Philippine E-Journals

Community Participation and Rural Development: Some Issues of Concern

Epictetus Patalinghug

Discipline: Community Development

 

Abstract:

Development practitioners have found the task of defining "development" extremely difficult. However, a general level of agreement is reached among the same practitioners if the concept of development is defined by what it is not. Many existing misconceptions of development can be spelled out at the outset. Development is not equivalent to any of the following: (1) massive foreign investment, (2) reliance on foreign capital, (3) industrialization, (4) rapid output growth, (5) capital accumulation, (6) highly educated population, and (7) centralized planning. Regardless of the difficulty of pinning down the concept of development, a prominent practitioner defines development as "a process of cumulative change that results from positive forces that raise productivity" (Meier, 1976).