Should we stop using the term "Third World"?

Daya Thussu explains the origin of the term "Third World" in The Historical Context of International Communication: back in the days of the Cold War, the world was divided between the capitalist and communist nations, and the ones that stayed out of either side. French historian Alfred Sauvy started calling those non-affiliated countries the "Third World". The planet has changed a lot since 1952, when the name was coined; the Cold War has ceased to exist and the Earth is no longer divided in Eastern and Western blocs. So why, then, does this name still come up so often in the media, casual conversations and scholarly texts? Is its usage still valid?

These two words have evidently evolved since their first use. Since we have stopped identifying our nations in the communist or capitalist categories, "Third World" must represent something entirely different than it did in the fifties. Today, it seems interchangeable with the term "developing world/countries". Nicola Graves mentions various definitions that have been given to it after its initial one. KumKum says that it is not just a geographical space, but an imaginary one that merges diverse areas of the word into "a single 'underdeveloped' terrain". Chandra Talpade Mohanty is more specific and includes "the nation-states of Latin America, the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, South and South-East Asia, China, South Africa, and Oceania". She also adds that "black, Latino, Asian, and indigenous peoples in the US, Europe, Australia, some of whom have historic links with the geographically defined third worlds, also define themselves as third world peoples".

None of these definitions answer some of the questions that I have about the term. Just who decides which countries are in the "Third World" and which ones are not? Under what criteria? According to whose definition of development? One of my problems with this name is that in using the words "first", "second" and "third", there is an imposed hierarchy that puts Western capitalist countries as the winners, the best. "Third World" countries, then, are the relegated losers; the backward nations that strive -or should strive- to be like their Occidental counterparts. It goes in line with that Modernization Theory that prevailed around the time that Sauvy coined the term. That is the idea that Western society has "the most developed model of societal attributes", as Thussu explains. 

I'll give a personal example to prove my point. After hurricane Irene went over Puerto Rico, the electricity system was out for days or weeks, depending on the area. I read the reactions of many of my Puerto Rican Facebook friends, some of whom started calling Puerto Rico a "Third World" country. I don't know if it is (again, according to whom?), but whenever something like this happens one of the most common comments is: "We think we live in a developed country, but we're part of the Third World". It is used as an insult, not as an objective way of identifying countries with high infant mortality rates, with low national incomes or whichever other indicator one might use to categorize.

I am not the only one who disagrees with its use. World Bank head Robert Zoellick declared in April of 2010 that it should no longer be used, albeit for different reasons. "We are now in a new, fast-evolving multipolar world economy…where North and South, East and West, are now points on a compass, not economic destinies", he said. Zoellick believes that the developing countries will play a key role in the world economy, and so the developed countries should start viewing the world in different terms. Maybe we should, too.

-Érica