Membership and Participation in Voluntary Associations

SOCIOLOGISTS and students from other disciplines have observed and reported upon proliferation of voluntary in the United States and upon the important influence of this phenomenon on American society.' Voluntary associations, though found in other contemporary industrialized societies, have been peculiarly and intimately related to the early and continued development of democracy in this country.2 The fact that pioneers through the agency of voluntary associations founded, settled and developed areas of the continent is, indeed, evidence of the early influence of this institution upon American life. The proliferation of voluntary associations has been ascribed to: (1) the change of function of the family, church, and state and the relative loss of control of these major institutions over the person, (2) the democratic and Protestant principle of the freedom of individual choice, (3) the articulation of minority groups, (4) the increased division of labor, and (5) secularization. These explanations for the genesis and continued growth of voluntary associations, particularly in the United States, may be subsumed under the rubrics of democracy and the urban way of life.3