Impoverished Nations

The purpose of this essay is to discuss the differences between Third World and UK hunger from a social scientists perspective. Social scientists, when looking at a wide issue such as hunger, tend to analyse thoroughly the underlying and triggering factors in each World, to come to an accurate understanding. Contrasts can be drawn between the reasons for hunger in the UK and third World.



First of all, the Third and First Worlds need to be defined so that false assumptions are not made which would distort the facts. The Third World consists of the underdeveloped and developing countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. The First World contains all the industrialised and capitalist nations of the World, including the UK.



In order to contrast Third World and UK hunger, the definitions of First and Third World hunger have to be compared. This is because they vary from society to society. Firstly The generic definition of hunger is ‘an appetite, desire, need or craving for food’(1.)



Secondly, the First World definition for hunger is the appetite, desire and the craving for food. This is not to suggest that the need for food is not evident in First World countries where many, such as the homeless and socially excluded, suffer from malnourishment and undernourishment.



In the context of the Third World however, a normal craving for food, hunger is defined as the need for food. The most important distinction for the social scientist to contemplate is the difference between desire and need.



The extent of hunger has then to be identified in both worlds to understand the nature of the hunger being studied. Malnourishment is the result of inadequacies in the quantity of food in a person’s diet and undernourishment is inadequacies in the quality of food, that is inadequate amounts of essential proteins, minerals, vitamins and water. These are both common in Great Britain. Famine, on the other hand, is a...