Originally posted by vansmack:
Originally posted by HoyaParanoia:
if you really cared about developing nations you wouldn't refer to them with the politically incorrect term "third world"
Would you prefer undeveloped? [/b]
i frankly don't really care, but i became interested ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World These countries are also known as the Global South, developing countries, least developed countries and the Majority World in academic circles.
Development workers also call them the two-thirds world and The South. Some dislike the term developing countries as it implies that economic development (industrialisation) is the only way forward, while they believe it is not necessarily the most beneficial. The term Third World is also disliked as it implies the false notion that those countries are not a part of the global economic system.
The term "third world" was coined by economist Alfred Sauvy in an article in the French magazine L'Observateur of August 14, 1952. It was a deliberate reference to the "Third Estate" of the French Revolution. Tiers monde means third world in French. The term gained widespread popularity during the Cold War when many poorer nations adopted the category to describe themselves as neither being aligned with NATO or the Warsaw Pact, but instead composing a non-aligned "third world" (in this context, the term "First World" was generally understood to mean the United States and its allies in the Cold War, which would have made the East bloc the "Second World" by default; however, the latter term was very seldom actually used).
