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Sorokin’s analysis of each of these areas will be briefly
summarized, with special reference to those issues of import to
Aboriginal identity.
3.11 Membership
Sorokin (1947:401) discussed at length the two ways of
attaining group membership:
(1) automatic : inherited
(2) non-autoɪnatie : voluntary acceptance of membership/
appointment∕election∕employment∕coercion
Sorokin pointed out that, other conditions being equal,
groups in which membership entails advantages and privileges tend
to remain closed to all except the specified limited number of
individuals that meet their qualifications.
Groups in which membership entails burdens tend to remain
open to all who wish to join the:
Membership of a group may be due to some form of coercion.
Sorokin (1947:304) maintained that
It is a one-sided theory that holds the membership
of all groups is recruited only through a willing
purposive association of individuals.
Sorokin (1947) discussed those factors which are not social
products, and which therefore prevent mobility of membership
between groups. He noted that we cannot speak of the mobility of
individuals among inter-racial, intersexual and interage ,plurels?.
A negro, for example, cannot become a white man.