What is a “Developed” Country?: Crash Course Geography #40

Today we’re going to discuss what it means for a place to be “developed”. Development is often associated with economic success — that is countries with higher standards of living and material wealth like those found in Europe and North America. But as we’ll see, this perspective is only one way to compare countries on the global stage, has strong ties to colonialist histories, and doesn’t necessarily capture a place’s environmental and socioeconomic sustainability or even the population’s general happiness. We’ll focus on the region in the Middle East and North Africa, called MENA, and examine how the histories of the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon have resulted in drastically different development scores.

[Sources]
General
Getis, Bjelland, and Getis. Introduction to Geography, 15 ed. McGraw-Hill Education. 2017. ISBN: 978-1-259-57000-1

Gregory, Derek, Ron Johnston, Geraldine Pratt, Michael Watts, and Sarah Whatmore, eds. 2009. The Dictionary of Human Geography. 5th ed. Willey-Blackwell. ISBN: 978-1-4051-3288-6

For a free and open source option for Intro to Human Geography, see: https://humangeography.pressbooks.com/

For a free and open source option for World Regional Geography, see: https://worldgeography.pressbooks.com/front-matter/introduction/

Cracking the AP Human Geography Exam: 2020 edition. The Princeton Review.

Human development Indices
https://worldhappiness.report/faq/
https://www.academia.edu/33199038/The_History_of_Gross_National_Happiness
http://www.gnh.institute/gross-national-happiness-research-library/history-of-happiness-science-who-is-who-happiness-leaders-pioneers.htm
http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdr_2020_overview_english.pdf

UAE Sources
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/united-arab-emirates/#economy (lists 30% of economy as oil and gas)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_Arab_Emirates

Lebanon Sources
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/lebanon/#economy
https://theconversation.com/lebanon-one-year-after-beirut-explosion-failing-state-struggles-amid-poverty-and-sectarianism-165543 “actually existing neoliberalism”
https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/lebanon/publication/lebanon-reform-recovery-reconstruction-framework-3rf

World Bank, IMF, and GDP Charts
https://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/GDP.pdf
https://thearabweekly.com/six-decades-after-independence-middle-east-

still-looking-growth-model
https://blogs.worldbank.org/arabvoices/shifting-development-paradigm-

middle-east-and-north-africa
https://www.salon.com/2016/05/31/wrong_all_along_neoliberal_imf_admits_neoliberalism_fuels_inequality_and_hurts_growth/

China, Belt and Road
https://theconversation.com/is-the-resource-curse-hard-baked-into-african-economies-chinas-approach-hints-that-it-may-not-be-167397 el)

First/Third World
https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/first_world.htm
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-first-second-and-third-world-countries-origin-of-concept-and-present-beliefs.html