannica

Political designation originally used (1963) to describe those states not part of the first world-the capitalist, economically developed states led by the U.S.-or the second world-the communist states led by the Soviet Union. The third world principally consists of the developing world, former colonies of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. With the end of the Cold War and the increased economic competitiveness of some developing countries, the term has lost its analytic clarity.

Columbia University Press

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.

Wikipedia

The subjective terms First World, Second World, and Third World, can be used to divide the nations of Earth into three broad categories. Third World is a term first coined in 1952 by French demographer Alfred Sauvy to distinguish nations that aligned themselves with neither the West nor with the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War. Today, however, the term is frequently used to denote nations with a low UN Human Development Index (HDI), independent of their political status (meaning that the PRC, Russia and Brazil, all of which were very strongly aligned during the Cold War, are often termed third world). However, there is no objective definition of Third World or "Third World country" and the use of the term remains common. Some in academia see it as being out of date, colonialist, othering and inaccurate; its use has continued, however [1] In general, Third World countries are not as industrialized or technologically advanced as OECD countries, and therefore in academia, the more politically correct term to use is "developing nation".
Terms such as Global South, less wealthy nations, developing countries, least developed countries and the Majority World have become more popular in circles where the term "third world" is regarded to have derogatory or out-of-date connotations. Development workers also call them the two-thirds world (because two-thirds of the world is underdeveloped) and The South. The term Third World is also disliked as it may imply the false notion that those countries are not a part of the global economic system. Some claim that the underdevelopment of Africa, Asia and Latin America during the Cold War was influenced, or even caused by the Cold War economic, political, and military maneuverings of the most powerful nations of the time. (See Emerging markets)
The term Fourth World (as least developed countries) is used by some writers to describe the poorest Third World countries, those which lack industrial infrastructure and the means to build it. More commonly, however, the term is used to describe indigenous peoples or other oppressed minority groups within First World countries.

THIRD WORLD definitions

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