The Bucharest School of Sociology and the Failure of the Interwar Community Development Project
The Bucharest School of Sociology and the Failure of the Interwar Community Development Project

Summary/Abstract: In interwar Romania, the Bucharest School of Sociology, founded by academician Dimitrie Gusti, theorized and implemented the first integrated program of community development, financed from the state budget, through the “Prince Carol” Royal Cultural Foundation, under the patronage of King Carol II. In this article [1] we will review the main causes leading to the failure of this project, aimed at culturally and materially lifting the Romanian village from its state of underdevelopment: on the one hand, peasants’ illiteracy, poverty, passivity and distrust of modernity and on the other, intellectual arrogance, lack of resources, Dimitrie Gusti’s utopian vision, combined with the inefficiency of the education system and failure of agriculture.

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