Urban Voluntary Associations, Locality Based and Externally Induced

Both the literature on urban communities and that on local voluntary associations have focused on endogenous social processes: urban communities are seen as important loci of social integration and loca voluntary associations as aggregates of local interests spontaneusly coalescing to influence external agents. The current relevance of these perspectives, in view of the increasing scale of urban social organization, is questioned on the bais of observations from a community study of a well-defined south-side Chicago neighborhood. Information on the social networks and institutional affiliations of area residents indicate that social residence is a relatively unimportant source of social integration for modern urban residents. In this context, the genesis and role of local voluntary associations are frequently reversed: because there are no obvious points of contact based on informal social networks, external agents seeking to intervene in these neighborhoods must sponsor or even create local voluntary associations as sources of information and legitimation.