American Community and Club Organization : a Study of P. Community in Pennsylvania

Abstract

The writer did field research in two communities in Pennsylvania and California between September 1967 and December 1968, with a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. This paper reports a part of the study made at P. Community of Pennsylvania Dutch people in southeastern Pennsylvania. The purpose of this paper is to grasp what sort of clubs, their form and content, the so-called 'Pennsylvania Dutch', who immigrated from Germany in the 17th century, created and developed in their 250 years of history in this community, and also how deeply American clubs are related with Western philosophy and ethics, studying this in relation to American history, and then, what significance these clubs have in the lives of American citizen. The, existence of associations in which people call for company and band together is seen in ancient history and also in primitive societies, and could be discussed, tracing human history quite a way back. The human group called 'club' in English has the same basic principle of group formation as above. It is said to have developed in the early seventeenth century when coffee was first imported from Turkey to England and it became popular among London gentlemen to gather in taverns and coffee houses, chatting and sipping this black drink. Therefore, the strictly English 'club' connotes that it is "an association of people united by some common interest, meeting periodically for cooperation and entertainment", which is similar to what we generally mean by club today. However, the word 'club' used in this paper by the author represents all the voluntary organizations of broader sense, including so-called association, society or fraternity. Not a few scholars have noted, pointed to, and analyzed such clubs stressing their important role and function in American social life.