Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
to be used with disturbing geographical looseness, since the South
includes many states in the northern hemisphere, such as China and
Mongolia, whereas Australasia comprises part of the North.
Although attention in recent years has focused on growing contrasts
within the Third World itself, it has also masked the more important
fact that global contrasts too are continuing to widen. In particular
there has been much concern that a large number of countries, particu-
larly in Africa, have not only failed to exhibit any signs of development
but have actually deteriorated, saddled as they have been with the
spiralling debts of poverty and harsh structural adjustment pro-
grammes. In this context, convergence theory could be seen as a myth.
Indeed, it is arrogant to assume that the process of economic and cultural
transfer is one way. The West has not merely exported capitalism to the
developing world, capitalism itself was built up from resources trans-
ferred to the West from those same countries. Similarly, acculturation
is not simply the spread of Gucci and McDonald's around the world; in
almost every developed country, clothes, music and cuisine, together
with many other aspects of day-to-day living, are permeated with influ-
ences from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean such as
bamboo furniture, curries and salsa music.
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The Third World by Another Name?
If the Second World no longer exists, can there be a Third World? In
this sense, there is little justification for retaining the term, particu-
larly since the early commonality of non-alignment and poverty has
also long been fragmented. Many commentators in the 1990s, particu-
larly those who form part of the anti-development school, suggested
that it is time for the term to be abandoned. Sachs (1992: 3), inelegantly
but forcefully, stated that 'the scrapyard of history now awaits the cat-
egory “Third World” to be dumped'. Yet despite such strong condemna-
tion the term persists in common usage, even by some of those who
have criticized its overall validity.
So why is the term still in use? Perhaps, as Norwine and Gonzalez
(1988) have remarked, some regions are best defined or distinguished
by their diversity. Despite the variations in the nature of the Third
World that we have noted, most people in most developing countries
continue to live in grinding poverty with little real chance of escape.
