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In What was the Third World? Tomlinson describes what the
third world is and illustrates the efforts, mostly unsuccessful, made
to align these countries with the rest of the world. He discusses the
dangers of using one term to group such diverse countries and
critiques theories on how to develop these other countries.
The term Third World is generally used to describe Africa, Asia,
the Middle East, the Pacific islands, and Latin America. Tomlinson
quotes Peter Worsely saying that in the 1960s the Third World was
the world made up of the ex-colonial, newly-independent, non-aligned
countries. I find it so interesting that a term that now has such a
negative connotation never used to be attached to such cynicism.
Tomlinson informs us that the usage of the term Third World has
diminished greatly in the past years, which is an extremely positive
thing. Using the term Third World demonstrates our inability to see
our world as one, whole entity, which is half responsible for the large
discrepancy between countries. Another reason Tomlinson critiques use
of the term Third World is that the countries we group into this term
are so diverse. They differ in "size, political ideologies, social
structures, economic performance, cultural backgrounds, and historical
experiences.
Over the course of the existence of a Third World, there have
been several theories of how to improve the disparity between
and more with the empowerment of the people to achieve humancentered development.