Voluntary Associations and Social Movements

Abstract

Abstract Voluntary associations are “organized, named collectivities in which the majority of participants do not derive their livelihood from their activities in the group” (Knoke & Wood 1981: 8; see also Berry 1977; Walker 1991). The concept of a “voluntary association” has deep roots in the history and thought of American political development. Indeed, as de Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America (1838), his celebrated account of his 1831 visit to the US, “no country in the world has made better use of association than the United States and nowhere has that powerful instrument been applied to a wider range of purposes” (de Tocqueville 2004: 215). Indeed, long traditions in US political thought have held that associations are schools of self‐reliant citizenship and democratic practice through which interests and preferences are newly formed rather than predetermined. Associations offer a space outside the bureaucratic and electoral demands of the state, while also remaining relatively insulated from the pecuniary interests and competitive pressures of the market. Scholars of voluntary associations have highlighted the means by which nonpolitical forms of civic organization, such as neighborhood groups, fraternal organizations, and, in a well‐known instance, choral groups, provide not only social integration and the participatory norms, social networks, and feelings of trust that accompany it (Putnam 2000), but they also indirectly socialize participants into active and engaged citizenship.