Title The making of Tocqueville's America : law and association in the early United States / Kevin Butterfield

Published Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2015

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Description 1 online resource : illustrations Series American beginnings, 1500-1900 American beginnings, 1500-1900. Contents Introduction -- The concept of membership in America, 1783 -- 1815 -- Friendship, formalities, and membership in post-revolutionary America -- Politics, citizenship, and association -- A common law of membership -- Practices and limits, 1800 -- 1840 -- Everyday constitutionalism in a nation of joiners -- When shareholders were members: the business corporation as voluntary association -- Determining the rights of members -- Consequences: civil society in antebellum America -- Labor unions and an American law of membership -- Conclusion: the concept of membership in the age of reform Summary Alexis de Tocqueville was among the first to draw attention to Americans' propensity to form voluntary associations--and to join them with a fervor and frequency unmatched anywhere in the world. For nearly two centuries, we have sought to understand how and why early nineteenth-century Americans were, in Tocqueville's words, "forever forming associations." In The Making of Tocqueville's America, Kevin Butterfield argues that to understand this, we need to first ask: what did membership really mean to the growing number of affiliated Americans? Butterfield explains that the first generations of American citizens found in the concept of membership--in churches, fraternities, reform societies, labor unions, and private business corporations--a mechanism to balance the tension between collective action and personal autonomy, something they accomplished by emphasizing law and procedural fairness. As this post-Revolutionary procedural culture developed, so too did the legal substructure of American civil society. Tocqueville, then, was wrong to see associations as the training ground for democracy, where people learned to honor one another's voices and perspectives. Rather, they were the training ground for something no less valuable to the success of the American democratic experiment: increasingly formal and legalistic relations among people Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Print version record Subject Societies -- United States -- Membership -- History -- 18th century Societies -- United States -- Membership -- History -- 19th century Societies -- Membership -- Political aspects -- United States Voluntarism -- United States -- History -- 18th century Voluntarism -- United States -- History -- 19th century Social participation -- Political aspects -- United States -- History -- 18th century Social participation -- Political aspects -- United States -- History -- 19th century Associations, institutions, etc. -- Law and legislation -- United States -- History -- 18th century Associations, institutions, etc. -- Law and legislation -- United States -- History -- 19th century SOCIAL SCIENCE -- General. Associations, institutions, etc. -- Law and legislation Voluntarism Verein Ehrenamt Gesetzgebung Soziales Engagement United States USA Genre/Form History Form Electronic book ISBN 9780226297118 022629711X

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