O Underdevelopment is a term used to refer to countries whose economic and social development are limited, with a high degree of social inequalities and a high level of poverty and misery. Currently, most countries are considered underdeveloped.
Previously, the expression "third world" was used to refer to the group of countries today considered to be underdeveloped, a since the "first world" would be the developed capitalist countries and the "second world" would be the developed countries socialists. However, this division is no longer used and is considered obsolete.
What are the origins of underdevelopment?
There is not a complete consensus in the specialized bibliography about the real origins of underdevelopment. However, the strongest current is the one that advocates that this problem arises from colonial foreign exploitation, in which countries “discoverers” (the metropolises) occupied and colonized other peoples (the colonies), submitting them to their culture and intensely exploring their natural resources.
Among the metropolises, the European countries stood out, which colonized territories in the Americas, Africa and Oceania, having eventually invaded and dominated some territories located on the Asian continent (such as the domination of England over the India).
In addition to colonialism, the action of the imperialism, in which some nations - especially England and the United States - dominated politics, military and economically other countries, imposing on them their rhythms of production and their conceptions of development.
In this way, a International Division of Labor in which economically dependent colonies and countries focused their efforts on producing raw materials for foreign capital. On the other hand, countries considered to be central or developed transformed these raw materials into products industrialized, supplying their goods both to supply their domestic market and their market external.
With that, the internal economy and the consumer market of underdeveloped countries were not very dynamic, which raised the degree of dependence and accentuated the indebtedness levels of these countries to build their internal infrastructure.
What are the criteria for defining a country as underdeveloped?
To say whether a particular country is underdeveloped or not, some specific criteria are considered, such as the Human Development Index, the economic and technological dependence, high levels of poverty and misery, records of wide social inequalities, foreign debt and trade balance unfavorable.
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These countries are also mostly dependent on primary products, so their degree of industrialization is low. In those countries, such as Brazil, where there is a high presence of industries, it is possible to notice that most of them are, in the True, foreign multinationals, that is, private companies from central countries displace a good part of their production process for these countries, thanks to the low wages of workers, easy access to raw materials and the search for new markets consumers.
The result of this dynamic is the aggravation of international differences, as the wealth of a territory is exploited and the profits generated, for the most part, are destined to the headquarters of large corporations that are generally located in countries developed.
What is the difference between underdeveloped and emerging countries?
Many people tend to understand that emerging countries are no longer considered underdeveloped, because their economies went through successive evolutions so that they differed from other peripheral nations. However, this is a false reality.
Countries like China and Brazil, which are among the largest economies in the world, are still considered underdeveloped. This is because the expression "emerging" is used to designate the group of peripheral countries that, eventually, can abandon their degree of underdevelopment and present the same social characteristics as core countries in the relatively near future (although it seems increasingly distant!).
Therefore, emerging countries would be a kind of “group” within underdeveloped countries, as they present more dynamic economies in relation to the others. The big question is that these countries believed that the most important thing was economic growth, way that social growth would come as a consequence, which has been demonstrated as a conception false.
Among emerging countries, we can mention the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and the MIST (Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey).
By Rodolfo Alves Pena
Graduated in Geography
