I’ve never heard someone call their own country a “third world country”. Out of curiosity, which country are you referring to?
I'm from what used to be a third-world country in the strict sense of term, I'd now refer to my country as a country in the global south.
Meaning what, in the southern hemisphere and not Australia or new Zealand?
We have 195 countries in the world and only 33 of those are entirely on the southern hemisphere.
Here is one example of an illustrative map:
Or not necessarily that the inventor of the phrase thinks like that themselves, but rather that they think most people think that way.
The closest geographical designation was the Brandt line drawn in the 80s showing a north and south divide in terms of global wealth distribution [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_North_and_Global_South#...
I understand if this comes across as pedantry but the global north and south terminology does a better job at leveling the playing field when talking about wealth and progress disparities.
As per your other question, Australia is part of the global north, China is part of the global south in the global north and south groupings.
I mean... but how? It's just the exact same concepts with less intuitively obvious words. Arguably it frames the disparity as a more immutable part of a nation; it doesn't fit normal language patterns to talk about a country moving north/south.
How? South Korea, Japan, and Singapore are richer than France or Spain now. As nations develop the geographic terminology makes less and less sense. Developing nation is much more accurate.
In other words, effectively developed = what we are, developing = trying to be what we are.
It also places unnecessary upper bound on progress (if you call yourself developed, I guess you can stop developing then?).
Ultimately it is forcing a finite game onto the world.
Global south sounds like a better term.
That’s the plan, yes.
> Ultimately it is forcing a finite game onto the world. Global south sounds like a better term.
Except that it’s geographically inaccurate as well as kind of racist. Japan, Singapore, and Korea can get richer than France or Spain, but they still get lumped in with the other non-white people in “the global south.”
Just to clarify, the plan is to stop developing?
> Japan, Singapore, and Korea can get richer than France or Spain, but they still get lumped in with the other non-white people in “the global south.”
Global south/north divide lumps SK, SG and JP into the north. I have a bigger problem with it putting Russia there, but not e.g. Argentina.
Besides, note how the term "developed" sounds like it has an objective, final and fixed definition, but always invites moving goalposts. Now you use some financial metric. Tomorrow someone uses education levels or democracy.
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The truth is that everybody should keep developing, and development can entail different things to different people. If you say "I'm developed, and that other person is developing", "we are good, but they are not good yet", all you get is resentment when in fact you want global cooperation.
"Developedness" is a vague, subjective measure that indicates duck all except hubris on the part of whoever coined the term (not coincidentally, that was developed countries).
A vague measure warrants a vague term. "Global South" is far from perfect, but it is less bad. It is obviously geographically inaccurate, which on a meta level is quite fitting.
I don't think I could ever use either term without air quotes, but at least with global south they are more or less implied.
Only if you arbitrarily make exceptions for what’s “south”—ignoring the fact that Singapore and Taiwan and Korea are south of China. The phrase itself implies a permanent association between “south” (I.e. non-white, since skin color is a function of latitude) and “under-undeveloped.” That seems far worse to me than acknowledging that developing countries are indeed trying to become like developed countries.
I'm not against replacing "third world", but something with the word "south" is ambiguous and counterintuitive.
'Southern hemisphere' is fine though I think? And I assume that's what was meant.
Your conclusion is my point.
Doesn't make sense. The second world countries wouldn't drop the third world when realigning to first world.
First world: NATO aligned. Second world: Warsawa pact aligned. Third world: Non-aligned.
Sweden and Swtizerland are traditional third world countries.
That is the official terminology used in school books required by the official curriculum.