"The Target is the People": Representations of the Village in Modernization and U.S. National Security Doctrine

Author: Cullather, Nick

Source: Cultural Politics: an International Journal, Volume 2, Number 1, March 2006 , pp. 29-48(20)

Publisher: Berg Publishers

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Abstract:

In the 1950s and 1960s, the term village served as a cardinal construct in modernization theory and counterinsurgency doctrine, signifying local resistance to the global power of the United States. Nation builders devised two strategies - community development and strategic hamlets - that reveal the attitudes and characteristics they ascribed to the village and its conceptual opposite, the city. The key innovations came from Albert Mayer, a New York real-estate developer who designed the modernist city of Chandigarh and India's village reconstruction scheme. Mayer's ideas persist in forms as diverse as Washington's country-club suburbs and the Pentagon's techniques for urban assault.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.2752/174321906778054637

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