THIRD WORLD
definitions and descriptions

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.

[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).]

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. Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, except for their big cities, their maquiladora-type production facilities, a small middle class and a much smaller ruling elite should be considered Third World countries as well, since their populations are overwhelmingly rural, agrarian and poor.

South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and the Gulf oil emirates are no longer poor and underdeveloped and therefore should not be considered part of the Third World.

Some of the very poorest countries, especially in Africa, that have no industrialization, are almost entirely agrarian (subsistence farming), and have little or no hope of industrializing and competing in the world "marketplace", are sometimes termed the "Fourth World".

The term "Third World" is not universally accepted. Some prefer other terms such as - the South, the Global South, non-industrialized countries, underdeveloped countries, undeveloped countries, mal-developed countries, emerging nations. The term "Third World" is probably the one most widely used in the media today.

No term describes all non-"First World", non-industrialized, non-developed, non -"Western" countries accurately. In comparison, the United States has been categorized as being part of : the West, the First World, the industrialized world, the developed world, the North, the Global North.

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001.

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.

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