ABSTRACT
Associations of this type have a relatively narrow range of interests. For that very reason their members feel less deeply involved with them than with, say, their families or their nation. Their rules will generally be formally established; membership will be determined by clearly understood criteria (like payment of a subscription, or a formal undertaking) since only those who clearly accept its obligations will be entitled to the association's benefits. This sort of association was for Locke the standard pattern of all societies except the family-and even the family became contractual once the children reached the age of reason.
(b) The family This account of associations becomes less and less adequate, however, as we move from joint-stock companies and sports-clubs towards the family and the nation. The differences between these two types have seemed so important that some writers reserve the term‘association' to the first, using 'community' for the second.9 However, there are so many intermediate possibilities between the two extremes, like churches, Communist parties, and even trade unions, that sharp distinction in nomenclature may suggest a more clear-cut classification than the facts will allow.
