Comments on: talking terms

by: Anonymous

Sun, 03 Apr 2005 04:32:26 +0000

you failed to say this was your 25th birthday - Mo-D

by: denim

Wed, 23 Mar 2005 04:46:40 +0000

Bottles? :-)

by: Bottle Man

Wed, 23 Mar 2005 04:24:48 +0000

Bottle man doesn't like pseudo-intellect.

Bottle man is from the 4th world.

Bottle man likes to talk in 3rd person..

Bottle man has 2 more sentences to go including this one.

Bottle man has 1 thing on his mind. Guess?

by: ann

Wed, 23 Mar 2005 00:25:33 +0000

What about when people use spiritual or othersuch measures to define their own experience?
Does it always have to be at the cost of down-playing and justifying dire poverty?

by: mark

Tue, 22 Mar 2005 18:13:32 +0000

I have been wrestling with this problem for a while. You missed out the dependency theorists’ ‘centre/periphery’ distinction, but then again I don’t like this either. I like the poor/rich thing best actually - I think it’s generally what Chomsky uses. I think adding the qualifier ‘materially’ is hideously twee, since ‘poor’ and ‘rich’ both have predominantly material connotations and the attempt to claim poor people are, say, ’spiritually rich’ is both 1. hippie shit and 2. actually a justification for keeping them mired in (material) poverty.

by: ann

Tue, 22 Mar 2005 00:36:08 +0000

that’s a v. useful article! cheeeers.

the idea of using the word ‘locales’ is to get away from terms like ‘country’ which can mask the presence of elites et al …. to delineate the specificity of each location’s conditions and allow more scope for people within those locations to define it for themselves … does it have particular connotations?

by: matrine

Mon, 21 Mar 2005 10:01:55 +0000

or go with the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ for it’s Woman’s Weekly-esque style. i reckon the word ‘locales’ is a bit too northern majority.
there’s a small article here on this issue http://www.sustainabletimes.ca/names.htm
But it’s Canadian.

by: ann

Mon, 21 Mar 2005 05:18:23 +0000

Heh. I’d forgotten about north and south. Had never quite understood it till now!

I had also forgotten about minority/majority world … probably invented by New Internationalist, and probably the best one …

by: matrine

Mon, 21 Mar 2005 03:56:52 +0000

i reckon the ‘north and south’ one is the best one cos it displays:
a. clear lack of ‘My First Atlas’ as a child
b. a bitterness at living in a cold country and thus believing that people in warm countries are too busy sunbathing to develop economy, trade etc.
c. the fact that it’s not only applied to the whooole world, but to individual countries for added insanity/hilarity