What is the third world?

•  Answer 1: Like the 3rd Estate in pre-Revolutionary France, the third world is rural, agriculture, and poor.
• In fact this image is not perfect, as the third world has become substantially urban.
• In practice, the level of poverty is far below anything that Americans experience.

• Answer 2: The third world is the "post colonial world," the countries that were affected by colonialism and are still influenced by it.

What countries were colonized?
•  Pretty much all of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Mid East
•  exceptions:  Ethiopia, Thailand, Japan, China, Russia, Turkey

• Boundaries of countries, what peoples were included
• often many cultures who don't want to live together
• Culture: language, religion, secular values, science
• Economy: export agricultural and mineral commodities, import technology, capital.
• Type of government: colonial ruling bureaucracy, idea of democracy
• Looting of Latin American gold  Spanish treasure fleet
• Much gold lost in shipwrecks links | Florida - 2 | Key West
• Continued linkages with colonial power
• "Artificial State" created and imposed on people,
•  not linked to traditional social and political organization
• not chosen by people

Other Names for the Third World:

Developing countries; but what if they aren't developing?

Developing nations; but are they nations?

Less Developed Countries (LDCs); but is there only one type of "development"?

Newly Industrialized Countries (NICS); true for a few

The South; although many are south of the equator, is geography so critical?  I don't want to stress geography.
    Jared Diamond's book argues  that geography has shaped the third world

• Book announcement
• interviews, rebuttals, reviews


The Fourth World; the poorest of the poor countries
Group of 77; UNCTAD countries; countries that formed the U.N. Committee on Trade and Development that argued for a New International Economic Order.
 

Our Textbook groups the Third World this way:
 

NICs (Newly Industrialized Countries
    Mexico
    India

Less Developed Countries
    Nigeria

Islamic World
    Egypt


 

General Patterns/Problems in the Third World:

1. Demographic Transition

    Traditional Pattern:

high death rate (especially of children, due to unclean water, malnutrition)
    high birth rate (to ensure two surviving sons, for old age security)
    Transition Phase:
    Death rate drops
        (due to improved sanitation, immunization campaigns)
    more children survive
    Birth rate stays high
    Population expands (from youngest ages)
    After 20 years, more young people entering labor market
    Soon a second wave of "baby boomers"
    This process creates much social and political stress
    Mature Phase
    Birth rate drops
    Population levels off at a much higher level (3-5 x)


2. Diversity

Usually, the state encompasses many ethnic groups
Ethnic hegemony leads to resistance, often communal violence


3. Dictatorship

democracy not well established in culture or institutions
military takes over, establishes dictatorship
cycle of dictatorship - democracy - dictatorship - democracy etc.


4. Corruption
        often institutionalized ("kleptocracy")

5. Dependency
    economic dependence on rich countries
 

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