C. Wright Mills would have enjoyed writing an essay about the contemporary research on voluntary associations. He would have found two of his favourite enemies: abstracted empericism, and a species of value bias similar to that of the 'social pathologists' whom he despisedonly in this case the bias is not rural romanticism but suburbanitis. The only missing polemic would be the one on grand theory. The reason is quite obvious: there is not much theory on voluntary associations, grand or otherwise. By ignoring the contributions of anthropologists, philosophers, political scientists, economists, and religious scholars we have lost touch with the contextual issues which might have helped to control bias and particularism.' The matter has been made worse within sociology by treating voluntary associations as a separate topic or simply as a dependent variable in community participation studies, while not placing the topic in the context of general organizational research.2 As a consequence of this specious parochialism one frequently encounters romantic notions about participatory democracy, such as: community members unite in the pursuit of common interests of their own free will, gain satisfaction with democracy, and satisfy the need to belong. The impression that a new theoretical start was needed grew out of the experience of trying to explain some findings regarding the voluntary associations of Negroes in a southern U.S. city.3 Available research provided no theory to explain the observation that co-racial social relations at work were a basic source of community participation, or that voluntary associations apparently took action contrary to their stated purposes. The object of this paper is to develop a theoretical approach which more adequately accounts for the social environment in which voluntary associations exist. To this end, two kinds of relationships with the organization are examined. The first concerns those aspects of opposition and support which the organization, and its members in member