Terms such as "Third World," "developing countries" and "Global South" are ubiquitous in the discipline of development studies, but they are often poorly defined, ideologically weighted and misleading.

Taking an intellectual history approach, this book examines the most commonly used spatial terms in the language of development, tracing their origins, meanings, evolution and processes of popularisation and demonstrating how geographical, political and economic concepts were used or misused in creating these terms. The book looks at the origins and the changing nature of fundamental...