Voluntary Associations

Associations and Community Building

Voluntary associations probably began early in human history at the time of the first agricultural communities. In tribal societies, voluntary associations often include men's or women's groups. In less developed nations, mutual benefit and rotating credit associations are common, while in richer nations many associations focus on leisure, welfare, and political activities. Local civic associations, like those described by Steven Gregory (1998) in the African American neighborhood of Corona, Queens, may be the repositories of social memories of [Page 1464]political struggles that help to define community identity. In many nations where rural-urban or transnational immigration has been widespread, associations have been created to provide social identity and material assistance for immigrants from the same hometown or region.

While associations flourish in many other parts of the world, America is often thought to be an exemplary incubator of volunteerism. In his book Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859), an early French observer of American life, noted the propensity of Americans for developing voluntary associations as a means of addressing the problems of nation building and community building. In 1938, sociologist Louis Wirth, in his influential formulation “Urbanism as a Way of Life,” noted the importance of nonkinship voluntary associations for shaping the life careers of urbanites in the United States. Twenty years later, political scientist Edward Banfield, in his controversial book The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, described the economic and social stagnation of a southern Italian town whose residents were unable to organize beyond the family unit. Robert Putnam's influential study of regional government in Italy, published in 1993, showed that regions with a history of voluntary associations were more democratic than regions that had no history of organizations. Membership in face-to-face social associations, regardless of the purpose of the organization, he argued, helps to develop the trust and confidence that are the foundations of civil society. In publications summarized in 2000, Putnam charted a worrisome decline in the incidence and membership in voluntary associations as a consequence of the dominance of passive television viewing in American life and the passing of a more organizationally inclined generation. The decline of voluntary associations—for example, the phenomenon of “bowling alone” rather than in a league—is for Putnam a signal of the decline of the social connections, or social capital, that makes civil society possible.