Third World Resource Directory
Fact Sheet

This page contains a descriptive fact sheet on the Third World Resource Directory 1994-1995, along with a note about updates to the directory and commentaries on the term Third World and on the editors' attempt to accentuate the positive in compiling the directory.

Note: the content of this page was composed in spring 1994 and does not reflect changes in the name of the Third World Resources organization and its publications. Please see the WorldViews Home Page and use the links below for up-to-date information.

Third World Resource Directory 1994-1995

Compilers/editors
Thomas P. Fenton and Mary J. Heffron have been involved in Third World education and publishing for almost 25 years. They established the Asia Monitor Resource Center in Hongkong and launched its quarterly magazine, Asia Monitor, in 1976. As co-directors of Third World Resources, an affiliate of the DataCenter, they have edited and published ten volumes of the Third World Resources quarterly magazine and compiled a set of ten resource directories on Third World regions and issues (all published by Orbis Books). The Third World Resource Directory 1994-1995 is the most up-to-date and inclusive of the directories compiled and edited by Fenton and Heffron.
Associates
Fifteen international nongovernmental organizations cooperated in the identification, acquisition, and evaluation of the print and audiovisual resources contained in the Third World Resource Directory 1994-1995. The names and locations of these associate organizations appear on the title page of the directory.
DataCenter
The DataCenter is an independent, non-profit research and information center. Founded in 1977 the center provides a range of products and services for the public-interest community on U.S. national and international issues of justice and peace.
Publisher
Orbis Books (Maryknoll, New York 10545)
Publication Date
April 1994
ID numbers
ISBN 0-88344-941-2 ISSN 1074-3145
No. of pages
xiv + 786 (total of 800 pages)
No. of entries
2,450 individual entries (with additional resource citations in the introduction to the Directory of Organizations and throughout the text). 977 entries in part 1 (more than 100 region and country chapters); 1,473 entries in part 2 (39 topical chapters).
Resources
Books, periodicals, curriculum materials, bibliographies, pamphlets, directories, visual resources (films, videos, slideshows, etc.), and audiotapes (radio programs, musical selections, etc.).
Origins
Resource materials come from more than 80 countries.
Size
7 x 10 inches
Indexes
Five indexes--organizations, individuals, titles, geographical areas, and subject areas.
Features
An alphabetical list with full contact information for more than 2,300 international organizations that produce and/or distribute Third World-related resource materials.
Illustrations
More than 100 black-and-white line drawings from Third World and other graphic artists.
Price
US$59.95, plus postage ($4 per book, North America; $6, elsewhere). Residents of California must include $5 per book sales tax.
Available from
Third World Resources, 464 19 Street, Oakland, CA 94612-2297 USA. Toll-free number for credit cards orders: 1-800-735-3741.
Contact
Thomas P. Fenton or Mary J. Heffron at 1-510-835-4692, ext. 113 or fax 1-510-835-3017.

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Updates

The staff of Third World Resources are continually updating and adding to the collection of resource materials presented in the Third World Resource Directory 1994-1995. Readers of the directory have numerous ways to gain access to the Third World Resources documentation collection--and, in this way, to keep the Third World Resource Directory up to date.
  1. Four times a year Third World Resources publishes a 24-page magazine (Third World Resources) that alerts readers to new organizations, print, and audiovisual resources on a variety of Third World regions and issues. Each issue of Third World Resources also contains a four-page listing of organizations (with addresses and other contact information) for one of the four Third World regions (i.e., Africa, Asia and Pacific, Latin America and Caribbean, and Middle East) and a one-page guide to resource materials on a particular topic (e.g., Palestinians, Africa in the classroom, international debt).
  2. Third World Resources regularly posts update information on various computer systems such as ERIC, the Association for Progressive Communications (e.g., PeaceNet), and the Geonet system. Individuals and organizations with modem-equipped computers can access this information from around the world. Registered users of the Third World Resource Directory will be offered an update of the Directory of Organizations either on a computer diskette or in hard copy form in January 1995. The Directory contains names and addresses of publishers, distributors, and nongovernmental organizations in more than eighty countries.
  3. The staff of Third World Resources is always willing to respond to written and telephoned requests for updated information or for recommendations for additional resource materials on specific Third World-related subjects.
The next edition of the Third World Resource Directory will be published in spring 1996 (the 1996-1997 edition).

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"Third World"

The term "Third World" is an inexact and popularly misunderstood designation for the emerging nations of the world. In the absence of a suitable alternative, however, we follow the lead of many in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East who continue to use the term while acknowledging its inadequacies.

In his Introduction to Dictionary of Third World Terms (I.B. Tauris, 1992) Kofi Buenor Hadjor describes the origins of the term and explains why he and many others in the Third World continue to find the term useful:

The emphasis of [French economist and demographer] Alfred Sauvy when he coined the term was on the exclusion and aspiration of the Third World. His article [published in 1952] concludes with these words: "The Third World has, like the Third Estate, been ignored and despised and it too wants to be something." Sauvy saw the Third World ("Tiers Monde") as a modern parallel to the Third Estate ("Tiers Etat") of the French Revolution--the class of commoners.

In this way Sauvy's term carries not only the connotation of exclusion from power but also...the idea of revolutionary potential....For Sauvy the third meant less "number three in a hierarchy" but rather "excluded from its proper role in the world by two other worlds"--namely, the East and the West whose conflict monopolized the spotlight of history.

We do not contend that the term "Third World" is very precise or that it by itself conveys much meaning. The importance of using it as the primary term to refer to all the countries comprised by the concept is that it symbolizes a particular form of analysis, one not symbolized by any of the other terms in use. The actually existing alternatives at present are:

  1. To use no term at all for the countries of Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East; this signifies that they do not have anything significant in common.
  2. To use rather cold, clinical, technical terms like "low income countries," "countries of low human development," "developing countries," "less developed countries"; these terms have been chosen by international and official agencies as largely euphemistic terms which carry little more than a descriptive, statistical meaning.
  3. To use the terminology of North-South which has also gained considerable popularity...but which contains the danger of converting a social, economic, and political division into a geographical one.
  4. To use the terms "centre" (or "metropolis") and "periphery," which do carry considerable analytical force but which are burdened with a rather inaccessible academic flavor.
  5. To speak of the Third World, which, for all its ambiguities and problems, suggests that the countries included have something in common; this arises particularly out a historical analysis stressing their colonial experience and their separation from power in the modern world, which is in widespread use among peoples of those countries themselves, and which contains the positive ideas that they are a "world," a vast and living social organism."

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Accentuating the Positive

While the Third World Resource Directory catalogs resource materials that describe and analyze "problems" and "negative" aspects of Third World societies it also accentuates the positive. In the Preface to the directory the authors write:
The print and audiovisual resources in the Third World Resource Directory...showcase stories of incredible courage and resourcefulness in the face of brutal adversities. These resources--many written or produced by the people themselves--show women and men in Third World countries not as objects on the receiving end of violations, but as fully engaged participants in often heroic efforts to analyze and radically alter the social and economic structures that weigh so heavily and so negatively upon them. Far from objects of pity, men like Pham Tranh (see Tranh's War, entry 1865) and the South African women profiled in Lives of Courage (see entry 1250) are shining examples of men and women who embody the human qualities upon which a fair and equitable new world order will some day be founded.

Other examples from the Third World Resource Directory 1994-1995 are:

Also noted in the Preface to the Third World Resource Directory is the fact that

so many nongovernmental organizations in the South and the North are actively engaged in understanding, educating about, and working together to correct the problems described in the resource materials in this directory. The cures have yet to be found and fully implemented, but it is heartening nonetheless that the Directory of Organizations in the Third World Resource Directory lists more than two thousand organizations that are working at all levels of world society to address the problems identified in the books, periodicals, films, and other resources in this directory.

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