Bio: (1924-2013) British anthropologist and sociologist. After studying anthropology in Britain, Peter Worsley spent several years in Australia, where he conducted field research on the Melanesian population. This research formed the basis of his doctorate, which he obtained at the Australian National University, and the results of the research were published in the book The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of „Cargo Cults“ in Melanesia (1957). This book describes the millenarian cults that developed among the Melanesian tribes, which refer to the belief that goods that arrive by airplanes, to Europeans who lived in Malaysian islands, are gifts that the ancestors of Europeans send to their descendants. The Melanesians developed the so-called "cargo cults" because they expected that their ancestors would start sending goods to them as well. Upon his return to Britain, Worsley taught sociology at Hull University and the University of Manchester.

In his books The Third World (1964) and The Three Worlds: Culture and World Development (1984), Worsley studied the economic, political, and cultural influence that colonialism and imperialism had on the former colonial states. His theoretical approach relied on Marxist theories. He is the most famous advocate of the division of all countries into "three worlds". The first world consisted of developed capitalist states, the second world consisted of communist or socialist one-party states, while the third world was a set of states (and those territories that still had the status of colonies) that were economically underdeveloped but did not have communist or socialist regimes. He opposed the world-systems theory developed by Immanuel Wallerstein and his division of the world's states into center, semi-periphery, and periphery.

Main works

The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of „Cargo Cults“ in Melanesia (1957);

The Third World (1964);

Problems of Modern Society: A Sociological Perspective (1972);

Inside China (1975);

Marx and Marxism (1982);

The Three Worlds: Culture and World Development (1984);

Knowledges: Culture, Counterculture, Subculture (1997).