Читать книгу Sociology - Anthony Giddens - Страница 175

Classifying countries and regions into groups according to criteria of similarity and difference is always contentious, as all such schemes are likely, or may be perceived, to contain value judgements. For example, after the Second World War, and with the developing Cold War between the superpowers of the Soviet Union and the USA, the three worlds model was widely used in academic studies. In this model, the First World included the industrialized countries such as the USA, Germany and the UK; the communist countries of the Soviet Union (USSR) and Eastern Europe made up the Second World; and the non-industrial countries with relatively low average incomes made up the Third World (see chapter 6, ‘Global Inequality’, for a discussion of the political origins of concept of the Third World).

Although presented as a neutral classification, it is hard to use these terms without appearing to imply that the First World is somehow superior to the Second and the Second is superior to the Third. In short, this scheme was adopted by scholars from the First World, who viewed their own societies as the norm towards which all others would or should strive. The collapse of Eastern European communism after 1989 and rapid industrialization in some Third World countries made this model less empirically adequate, and few, if any, social scientists use this scheme uncritically today.

An alternative scheme that is still widely used today is the simple, perhaps overly simple, distinction between developed and developing countries. Countries that have undergone a thorough process of industrialization and have high levels of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, including Australia, Norway and France, fall within the category of developed countries. On the other hand, developing countries have mostly been exploited and underdeveloped by colonial regimes and consequently are less industrialized, have lower levels of GDP per capita, and are undergoing a long-term process of economic improvement. Niger, Chad, Burundi and Mali fall into this category, for example (UNDP 2019b: 300–3). This basic classification has long been used by the UN and those working in the sub-field of ‘development studies’, though it does not claim to be based on widely agreed criteria. Instead it is designed to enable the collection of statistical information which allows for international comparisons, which in turn facilitates interventions aimed at improving the life chances of people in developing countries.