Rural Community Development

The author discusses rural community development in the United States by tracing its historical origins, reviewing its status within sociology, contrasting development of the community with development in the community, and reviewing three basic strategies of rural community development: authoritative intervention, client-centered intervention, and radical reform. The author concludes that federal intervention policies have created elaborate and complex interdependencies among state and federal governments, the private sector, and communities, and that rural community development requires a sociology that maps these relationships and provides explanations for changes in them.