ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the background of the community crisis, identifies its main parameters, and suggests an approach that could be taken to turn the community crisis into a new era of community development in the rural South. Perspective for an analysis of the community crisis is gained by acknowledging that the rural South, for all its distinctiveness, shares a number of community and rural problems with other regions. Inequality has a number of more or less obvious effects on community wellbeing in the rural South. Essential to understanding the dimensions of the community crisis in the rural South, therefore, is an appreciation of the separate influences of three key factors that interact to structure the crisis, namely the community, rural life, and the South. The rural crisis and the community crisis are related. Contrary to some observations about the past, the evidence for the present shows quite clearly that rural living entails problems for community development.
