Thursday, September 11, 2008

Teaching "Third World Politics":Reflections 2

Let's start with this 'Third World' tag.

Forget the political correctness stuff. Dress the term any way you like and you still have no way of understanding what it means.

  • poverty
  • inequality
  • tradition
  • old technology
  • unresolved political issues
  • 'backwardness'
Where can you find these? Today, practically everywhere. Being 'Third World' is a condition not a location. Teaching in nice classrooms in the 'First World,' sometimes the 'Third World' was three streets away, sometimes a neighbourhood my student had left behind and sometimes a place far away.

Once you accepted that, what was your course about? Almost everything, every place and everybody.

What was the difference between teaching this course, teaching introductory political science or government and teaching American or Indian politics? Just a little value judgment, a little prejudice and a little historical accident.

1 comment:

InTheVestibule said...

The real meaning of the phrase 'Third World' is often overlooked. In the rush for political correctness, it's been swept aside in favour of meaningless phrases such as the 'majority world', 'global south' etc

When Albert Sauvy came up with the term 'Third World', it was because he was comparing the world's poor to the Third Estate of the French Revolution - those who had nothing to lose, those who were powerless but desired to seize it.

In other words, the term 'Third World' is an extremely political term which goes beyond mere description - it looks at the so-called developing world through an historical, political lens.