Het verenigingsleven in sociologisch perspectief. Enkele voorlopige verkenningen

Samenvatting

Corporate life in a sociological perspective. In spite of the commonness of this phenomenon, the needs of authorities of social and cultural work and stimuli in foreign literature, a sociology of associations is as good as absent. Generally, associations are considered useful and looked upon as things stimulating integration, which should be advanced in all circumstances. The author checks a few categories first and discusses, in short, the possibilities of association as a social technique, as a group, as a situation, as an aspect of society in wider connection, as ideology and as an aspect of a historical phase. After a number of definitions the article is concluded with an attempt to a theory with respect to the concept ’mass-apathy of members of associations’. It is supposed that this is to be explained as well by the increasing organizational density of society, which Is attended by a shifting to newer and more adequate social techniques (organization, mass-control, formation of publics, a.o.), a shifting of the associations to the self-expression type (Rose), a centralization and cluster formation, a segmentation of society according to socio-economic or ideological principles and other factors.