Communities and their development :
Batten, T.R
Communities and their development : an introductory study with special reference to the tropics c.2 - an introductory stud - London Oxford University Press 1957 - 248p.
THE past ten years or so have seen a very rapid expansion of community development work, and nearly everywhere governments and voluntary agencies have been trying out new forms of organization, new methods and new techniques. In this book I aim to study some of these experiments and draw conclusions from them, bringing together information and ideas from many sources which are not all easily accessible to most workers in the tropics.
My main purpose is to study and compare differences in aim, method, and organization, and to illustrate each point with one or more examples. I have not tried to describe policies and methods country by country, and the fact that some countries are but sketchily repre sented and others, perhaps, not mentioned at all, is not intended to imply that they are not important. It means only that their ideas and methods are well enough illustrated by one or more of the examples actu ally selected. While all the chosen examples are neces sarily local and particular, I hope that the conclusions drawn from them will be of interest and use to organizers and field workers everywhere..
Accurate, detailed knowledge of what is being at tempted in many countries is difficult for the outsider to come by, yet on it must depend the validity of the conclusions reached and the usefulness of the book. I am aware of this difficulty and have done my best to overcome it. I have been greatly helped by experience in dealing with problems of community education while serving in West and East Africa from 1927 to 1949, and since 1949 by the work I have been doing at the Univer sity of London Institute of Education. There for the last eight years I have been making comparative studies of community development work with special reference to the tropics. This has meant making a systematic study of a wide range of reports, journals, and other publications, but even more important as sources of information have been sustained discussions with a large number of experienced serving officers ranging in seniority from assistant field officers to directors and deputy directors of development departments. About twenty such officers, men and women, come to the Institute each year to study community development or the techniques of extension work. Almost everything in this book has been hammered out in discussion with groups of these officers, and most of the examples have been checked for accuracy with one or more officers with a first-hand knowledge of the area or project con cerned. In fact, many of the examples selected have been preferred to other examples just because it has been possible to check them in this way. Thus in a very real sense this book is a product of group study. Most of the 150 officers from some thirty tropical and sub tropical countries who have worked on the Community Development Course at the Institute have in some way or another contributed to the ideas it contains.
Sociology
307 BAT
Communities and their development : an introductory study with special reference to the tropics c.2 - an introductory stud - London Oxford University Press 1957 - 248p.
THE past ten years or so have seen a very rapid expansion of community development work, and nearly everywhere governments and voluntary agencies have been trying out new forms of organization, new methods and new techniques. In this book I aim to study some of these experiments and draw conclusions from them, bringing together information and ideas from many sources which are not all easily accessible to most workers in the tropics.
My main purpose is to study and compare differences in aim, method, and organization, and to illustrate each point with one or more examples. I have not tried to describe policies and methods country by country, and the fact that some countries are but sketchily repre sented and others, perhaps, not mentioned at all, is not intended to imply that they are not important. It means only that their ideas and methods are well enough illustrated by one or more of the examples actu ally selected. While all the chosen examples are neces sarily local and particular, I hope that the conclusions drawn from them will be of interest and use to organizers and field workers everywhere..
Accurate, detailed knowledge of what is being at tempted in many countries is difficult for the outsider to come by, yet on it must depend the validity of the conclusions reached and the usefulness of the book. I am aware of this difficulty and have done my best to overcome it. I have been greatly helped by experience in dealing with problems of community education while serving in West and East Africa from 1927 to 1949, and since 1949 by the work I have been doing at the Univer sity of London Institute of Education. There for the last eight years I have been making comparative studies of community development work with special reference to the tropics. This has meant making a systematic study of a wide range of reports, journals, and other publications, but even more important as sources of information have been sustained discussions with a large number of experienced serving officers ranging in seniority from assistant field officers to directors and deputy directors of development departments. About twenty such officers, men and women, come to the Institute each year to study community development or the techniques of extension work. Almost everything in this book has been hammered out in discussion with groups of these officers, and most of the examples have been checked for accuracy with one or more officers with a first-hand knowledge of the area or project con cerned. In fact, many of the examples selected have been preferred to other examples just because it has been possible to check them in this way. Thus in a very real sense this book is a product of group study. Most of the 150 officers from some thirty tropical and sub tropical countries who have worked on the Community Development Course at the Institute have in some way or another contributed to the ideas it contains.
Sociology
307 BAT