ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses certain characteristics of group membership that stem from its symbolic character and describes the necessity for historical research in studies of membership and identity. The symbolic nature of groups raises intricate questions concerning membership. If one takes membership to mean only formal "joining," no great question arises concerning membership in certain kinds of groups. The members are able to participate in various coordinated activities because they share a common terminology. The members of any group necessarily experience certain areas of conceptual disagreement as well as non-communication. However difficult it may be to talk of memberships in such abstract groupings, and however transitory such memberships may be, they are immensely relevant to personal action and identity. Persons can be conceived as taking some particular stance toward the historical, suprapersonal and past. They will be memorializing it, rejecting it, recreating it, cashing in on it, escaping, or in flight from it; these are but a few of countless possibilities.
