Rural development literature yields three images of improved social well-being--economic technical growth, human-interpersonal growth, and environmental-quality protection. While the economic growth dimension of rural development has received much attention, little is known about the structural conditions in the social organization or the kinds of intervention strategies which will produce social well-being. It appears that once the sustenance threshold is approached, increments of liberation per unit of economic technical growth diminish sharply. Social theory literature suggests the means for ordering the rural development model a la interactionist theories based in existential philosophy which parallel rural development intervention practices by treating both ends and means. Economic development must be viewed as no more than a means, for the ends of rural development should be human and ecological and have to do less with development than with being. Therefore, rural development should inlclude a systematic examination of social theory, and the following, among other, hypotheses should be tested: relationships expressing cooperative linkages are more supportive of social well-being than those expressing opposition or isolation; comprehensiveness of linkages is more facilitative of social well-being than is fragmentation; conscious commitment to comprehensiveness/cooperativeness is most facilitative of social well-being. (JC)