What is "sodality"

Sodality \So*dal"i*ty\, n.; pl. Sodalities. [L. sodalitas, fr. sodalis a comrade.]

1. A fellowship or fraternity; a brotherhood.

2. (R. C. Ch.) Specifically, a lay association for devotion or for charitable purposes.

"companionship, fellowship, association with others," c.1600, from Middle French sodalité or directly from Latin sodalitatem (nominative sodalitas) "companionship, a brotherhood, association, fellowship," from sodalis "companion," perhaps literally "one's own, relative," related to suescere "to accustom," from PIE *swedh-, extended form of root *s(w)e-, pronoun of the third person and reflexive (see idiom). Especially of religious guilds in the Catholic Church.

n. 1 A fraternity, a society or association. 2 companionship.

n. people engaged in a particular occupation; "the medical fraternity" [syn: brotherhood, fraternity]

In Christian theology, a sodality, also known as a syndiakonia, is a form of the "Universal Church" expressed in specialized, task-oriented form as opposed to the Christian church in its local, diocesan form (which is termed modality). In English, the term sodality is most commonly used by groups in the Anglican Communion, Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Lutheran Church and Reformed Church, where they are also referred to as confraternities. Sodalities are expressed among Protestant Churches through the multitude of mission organizations, societies, and specialized ministries that have proliferated, particularly since the advent of the modern missions movement, usually attributed to Englishman William Carey in 1792.

In many Christian denominations, " modality" refers to the structure and organization of the local or universal church, composed of pastors or priests. By contrast, parachurch organizations are termed sodalities. These include missionary organizations and Christian charities or fraternities not linked to specific churches. Some theologians would include denominations, schools of theology, and other multi-congregational efforts in the sodality category. Sodalities can also include religious orders, monasteries, and convents.

In social anthropology, a sodality is a non-kin group organized for a specific purpose (economic, cultural, or other), and frequently spanning villages or towns 1.

Sodalities are often based on common age or gender, with all-male sodalities more common than all-female. One aspect of a sodality is that of a group "representing a certain level of achievement in the society, much like the stages of an undergraduate's progress through college [university]" 2.

In the anthropological literature, the Mafia in Sicily has been described as a sodality 3. Other examples include Maasai war camps, and Crow and Cheyenne military associations, groups that were not much unlike today's Veterans of Foreign Wars or American Legion.

The term was first used with this meaning by Elman Service (no doubt drawing on the sodality vs. modality distinction used in some Christian churches), as part of his band-tribe-chiefdom-state model for the progression of political integration. It defined an organization that occurred across bands, and therefore was a part of a tribe, rather than a band, which was composed of only kin.

Arjun Appadurai uses the concept of sodalities to describe what he views as the collective, cultural dimension and function of the imagination given the globalization of electronic mass media and transnational migration. For Appadurai, sodalities, much like what he terms "localities" or "neighborhoods", are cultural groups or spaces that mediate globalized cultural flows and, importantly, create possibilities for "translocal social action that would otherwise be hard to imagine" (p.8). In other words, sodalities are generative social spaces for agency, imagination, and social action.