From Service to Solidarity: On the (Im)Possibilities of Liberative Service-Learning

Abstract

In this paper I argue that service-learning should be understood as an invitation to solidarity. After reviewing critiques of “traditional” and “critical” service-learning, I provide a description of solidarity as formulated in the work of Peter Hans Kolvenbach, SJ, Paulo Freire, and Pope Francis. This description describes solidarity as developing authentic relationships that emerge via experiences of encounter, perdure over time, and entail both risk and love while pursuing social justice and mutual flourishing. Such solidarity requires, in the words of Keri Day, the “undoing” of our neoliberal selves and new, unpredictable moral formations in the context of authentic relationships.