what about “2/3rds world”? pointing out that we are the majority and that we live/survive/create/are in so-called developed countries also.
Third World Women’s Alliance - Smash Capitalism, Racism & Sexism (1970s)
View more archival clippings from TWWA’s newspaper Triple Jeopardy here.
I get why people don’t like saying third world — it’s become a code word for starving, weak, helpless — “third world conditions” — etc — bad scene.
but it’s not necessarily a pejorative and has been used in a self-descriptive sense by a lot of radical groups. historically the third world meant not aligned with capitalist (first world) or communist (second world) powers. the third world was all the independent nations. independent nations that got used and fucked over and fought on but not fought over. at least it’s a term that acknowledges recent global history.
it’s a hell of a lot better than terms like developed/underdeveloped/developing. such terms buy into the idea that there is one standard trajectory of “development”, that rich European countries are its apex, and other nations are chronologically behind them. that they just need to be modernised. rather than looking at the unique historical factors leading to poverty and marginalisation and exploitation. it’s depoliticising. it’s weird and gross how “developing nations” has become the new not-too-radical-but-vaguely-liberal preferred terminology.
(via waiyanjpn)
