The disguised rationality of solidarity: Gift giving in informal relations

Abstract

The concept of solidarity as we use it nowadays generates a series of rather diverging associations: the clenched fist of international workers’ solidarity; solidarity as group integration based on shared values and beliefs; a sense of attachment between individuals who are related to one another by ascriptive properties such as age, sex, kinship, ethnicity, or linguistic or territorial affinities (cf. Lockwood, 1992); forms of mutual support among certain communities such as the neighborhood, church, or family; and finally, individual acts of solidarity with those who are in need (cf. the Oliner and Oliner's study on helpers of Jews during the World War II, 1989). In its common‐sense linguistic use, solidarity seems to have predominantly positive connotations: no one is actually against solidarity, as it seems to cover a content which is “morally good,” solidarity is conceived as opposite to the values embodied in individualism, competition, purely instrumental rationality, and the market, and its main connotations are with unselfishness and a willingness to act in the interest of other people.