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Based on documentation now cited in the article, I loosened the definition and expanded the scope of this article, while more than doubling the content. I started with an article on mutual aid societies, but after back-browsing through links from specific fraternal organizations, I found this one. Not being sure if mutual aid society or benefit society was the prefered definition, I let Google do the voting. Benefit society won by some 18 million to 9 million links.
In loosening the definition toward a more inclusive concept, I changed what a benefit society "is" to what it "can be". The basis for this looser definition comes from Prince Kropotkin, 1902, Mutual Aid A Factor of Evolution, a widely recognized text from a time when mutual aid societies were still widely organized and recognized as such. With that basis, I expanded the history, touching on Asian and African American traditions. Still using Kropotkin as a basis for a broad definition but citing recent literature, I concluded with reference to open-source activities, and ad hoc incidences of mutual aid as they to appear in widely divergent occassions where human needs confront unique challenges. In trying to avoid a Eurocentric, liberal or organizational POV, I've included links to religious, military and ethnic societies, and references to both pacifist and militant instances when ad hoc mutual aid affiliations arose to meet immediate needs of particular times and places. ProveReader 07:33, 21 January 2006 (UTC)Reply
Does there need to be a discussion here, or on a separate page, of the institution of non-profit mutual benefit corporations (a distinct legal form in the U.S.)? Currently, "mutual benefit" redirects to a life insurance company's page and "mutual aid" seems to be more about a political concept. Perhaps this leaves a gap that doesn't serve readers well? -A — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.37.45.177 (talk) 14:57, 5 August 2011 (UTC)Reply
Editors regularly clean out undiscussed links from this article. Please discuss here if you want a link not to be cleaned out regularly. (You can help!)--VS talk 04:35, 27 April 2007 (UTC)Reply
VS talk has removed an external link to a website which I published. I believe the link is a relevant citation to this article. I acknowledge as an editor of this article, this is potentially a conflict of interest.
The link:
is an original source used for the development of this article. I believe this link is still relevant to the article. Under Wikipedia:Conflict of interest guideline I should not add external links to articles I have published (even though they may be authoritative texts) except after raising them for discussion on the talk page. Please discuss and decide on the relevancy of the link.
I do NOT think that the idea of a "benefit society" is so exactly equivalent to a "friendly society" as to merge the two articles. For one thing, the "friendly society" is more prevalent in the British and Commonwealth contexts, whereas "fraternal benefit societies" such as (predominately) the two major "Woodmen" groups are more of an American one, and the American concept was greatly expanded with new fraternal groups exclusively devoted to racial, religious and ethnic minorities there with their own societies for the exclusive use and benefit of members of the particular subculture for which they were established. While such groups are arguably less influential than in the past, they are still pervasive within some ethnicities in the U.S. 2600:1004:B15E:718B:54B4:ECA4:B3C5:232F (talk) 02:07, 6 June 2016 (UTC)Reply
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