COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT IN THE THIRD WORLD: A LITERA

Community development, as the term is used in this literature review, refers to societal development at the level of local communities. Within this context, such development may occur in either rural or urban settings. Encompassed within the concept of community development are the creation of economic structures, the establishment of systems to deliver services to the residents of the community, and the policy and support mechanisms required to assure the availability of the human, physical, and financial resources required to establish and maintain the economic and social systems upon which community development is dependent.

Community development is largely a product of public policy. Unfortunately, in many developing countries, public policies, however, commendable, cannot always be implemented fully with available resources. In contemporary society, prospects for community development are "determined by public policy, by those decisions which shape contemporary environments in communities, workplaces, homes, and schools (Milio, 1981, p. 3).

Community development is more than a contemporary crisis, and community development policies concern more than the programs required to deal with such crises. Community development is not a state to be captured, nor is it some achievement to be attained with finality. Rather, community development is the response of people to their environments (Korte

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t be addressed within each economy. Regardless of the philosophical and theoretical structure on which these different economies may be based, similar functions must be performed in the addressing of similar problems. Through the early1970s, most of the people of the industrialized world became accustomed to the idea that developing countries were poor, and that they required some sort of economic assistance from the developed countries. In the early1970s, however, some of the developing countries began to flex their political muscles in the United Nations, and many people in the industrialized countries began to view economic aid to these countries from a new (and often unsympathetic) perspective (Smith, 1990, p. 73). At about the same time, the crude oil price shocks began moving through the world economy. The combination of a reluctance of the developed countries to extend aid and rising energy prices exerted enormous development pressures on the non industrialized countries. The financing of development, thus, assumed an increasingly critical character. The United States financed its economic development primarily through the use of domestic resources in the nineteenth century. The United States, however, had the ben
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 9692
Approximate Pages = 39 (250 words per page)