‘Third World’: the 60th anniversary of a concept that changed history

Abstract

The term ‘Third World’ was coined in 1952 by the French scientist Alfred Sauvy. From the start the meaning of both the phrase itself and its geographical reference have been ambiguous. Generally speaking the term has always had both a political and a socioeconomic meaning, even though at first, during the Cold War, the political sense was more widely applied. The term gained popularity quickly and it became one of the most important and expressive concepts of the 20th century. From the very beginning, however, it was strongly criticised. Its critics have pointed out many different problems, which is why some people have argued that the notion of the ‘Third World’ should be abandoned. These voices were particularly widespread after the end of the Cold War. Nevertheless, the concept ‘Third World’ is still valid and it remains one of the most frequently used terms for describing the global South. The factors that made the concept of the ‘Third World’ popular are still valid.

Notes

1 I write more about the concept of the Third World in MW Solarz, Trzeci Świat. Zarys biografii pojęcia (Third World: A Short Biography of the Concept), Warsaw: Warsaw University Press, 2009.

2 A Sauvy, ‘Trois mondes, une planète’, L'Observateur, 118, 1952; Funk and Wagnalls New Encyclopedia, New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1986, p 323; J Lacouture, ‘Bandung o[ugrave] la fin de l'ère coloniale’, Le Monde diplomatique, April 2005, pp 22–23, at http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2005/04/LACOUTURE/, 2012.03.24; M Nouschi, ‘L'émergence du tiers-monde’, in P Boniface (ed), Atlas des relations internationales, Paris: Hatier 2003, p 28; and P Worsley, ‘How many worlds?’, Third World Quarterly, 1(2), 1979, p 101.

3 A Sauvy, ‘Note sur l'origine de l'expression “Tiers Monde” par Alfred Sauvy’, Le Magazine de l'Homme Moderne, at http://www.homme-moderne.org/societe/demo/sauvy/3mondes/html, accessed 20 March 2012; and M Tamim, Le spectre du Tiers-Monde: L'Education pour le Développement, Paris: L'Harmattan, 2002, p 29.

4 JT Marcus, Neutralism and Nationalism in France, New York: Bookman Associates, 1958, pp 33–34, 60; and MT Berger, ‘After the Third World? History, destiny and the fate of Third Worldism’, Third World Quarterly, 25(1), 2004, p 35.

5 W Lamanski, Tri mira azijsko-jewropejskawo matierika (Three Worlds of the Asian–European Continent), St Petersburg, 1892. See also M Zdziechowski, ‘Trzy światy: Europa, Rosja, Azja’ (‘Three worlds: Europe, Russia, Asia’), in Zdziechowski, Wybór pism (Selected Writings), Kraków: Wydawnictwo Znak, 1993, p 366.

6 Zdziechowski, ‘Trzy światy’, pp 361, 382, 384.

7 See JL Love, ‘“Third World”: a response to Professor Worsley’, Third World Quarterly, 2(2), 1980, pp 315–316.

8 W Giełżyński, Trzeci Świat—dwie trzecie świata (Third World—Two-thirds of the World), Warsaw: Młodzieżowa Agencja Wydawnicza, 1984, p 9; J-Y Calvez, Tiers Monde … Un monde dans le monde: aspects sociaux, politiques, internationaux, Paris: Editions Ouvrières, 1989, p 7; Sauvy, ‘Note sur l'origine de l'expression “Tiers Monde”’; and Love, ‘“Third World”’, p 316.

9 See W Safire, The New Language of Politics: An Anecdotal Dictionary of Catchwords, Slogans & Political Usage, New York: Random House, 1968; Safire, The New Language of Politics: A Dictionary of Catchwords, Slogans & Political Usage, New York: Collier Books, 1972; Worsley, ‘How many worlds?’; Worsley, The Three Worlds: Culture and World Development, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984; RB Potter, T Binns, JA Elliott & D Smith, Geographies of Development, Longman: London, 1999; M Power, Rethinking Development Geographies, London: Routledge, 2003; BR Tomlinson, ‘What was the Third World?’, Journal of Contemporary History, 38(2), 2003; Berger, ‘After the Third World?’; and A Greig, D Hulme & M Turner, Challenging Global Inequality, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, pp 307–321.

10 L Wolf-Philips, ‘Why Third World?’, Third World Quarterly, 1(1), 1979, p 106.

11 Greig et al, Challenging Global Inequality, p 50.

12 See Sauvy, ‘Trois mondes, une planète’.

13 See, for example, Love, ‘“Third World”’, p 316; Worsley, The Three Worlds, p 307; Tomlinson, ‘What was the Third World?’, pp 308, 309, 311; J Haynes, Politics in the Developing World: A Concise Introduction, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002, p 6; HA Reitsma & JMG Kleinpenning, The Third World in Perspective, Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1989, p 23; Potter et al, Geographies of Development, p 17; AB Mountjoy, The Third World: Problems and Perspectives, London: Macmillan Press, 1980, p 13; Wolf-Philips, ‘Why Third World?’, pp 106–108; Wolf-Philips, ‘Why “Third World”? Origin, definition and usage’, Third World Quarterly, 9(4), 1987, pp 1311–1312, 1318; and W Clark, ‘Preface’, in A Moyes & T Hayter, World III: A Handbook on Developing Countries, Oxford/New York: Pergamon/Macmillan Company, 1965, p xiii.

14 Love, ‘“Third World”’, p 316.

15 Ibid.

16 Wolf-Philips, ‘Why Third World?’, pp 106–107.

17 Marcus, Neutralism and Nationalism in France, pp 46–47, 53–54.

18 RDG Kelley, ‘A poetics of anticolonialism’, Monthly Review, 51(6), 1999, at http://www.monthlyreview.org/1199kell.htm, accessed 15 March 2012.

19 See P Deszczyński, Kraje rozwijające się w koncepcjach ekonomicznych SPD: Doktryna i praktyka (Developing Countries in the Economic Concepts of the SPD: Doctrine and Practice), Poznań: Wydawnictwo Akademii Ekonomicznej, 2001, p 20.

20 See HW Arndt, Economic Development: The History of an Idea, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987, p 42.

21 L Sédar Senghor, ‘Bandoeng’, in P Braillard & M-R Djalili (eds), Tiers Monde et Relations Internationales, Paris: Masson, 1984, p 67.

22 J-P Sartre, ‘Posłowie’ (Epilogue), in F Fanon, Wyklęty lud ziemi (The Wretched of the Earth), Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1985, pp 219–220.

23 V Prashad noticed that ‘during the seemingly interminable battles against colonialism, the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America dreamed of a new world … They assembled their grievances and aspirations into various kinds of organizations, where their leadership then formulated a platform of demands … The “Third World” comprised these hopes and the institutions produced to carry them forward.’ Quoted in JD Sidaway, ‘Geographies of development: new maps, new visions?’, Professional Geographer, 64(1), 2012, p 52.

24 For one of the latest critiques, see Sidaway, ‘Geographies of development’, pp 49–62.

25 I Sachs, Kształt niepodległości: Wprowadzenie do polityki Trzeciego Świata (The Shape of Independence: An Introduction to Third World Politics), Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1966, p 16.

26 MW Lewis & KE Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997, p 208; and V Randall & R Theobald, Political Change and Underdevelopment: A Critical Introduction to Third World Politics, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998, p 13.

27 See, for example, Wolf-Philips, ‘Why “Third World”?’, pp 1314–1315; Haynes, Politics in the Developing World, pp 7–8; Randall & Theobald, Political Change and Underdevelopment, p 15; and BC Smith, Understanding Third World Politics: Theories of Political Change and Development, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, pp 17–19.

28 Some institutions active in the post-cold war period, based in both the North and the South, are the Third World Network, Third World Media Network, enda Tiers Monde (Enda-tm, Environnement et Développement du Tiers Monde), Action Solidarité Tiers Monde (astm), Carrefour Tiers-Monde (ctm), Forum du Tiers Monde, Médecine pour le Tiers Monde, Instituto del Tercer Mundo (item), Third World Organization for Women in Science (twows), Stowarzyszenie Sprawiedliwego Handlu ‘Trzeci Świat i my’, and Ruch Solidarności z Ubogimi Trzeciego Świata ‘maitri’, etc. See the list of recent books, for example, from Routledge, Palgrave Macmillan or L'Harmattan. See also Solarz, Trzeci Świat, pp 129–130.

29 I would like to thank Dr Izabella Łęcka (University of Warsaw) and Dr Robert M Arthur (University of United Arab Emirates) for their help in carrying out my survey.

30 See also MW Solarz, ‘Wstęp’ (‘Preface’), in Solarz (ed), Kraje rozwijające się na początku XXI wieku: Wybrane problemy (Developing Countries in the early 21st Century: Selected Problems), Warsaw: Warsaw University Press, 2011, p 11.

31 See Funk and Wagnalls New Encyclopedia, p 323.

32 See, further, MW Solarz, ‘North–South, commemorating the first Brandt Report: searching for the contemporary spatial picture of the global rift’, Third World Quarterly, 33(3), 2012, pp 559–569.

33 See A Leszczyński, ‘Kto się rozwija, kto się zwija’ (‘Who is developing, who is collapsing’), Polityka, 52–53, 2004–05, p 72.

34 See B Lisocka-Jaegermann, ‘Geografia wobec problemów Trzeciego Świata’ (‘Geography and the Third World’), in W Maik, K Rembowska & A Suliborski (eds), Geografia a przemiany współczesnego świata: Podstawowe idee i koncepcje w geografii (Geography and the Changing Contemporary World: Basic Ideas and Concepts in Geography), Bydgoszcz: Wydawnictwo Wyższej Szkoły Gospodarki, 2007, p 165.

35 See, further, Solarz, ‘North–South, commemorating the first Brandt Report’.

36 See Haynes, Politics in the Developing World, p 8.

37 J Swift, The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of the Cold War, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, map 50.

38 J Barbag, ‘Mapa polityczna świata’ (‘Politcal map of the world’), in Barbag (ed), Geografia świata (Geography of the World), Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Szkolne i Pedagogiczne, 1985, p 698.

39 See Solarz, ‘The communist world from dawn till dusk: a political geography perspective’, Miscellanea Geographica—Regional Studies on Development, 16(1), 2012, pp 1–6. www.versita.com/mgrsd/

40 According to a survey by the Hungarian tarki Social Research Institute. The survey was conducted in Belarus, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine. See Solarz, ‘The communist world from dawn till dusk’; ‘Nie mija tęsknota za socjalizmem’ (‘Socialism is still missed’), Gazeta Wyborcza, 8 March 2006, at http://wiadomosci.gazeta.pl, accessed 12 March 2006; and ‘Nostalgia za komunizmem’ (‘Nostalgia for communism’), Rzeczpospolita, 9 March 2006, p 2, at http://archiwum.rp.pl, accessed 12 March 2006.

41 Randall & Theobald, Political Change and Underdevelopment, pp 14–15.

42 Solarz, ‘The communist world from dawn till dusk’.

43 As V Prashad wrote: ‘The Third World was not a place. It was a project.’ Sidaway, ‘Geographies of development’, p 52.

44 Power, Rethinking Development Geographies, p 111.

45 See Potter et al, Geographies of Development, p 22.