ABSTRACT
The concept of 'the community' (and therefore of 'community development') has come to dominate many aspects of policy and society: as in community health initiatives, community policing, community schools, art in the community, planning-for-real exercises. Indeed, the redesign of policy so as to reflect, and to be implemented at, the level of the community has become virtually the new orthodoxy. This is no more so than in rural areas where, for many, the term community assumes almost definitional power. Tied in with this is the three-fold character of the concept: descriptive (a category of the 'real' world), normative (a set of values) and prescriptive (an ideal to pursue).
