| 释义 |
Fourth World, n.
Brit. |ˌfɔːθ ˈwəːld|, U.S. |ˈˌfɔrθ ˈwərld|
[‹ fourth adj. + world n., after Third World n. In sense 4 after French quart monde fourth world, in the name of the Mouvement ATD (Aide à Toute Détresse) Quart Monde, an international non-governmental agency founded in 1957 by the French priest Joseph Wresinski (1917–88) to relieve poverty worldwide.]
1. In various mythologies or sacred cosmologies.
a. A distant, mysterious, or otherworldly place, esp. one inhabited by magical or supernatural beings. In later use, gen.: a supernatural, fantastic, or imaginary realm.
1833C. S. Rafinesque in Atlantic Jrnl. & Friend of Knowledge 103 These African and Spanish Atlantes gave their name to the Atlantic Ocean and to the great Atlantis or America! called in the Hindu books Atala or Tala-tolo the fourth world where dwelt giants or powerful men. 1886Amer. Naturalist 20 844 When the race came up from the fourth world to this, to escape the last flood, two very popular and much beloved persons were chosen to carry the sun and the moon. 1957D. Athas Fourth World 31 When they were thirteen and fourteen..they created the Fourth World... They grew themselves into an imaginary world where their will was supreme over all. 1995Gazette (Montreal) (Nexis) 21 Jan. g1 The girls resolve to write a novel, and soon find themselves fashioning..a mythical ‘Fourth World’ medieval kingdom called Borovnia. 2000Hindu (Nexis) 6 Feb. That's the realm of art, the realm of fantasy, imagination and so on. I call that the fourth world. I discovered that in the native American myth, the world of the Navajo.
b. The present world, or the human realm, regarded as a distinct cosmological era or plane.
1931E. Heron-Allen Gods of Fourth World 17 The most popular and permanent grouping is that of the Five [Buddhas], directing the affairs of the Five Worlds (Kalpas), of which three are past and gone. We are now inhabiting the Fourth World. 1968Man 3 508/1 In Newcomb's [Navaho] Tales the supernatural inhabitants of the Third World emerged into the Fourth World and dispersed. 1992P. G. Allen Sacred Hoop 19 The Hopi see Spider Woman as Grandmother of the sun and as the great Medicine Power who sang the people into this fourth world we live in now.
2. A loose or notional confederation of territorial or political units without sovereign statehood, often consisting of established regions or peoples which have distinct cultural identity or partial administrative autonomy within a larger state; indigenous minorities living in or subject to another nation.
1967Resurgence Nov.–Dec. 19/2 Islands that go-it-alone make natural members of The Fourth World. 1974G. Manuel & M. Posluns Fourth World Introd. 5 It was a Tanzanian diplomat who said to me, ‘When the Indian peoples come into their own, that will be the Fourth World.’ I do not think he meant that we would create nation-states like his own, but that, like Tanzania, the nation-state would learn to contain within itself many different cultures and life-ways. 1986R. B. Morrison & C. R. Wilson Native Peoples viii. xxvi. 536 George Manuel, Indian elder statesman, developed the concept of the Fourth World in a seminal book of that title. The idea refers to tribal peoples who have become incorporated into modern nation states. 1996R. A. Griggs (title) The role of Fourth World nations and synchronous geopolitical factors in the breakdown of states.
3. A group of nations considered distinct because of common characteristics not shared by countries of the First, Second, or Third World. Now: spec. those countries and communities, esp. in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, considered to be the poorest and least developed of the Third World, typically heavily dependent on foreign economic aid and having very low per-capita GNP, and often as distinguished from wealthy neighbouring nations possessing oil resources.
1967J. D. B. Miller Politics of Third World p. xi, It seems..reasonable to regard Latin America as something of a Fourth World, with characteristics of its own which entitle it to be studied in its own right and not forced to conform to whatever generalizations can be made about the Third. 1974Economist 18 May 70/1 So dire is the condition of the poorest countries, so distinct are they in deprivation from all the rest, that..‘the fourth world’ became common currency in describing their condition. 1977N.Y. Rev. Bks. 12 May 39/3 A disaster for developed countries, OPEC was an unmitigated tragedy for the abysmally poor nations of the ‘Fourth World’, those nations of Africa, Latin America, and Asia unblessed by oil or other riches. 1996Times Union (Albany, N.Y.) (Nexis) 21 Apr. e1 A ‘fourth world’ has emerged, inhabited by more than 1 billion souls who survive on less than $400 dollars a year.
4. (A category of) people living in a relatively wealthy nation, yet in conditions of extreme deprivation or poverty, esp. an urban underclass; the phenomenon of poverty in wealthy nations.
1976L. Hamalian (title) The fourth world: the imprisoned, the poor, the sick, the elderly and underaged in America. 1979Guardian 11 Oct. 12/5 The term Fourth World was invented by French priests and social workers, sponsored by a philanthropist, in the late 1950's, to describe the outcasts of the welfare state, the new lumpen proletariat of second-class workers who get the left-over jobs, who don't get welfare because they don't know how to apply, and whose children are rejected at school. Fourth World people are not migrants. 1990Jrnl. Amer. Med. Assoc. 20 June 3201/3 We call it the ‘Fourth World’, the phenomenon of Third-World poverty within the borders of a wealthy nation. It's a great tragedy. 1993Community Devel. Jrnl. July 207 A combination of District and Regional Council's policies, industrial decline, and the embracing of popular capitalism..has ensured that the schemes in Glasgow have the highest levels of multiple deprivation of any other city in the UK and has created what is commonly referred to as the Fourth World. |