The Phenomenon of Social Solidarity Essay Example

Social solidarity has long served as the foundation for the sociological discourses of many thinkers throughout history, including Émile Durkheim, Aafke Komter, and Alice Julier -- all of whom employ unique frameworks that build upon one another, allowing us to deconstruct how and why solidarity can emerge within societies. However, as these scholars note, exclusivity and marginalization inherently co-exists with solidarity -- composing the “other side of the same coin.” As such, in this essay, I will explore how solidarity can be employed as a force of radically transformative social change, but also as a force of further destruction and division. In addition to this, I will also foreground contemporary scholar bell hooks’ work to underscore how solidarity can be elevated further beyond its potential for exclusivity through the frameworks and practices of mutual aid (and collective liberation). 

In delving deeper into the phenomenon of social solidarity, all of the aforementioned scholars anchor their analyses in the material and the immaterial. More specifically, they hone in on how our immaterial feelings, values, and experiences are often made tangible through material “totems,” gifts, symbols, and practices. As Durkheim notes in “Religion and Society,” “For we are unable to consider an abstract entity, which we can represent only laboriously and confusedly, the source of the strong sentiments which we feel. We cannot explain them to ourselves except by connecting them to some concrete object of whose reality we are vividly aware” (Durkheim 242). Thus, a potluck serves as the actualization of Durkheim’s theory of “collective effervescence,” providing opportunities through which people can interact and learn from each other: “In putting together a potluck, the group takes what is offered, recognizing that people contribute what they can, based on their material and emotional resources. The whole, the group, is constructed from what comes at that moment” (Julier 154). 

However, as Komter suggests, solidarity does not exist apart and cannot be divorced from exclusivity. The two exist in tandem with one another as gift-giving, gift-receiving, and contributing to a potluck or any collective activity assumes that one has the material capacity and “capital” to partake. As such, for those who are unable to, solidarity is often withheld or, in the same vein, they are encouraged to withdraw from otherwise coalition-building activities. Julier foregrounds how existing inequities and inequalities rooted in the marginalization by race, class, gender, sexuality, and more can influence the ways in which we partake in a collective activity such as a potluck -- and, by extension, how the very concept of “we” is defined. She builds upon this very idea, noting that: “The potluck involves both a suspension and a reinforcing of status… Mennell et al. write, ‘If sharing food signifies an equivalence among insiders as socially different from outsiders, and marks the boundary between them… inclusion implies exclusion’” (Julier 166). With this in mind, solidarity can serve as the basis upon which alienating and exploitative systems can emerge:

“As Beck (1986) has argued in Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, the process of individualization leads to winners and losers. Some groups profit from the process by securing themselves a greater autonomy and more options to participate in society. Other groups become separated from traditional support networks and are incurring increasing risks of losing their jobs and incomes” (Komter 142).

Collective mutual aid and ultimate liberation from white supremacy -- in all of its institutional and interpersonal manifestations -- can thus potentially serve as a way in which we navigate and move beyond exclusion. Within the framework of mutual aid and liberation, bell hooks’ vision of a world, as detailed in “Feminist Theory: A Radical Agenda,” in which freedom is an active practice and not exclusively an intellectual ideal can become more tangible -- a world in which liberatory knowledge (which has the potential to inspire action) is understood as a gift to be given and received beyond the walls of predominantly white institutions. She reminds us of Audre Lorde’s powerful sentiments:

“When Audre Lorde made that much quoted yet often misunderstood cautionary statement warning us that ‘the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,’ she was urging us to remember that we must engage in a process of visionary thinking that transcends the ways of knowing privileged by the oppressive powerful if we are to truly make revolutionary change” (hooks 37). 

hooks envisions a world of justice, especially for historically marginalized and oppressed communities, not solely equity or equality, gift-giving or gift-receiving -- a world in which people can be freed from unjust systems in which, as Durkheim may put it, anomie reigns unhindered. Thus, hooks and Durkheim are in further conversation with one another as both thinkers underscore the importance of raising consciousness to the fact that we are all inherently interdependent beings. In fact, Durkheim advocates for the eradication of anomie in which “the [normal] division of labor gives rise to rules ensuring peaceful and regular cooperation between the functions that have been divided up” (Durkheim 204). Not only this but, in connecting all of these scholars to one another, the need to preserve the sanctity of and the gift that is humanity becomes abundantly clear. For, “the mere existence of rules is not sufficient: they must also be just” (Durkheim 204). Humanity, in relationship to the collective, the individual, and our greater world, is not to be exploited and misused, but to be appreciated, nourished, and protected. 

Questions to consider moving forward:

How does the formation of affinity groups among marginalized communities complicate and disrupt Komter’s sentiment that “inclusion implies exclusion”? 

How can we actively resist and prevent the co-optation and appropriation of liberatory movements that ultimately propagate white hegemony in all of its forms?

What are methods that social thinkers and activists have historically employed?

How have these strategies of resistance evolved in the age of social media?