Communities as “Big Small Groups”: Culture and Social Capital

Abstract

Since the early days of the American republic, social and political observers have analyzed the role of local associations in promoting civic participation, strengthening democracy, and developing countervailing structures to those of the state. Their commentaries emphasized the importance of group solidarity, voluntarism, and reciprocity in the preservation of republican virtues. During the late nineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries, these perspectives played a prominent role in defining the patterns and parameters of social policies designed to assimilate an increasingly diverse U.S. population. Conversely, they also enabled minorities to resist the forces of institutional oppression in their communities.