SOLIDARITY AND AGENCY - RETHINKING COMMUNITY-DEVELOPMENT

Despite its four decade-long history, community development is still i nsufficiently conceptualized. Its name is buried under various euphemi sms, although its ideology has become the legitimizing cachet for soci al interventions of all sorts. This paper presents a reformulation of the classic idea of community development as the pursuit of solidarity and agency. Such a formulation aligns community development with the central intellectual concerns of today. While community development pu rsues the same goals as many other endeavors, its distinctiveness lies in the manner in which it pursues them, namely, by adhering to the pr inciples of self-help, felt needs, and participation.