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Third World
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Not to be confused with Developing country.
For other uses, see Third World (disambiguation).
In present-day English, the Third World is "the developing countries of Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa". [1] Third world countries in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa include Russia, Albania, Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Argentina, South Africa, and Armenia. The term usually suggests poverty and low level of industrial development and thus it is the opposite of the term developed nations. This usage is considered by some to be offensive.[2]
The "three worlds" of the Cold War era, as of the period between April 1975 and August 1975.
First World: United States, United Kingdom and their allies.
Second World: Soviet Union, China, and their allies.
Third World: neutral and non-aligned countries.
The term Third World was formulated in 1952 by French economic historian Alfred Sauvy to mean countries that were neither part of the West nor of the Iron Curtain.[3] Thus the term originally had a political meaning as it arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Communist Bloc. The United States, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Western European nations and their allies represented the First World, while the Soviet Union, China, Cuba and their allies represented the Second World. This terminology provided a way of broadly categorizing the nations of the Earth into three groups based on political and politically-related economic divisions.
The Third World was normally seen to include many countries with colonial pasts in Africa, Latin America, Oceania, Asia, and Europe. It was also sometimes taken as synonymous with countries in the Non-Aligned Movement. In the dependency theory of thinkers like Raúl Prebisch, Walter Rodney, Theotonio dos Santos, and Andre Gunder Frank, the Third World has also been connected to the world economic division as "periphery" countries in the world system that is dominated by the "core" countries.[4]
Due to the complex history of evolving meanings and contexts, there is no clear or agreed-upon definition of the Third World.[4] Some countries in the Communist Bloc, such as Cuba, were often regarded as "Third World". Because many Third World countries were extremely poor, and non-industrialized, it became a stereotype to refer to poor countries as "third world countries", yet the "Third World" term is also often taken to include newly industrialized countries like Brazil, South Africa, Russia, China excluding Hong Kong, and India now more commonly referred to as part of BRICS. Historically, some European countries were non-aligned and a few of these were and are very prosperous, including Austria, Sweden, Finland, and Switzerland.
The term Third World is still largely used interchangeably with the least developed countries, the Global South and developing countries.
Contents
[hide]
1 Etymology
2 Third World vs. Three Worlds
3 Third Worldism
4 History
5 Foreign aid and development
6 Great Divergence and Great Convergence
7 See also
8 References
9 External links
Etymology[edit]
French demographer, anthropologist and historian Alfred Sauvy, in an article published in the French magazine L'Observateur, August 14, 1952, coined the term Third World (French: Tiers Monde), referring to countries that were unaligned with either the Communist Soviet bloc or the Capitalist NATO bloc during the Cold War.[5] His usage was a reference to the Third Estate, the commoners of France who, before and during the French Revolution, opposed the clergy and nobles, who composed the First Estate and Second Estate, respectively. Sauvy wrote, "This third world ignored, exploited, despised like the third estate also wants to be something."[6] He conveyed the concept of political non-alignment with either the capitalist or communist bloc.[7]
Third World vs. Three Worlds[edit]
See also: Three World Model and Three Worlds Theory
The "Three Worlds Theory" developed by Mao Zedong is different from the Western theory of the Three Worlds or Third World. For example, in the Western theory, China and India belong respectively to the second and third worlds, but in Mao's theory both China and India are part of the Third World which he defined as consisting of exploited nations.
Third Worldism[edit]
Main article: Third-Worldism
Third Worldism is a political movement that argues for the unity of third-world nations against first-world influence and the principle of non-interference in other countries' domestic affairs. Groups most notable for expressing and exercising this idea are the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and the Group of 77 which provide a base for relations and diplomacy between not just the third-world countries, but between the third-world and the first and second worlds. The notion has been criticized as providing a fig leaf for human-rights violations and political repression by dictatorships.[8]
History[edit]
Most Third World countries are former colonies. Having gained independence, many of these countries, especially smaller ones, were faced with the challenges of nation- and institution-building on their own for the first time. Due to this common background, many of these nations were "developing" in economic terms for most of the 20th century, and many still are. This term, used today, generally denotes countries that have not developed to the same levels as OECD countries, and are thus in the process of developing.
In the 1980s, economist Peter Bauer offered a competing definition for the term "Third World". He claimed that the attachment of Third World status to a particular country was not based on any stable economic or political criteria, and was a mostly arbitrary process. The large diversity of countries considered part of the Third World — from Indonesia to Afghanistan — ranged widely from economically primitive to economically advanced and from politically non-aligned to Soviet- or Western-leaning. An argument could also be made for how parts of the U.S. are more like the Third World.[9]
The only characteristic that Bauer found common in all Third World countries was that their governments "demand and receive Western aid," the giving of which he strongly opposed. Thus, the aggregate term "Third World" was challenged as misleading even during the Cold War period, because it had no consistent or collective identity among the countries it supposedly encompassed.
Foreign aid and development[edit]
During the Cold War, unaligned countries of the Third World[4] were seen as potential allies by both the First and Second World. Therefore, the United States and the Soviet Union went to great lengths to establish connections in these countries by offering economic and military support to gain strategically located alliances (e.g., United States in Vietnam or Soviet Union in Cuba).[4] By the end of the Cold War, many Third World countries had adopted capitalist or communist economic models and continued to receive support from the side they had chosen. Throughout the Cold War and beyond, the countries of the Third World have been the priority recipients of Western foreign aid and the focus of economic development through mainstream theories such as modernization theory and dependency theory.[4]
By the end of the 1960s, the idea of the Third World came to represent countries in Africa, Europe, Asia and Latin America that were considered underdeveloped by rich countries like the USA and Japan based on a variety of characteristics (low economic development, low life expectancy, high rates of poverty and disease, etc.).[5] These countries became the targets for aid and support from governments, NGOs and individuals from wealthier nations. One popular model, known as Rostow's stages of growth, argued that development took place in 5 stages (Traditional Society; Pre-conditions for Take-off; Take-off; Drive to Maturity; Age of High Mass Consumption).[10] W. W. Rostow argued that Take-off was the critical stage that the Third World was missing or struggling with. Thus, foreign aid was needed to help kick-start industrialization and economic growth in these countries.[10]
However, despite decades of receiving aid and experiencing different development models (which have had very little success), many Third World countries' economies are still dependent on developed countries, and are deep in debt.[11] There is now a growing debate about why Third World countries remain impoverished and underdeveloped after all this time. Many argue that current methods of aid are not working and are calling for reducing foreign aid (and therefore dependency) and utilizing different economic theories than the traditional mainstream theories from the West.[12] Historically, development and aid have not accomplished the goals they were meant to, and currently the global gap between the rich and poor is greater than ever,[13] though not everybody agrees with this.[14]
Some scholars argue the problem of development amongst many third world states through socioeconomic perspectives which study how individuals form organizations among each other for all kinds of goals, such as economic matters. Scholars like North and Weingast claim that modern states are composed of natural states and open access order states whereby open access order states have more positive development than natural states, because in these states, legally binding institutions (rules of the game, customs) allow individuals to freely form impersonal organizations that can attract a large group of people who work or compete with each other economically.[15] The more competition, the more wealth and growth is created. Examples of open access states are many Western countries like America and Germany.[16]
In contrast, a natural state (which compromises much of the third world) consists of political elites who try to protect their special privileges by restricting access to the ability to form organizations amongst individuals.[16] These elites must rely on personal communication and the threat of violence to both maintain order and recruit "desirables" into the organizations. Such a set-up not only weakens good governance (as leaders are less accountable) but also leads to weak institutions, where peace is not always assured, as those in control of the means to inflict violence simply restrain themselves out of trust or loyalty, and can easily resort to violence, as has happened in the past (e.g., Biafra against the rest of Nigeria, Bangladesh against the rest of Pakistan).[17]
Over the last few decades, global population growth has largely been focused in Third World countries (which often have higher birth rates than developed countries). As populations expand in poorer countries, rural people are flocking to cities in an extensive urban migration that is resulting in the creation of massive shanty towns and slums.[13]
Great Divergence and Great Convergence[edit]
Density Function of the Worlds Income Distribution in 1970 by Continent, logarithmic scale: The division of the world into "rich" and "poor" is striking, and the world's poverty is concentrated in India and the Indian Sub-continent countries of Bangladesh and Pakistan in Asia.
Asia and Oceania
Africa
America
Europe
Density Function of the Worlds Income Distribution in 2015 by Continent, logarithmic scale: The division of the world into "rich" and "poor" was vanished, and the world's poverty can be found mainly in Europe (Russia and Ukraine), the Southeastern countries (e.g Burma), Indian Sub-continent, and Africa.
Asia and Oceania
Africa
America
Europe
Many times there is a clear distinction between First and Third Worlds. When talking about the Global North and the Global South, the majority of the time the two go hand in hand. People refer to the two as "Third World/South" and "First World/North" because the Global North is more affluent and developed, whereas the Global South is less developed and often poorer.[18] To counter this mode of thought, some scholars began proposing the idea of a change in world dynamics that began in the late 1980s, and termed it the Great Convergence.[14] As Jack A. Goldstone and his colleagues put it, "in the twentieth century, the Great Divergence peaked before the First World War and continued until the early 1970s, then, after two decades of indeterminate fluctuations, in the late 1980s it was replaced by the Great Convergence as the majority of Third World countries reached economic growth rates significantly higher than those in most First World countries".[19]
Others have observed a return to Cold War-era alignments (MacKinnon, 2007; Lucas, 2008), this time with substantial changes between 1990–2015 in geography, the world economy and relationship dynamics between current and emerging world powers; not necessarily redefining the classic meaning of First, Second, and Third World terms, but rather which countries belong to them by way of association to which world power or coalition of countries — such as G7, the European Union, OECD; G20, OPEC, BRICS, ASEAN; the African Union, and the Eurasian Union.
See also[edit]
Developing country
Failed state
First World
Second World
Third world
Fourth World
References[edit]
Notes
Jump up ^ https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/Third_World
Jump up ^ http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/third-world
Jump up ^ http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=Third+World&allowed_in_frame=0
^ Jump up to: a b c d e Tomlinson, B.R. (2003). "What was the Third World", Journal of Contemporary History, 38(2): 307–321.
^ Jump up to: a b Gregory, Derek et al. (Eds.) (2009). Dictionary of Human Geography (5th Ed.), Wiley-Blackwell.
Jump up ^ Literal translation from French
Jump up ^ Wolf-Phillips, Leslie (1987). "Why 'Third World'?: Origin, Definition and Usage", Third World Quarterly, 9(4): 1311-1327.
Jump up ^ Pithouse, Richard (2005). Report Back from the Third World Network Meeting Accra, 2005. Centre for Civil Society : 1-6.
Jump up ^ "Third World America", MacLeans, September 14, 2010
^ Jump up to: a b Westernizing the Third World (Ch 2), Routledge
Jump up ^ "First, Second and Third World"
Jump up ^ Mehmet, Ozay, (1995). Mainstream economic development theories have failed to come up with a model that appropriately supports development in the Third World. Westernizing the Third World (Ch 1), Routledge
^ Jump up to: a b Westra, Richard (2011). "Renewing Socialist Development in the Third World", Journal of Contemporary Asia, 41(4): 519-543.
^ Jump up to: a b Korotayev A., Zinkina J. On the structure of the present-day convergence. Campus-Wide Information Systems. Vol. 31 No. 2/3, 2014, pp. 139-152
Jump up ^ North, D.C; Wallis, J.J; Weingast, R. (2009). Violence and social orders a conceptual framework for interpreting recorded human history. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 11.
^ Jump up to: a b North, D.C; Wallis, J.J; Weingast, R. (2009). Violence and social orders a conceptual framework for interpreting recorded human history. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 18.
Jump up ^ North, D.C; Wallis, J.J; Weingast, R. (2009). Violence and social orders a conceptual framework for interpreting recorded human history. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 21.
Jump up ^ Mimiko, Oluwafemi (2012). "Globalization: The Politics of Global Economic Relations and International Business". Carolina Academic Press: 49.
Jump up ^ Phases of global demographic transition correlate with phases of the Great Divergence and Great Convergence. Technological Forecasting and Social Change. Volume 95, June 2015, Page 163.
Further reading
Aijaz, Ahmad (1992). In theory: Classes, nations, literatures. London: Verso.
Aijaz, Charles K. (1973). The political economy of development and underdevelopment. New York: Random House.
Bauer, Peter T. (1981). Equality, the Third World, and economic delusion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Buchanan, Pat J. (2006). State of emergency: The Third World invasion and conquest of America. New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press.
Escobar, Arturo (2011). Encountering development: The making and unmaking of the Third World (revised ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Furtado, Celso (1964). Development and underdevelopment. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Huffington, Arianna S. (2010). Third World America: How our politicians are abandoning the middle class and betraying the American dream. New York: Crown Publishers.
Melkote, Srinivas R. & Steeves, H. Leslie. (1991). Communication for development in the Third World: Theory and practice for Empowerment. New Delhi: SAGE Publications.
Rangel, Carlos (1986). Third World Ideology and Western Reality. New Brunswick: Transaction Books.
Sheppard, Eric & Porter, Wayland P. (1998). A world of difference: Society, nature, development. New York: Guilford Press.
Smith, Brian C. (2013). Understanding Third World Politics: Theories of Political Change and Development (4th ed.). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
External links[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Third World.
Hans Rosling at TED 2006
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text:
The Girl Next Door (2007 film)
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The Girl Next Door
Theatrical release poster
Directed by
Gregory M. Wilson
Produced by
William M. Miller
Andrew van den Houten
Screenplay by
Daniel Farrands
Philip Nutman
Based on
The Girl Next Door
by Jack Ketchum
Starring
Blanche Baker
Daniel Manche
Blythe Auffarth
Narrated by
William Atherton
Music by
Ryan Shore
Cinematography
William M. Miller
Edited by
M.J. Fiore
Production
company
Modernciné
Modern Girl Productions
Distributed by
Starz Home Entertainment
Release date
October 3, 2007 (2007-10-03)
Running time
91 minutes
Country
United States
Language
English
The Girl Next Door (also known as Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door and, in Germany, Jack Ketchum's Evil) is a 2007 American horror film adaptation of Jack Ketchum's 1989 novel of the same name.[1] The film is loosely based on true events surrounding the torture and murder of Sylvia Likens by Gertrude Baniszewski during the summer of 1965.
Contents
[hide]
1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 See also
5 References
6 External links
Plot[edit]
In 2007, David Moran (William Atherton), a Wall Street player, witnesses a hit and run by a car. He responds to the situation and tries to resuscitate the victim. That evening, he reflects on his past to the summer of 1958, when he meets his first teenage crush Meg Loughlin (Blythe Auffarth). Meg and her disabled sister Susan (Madeline Taylor) have lost their parents in a car accident and because of this, they are sent to live with their reclusive aunt, Ruth Chandler (Blanche Baker), and her sons, Willie, Ralphie, and Donny (Graham Patrick Martin, Austin Williams and Benjamin Ross Kaplan).
Living next door to the Chandlers, David is aware of the charisma Ruth has, since she freely allows her sons and their neighborhood friends to her house, where she entertains them and offers them beer and cigarettes. Meanwhile, Ruth starves Meg, accuses her of being a whore and subjects her to misogynistic lectures, whilst her children listen. One day, David visits the Chandler residence, where he sees the Chandler sons tickling Meg. Ralphie inappropriately tickles Meg's breasts, prompting her to fend him off as she runs from the room. His brothers humiliate Susan and when Ralphie brings Ruth to the situation, Ruth reprimands her for forgiving Meg's actions. Ruth beats Susan's bare buttocks as the Chandler sons restrain a horrified Meg, who came back to the room to save Susan. Ruth then takes the ring that Meg wears around her neck, which belonged to her mother.
A few days later, Meg stops a policeman, Officer Jennings (Kevin Chamberlin) and reports the ongoing child abuse at the Chandler residence. As punishment, Ruth and her sons bind Meg in the basement with her hands tied to the rafters. They play a bizarre game of "confession", and when Meg has nothing to confess, she is stripped naked. They blindfold her, gag her and leave her there. That night, the boys sneak back downstairs, giving her water. They agree to loosen her bindings, but only if she lets them touch her. She refuses, but David loosens them anyway, promising to free her into the woods.
Eventually, Meg is untied but is unable to eat the food Ruth gives her since she is severely dehydrated, to the extent of choking if she did. Ruth again beats Susan's bare buttocks for Meg's disobedience. With Ruth's approval, the neighborhood children visit the Chandler residence to tie, beat, burn and cut Meg for fun. Ruth cauterizes the wounds Meg receives with cigarettes. David tries to tell his parents but is unable to do so. Soon, the Chandler sons hear Officer Jennings arriving at their house, after having had his suspicions raised after a local boy reports a girl being beaten and used as a "plaything". Before answering the door, Ruth threatens to kill Meg and David if they make a noise in the basement. Ruth and her sons then mislead Jennings and assures him that no wrongdoing has occurred. Back in the basement, David secretly loosens her bindings and tells her that it is time for her to escape. He also leaves money in the woods for Meg to run away with it. The next day, David still sees the money there, realizing that his plan had failed.
David quickly returns to the basement. There, Meg is raped by Willie, as punishment for trying to escape. David tells Ruth to stop but is harshly ignored. Donny steps forward, wanting to rape Meg as well, but Ruth does not want him to, considering it to be incest to have sex whilst his brother's "scum" is still inside Meg. Ruth instead offers Eddie or David to take a turn with her. When David declines, Ralphie requests Ruth to brand Meg so that she'll be known as a whore. She happily agrees as she starts carving into Meg’s belly and past her belly button the words "I FUCK, FUCK ME" with a heated bobby pin. Ruth taunts Meg about how she will never have relations with a man due to the branding. However, she fears that Meg may still have feelings, especially for David, and decides to perform a clitorectomy. David tries to flee and tell somebody but the children, under Ruth's command, tie him up. Bound on the floor, David helplessly watches Ruth mutilate Meg's vagina with a blowtorch.
The next morning, David awakes still on the basement floor. He frees himself from his bindings and finds Susan sitting with an unconscious Meg. Susan tells David that Meg did not escape the night that he secretly untied her because she was caught trying to take Susan with her. Although David's plan was to come back for Susan after Meg escaped, Susan had told Meg that Ruth had molested her on a regular basis to extent of making her bleed, which made Meg want to escape, along with her sister, the house as soon as possible. Susan then tearfully insists that Meg should have just gone without her and saved herself while she could, but David tells Susan everything was going to be all right.
David is afraid that Meg won't survive much longer without help, so he tries to get everyone else's attention by lighting a fire in the basement. Ruth notices the smoke from the fire and enters the basement. As she enters, David quickly bludgeons Ruth to death with Susan's crutches. Willie attacks David and vengefully attempts to stab him as Donny mourns his mother's death. Jennings and another policeman arrest Willie and Donny (and presumably Ralphie) in time. Jennings checks Ruth's pulse and questions David but after he tells him about her crimes, he leaves Ruth for dead. After Susan is taken from the basement by the authorities, David retrieves Meg's ring from Ruth's corpse and gives it to Meg as she succumbs to her wounds.
Back in 2007, the adult David reflects on how his past still haunts him to his present day, though as Meg taught him, "It's what you do last that really counts."
Cast[edit]
Daniel Manche as David Moran
William Atherton as adult David Moran
Blythe Auffarth as Meg Loughlin
Blanche Baker as Ruth Chandler
Madeline Taylor as Susan Loughlin
Benjamin Ross Kaplan as Donny Chandler
Graham Patrick Martin as Willie Chandler, Jr.
Austin Williams as Ralphie Chandler
Michael Nardella as Tony
Kevin Chamberlin as Officer Lyle Jennings
Dean Faulkenberry as Kenny
Gabrielle Howarth as Cheryl Robinson
Spenser Leigh as Denise Crocker
Grant Show as Mr. Moran
Catherine Mary Stewart as Mrs. Moran
Peter Stickles as EMT
Michael Zegen as Eddie
Jennifer Alexander as Girl at concession stand
Jack Ketchum as Carnival worker
Mark Margolis as Hit and run victim
Reception[edit]
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (June 2016)
The film had a polarizing effect on film critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, it currently holds a 67% "Fresh" rating. In contrast, Metacritic assigns it a 29.
Stephen King said about the film, "The first authentically shocking American film I've seen since Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer over 20 years ago. If you are easily disturbed, you should not watch this movie. If, on the other hand, you are prepared for a long look into hell, suburban style, The Girl Next Door will not disappoint. This is the dark-side-of-the-moon version of Stand by Me."
See also[edit]
An American Crime, which leans more in the direction of a documentary telling of the Likens story was scheduled for release at roughly the same time, but not released until a Showtime premiere in mid-2008.
References[edit]
Jump up ^ New Book Goes Behind the Scenes of The Girl Next Door Movie
External links[edit]
The Girl Next Door on IMDb
The Girl Next Door at Rotten Tomatoes
The Girl Next Door at Metacritic
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Girl_Next_Door_(2007_film)&oldid=835779374"
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