The Role of Civil Society and Associations in American History

In his famous book, Democracy in America, written in the 1830s, French nobleman Alexis de Tocqueville noted that American were quick to create and join voluntary associations of all sorts. They created associations for business purposes, to reform problems within their society, to share knowledge, to foster sociability. Tocqueville hoped that these many associations would provide a kind of social glue that would hold together America's vast, rapidly changing, and highly individualistic nation.

Here is a famous passage on associations from Democracy in America, which not only contains Tocqueville's observations on the popularity of associations in America, but also offers a reasonably good description of civil society:

"Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations. There are not only commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand different types--religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limit