Development

Terminology in development

A similar discussion is what to call countries depending on their level of development. The traditional view splits the world into two groups: the developing world and the developed world. This enabled global issues to be seen in black and white; some countries were not quite up to the standards of the developed world. Countries could also be placed on a clearly defined hierarchy. Issues, like famine, would be framed as affecting countries in Africa, Asia or Latin America, not households in Slovakia. But there’s a problem with this model – the world is not black and white and it’s not just about reaching a ‘standard of living’. There are power imbalances in every country; not everyone lives in poverty in Africa and not everyone has a good standard of living in Slovakia. People were critical of the black and white view of the developing/developed world terminology and looked for alternatives. This led many NGOs (non-government organizations) to replace the words ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ with ‘majority’ and ‘minority’. The words ‘majority world’ and ‘minority world’ don’t refer to a norm which all countries are trying to reach. They refer to very real power imbalances that exist in this world between countries and within countries. The reality is that the majority of the world’s people (the ‘majority world’) does not have, or has limited, access to the world’s resources. These resources include access to health, trade and educational services; without access to these, imbalances become entrenched and jump from generation to generation. Many of these people do live in countries traditionally called ‘developing’ so the focus in this module tends to be on these settings where the extremes of disadvantage can be seen directly.