First and Third Worlds .... no more

Hey, I am a tad past the halfway mark in terms of the number of essays I have graded thus far.  I should be able to complete the grading before this evening.  I will update you at that time.

In your responses to DQ 3 and in some of your essays I notice the usage of "Third World" countries and cities.  Yes, colloquially we use them.  But not anymore in the academic world.  Which is why the textbook authors and I use phrases like "developing countries" ....

So, what is the deal with "First" and "Third" Worlds anyway?  It refers more to the Cold War era than anything else.  Western European countries, Japan, Australia, US, Canada, etc. were classified as the First World, back in the dark ages of the nasty Cold War, and the Soviet bloc countries were the Second World.  And the rest of the world, which was mostly poor countries anyway, were referred to as the Third World.

In a way, a majority of the so-called Third World countries were also members of the Non-Aligned Movement--that they were not aligned with the American influence nor with the Soviet influence.  I personally think that this non-alignment was more a fiction than a fact; but the reality was that this was a large number of countries.

Of course, the fall of the Soviet Union and the communist governments of its erstwhile ideologically aligned countries means that there is no longer a "Soviet bloc" and no "Second World."  East Germany--a former Second World country--does not exist anymore and neither does Czechoslovakia, which split up into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Meanwhile, many old Third World countries have rapidly moved out of "Third World" economic conditions.  Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, Brazil, ..... the list is long.

So, the academic world, and the political world too, has abandoned the usage of "Third World".  If we are not happy with a dualistic Developed versus Developing usage, then we go with, for instance, "high income", "middle income" and "low income".  Note that "middle income" does not mean the old "Second World"--there is no one-to-one correspondence other than that at the high-income level.

I hope this helps.  Let me know if I can "talk" more about this; will gladly do.  Meanwhile, I will get back to grading.