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Take one NIC from the list above and do your own research to find out when the country’s economy began to take off, which industries drove forward this development, how the national government promoted development, and how globalization facilitated rapid development.

Further discussion of the NICs can be found in chapter 6, ‘Global Inequality’.

Since 2010, the UN has combined national life expectancy at birth, years of schooling and gross national income per capita (GNI) into its Human Development Index (HDI) as the basis for assessing the general condition of countries around the world. The HDI divides countries into four development categories: very high, high, medium and low human development. Hence, the basic concept of ‘development’ remains central to this scheme. Again, although this may appear as a neutral method of classifying countries based on empirical data, not everyone agrees.

Chapter 6, ‘Global Inequality’, contains much more on the HDI measure and development issues.

It may be argued that there is still an inherent bias, as the developing countries are seen to be ‘developing’ towards the existing model presented by the industrialized, developed countries, thus privileging the latter’s form of ‘development’ over all possible alternatives. There is also no sense from this scheme that the lower average incomes, life expectancy levels and public spending on schooling in many developing countries is part of the continuing legacy of being actively underdeveloped while under colonial rule. The World Bank abandoned the developed/developing scheme in 2016, preferring a classification of countries based on income per capita – low income, lower-middle income, upper-middle income and high income – which allows for reclassification as national economies improve or decline. However, this move means that the revised scheme is based purely on economic criteria and does not take account of other indicators, such as those embedded within the HDI. At present, the basic developed/developing country contrast is still widely used in development studies work and among many NGOs and aid agencies.

Another alternative is to contrast the majority world with the minority world. This scheme reverses the perceived status of the developed and developing countries, reminding us that the majority of the world’s population actually lives in ‘developing’ countries and only a minority lives in the ‘developed’ world (Dodds 2018). It also makes clear in a very stark and simple way that, even in a supposedly postcolonial age, a minority continues to own and control the majority of global wealth to the disadvantage of most of the world’s population. In this way the distinction aims to institute a normative bias in favour of developing countries. So far, the majority/minority world contrast has not taken root, and the most recent, and still developing, way of discussing global inequalities and power relations is to contrast the Global South with the Global North. This approach is more overtly postcolonial in its aims than previous schemes.

From the seventeenth to the early twentieth century, Western countries used their overwhelming military power and technology to establish colonies in regions previously occupied by traditional societies. In some regions, such as North America, Australia and New Zealand, which were thinly populated by hunting and gathering groups, European colonists became the majority population. In other areas, including much of Asia, Africa and South America, local populations remained in the majority and lived under minority rule. Many countries in the Global South today are in areas of Asia, Africa and South America that faced colonial domination and rule.

The policy and practice of colonialism shaped the map of the world until the former colonies were able to break free and become independent countries in their own right. A few colonized regions gained independence quite early. Haiti, for instance, became the first autonomous black republic in 1804. The Spanish colonies in South America gained their freedom in 1810, while Brazil broke away from Portuguese rule in 1822. However, most colonized countries became independent states only after 1945, often following bloody anti-colonial struggles against Western colonists. In India, and a range of other Asian countries including Burma, Malaysia and Singapore, as well as those in Africa such as Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania and Algeria, nationalist movements and popular uprisings were crucial in challenging the economic and military power of Western colonial regimes.

Generally, these countries are very different to those that existed before colonialism. Their political systems tend to be modelled on those first established in the West – that is to say, they are nation-states – and, while most of the population still lives in rural areas, many are experiencing a rapid process of urbanization. Similarly, agriculture remains the main economic activity in many countries, but crops are produced for sale in world markets rather than purely for local consumption. What is clear is that ‘developing countries’ are not ‘primitive’ societies that have simply ‘lagged behind’ the industrialized countries. Western colonialism systematically ‘underdeveloped’ these countries in order to plunder their resources, which, in turn, helped to generate rapid economic development in the West. Colonial regimes undermined the existing economic and social systems, leaving former colonies severely disadvantaged on independence.

The legacy of colonialism and the postcolonialist critique of sociology are discussed in chapter 3, ‘Theories and Perspectives’.

Seen globally, the majority world of developing countries lies in the southern hemisphere, and you may see them collectively described as the Global South, contrasted with the minority world of developed countries in the Global North. Geographically, this is a rough and ready generalization because, for example, Australia, New Zealand and Chile are in the Global ‘South’ but are high or middle-high income, developed countries that are typical of the Global ‘North’ (World Bank 2020a). Also, as countries in the Global South continue to develop economically, this simple geographic division of the world becomes less accurate.

Yet the shift in terminology used here was never intended to be purely a descriptive alternative. Rather, it marks a political intervention in debates on global interdependence, particularly the notion that intensifying the connections between countries through globalization will benefit them all. Dados and Connell (2012: 13) argue that the term ‘Global South’ ‘references an entire history of colonialism, neo-imperialism, and differential economic and social change through which large inequalities in living standards, life expectancy, and access to resources are maintained.’ Indeed, Mahler (2018: 32) argues that some regions within the Global North are also disadvantaged and exploited, while wealth and power continue to flow to a minority. Simply put, ‘there are Souths in the geographic North and Norths in the geographic South.’

Framing global relations in this way looks to build solidarity among all of those that are negatively impacted by global capitalism, regardless of geographical location, and it is clear that this is not an attempt to produce a ‘neutral’ classification. The model is based not on classifying the world’s countries but on relations of inequality, power and domination, both between and within national societies. In this sense, it is a very different way of looking at and thinking about global issues that is not directly comparable to the other classification schemes discussed above.

It is clear that all classification schemes have pros and cons, so how do we choose? One way of moving forward that may become more common in the future is to avoid committing to any of these broad, generalizing schemes that slice up, arrange and rearrange the diverse type of societies in the world. Instead, we might just try to be clearer about what we mean in the context of what we are discussing at the time. Toshkov (2018) forcibly makes this case, arguing that, ‘If you mean the 20 poorest countries in the world, say the 20 poorest countries in the world, not countries of the Global South. If you mean technologically underdeveloped countries, say that and not countries of the Third World. If you mean rich, former colonial powers from Western Europe, say that and not the Global North. It takes a few more words, but it is more accurate and less misleading.’

Sociology is a discipline that tries to draw the broadest, legitimate, general conclusions that are consistent with the available evidence, and this generalizing approach is important and necessary. Yet Toshkov’s argument is persuasive and may be more widely adopted in the future. We will go some way in this direction in the rest of the chapter (and elsewhere), though, in practice, we will often use developed/developing countries where our source material adopts this framing. Where they are appropriate, we will also use majority/minority worlds, high-/medium-/low-income countries, colonialism and postcolonialism, and a geographical version of the rough Global South/Global North distinction.

By the early twentieth century, Britain’s colonial expansion had created ‘an empire on which the sun never sets’ covering over one-fifth of the global population. This advertisement presents the empire, coloured red, along with trading routes.