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In this chapter the historical context of the term ‘Developing World’ will be investigated to give a brief description of the theme dealt with in this paper. It will also look into the issues associated with the developing world, and further examine the previous strategies used. The first chapter will be divided into three parts, whereas the first part will consider briefly the historical aspect; the second part will look into the issues concerning the developing world; and the third part will look into the strategies.

The term ‘Developing World’ has many definitions; however, most of them have some sort of resemblance. The essential of the definitions can be stated like ‘A term used to describe countries that lack strong amounts of industrialization, infrastructure, and sophisticated technology, but are beginning to build these capabilities.’ This would imply that the countries that are defined as a developing country are all improving. If this was true, in theory the ‘Developing World’ would be decreasing. Unfortunately, this is not so. There are still parts of the world where the population gets poorer, and the countries are still-standing when it comes to the development of the country.

The issues in the ‘Developing World’ all seem to be related, and they all work together to decrease the standards of the country. Schumacher, in his book ‘Small is Beautiful’, suggested that the main reasons to poverty rather than being related to ‘material factors’ it was caused by the lack of education, organisation and discipline. He further stated that the material factors are entirely secondary.
• Infrastructure - road, water supply, sanitation. In rural areas the ‘amount of public investment per unit of geographical area’ is considerable less than in urban areas.
• Poverty – the definition of the line of poverty differs from less than 1$ a day to 2.75$ a day . According to the World Bank, '75% of the worlds poor live in rural areas.
• Imbalance –
• War
• Corruption
• Illiteracy

Find quotes to prove this




The strategies for the ‘Developing World’ has been more like ‘fire-fighting’, trying to deal with problems when they occur, rather then preventing them.
• Charity – find good examples, write about the effect and the limitations
• Aid
• In the field
o Medicine
o Technology




In his book, ‘Small is Beautiful ‘, Schumacher gives examples of strategies to how to help the ‘Developing World’. Find a good quote here, and tell what it means.


















Papaneks suggested in his major text, ‘Design For The Real World’, that the ideal strategy to help the ‘Developing World’ would be for a designer to move to the designated country where he can educate the designers themselves to train designers. By doing this, the country gets the help to help it self, rather than providing short-term help. This is similar to the old saying ‘Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime’

This would suggest that Papanek meant that to help the developing world, the work of a designer would be enough. He did not imply that working across the disciplines would be beneficial. This would limit the designers to work with rather shallow solutions on merely designing objects.