Just another step on the euphemism treadmill honestly. And less accurate. Idk what’s wrong with saying a country is developing or undeveloped, its much less ambiguous than global south or third world, when 99% of the time what youre trying to say is that the country lacks infrastructure, economic development, and law and order.
Imo “Global South” is actually the most problematic of the three because it implies that a country is undeveloped because of its geographic position. I.e. the implication is “if you’re south of the equator, your country sucks.” Any nation can move from undeveloped to developing or developing to developed, but you can’t move your physical location on the map.
What makes a country ‘developed’? Is the US becoming undeveloped because they’ve fallen so far below the standard of other countries with a high quality of life? If countries move from ‘undeveloped’ to ‘developing’ to ‘developed’ what happens when they start to move backwards? You can’t say they’re ‘developing’ because that implies forward progress, so then does the middle stage become ‘de-developing’? And at what point is progress supposed to just stop because the country is ‘developed’ now? That implies a finality to the process. The whole thing is stupid.
Developed vs developing vs undeveloped are pretty well defined. They are relative terms. So sure you could in theory move from developed to developing, that kind of thing happens very rarely though.
I do agree that “developing” implies progression towards developed, so a more accurate term would be something like “partially developed” but its clunkier. Overall though I think they are far more accurate terms than the alternatives.
From your link:
"According to the United Nations Statistics Division:
There is no established convention for the designation of "developed" and "developing" countries or areas in the United Nations system.[7]"
I do think rankings like the Human Development Index can be useful, which is a 1-5 ranking based on seven criteria like quality of life, life expectancy and income, but calling some countries ‘developed’ as though they’ve hit the end of some process and no further work needs to be done, while other countries must obviously be ‘developing’ towards that standard is just such an incredibly arrogant narrow-minded worldview that really showcases American exceptionalism.
Yeah “developing country” is probably best. Being American, “Global South” always reminds me of the southern US, which if it were independent would also be considered a developing country.
As someone from developing country, i’d rather be called that than Global South, because it imply that the southern countries are all underdeveloped while northern country are developed. Which kinda mean Austrailia, New Zealand, and Singapore are all underdeveloped country. Inaccurate as heck, but not as bad as saying first and third world.
Most of the time “Global South” adequately covers it.
Just another step on the euphemism treadmill honestly. And less accurate. Idk what’s wrong with saying a country is developing or undeveloped, its much less ambiguous than global south or third world, when 99% of the time what youre trying to say is that the country lacks infrastructure, economic development, and law and order.
Imo “Global South” is actually the most problematic of the three because it implies that a country is undeveloped because of its geographic position. I.e. the implication is “if you’re south of the equator, your country sucks.” Any nation can move from undeveloped to developing or developing to developed, but you can’t move your physical location on the map.
What makes a country ‘developed’? Is the US becoming undeveloped because they’ve fallen so far below the standard of other countries with a high quality of life? If countries move from ‘undeveloped’ to ‘developing’ to ‘developed’ what happens when they start to move backwards? You can’t say they’re ‘developing’ because that implies forward progress, so then does the middle stage become ‘de-developing’? And at what point is progress supposed to just stop because the country is ‘developed’ now? That implies a finality to the process. The whole thing is stupid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developed_country
Developed vs developing vs undeveloped are pretty well defined. They are relative terms. So sure you could in theory move from developed to developing, that kind of thing happens very rarely though.
I do agree that “developing” implies progression towards developed, so a more accurate term would be something like “partially developed” but its clunkier. Overall though I think they are far more accurate terms than the alternatives.
From your link: "According to the United Nations Statistics Division:
I do think rankings like the Human Development Index can be useful, which is a 1-5 ranking based on seven criteria like quality of life, life expectancy and income, but calling some countries ‘developed’ as though they’ve hit the end of some process and no further work needs to be done, while other countries must obviously be ‘developing’ towards that standard is just such an incredibly arrogant narrow-minded worldview that really showcases American exceptionalism.
Yeah “developing country” is probably best. Being American, “Global South” always reminds me of the southern US, which if it were independent would also be considered a developing country.
As someone from developing country, i’d rather be called that than Global South, because it imply that the southern countries are all underdeveloped while northern country are developed. Which kinda mean Austrailia, New Zealand, and Singapore are all underdeveloped country. Inaccurate as heck, but not as bad as saying first and third world.
For those in/from the US, perhaps. 😅