Community Development as A Process of Emergence

I understand the word ’development’ to contain at least, the ideas of ’process’, ’emergence’ and ’change’. Although this chapter is not intended to be a study in conceptual analysis, nevertheless it is important to distinguish different notions. ’Community development’ itself is a confused notion. Thus ’community development’ is used sometimes to refer to a better provision of services. At the other extreme it is taken to be solely a strengthening of local politics or even further the imposition of idealistic societies. It is true that there are terms which distinguish different approaches to social intervention such as ’community provision’, ’community action’, ’community service’ or ’community relations’ but often they are lumped together under the title of ’community development’.