JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Clark University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Economic Geography.Several months ago, in discussing the problem of supplying water to the rural dweller, I made the following general comment: "The task of supplying water to urban communities, although posing many difficulties, was far simpler and more economical than providing the same commodity to rural dwellers. The same unit of expenditure in the first case usually covered a greater number of people than in the scattered villages or with more widely dispersed rural dwellers. The logistical approach, whether engineering, economic, or political, was essentially simpler. Yet, throughout the years, statesmen were uninterruptedly concerned with the depressed fate of the rural dweller, whose water supply needs were abysmally delayed in implementation, in comparison with his more favored urban brethreneven though these, in a large part of the world, still awaited safe and continuous supply."Although it is true that the rural dweller somehow always manages to get water, it is usually with effort and most of the time the commodity is meager in quantity and unsafe in quality. The global situation is well described in the 1972 Progress Report by the Director General of the World Health Organization to the Twenty-Fifth World Health Assembly. The 90 countries thus surveyed represented a 1970 population of 1,627 million. The rural picture was dismal, in that some 88 percent of its population of 1,026 million was inadequately served.The present volume, therefore, is particularly timely in the renewed interest in and desire to expand more rapidly the service of water in rural communities. The document approaches the problem quite differently from the more familiar mass attacks of previous workers in this field. The focus is primarily upon the habits, views, reactions, and acceptances of the local inhabitants, in order to determine with greater validity whether water systems, if provided, are of acceptable type and will actually be used.The apparent motivation for this inquiry lies in the fact that, even where systems have been provided on a relatively large scale, social and structural failures have been more frequent than desired. This has been the case, for example, in Thailand, Venezuela, and Argen-
