Third-world Nations Research Articles

Preparing to Teach in Developing Nations: Toward a Checklist

Each year thousands of American professors seeking a change ponder whether to take on the challenges of visiting teaching positions at universities in far-off, exotic, and foreboding places, from Uganda to Ecuador to Indonesia. However, there are few guidelines available to help an instructor anticipate the hurdles and challenges of teaching in developing or Third-World nations. This article provides a checklist and discussion on tips for preparing yourself for teaching abroad and for preparing for the culture of the host country. Overseas assignments can be very enriching. However, as expatriate business personnel have learned, successful overseas tours often are predicated on effective preparation for both the assignment and the cultural experience. And, family members need to be included in the decision and preparation process.

Impacts of national economic reforms upon urban households in an African society

Many Third-World nations have implemented structural reforms as conditions for receiving financial assistance from international banks. Whereas the effects of these reforms on national economic performance are carefully monitored, there often is a paucity of information about their direct impact upon citizens. Findings are reported here from an assessment of some social and economic effects of recent structural reforms in Zambia, Africa, upon upper-, middle-, and lower-status urban households. Persons at all socioeconomic levels perceived that the reforms had brought a deterioration in both the economy and their personal financial well-being. Poor families were especially hard hit by the increased costs of necessities, and most were experiencing difficulty in coping with their changed circumstances. The findings point up the importance of including socioeconomic impact assessment in national policy making.

Airline Safety: The Last Decade

The paper presents safety data for the period 1977–86 from more than 30 U.S. domestic airlines and 80 international flag carriers. These statistics are examined in conjunction with others from an earlier MIT study about the previous two decades. The primary safety measure used is “death risk per flight,” which weights each fatal accident by the proportion of passengers killed and exploits statistical evidence that the risk arising from a nonstop flight is uncorrelated with its route length. The main conclusions of the analysis are: (1) The U.S. domestic trunklines can continue to lay claim to being the safest group of airlines in the world. In 1977–86, the death risk per flight on these carriers was roughly one in eleven million. This represents a factor-of-four improvement since the early 1970's and a factor-of-ten improvement since the early 1960's. (2) But while U.S. jet travel has become safer in recent years, the improvement would probably have been greater still in the absence of airline deregulation. The reason for this assessment relates to the new jet carriers spawned by deregulation. Most such carriers have perfect safety records so far but, collectively, the recent entrants averaged twelve times the death risk per flight in 1979–86 of the established trunklines. This statistically significant excess cut by nearly one-half the recent progress in domestic jet safety. (3) International air travel was also far safer in the last decade than in preceding ones. But the flag carriers of Communist bloc and Third-World nations averaged eight times the death risk per flight as those from industrialized First-World nations. This factor-of-eight discrepancy, which has persisted with little change throughout the last quarter century, cannot be explained by differences in route structure.

Development of a nurse-instructor preparation program in China

Preparation of nurses to function as instructors in schools of nursing has proved a continuing problem in the effort to upgrade nursing and nursing education in third-world nations. Development of a nurse-instructor preparation program in China is discussed. Methods of adapting the program to local and national needs, abilities and resources are described along with the use of the counterpart concept to assure program continuation once foreign nurse-experts are no longer available. Use of a Phase Model program is seen as a method of maximizing use of nurse-consultants while alleviating their recruitment problems and preserving the continuity and integrity of the program.

Internal and External Forces Acting Upon Disparities in Sierra Leone

The investigation of African economies has been dominated by two perspectives. On the one hand, the neo-classical or diffusionist position views third-world nations as essentially repeating the same development path as occurred during the historical experience of the now-industrialised nations. This paradigm indicates that the barriers to the advance of these undeveloped economic systems are essentially internal, and that they include issues such as shortages of labour, limitations in infrastructure, and lack of capital savings. On the other hand, while recognising the constraining influences posed by such factors, the dependency or neo-Marxian perspective argues that the constraints posed by the peripheral position of these economies in a world system is of pre-eminent importance. Such contrasts, although greatly simplified, dominate the explanations of the economic difficulties facing African nations.

Racism and Indian-U.S. Relations, 1947-1953: Views in the Indian Press

MANY THIRD World nations, predominantly nonwhite and nonaligned, became the focus of Soviet-American rivalry after 1945. Their emergence as new national entities, whether in Asia or Africa, was not exclusively a struggle of nationalism against colonialism, but was also an intimate, integral factor in the worldwide competition between East and West. The two behemoths, the United States and the Soviet Union, as leaders of their respective power blocs, sought to win Third World support because much was at stake. Third World countries possessed large quantities of strategic raw materials vital to the industralized nations of the East and West; these countries provided markets for the products and technology of the nations of the East and West; and equally as important, the two giant powers looked to the new states of the Third World for support in the fledgling United Nations. Both powers, aggressively and unblushingly, courted these new arrivals to the international community in several ways, including foreign aid, technical assistance, and good-will visits by some of their most outstanding and respected leaders at the various socio-economic, humanitarian, and political levels. The three-week visit of Eleanor Roosevelt to India in 1952 illustrates

Export-Led Industrialization in the Third World: Manufacturing Imperialism

The failure of import-substitution industrialization has led many bourgeois economists to prescribe for Third-World nations a strategy of indus trialization based upon the export of manufactures to the developed capitalist world. South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, for example, are following this strategy and, according to these economists, are beginning to achieve indigenous capitalist development. Other Third-World nations are now starting to look upon these nations as models for Third-World industrialization.

Trends in the Relationship between Urbanisation and Development in Africa

It can be suggested that the ‘economic development’ of most Third-World nations today will be reflected in two distinct but interrelated processes: (1) a rise in economic productivity and in real incomes, and (2) a reduction in fertility and a corresponding slowing down in the rate of population growth.1 Historically, an increase in both the number of cities in a country and the number and proportion of the population living there, has been closely associated with both these processes. Accordingly, as urbanisation proceeds in Africa it might logically be assumed that economic growth and demographic modernisation are also taking place. It is our purpose in this brief article to offer a partial explanation for the fact that this historical association has not characterised recent trends in the continent.

The Changing Scene

Despite the problems of life in an ever-changing world, there is strong evidence that the future of the United States can be bright and that it can continue to offer leadership to the non-Communist and third-world nations. The population will continue to increase but at a more moderate rate. The size of the workforce will increase as more women take jobs. Pollution controls will become more effective and shortages will develop as controls are placed on nonrenewable resources. Environmental control and stewardship of resources will be recognized, but will not overcome the basic concern for economic survival and social need. Land use will continue to be a problem. A greater respect will be developed for ecology and for land as a critical resource; for the need of a strong economic base and the continuing need for leadership in the face of the growing needs and concerns of people.

Re-Visioning the Future of the Third World: An Ecological Perspective on Development

Until recently, the commonly accepted notion of human social development held that static “traditional” societies passed through a dynamic transitional period and came to rest again as “modern” industrial societies. Such simplistic stage and linear development theories have now been formally superseded by Huntington's formulation of development and decay as concurrent processes with no necessary endstate. There remains, however, an implicit assumption that highly populated, urbanindustrial societies with continuously growing economies are the proper goal of development, and that the current internal political and economic processes of third-world nations are the proper subject of study.

Political Mobilisation for Development in Guinea-Bissau

In a recent theoretical essay I tried to demonstrate, among other things, the crucial importance of politics in any effort to overcome the underdevelopment of our own historical period; and I hope I have also shown how different kinds of political systems may be assumed to interact with various kinds of development strategies.1 The most hopeful combination is where a dynamic political interaction is established between the developmental needs and aspirations of the masses, and a consciously applied strategy of challenge to the social, political, and economic status quo of underdevelopment. It is surely an important task of political science to attempt to define the conditions under which such a mobilising interaction may be established and sustained. They are probably minimal conditions of development for any Third-World nation in the predominantly capitalist international system.