UNDERDEVELOPED COUNTRIES: CHARACTERISTICS, CAUSES, EXAMPLES - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2025

The underdeveloped countries are those that do not have a certain amount of services, wealth or productive capacity. At present there is no agreement on how these quantities should be measured, as different criteria have been developed; therefore, underdevelopment is a controversial term, because there is no specific consensus.

The concept of underdeveloped countries emerged during the 19th and early 20th centuries, when a group of German economists engaged in discussing a series of premises by the economist and philosopher Adam Smith, who proposed that all regions, populations, and professions could progress economically at similar rates.

In underdeveloped countries there are high levels of poverty. Source: pixabay.com

Although underdevelopment is complex to define, it cannot be denied that this is a global problem to which different factors are attributed, such as race, religion or colonialism; the latter is generally linked to blaming other developed nations.

Underdevelopment generates a large number of negative repercussions that are manifested in the form of food, health or public safety deficiencies. However - as with other phenomena - the underdevelopment of a country can also imply positive aspects for a smaller part of the inhabitants.

Likewise, the disorientation that exists in underdeveloped countries is compounded by the difficulty of finding solutions; This is partly due to the fact that several authors defend the idea that poverty or underdevelopment is not a problem, but rather is a primitive state of every human group.

However, there are some authors, politicians and thinkers who have undertaken various proposals and projects to improve the quality of life in underdeveloped countries. These have met with some success; however, there have also been a large number of failures, especially in the towns that make up Southwest Asia.

Definition

According to the Royal Spanish Academy, a country is underdeveloped when it lags behind in the development of certain social areas, such as the economy or culture.

Another definition determines that underdevelopment is a stage that every country or society must go through during its progress. However, the idea of ​​"stage" has been disagreed by several authors, who assure that underdevelopment may never be overcome due to multiple factors.

Underdevelopment as a structure

Some authors have also established that underdevelopment consists of a socioeconomic structure in which livestock, agriculture, the export of raw materials and fishing predominate. This structure seeks to lead the country towards self-independent development, which mostly ends up generating widespread poverty.

Another point of view establishes that underdeveloped countries are all those that belong to the Third World. In this sense, the nations of the West confirm the First World; the nations of the Eastern Bloc are part of the Second World; the rest of the nations make up the third.

This division was proposed by the sociologist Peter Wosley during the 1960s and consists of an analogy with the three stages of the French Revolution. This definition has also been highly disputed, since countries like Albania belong to the Second World but are clearly underdeveloped nations.

Underdevelopment and poverty

According to the author José Luis Sampedro, underdevelopment is strongly linked to poverty, so underdeveloped countries may be those nations in which a certain percentage of their population lives in poverty. However, this definition collides with the measurement problem mentioned above.

From this, the following unknowns arise: how can the wealth of a people be calculated? From what percentage does a person enter a low level of poverty? The doubt also persists as to whether underdevelopment is only an economic issue or whether it involves other elements.

Finally, although the expression is generally used for countries, underdevelopment can also be used to designate certain regions or areas.

It is even used to determine certain ways of living or thinking. An example of this is the phrase "underdeveloped mentality", which refers to waiting to solve problems through foreign aid.

characteristics

There are several factors that make it possible to determine whether a country is underdeveloped; among the most common the following can be mentioned:

- The country or region maintains an economy supported by the primary sector.

- The underdeveloped countries maintain a precarious foreign trade.

- Infant mortality is very high as a consequence of the level of poverty.

- In these countries, there is massive underemployment and unemployment (that is, unemployment and unemployment).

- In some cases there are high levels of overpopulation in these countries.

- The educational level is very low, which greatly influences the other factors.

- In underdeveloped countries, income is usually low and badly distributed, as well as irrationally used.

- A fairly frequent characteristic or phenomenon in underdeveloped countries is that they are under a corrupt political regime. In turn, this leads to the lack of democratic institutions and bodies.

- The underdeveloped nations present a strong political and military dependence on the foreigner.

- They also present a structural dependency, which conditions the socioeconomic structure and notably influences the main features of the development system.

- In general, an underdeveloped country has a very primitive technology.

- The economic development of underdeveloped countries is strongly dependent.

- The export of this type of nation is based solely on tropical products. Instead, imports are made up of manufactured products.

Causes

It is necessary to note that some experts consider that underdevelopment is a "caused" phenomenon, since the natural state of any region is to exist without electricity lines, without communication routes or without water supply.

Consequently, according to these experts, development is the phenomenon that has causes, not underdevelopment.

Taking into account the approaches of the German School, the cause of underdevelopment is the lack of industrialization; therefore, the industrialization of societies would be the most concrete solution for underdevelopment.

However, over the years it has been possible to indicate that the industrialization process is not so simple, since in many cases nations have tried to adapt to this process without success. Consequently, there are other factors that prevent the development of countries.

Currently it has been established that the causes of underdevelopment are many, so there is no general agreement on which is the most important. Here is a list showing some causes; however, these cannot be taken as final:

The race

Previously it was thought that human development was conditioned by racial issues. The defenders of this hypothesis argued that population differences were influenced by racial differences, so that some races should be superior to others; in this case, the white race was superior to the rest.

This premise supported its foundations in some moments of history, as well as in the theory of social Darwinism.

The defenders of this position claimed that the warlike, industrial and economic superiority of part of Europe and of some of its former colonies, such as Canada or the United States, was due to the white origin of the majority population group.

However, the decolonization processes have been in charge of demonstrating the obvious falsehood of this hypothesis. For example, a country like the Bahamas - populated mostly by blacks - in 2000 had an income of up to $ 15,000, while in Latin America the income was $ 3,000.

In conclusion, the claims about race as the cause of the underdevelopment of a nation maintain a popular hue used by non-specialized people, without having any real support from a biological, social or economic background.

The religion

Max Weber, a German philosopher and economist, proposed that religion could be an impetus for development, especially in places where Protestant churches were located. This idea was later endorsed by other influential authors, such as César Vidal and Erick Fromm.

The argument for this hypothesis is that Protestant churches favor individual enrichment, allowing them to build more developed nations. This position is quite wrong, since according to this logic nations like Belgium and France would be underdeveloped.

Later, in his text The New Model (1994), Rodolfo Terragno established that this hypothesis lacked sense, because many of the British colonies are currently among the poorest on the planet, while there are developed countries that do not practice Protestantism., like Japan or South Korea.

Despite this, the influence of religion on development cannot be completely ruled out, as it can wreak havoc on production depending on religious tasks. For example, many Muslims have to stop their work to devote themselves to prayer several times a day.

However, we must consider cases such as Dubai, one of the richest nations in the world and where the majority of its inhabitants are Muslims.

Colonialism

During the time of discoveries and great travels, the most technologically advanced civilizations prevailed over those that did not have as much mastery of tools; the goal was to use them for their own benefit.

In most cases, this situation generated contempt for the colonized peoples, as well as the construction of artificial borders and the exploitation of some ethnic groups, without making an effort to educate or train them in technical and economic material.

These aspects caused a strong dependence on the metropolis, especially with regard to technology, machinery and personnel who knew how to handle it. In turn, this dependence even encouraged the loss of the native language of the place, replacing it with a European language.

As with the previous sections, there is no exact consensus on colonialism either, since some affirm that colonization itself could not be the cause of underdevelopment.

This is because, with the arrival of Westerners, the founding of university institutions, other academic centers and the installation of hospitals, highways, railways, roads, mines and factories were introduced in the colonies.

This position is not only defended by Westerners, but there are also authors such as Osama Kur Ali, of Syrian nationality, who agree with this point of view.

The weather

This is the only factor in underdevelopment that has few discrepancies. This theory is endorsed by the African Alí A. Mazrui, who determined that the climate, together with the abundant or scarcity of resources that it usually entails, is the main cause of underdevelopment.

The Kenyan-born author is based on the argument that the abundance of food and resources in the equatorial and tropical zones, as well as the lack of need for shelter and shelter from the cold, constitute a notable brake on the development of the ingenuity in a environment where this is not really necessary.

Alí A. Mazrui uses his own life as an example: the author assured that as a child he always went barefoot, so he never needed to make or get something similar to a shoe, since this was expendable in a temperate climate.

Likewise, the opulence of food offered by territories such as tropical Africa causes a lack of planning, while in other latitudes the opposite occurs: climatic variations can lead to famines and terrible diseases.

In conclusion, most authors, philosophers and scientists agree with the idea that a generous and stable climate in natural resources becomes a brake on the material and technological advance of a culture.

Examples

Below is a list of underdeveloped countries according to their continent:

Underdeveloped countries of Africa

- Cape Verde.

- Congo.

- Angola.

- Benin.

- Equatorial Guinea.

- Ethiopia.

- Guinea.

- Liberia.

- Madagascar.

- Malawi.

- Mozambique.

- Rwanda.

- Nigeria.

- Senegal.

- Sierra Leone.

- Somalia.

- Tanzania.

- Uganda.

Underdeveloped countries of America

- Haiti.

Underdeveloped countries in Oceania

- Samoa.

- Kiribati.

- Tuvalu.

- Solomon Islands.

- Vanuatu.

Underdeveloped countries in Asia

- Bhutan.

- Afghanistan.

- Bangladesh.

- Cambodia.

- Maldives.

- Laos.

- Nepal.

- Burma.

- Yemen.

- East Timor.

Underdeveloped countries in Europe

Taking into account various recent sources, it can be established that there is no country in Europe that can be classified as underdeveloped.

However, there is a group of countries that is somewhere between being developed and underdeveloped. These include Serbia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, Bosnia, Romania, Croatia and Montenegro.

References

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