Meaning,defination and Characteristics of Association

 

There are three ways in which men seek the fulfillment of their ends. First, they may act independently, each following his own way without thought of his fellows or their actions. However seemingly desirable, this unsocial way has narrow limitations wherever men live together. Second, they may seek them through conflict with one another, each striving to wrest from the others the objects that he prizes. But this method, if not channeled strictly by regulation, is precarious and is opposed to the very existence of society. Finally, men may pursue their end in company, on some co-operative basis, so that each is in some degree and, manner contributing to the ends of his fellow.

This co-operative pursuit may be determined by the customs of a community. On the other hand, a group may organize itself expressly for the pursuing certain of its interests together. When this happens, an association is born. One can define an association, then as a group organized for the pursuits of an interest or group of interests in common.

Like ‘community’, the term ‘association’, is also very loosely used and confused with the term society. The term association has been severally defined by several sociologists. Some of these definitions are give

 

DEFINITION OF ASSOCIATION

According to G.D.H Cole: “ By an association we mean any group of persons pursuing a common purpose by of course co-operation action extending beyond a social act and foe this purpose agreeing together upon certain methods of production and lying down, in however a rudimentary form, rules of common actions.”

According to Bogardus: “An Association is usually working together of people who wish to achieve certain purposes”.

According to Maclver: “An association is an organisation deliberately form for the collective pursuit same interest or set of interests, which its members share”.

According to Ginsberg: “An association is a group of social beings related to one another by the fact that they posses or have instituted in common an organisation with a view to securing a specific end or specific ends”.

According to Gillin and Gillin: “An association is a group of individuals united for a specific purpose or purposes or held together by recognised or sanctioned modes of procedure or behaviour”.

To sum up, it can be said that an association is a group of people organised for a particular purpose or a limited number of purposes. To constitute an association there must be, firstly, a group of people, secondly, these people must be “an organized one” i.e. there must be certain rules for their conduct in the group, and thirdly, they must have a common purpose of a specific nature to pursue. Thus family, church, trade union all are the instance of association.

Men have several interests. Hence they establish different association to fulfill them. Some examples of the different kind of associations may be cited here:

Examples

·        Political Associations:  The congress party, the BJP.

·        Religious Associations: The Arya Samaj, the Ramakrishnan mission.

·        Students Associations: The Akhil Bhartiya Vidiyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the national students union of India (NSUI).

·        Labourers Associations: The Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangha, all India trade union congress, etc.

·        Professional Associations: Indian medical association, the Indian bar council.

·         Economic Associations or Business Organization: hotel owners association, chamber of commerce, etc.

·         International Associations: The rotary club, Y.M.C.A., Y.W.C.A.

Purpose of association and need 

In our primitive society needs and requirements of every individual were limited with the result that every individual was self-sufficient in many ways. Today however, we are living in a complex set up and structure, where we are dependent on others for meeting our needs. Therefore, we can meet our demands either independently or follow the useless method of seeking them through conflict with one another or pursue their ends in company or in cooperation with others. It is usually the last method which is followed in our day to day life and spirit of cooperation and desire of achieving ends in the company of others has given birth to association. Maclver says that, ‘co-operative, pursuit may be spontaneous, such as the offering of a helping hand to a stranger. It may be casual. It may be determined by the customs of a community, as in the case of farmers assisting their neighbours at harvest time. On the other hand, a group may organise itself expressly for the purpose of pursuing certain of its interests together. When this happens, an association is born.” In other words, association is required to meet collective needs and necessities of the people, for which collective efforts are required.

The association, in modern times are required to form many social functions. It is through these associations that people can think of claiming and discharging social obligations. It is through associations that it is to possible to mobilize public opinion for remedying social evils or introducing new healthy social institutions. Healthy association are emblems of a healthy society because is a combination of association working in it. Society helps in many ways in the cultivation of human personality.

Essential Characteristics Of Association

There are following six essential Characteristics of an association:

1-It is a concrete form of organization: Association is a group of persons collected for some specific aim. It is, thus a concrete group which can be seen, while at work. Thus it is a concrete form of organization of human beings.

2-It is Established: Like community, association does not glow spontaneously. It has not natural growth and it does not grow itself. Associations are formed with certain aims and objects to be fulfilled. They are created by men to satisfy some motive or cause. Rules and regulations are formed to run a particular kind of association and the members of the association run it on the basis of these roles and regulations.

3-Its Aim is Determined: No association is formed without any aim. First, there is the problem and the solution of which becomes the aim of the association formed to solve such problems for example, if it is a dramatic association, then its aim will naturally be to stage dramas and plays. No association can maintain its identity without any distinct aim and object.

4-Followers of Rules and Regulations are the only Members: Every association floats on the ground of certain rules and regulations. It also contains ‘code of conduct’ for the members. Those who follow the rules and regulations provided for and participate in the pursuit of the aim of the association are only called as the members of it. Anyone acting contrary or disowning the obligations as members may be expelled from the membership, as per procedure framed for the purpose.

It also becomes obligatory for every member to cooperate with others in the achievement of the goals of the association.

5- Its membership is voluntary: An association is not an essential organisation like state or society. Neither it is natural organization in which every one’s contribution can be asked for on natural grounds. Neither there is any common instinct among the persons based on common and unified ideology to become the members of a particular association.

But the membership of an association is voluntary. A person becomes the member because he wants it and only because he likes it and if he grows a feeling of dislike he is absolutely free to disown any such association.

6- An Association Exists for its Aims and objections: The life of an association is upto the achievement of the aim for which it has been created. The existence of association after the achievement of the aim becomes immaterial and irrelevant. It become nominal and lifeless body of formalities only. The aim is the soul of the association.

Factors Responsible For The Formation Of An Association

The Role of Interests:

 In the formation and maintenance of associations, the role of interests is greater than that of  attitudes encourage or discourage the process of organizing, but they do not create organizations. Associations develop as means or modes of attaining interests. An association is likely to be formed wherever people recognise a like, complementary or common interest, sufficiently enduring and sufficiently distinct to be capable of more effective promotion through collective action, provided their differences outside the field of this interest are not so strong as to prevent the partial agreement involved in its formation.

Heterogeneous and Specialized Community: 

A heterogeneous and specialized community affords more opportunity for the creation of organized group than does a simple or primitive community. In the former we are able to distinguish particular interests from the general concerns and the very fact of specialization makes necessary the organization of these particular interests. Moreover the constant changes that occur in a specialized community precipitate conditions favourable to the emergence of new groups.

The Role of Leadership: 

The mere recognition of an interest that can be promoted by organization in not sufficient to bring about the formation of an association. For inertias, prejudices and problems of ways and means must overcome, and here is where the role of leadership is most manifest. Usually the initiative, enthusiasm and energy of one or a small number of persons prepare the ground for organization. The leaders, whether from sheer devotion to the cause or from  sense of advantage to themselves in the form of status or power or economic gain- usually, in fact, from a combination of these motives-play up the desirability of organization and seek to establish attitudes in the potential members favourable to its formation.

The nature of the interest to be organised determines in part the specific task leadership. Where the interest is essentially economic the task is different from what it is when a recreational or educational or religious interest is in question. It is different where the interest has an intimate and limited appeal.

Leadership and the Type of the Interest: 

The development of appropriate leadership is subject to difficulties which vary with the type of the interests to be organized. The leader, as ‘leader’, has ‘like’ interests. And these may prove too strong for his sincere service to the common cause. Another obstacle to effective leadership of organisations based upon common interests of the more idealistic type is that control tends not infrequently to fall into the hands of narrow-minded enthusiasts who, because of their zeal, are most ready to undertake the onerous tasks of leadership while they are often least conscious of its problem.

It follow from the above distinction that an association is not a community, but an organisation within a community. A community is more than any specific organization that rise within it. Secondly, the major contrast between the community and the association is revealed by considering the interest aspect of associations. Because the association is organized for particular purposes, for the pursuits of specific interests, people belong to it only by virtue of those interests. Membership in an association has a limited significance. There can be a multitude of association within the same community and the individual of course, may belong to many.

 Association In A Complex Society

 In a complex society, association tend to be specialized so that each stands for a particular type of interest or interest complex. In primitive society, where there is less division of labour and where change is slow, there are a few associations and they are more inclusive. They are communal pr semi-communal in the range of their interest. A newly-developed interest doew not so often create a new association, but is incorporated in the general body of interests pursued by the existing organization. Thus is primitive life, associations lack the specific, limited functional character which our own possess. They take such forms as age groups, kin group, sex-groups for the performance of communal rites and ceremonies rather than the economic or professional or political or cultural varieties familiar to ourselves. 

Smaller communities like village or neighbourhood are the examples of the primitive world. With the expansion of community to the dimensions of the nation, and even the world, smaller communities now remain only in degree. Both the type of communities, big r small are essential to the full development of life.

Difference Between Community And Association

The main difference between community and association is that the latter is an organisation within the former and serves, in respect of man, as means of pursuing ends, a community is more than any specific organization that grows within it and is indicative primarily of the sharing of some common basic conditions of life by group of people rather than some organisation entity. Though as often happens, a community has distinctive organisational features but it is not the prime factor that gives birth to community. Beside these, the following points of distinction are more important.

Natural: 

·        A community is the natural development of these social forces which inspire men to come together within a common bond of a shared way of life and cause settlement over some distinct locality. But an association is a man-made organisation.

·         Aims: since an association is man-made, it has definite aim but same is not the case with the community. We cannot easily find an answer to the question why community came into being or exists at all? Every association is limited in its aims and scope and it cannot consequently include all aspects of human life. Community, relatively speaking offers wide scope for the development of human personality.

·        Definite Interests: Association is organized for a definite purpose that is to say, for a definite purpose that is to say, for pursuit of definite interests, and a person belongs to an association by virtue to those interests. Hence it follows that the membership of an association may be of short or long during in in accordance with the time required for the fulfilment of a particular interest and that one may belong to as many associations as one may like. There is no restriction in this as in the case of community, which clearly tends to get single loyalty from its members. Due to the diversity of the human interests, there are found a galaxy of associations within a single community.

·        Settlement: Associations are generally transitory and serve as a means whereas a community is a permanent settlement and is a means as well as an end, at the same time. Due to its man-made origin, associations have some fixed sets of rules. But in the case of community, no definite rules are prescribed, save those which evolved naturally and automatically out of the process of sharing of a common way of life by a group of people.

·        Society is Older than Association: Society is in existence since man appeared on the earth while association arose at a later stage when man learnt to organize himself for the pursuits of some particular purpose.

·        Membership of Society is Rather Compulsory: The membership of society is compulsory as n man can live without it. On the other hand, a man may live without being a member of any association at all. Society will exist so long as man exists but associations may be only transitory.

An association is not a community, nut a group within a community. The following are the points of difference between the two:

Difference between association and community
Association	Community
It is up to the sweet will of a member to become a member of a particular association or leave that to suit his convenience. For participation in the activities of an association some personal interests are involved. In other words, the people join an association for serving personal ends. As regards stability, associations are less stable. Only those associations have stability which wishes to achieve long standing objectives, more or less permanent. In every association code of behaviour is required to be observed by the members. Without their observance an association must disintegrate. The members of an association join it for achieving their selfish ends in view. Association, when these acquire some legal status, their actions can even be challenged in the court of law. It required specific efforts on the part of interested person to bring an association into existence.It is impossible to think of an association to meet all the demands of the members.	The membership of community cannot be said to be absolutely voluntary. It is more or less compulsory. An individual lives, functions and dies in the same community, no matter whether his personal interests are involved in that or not. Communities are made stable that the associations. In community, there  are no such rules and regulations and gap is filled by custom, and conventions etc. Which cannot be easily vioalated?  In a community, community sentiment must be there because without that the existence is both meaningless and illogical. The communities can have no legal status and as such the question of challenging and action in any court of law does not arise. It requires no specific efforts for the members to bring community into existence.  A community is required to meet all the demands of people and as such community has multifarious activities, as compared with an association.