Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development

by Daniel Immerwahr

Winner of the Merle Curti Award in Intellectual History, Organization of American HistoriansCo-Winner of the Society for U.S. Intellectual History Book AwardThinking Small tells the story of how the United States sought to rescue the world from poverty through small-scale, community-based approaches. And it also sounds a such strategies, now again in vogue, have been tried before, with often disastrous consequences.“Unfortunately, far from eliminating deprivation and attacking the social status quo, bottom-up community development projects often reinforced them…This is a history with real stakes. If that prior campaign’s record is as checkered as Thinking Small argues, then its intellectual descendants must do some serious rethinking… How might those in twenty-first-century development and anti-poverty work forge a better path? They can start by reading Thinking Small.”—Merlin Chowkwanyun, Boston Review“As the historian Daniel Immerwahr demonstrates brilliantly in Thinking Small, the history of development has seen constant experimentation with community-based and participatory approaches to economic and social improvement…Immerwahr’s account of these failures should give pause to those who insist that going small is always better than going big.”—Jamie Martin, The Nation

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction, Economics, The United States Of America, Sociology

268 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 17, 2014

About the author

Daniel Immerwahr is an associate professor of history at Northwestern University and the author of Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development, which won the Organization of American Historians’ Merle Curti Award. He has written for Slate, n+1, Dissent, and other publications.

Reviews

[Adam Wasserman · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The problem is not just that communities are rarely up to the task of conquering poverty. It it also that community development’s characteristic focus on the small and local is itself evasive. The power of community development to direct attention away from larger structural problems toward small-scale ones was, in fact, precisely why the CIA found it so promising as a counter to rural communism. Community developers, confronted with poverty, ask what the poor can do, locally, to overcome it. But that is rarely the most productive question to ask, since it implicitly places the responsibility for alleviating poverty on the victims of poverty themselves. In the guise of “empowering” the poor, it drops the rich from the equation. And it is the rich who are both the beneficiaries of a screwed system of resources distribution and far more capable of altering that system.”

[Kyle Dunlap · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well Researched

I read this book as I've been volunteering in the Peace Corps. This book was well researched and worth the read. It forced me to consider the role of community development work.

[Sunjay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an essential book for anyone interested in international development or ending poverty. It provides much-needed context on the past century of development thought and the things that people got right and wrong throughout it.
I especially want to recommend this to folks who are either considering a career in international development or are passionate about effective altruism.

[Caroline Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Important and necessary read for anyone interested in domestic or global development! Immerwahr unpacks the bleak history of community development and the power structures at play— from the US, to India and the Philippines— highlighting the tactics of inequality and diversion that have allowed community development to continue as a praised model for all these years.

[Teddy Stravin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really thoughtful and interesting critique on community development efforts by the US abroad after WWII. So much research is brought in to provide examples in India, the Philippines, and domestically in the US and how localism has not truly been what it is believed to be. An incredibly worthy read for anyone interested in development and in support of community-level projects to see just where they have gone wrong in the past and how future projects can be restructured to ensure those whose voices are meant to be brought to the table are actually supported, empowered, and listened to.