The
Fourth World is either (i) sub-populations socially excluded from
global society, or (ii) nomadic, pastoral, and hunter-gatherer peoples living beyond the modern industrial norm. Since publication of
The Fourth World: An Indian Reality (1974), by
George Manuel, Chief of the National Indian Brotherhood and
Assembly of First Nations, the academic term
Fourth World is synonymous with stateless, poor, and marginal nations. Since 1979, think tanks such as the
Center for World Indigenous Studies have used the term in defining the relationships between ancient,
tribal, and pre-industrial nations and modern industrialised nation-states. With the 2007 UN
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, communications and organizing amongst Fourth World peoples have accelerated in the form of international treaties between aboriginal nations for the purposes of trade, travel, and security.
Etymologically,
Fourth World follows the
First World,
Second World, and
Third World hierarchy of nation-state status; however, unlike the former categories,
Fourth World denotes
nations without a
sovereign state, emphasising the non-recognition and exclusion of ethnically- and religiously-defined peoples from the politico-economic world system, e.g. the
Romani people world-wide, pre-
First World War Ashkenazi Jews in the
Pale of Settlement, the
Palestinians, the
Assyrians, and the
Kurds in the
Middle East, the
indigenous peoples of the Americas and
First Nations groups throughout North, Central and South America, and indigenous
Africans and
Asians. Spanish
sociologist Manuel Castells of the
University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication has made extensive use of the term
fourth world in the
International Journal of Communication.
See also
