ABSTRACT
The term Third World was intrinsically tied to the concepts of dependence and development, which were constructs. The Third World never existed as a social, political, or economic phenomenon. It was an idea, a construct and concept of politicians, economists, development experts, and leftist intellectuals between the 1960s and 1980s. The conceptual triad of Third World, dependence, and development always had the entire globe in mind, asymmetrically dividing it into a First, a Second, and a Third World, following the belief that the Third World was both underdeveloped and dependent on the First and the Second World. This chapter investigates the historicity of the three concepts and their entanglements. It deconstructs their geopolitical impact by showing their ideological and Eurocentric determination and discusses how the concepts have always referred to transregional categories, both by constructing and transforming transregional arenas and by forging unequal relations between them.
