Membership and Morals : The Personal Uses of Pluralism in America

In recent years, membership has dropped in traditional voluntary associations such as Rotary Clubs, Jaycees, and bowling leagues.

At the same time, concern is rising about growth of paramilitary and hate groups.

Scholars have warned that these trends are undermining civic society by creating a dangerous number of isolated, mistrustful individuals and organized, antisocial renegades.

In this book, however, Nancy Rosenblum takes a less narrowly political approach to the study of groups and reaches optimistic conclusions about the state of civil society.

Rosenblum argues that we should judge associations not only by what they do for civic virtue, but also by what they do for individual members.

She shows that groups of all kinds - among them religious groups, corporations, home-owner associations, secret societies, racial and cultural identity groups, prayer groups, and even paramilitary groups - fill deep psychological and moral needs. And she contends that the failure to recognize this has contributed to an alarmist view of their social impact. For example, she argues that, although extremist groups have obvious antisocial aims, they constrain individuals who would be even more dangerous as a maladjusted loners. And she examines the rapid growth of small "support groups" - which are usually dismissed as politically irrelevant - and shows that the moral support people find in such places as prayer groups and self-help groups helps to cultivate the social trust some scholars say is disappearing.

Rosenblum concludes that, for practical and principled reasons, American democracy should permit expansive freedom of association, illustrating her case with discussion of specific cases in law.