The Mantra of Efficiency Michael S. Cummings practitioners and service users -

practitioners and service users - to identify both the opportunities and challenges

Elena Padilla

But there is no need to feel intimidated

the leadership they lack

In her ethnographic case study of La Ciénaga—a rural community on the edge of an important ecological preserve and national park in the Dominican Republic—Carruyo argues that Dominican economic development has rested its legitimacy on rescuing peasants from their own subsistence practices so that they may serve the nation as "productive citizens

The Mantra of Efficiency Michael S. Cummings practitioners and service users -Efficiencyassociated with individual discipline, superior management, and increased profits or productivityoften counts as one of the highest virtues in Western culture. But what does it mean, exactly, to be efficient? How did this concept evolve from a means for evaluating simple machines to the mantra of progress and a prerequisite for success? In this provocative and ambitious study, Jennifer Karns Alexander explores the growing power of efficiency