I agree, but this often leaves open the question of defining new and
appropriate terminologies for what we're trying to express.
I'll use India as an example, since I'm very familiar with it (I grew up
there, for the latter part of my childhood). India is extremely,
ridiculously, industrialized, as a nation. India is also the world's
largest democracy. India also sports a middle class with ridiculous
amounts of purchasing power and a standard of living that, in many ways,
far surpasses that of Western Europe or the US (do middle class
Americans have chauffeurs and servants to clean their houses? Indians
do, and couldn't live without them...upper middle class Indians rarely
interact with the poverty you saw on National Geographic).
And this brings me to the catch...India has a yawning chasm between the
"middle" and the "lower" economic classes. And the "lower" economic
classes comprise a very large percentage of the population. Which, given
the size of the population, is a very large number of people indeed. It
is easy to lose sight of this population if you are a member of a middle
class that is trying to insulate itself as quickly as possible, or lose
sight of the development in India if you are focusing on the
poverty...but India is both, as much as it is anything.
India is, in many ways, a better-than-first-world and a
ridiculously-third-world nation at the same time. This dichotomy makes
it very difficult to label India, and other nations like India (India is
by no means alone) in terms of a category heading.
This is the dilemma in finding a vocabulary for thought processes on
these nations. Suggestions?
D.
---
Dave A. Chakrabarti
Projects Coordinator
CTCNet Chicago
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Andrew Pleasant wrote:
For what it is worth, when a collective term is unavoidable I use
high income, low income .. and less often, economies in transition.
Most often these seem simply more accurate as the reference isn't really to
a state of 'development' or an alternative, and unfortunately too often
implied lesser, 'world'.
ap
On 11/7/05, Dr. Steve Eskow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Since I know that "Third World" was chosen by the partisans of those
countries themselves, and many continue to favor it, I've been using
"Third
World" regularly. I think, however, that Don Osborn is right, and that the
term has grown into negativity.
...
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