Abstract
Voluntary associations are often said to be the fount of democracy. They are said to foster all sorts of goods in citizens, simultaneously: solidarity and trust, wide‐ranging deliberation, political knowledge, broadened horizons, and political power. This essay explores the tensions between these different goods. First, using Michael Schudson's historical study, The Good Citizen, and my own fieldwork in a range of voluntary associations as springboards for questioning, the essay asks how people in everyday conversations create these different, possibly incompatible goods. The essay argues that contemporary speech genres for voluntary associations resonate deeply with the very discrepant, clashing forms of citizenship Schudson discovered in past eras of American history. Finally, using some tentative ethnographic evidence from intimate settings and bureaucratic settings, the essay asks how people might cultivate some of these goods in institutions that are not “voluntary associations,” that do not just meet after dinner.
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