Third — Developing — South?
I recently attended a webinar, hosted by one of the most reputed architectural schools in India. They had invited a world renowned architect, what are now called ‘starchitects’, from one of the European countries to present his work for an Indian audience of young students and architects. When asked, how he would suggest that the issue of urban sprawl be tackled in the context of India (since his work revolves around building cities for people), he was quick to revert that he didn’t think he knew “how in a ‘Third-World Country’ like India it could be tackled”, as he had little experience with the scale and situation.
This was in a webinar that was attended by over 500 architects and architecture students from across the country. On one hand, I was shocked on the blatant use of the term that is known to be quite derogatory in most western countries, down-right offensive actually, for it clearly put India in a hierarchical position from the medieval times. Where the current generation of scholars are working against any kind of fixated definitions, whether if comes with gender, sexuality or even nationality, we still have a few defining entities as large as countries as they were during the Cold War.
The trajectory of the term can be traced to around the mid-20th century, just about when the Cold War was starting out between the Western capitalism (USA, western Europe and allies) versus Soviet socialism(USSR, China, Cuba and allies), which had support from many countries from around the world. However there were countries, many of them former colonies, which did not squarely sit on either side and hence formed another group. Addressing these three groups, French demographer Alfred Sauvy wrote of “Three worlds, one planet” in an article published in L’Observateur in 1952. The third world has never had a clear category of analysis, however since the colonies were impoverished after having been colonialized by the First Worlds, the term came to be used to refer the poor world.
Image: nationsonline.org
Figuratively, today the term has become an adjective which subtly implies entire countries as unsophisticated, poor and unequal, almost being used as an adjective itself. Yet, the categorisation was coined as a marker for a nation’s political ideology and maybe the lack of one for the ‘Third World’, in the time of a global unrest. However the term can no longer be a blanket term for economic, political and social life of half of the world population and more than half of world geographically. Yet, it has become a short hand to refer to an image of poverty-ridden, plagued with governmental corruption or an unstable economic condition. While countries do face such circumstances, to categorically characterize a whole nation as ‘Third world’ can be ambiguously misleading.
When Sauvy wrote of “Three worlds, one planet” for his article, he envisioned the world entirely constructed in terms of capitalism and socialism, with an undecided grey area for the ones who had not picked sides. However, in the 21st century, with globalisation and the development of a global economy, how can we still refer to places with whom we share resources, that grow and produce resources that are consumed by many in other ‘advanced’ countries, as that from ‘another world’?
The correct terminology of addressing the ‘another world’ is often debated. We have moved from the categorisation of developed and under-developed, to developed and developing. This is still a better choice as the countries in the latter categories do need to develop better education, better health care and provision of basic amenities to its people. The term almost gives the countries a chance to improve. However, it still developed a hierarchy between countries, designating the ‘Western world’ as ideals of development when even those societies face social and political problems.
This categorisation was considered invalid in the academic world, being replaced by a solution to label countries based on the geography, ‘the global south’ and ‘the global west’. However, the issue with labels still sits like an elephant in the room and the fact that all of these terms come from positions of power and authority held by few people in the western countries. The question remains- What is the correct label? Or can there ever be an appropriate label, especially when there is a disbalance that creates power positions and the labels come from positions of power, patronising the others?
Labels that define identities, forming hierarchies and producing incomplete images that are a blanket for the majority of the world population is a challenge, one that does not necessarily have to be taken up. I might not be sure of the answer to the question posed above, but I believe that rhetoric on nations should be unifying rather than divisive. There is only one world, which happens to be shared and not owned; hence it is important to eliminate the divisive factor and learn to co-exist without hierarchies.
