7 - Cultural Differences and Stereotyping

There is no general agreement on an appropriate collective term for the group of nations which had formerly been called the “Third World,” and perhaps there shouldn’t be. The term Third World has fallen into disfavour first because it appears to imply a ranking (third being inferior to one or two), and because it came to imply a certain level of poverty and under-development which cannot accurately now be attributed to all of the original non-aligned nations. But the reality remains that there is a group of countries which shares certain qualities previously associated with the term “Third World,” and therefore some way of designating them remains useful.

Alternate terms have included “Southern Countries” [excluding, of course, places like New Zealand and Australia], the “Majority World” [although China, which has 20% of the world’s population and is the largest nation on the planet, no longer fits easily into the same grouping as the other nations], and Developing Countries [which implies what?—that other countries aren’t developing?]. Probably the last is the least inappropriate, but even that term has acquired a number of connotations which are worrisome. I will use it but will also continue to use the more familiar “Third World” as well.

There are many different and conflicting stereotyped images associated with Developing Countries. In Child Sponsorship ads, the people of the Developing Countries are portrayed as so overwhelmed by poverty that they are unable to care even for their own children. In tourism brochures, smiling dark-skinned locals are portrayed happily serving drinks to lighter complexioned tourists.

In any series of reflections on Developing Countries, it is difficult to avoid falling, from time to time, into stereotypes. The effort to define similarities that distinguish one group from another must necessarily become guilty of simplification and distortion. Within the YMCA network, this is an issue we address in particular as we prepare young people to take part in overseas placements. The orientation material we provide them suggests that when attempting to understand people who live in different cultures, there are two extremes that should be avoided. The first is to minimize cultural differences and attempt to emphasize only the similarities that exist between cultures. The other is to over-emphasize those cultural differences.

Clearly there are historical and cultural differences not only between nations but also groups within those nations (this is a point I will come back to later, but a very simple example can be found by comparing the differences between the points of view of English and French Canadians). However, behind all these differences, all human beings share a set of basic needs and motivations. Many cultural differences are the result of finding different solutions to these common needs.

One of the challenges people of one culture have when considering another culture is to avoid falling into the temptation of judging whether one set of solutions is necessarily superior to another. This is easy to do with customs such as which side of the road to drive on; it is more difficult to do when considering political systems or issues such as the place of religion within society or gender roles.