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Green, Gary Paul and Anna Haines
Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2002.
251 pp.
0-7619-2263-6 (pbk)
$48.95 US
There are two important claims made in the preface of this book. The first is that while it is not a "cookbook" for community development, the book is intended as a resource for students and practitioners. The second is the strange assertion that "community development is rooted largely in the US experience". The first claim is a fairly accurate assessment of the book's usefulness. However, the second is a foreshadowing of the limited utility of this book outside of the US context.
The book is firmly grounded in the now popular approach to community development pioneered by Kretzmann and McKnight known as asset-based community development (also called "ABCD"). The ABCD approach views poor communities not as reservoirs of need and despair, but as collections of resources and assets that can be tapped in order to realize social and economic development.
True to its mission, the book is structured much like a university text. It is divided into three sections, each with three...