Immerwahr, Daniel. Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015.

== Summary ==
Modernization,
as a theory of development, shared a “rival impulse” in community development
during the 1950s and 1960s. Responding to the popular memory and romanticism of
the small-scale (“Modernization Comes to Town” Story/caricature of the past),
Immerwhar’s book historicizes the pursuit of “community” and an approach,
defined as “community development” that attempted shore up small-scale
solidarities and encourage civic and democratic participation. Immerwahr
writes: “Thinking Small traces a
generation of thinkers and policymakers,” including Jawaharlal Nehru, Mohandas
Gandhi, Ferdinand Marcos, John F. Kennedy as well as mid-level functionaries
working for the UN and the Peace Corps, “who identified scale as a central
issue and whose attitudes toward centralization fell somewhere between wariness
and outright hostility.” By 1960, the UN counted sixty countries with
community development projects; Immerwahr’s book focuses on the U.S., India,
and the Philippines. These three countries, Imemrwahr argues, were among the
most important. India, he contends, shaped “both the ideological components of
community development and many of its basic practices.” The Philippines was a
testing ground for community development tied with counterinsurgency.
Eventually, these experiences made it back to the U.S. in the form of Johnson’s
“War on Poverty.” In India, Immerwahr argues, community development schemes
tended to empower local elite, rather than the peasants themselves. As a
result, it reinforced structural problems (unequal land tenure, caste, and
patriarchy). Immerwahr concludes: “Community development was, in other words,
neither a utopia nor a panacea. It was a complicated undertaking encompassing a
mix of hope, disappointment, and unintended consequences.”
Example: India Etawah Project
See also: David Elkbadh, Andrew Zimmerman