THE LIMITS AND POTENTIAL OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT FOR PERSONAL AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Abstract

Some health and welfare workers are making claims for community development which are both unrealistic and misleading. By tracing the history and public policy use of community development and by defining its characteristics, much of the mystique which surrounds this intervention is eliminated. Community development is revealed in this paper to have potential in the areas of personal and planned social change. However, community development's contribution to fundamental social change is circumscribed by the nature of government sponsorship and by its very process which emphasizes parochialism and the generation of self reliance.