Fraternity is a word for brotherhood, and by extension deep friendship or camaraderie. For girls and women the word is sorority.
Fraternities can be organized for a virtually endless variety of purposes. The only true distinction between a fraternity and any other form of social organization is the implication that the members freely associate as equals for a mutually beneficial purpose, (rather than because of a religous, governmental, commercial, or familial bond, although there are fraternities dedicated to each of these topics).
The ability to organize freely apart from the institutions of government and religion were a fundamental part of the establishment of the modern world. In Living the Enlightenment, Margaret C. Jacobs showed the development of Jurgen Habermas' 'public space' in 17th century Netherlands was closely related to the establishment of lodges of Freemasons.[1]
There are known fraternal organizations which existed as far back as ancient Greece and Rome, and analogous institutions which existed allied to the Catholic Church in the medieval period.
The development of Freemasonry in the early 1700's became a critical watershed moment in fraternal organization, and there have been hundreds of varieties of Freemasonry, and thousands of closely parallel organizations since then. Virtually any fraternal organizations today bear some debt to the models of organization first worked out in Masonic lodges.
The development was especially dynamic in America, where the freedom to associate outside governmental regulation is expressly sanctioned in law. There have been hundreds of fraternal organizations in America alone, and at the turn of the last century, there were enough memberships for every adult male, (because of multiple memberships, probably only 50% of adult males belonged to any organizations).[2]Arthur M. Schlesinger coined the term 'a nation of joiners' to refer to the phenomenon in October 1944. [3] Schlesinger in turn referred to de Tocqueville's commentary on American reliance on private organization dating back to the 1830's.
There are many attributes that fraternities can have, or not depending on their structure and purpose. Fraternities can have differing degrees of secrecy, some form of initiation or ceremony marking admission, formal codes of behavior, disciplinary procedures, very differing amounts of real property and assets.
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