Kind Of Solidarity Research Articles

Sisterhood Is X: On Feminist Solidarity Then and Now

In the 1970s and 1980s, sisterhood became a critical concept in the making of internationalist feminisms built on an infrastructure of women's movements, international organizations, and postcolonial states. Perhaps most famously, radical feminist Robin Morgan declared over three anthologies and three decades that sisterhood is, in the present tense, powerful (1970), global (1984), and forever (2003). It was envisioned differently by women of color and Third World feminists who saw sisterhood as a critical praxis of survival in the face of authoritarianism. Today, the moral invocation of sisterhood as powerful and forever is far less viable. So, is sisterhood all bad for twenty-first-century feminisms? In this essay, I return to bell hooks's formulations of sisterhood as a pedagogy of political solidarity to ask, what kind of solidarity is possible under the rubric of sisterhood and how might we imagine a global feminist politics of solidarity today?

Digital Solidarity and the Use of Hashtags as a Way to Label the Ecological Communities

This paper examines the concept of digital solidarity that emerged in the era of high technology development, digitalization and digital culture. As a form of social support and approval in the digital space, this kind of solidarity is gaining popularity due to the possibility of using universal codes and hashtags to mark certain topics, indicate belonging to the community and “recognize” one’s own in digital communication. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the processes of communication in the digital space, which has created a need for the formation of new cultural codes and meanings in the digital environment. In certain areas, for example, in the environmental agenda, there is a special need for labeling a community if it is at the stage of emerging and requires information coverage. Using the example of digital solidarity in an environmental theme, explored through hashtags on social networks, this article reveals a new form of social interaction that promotes social integration and the joint expression of ideas. As a result of the study, hashtags of the first and second order are identified, which determine the range of topics, involvement in issues and are used mainly in combinations to enhance the effect and increase coverage in social networks.

After All Is Said and Done: On Fluid Solidarity and Survival

After All Is Said and Done: On Fluid Solidarity and Survival

Towards what end? Collective bargaining and the making and unmaking of the working class

In contemporary literature, bargaining is often construed as an instrument in the hands of the employer, a practice that is sustained by undermining worker solidarity and promoting interests of privileged unionized workers at the expense of other workers. This article challenges such narratives by foregrounding the idea of solidarity and highlighting the complex interplay of solidarity emanating from the multiple ways consciousness about worker identity plays out. Drawing on the literature on new social movements (NSM) and industrial relations (IR), the article shows that the relevance of bargaining is not merely confined to instrumental economic goals but extends to politically constitutive action. In the process of bargaining the political agency of workers and distinctive articulations of solidarity are identified. This article presents and classifies three kinds of solidarity that correspond to the three dimensions of political consciousness, namely critical solidarity, limited solidarity and absent solidarity across cases that are shaped by contextual realities of labour politics.

Principles of Peaceful Coexistence in the State of Qatar and their role in Managing Population Diversity

The study addresses the principles of peaceful coexistence in the State of Qatar and its role in managing population diversity. The significance of the study is that it sheds light on an issue that has received great international attention since the principles of peaceful coexistence are at the heart of the dialogue of civilizations that the developed world aspires to. The objective of the study is to identify the principles of peaceful coexistence in the State of Qatar and to show their impact on managing population diversity. The researcher uses the descriptive-analytical method to achieve the objective of the study. One of the most important findings of the study is that the State of Qatar has adopted a set of long-term reforms in the field of population diversity and civilized dialogue. Consequently, Qatar has become a pioneer in peaceful coexistence in the Gulf region and the Middle East. At the conclusion of the study, the researcher recommends the necessity of addressing the fears of the increase in the number of expatriate workers, because the presence of expatriate workers is temporary in most cases, important for the development of the country and their home countries in addition to being a kind of solidarity.

Building Solidarities Through Public Education: National, Multicultural and Cosmopolitan?

In most countries, the education system seeks to instill two kinds of solidarity: a thick sense of national solidarity with one’s co-citizens, and a thinner sense of global solidarity with all of humanity. Many commentators argue that we need to rebalance these two forms of solidarity, de-emphasizing national solidarity and re-centering global solidarities. More radical commentators argue that we should abandon ideas of national solidarity entirely as inherently exclusionary and outdated. I will suggest that we in fact need both kinds of solidarity, although our conception of education for national solidarity needs to reflect our multicultural realities.

Film and the Politics of Negative Community. Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Dialectic in the Late 1970s Polish People’s Republic

Polish People’s Republic (PRL) in the late 1970s saw an increased alliance among, and indeed, a blending of, workers and intellectuals, young and old, women and men, actively struggling against the state. A new kind of solidarity emerged that threw off tired notions of what constituted the working class. The preeminent filmmaker of this time, Krzysztof Kieślowski, is often seen as increasingly depoliticized as he moved into fiction, but in this paper the author argues for the dialogic value of his work with respect to political organizing. Kieślowski’s documentarist sensitivity to registering Polish reality and the intimacy of human engagement with the world led him to question the prevailing mode of representing these shifts in politics and class. His feature films, in articulating failures of representation, challenge a “realism” that purported to be universal, but instead reified a certain historical anxiety in the Polish political imaginary (workers vs. intellectuals, urban elites vs. peasantry), or precisely that which was being unraveled by the praxis of the late 1970s. Further, they refuse to cordon off interests of individuals from the very state shown to be oppressing them. Here we have a filmic counterpart to the immanent praxis of workers and intellectuals that turned one of the engines of the state—the trade union—into the greatest weapon against it. The author shows how this functions, in negative terms, in Kieślowski’s first feature, Blizna/The Scar (1976), in which class solidarity is felt stylistically as aporia, and is further developed in Amator/Camera Buff (1979), which expresses the personal as political in the tension between the desire for spokój (peace and quiet) and czegoś wiecej (something more). Rather than a retreat, we should see this in correspondence with the revolutionary consciousness being inscribed in individual Poles by the collective labor action of Solidarity in 1980.

Is it Possible to Connect Recognition with a Post-Identitarian Notion of Solidarity?

Abstract This article intends to confront the perspectives of Axel Honneth and Judith Butler on solidarity. Honneth emphasizes the role of identities and a notion of solidarity connected to cultural backgrounds, shared narratives and world images. Butler, on the other hand, fears that this form of solidarity, based on similitudes, might lead to social narcissism. She believes that it is possible to foster another kind of solidarity, one based on our shared vulnerability and on experiences that can make us recognize that we are not identical to ourselves. Investigating the tensions between these two very dissimilar points of view will help to explore possible connections between post-identitarian forms of solidarity and affects such as desire and mourning, which are frequently at stake in social struggles.

Women leading change: re-shaping gender in Ghanaian mines

Purpose There is growing attention towards inclusive mining to make an economic case for gender equality and diversity in the industry. Available literature lacks sufficient empirical evidence on the subject matter in Ghana. Therefore, this paper aims to understudy women miners in Ghana and document their role in recent change regimes in mine works gender profiles. An observed change that is stimulating a shift in background dispositions leads to increasing number of women taking up mine jobs. Design/methodology/approach In working towards achieving the aim of the study, both qualitative design and a multiple case study approaches are deployed. Four multinational Ghanaian mines and a mining and technology university were used to understudy the women miners and their role towards a change in mine work gender perspectives. Findings The results showed a regime of “ore-solidarity movement” (women in mining – Ghana). A kind of solidarity identified conventionally as a social movement in active resource and self-mobilization, engaged in a symbolic contestation for change of the status quo (dominant masculinity cultures) in furtherance of gender equity and inclusion in milieu of mine works reforms in Ghana. Originality/value The study is of high scientific, political and public interest to better understand women’s movements in the mining industries in Ghana and to frame them theoretically. It offers solid empirical evidence on roles women miners play to ensure gender shape-shifting and liberalizing the mining space for women’s participation. This move towards inclusive mining implies poverty eradication among women, work towards achieving sustainable mining, competitiveness and assurance for gender-driven social innovative mining.

HERTA MÜLLER'S RESHAPING OF GERMAN CULTURAL MEMORY

AbstractSeeking to explore the contemporary relevance of Herta Müller's work in the context of national and transnational memory cultures, this article examines the constitution of individual and collective memory and the ethical implications it carries for envisioning a more just future. My interest lies in exploring the challenge that Müller's approach to the labour of memory poses to conceptions of cultural memory and, related to it, to notions of national identity, national literary canons, and authorship. I ask how the ethical and aesthetic precepts of Müller's disruptive memories in her written work and her numerous public interventions may contribute to an affirmation of human rights today – at a time when democratic values are increasingly under threat. I argue that Müller's work – augmented by her public engagement – contributes to the reshaping of cultural memory from a narrowly conceived national one toward a deterritorialised collective memory that may transcend national and ethnic boundaries and foster new kinds of solidarity.

Judicial Intervention on Environmental Protection through Judicial Review with Special Reference to Sri Lanka

The concept of solidarity as advanced by Durkheim in the 18th century concerns about the totality of a given society in which it tries to work together as a cohesive unit. Durkheim observed that at the initial stages, that is to say in the primitive societies people bonded together because of their similarities. As most of the people in a tribe or a clan in those periods were self-sufficient and their needs and wants being limited in nature, they were capable of surviving on their own and hence they formed alliances with one another out of their similarities. This was termed as mechanical solidarity. Durkheim observed that, during these periods laws were stringently applied and that any deviant behaviors were heavily condemned and retributive justice was considered to be the norm. However, as the societies grew in numbers, the similarities which existed among the people in a tribe or a clan soon started to disappear and more and dissimilarities and differences among them began to arise. With these latter developments, the unity of the society was protected by a different kind of solidarity, which is termed as organic solidarity. Under this particular system social unity is based on a division of labor that results in people depending on each other. As one person became dependent on another the relationships which existed prior to such change of circumstances were not able to provide for the rather complex relationships which started to develop with the division of labor, where each person was somehow, or the other produced a commodity which was to be exchanged with other commodities in which the exchange of ones capabilities with another became the norm of a society. Durkheim explained that, even with these differences people had to work together under an organic solidarity to make sure of their future existence. Durkheim observed that, during these periods, the laws are made not so with a retributive aim but with a rehabilitative aim, in which offenders or deviants are rehabilitated so that they can be re-released to a given society where once again they can become productive individuals. Using a black letter approach, this paper tries to evaluate the theory of solidarity as advanced by Durkheim in a conceptual manner with the prevalent realities of the modern society. In doing so this paper looks at the contemporary arguments which have been put forward both for and against the ides presented by Durkheim with regard to his idea of solidarity. From these contemporary writings it has been found that, though not in its entirety, he Durkheimian concept of solidarity still holds true with regard to the working of or keeping a society together admits all of its differences.

Refugee solidarity in Europe: Shifting the discourse

This article focuses on the discourses in support of refugees as developed in Greece by local grassroots groups. The article theorises the public debate of the refugee issue as taking place in a hybrid media system, in which elites and policy makers, mainstream media, large non-governmental organisations and smaller solidarity groups as well as everyday people participate in unequal ways in constructing this debate and its parameters. In focusing on the solidarity discourses emerging from the grassroots, this article hopes to show how these groups seek to re-politicise the question of refugees, directly countering the (post)humanitarian and charity discourses of non-governmental organisations as well as the racist and security frames found in the mass media and policy discourses. In focusing on Greece, this article shows how two crises, the refugee and austerity crises – both symptoms of an underlying deep structural crisis of capitalism – may be dealt with in ways that overcome dilemmas of belongingness and otherness. In empirically supporting such arguments, the article posits the issue of solidarity to refugees as a research question: what kinds of solidarity do refugee support groups in Greece mobilise? This is addressed through focusing on the Facebook pages of 12 local solidarity initiatives. The analysis concludes that their alternative discourse is not based on spectacle and pity, nor on irony, but on togetherness and solidarity. This solidarity takes three forms, human, social and class solidarity, all feeding into the creation of a political project revolving around ideas of autonomy and self-organisation, freedom, equality and justice.

Decadence of an empire: war, heroism and derision

First World War is the turning point of building a new era, which will preside over the emergence of new forms of radicalism, of totalitarian regimes. But before that, the First World War closes in a brutal manner the slow decadence of some great empires, including the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Through his totalizing vocation, the novel is the most appropriate document capable of recording this process that leads to finis monarchiae. In the present paper I analyzed three different perspectives on war as a catalyst and expression, face of decadence with Jaroslav Hasek’s novel, Good Soldier Svejk, Liviu Rebreanu’s novel, Forest of the Hanged, and Joseph Roth’s novel, The Radetzky March. From the joyful apocalypse of Hasek’s novel to the “wounded identities” of Rebreanu’s heroes and the aristocratic ethos cultivated among the bourgeoisie on which the empire is based in Roth’s novel, we have a complex picture of the decline of belle epoque society and the values on which it relies. The image of the Imperial officer as well as the simple soldier puts into play a code of honor and a kind of solidarity meant to overcome the sensibilities of national identity. I have been pursuing this conflict between unifying, imperial identity and national identities as a factor of the empire’s dissolution, especially where double engagement provokes a tragic tension.

Monique Wittig and the Allegory of the Possible in Across the Acheron

Monique Wittig and the Allegory of the Possible in Across the Acheron M. M. Adjarian (bio) Monique Wittig’s fictional and theoretical writings—indeed, the very words she uses to express her creative and intellectual vision—are infused with an intense passion for women and their social, sexual, economic, and political liberation. A celebrated member of a French feminist movement that gave rise to work described as “poetic, utopian, hyperbolic [and] declamatory,” Wittig produced a small, but powerful oeuvre that demonstrated all of these characteristics, sometimes simultaneously.1 Yet many of Wittig’s American feminist heirs and commentators, chief among them theorist Judith Butler, have diminished the complexity of her work. In so doing, they have misrepresented Wittig and diverted attention away from the importance of Wittig’s writings to Anglo American feminist thought and its continuing evolution. This becomes especially apparent when examining her theoretical work in context of the historical matrix from which it emerged alongside her post-1968 fictions, and in particular her 1985 novel, Across the Acheron. “lesbians are not women”: the return of lesbian materialism Key to understanding the reductionism to which Wittig’s work has been subjected is her infamous 1978 claim, “lesbians are not women.”2 First uttered at the 1978 MLA Convention in New York City, these four words ignited heated debates among feminists about gender, sex, and sexuality that continued into the 1990s.3 Wittig’s statement is grounded in the notion that language is tied to “a network of powers” that directly acts upon and constructs social reality.4 Language is therefore a political force that creates day-to-day material conditions in society. This means that the institutions or groups controlling language can use it to oppress (the speech of) those deemed outsiders. The result is that these social “others” must “speak in [the oppressor’s] terms,” if they are to be heard or even acknowledged.5 So when Wittig says “lesbians are not [End Page 96] women,” she is breaking an implied linguistic, political, and historical contract with patriarchy that demands speaking subjects identify lesbians by (1) their biology (sex) and (2) the nature of their desires (sexuality). In Gender Trouble, a seminal text directly influenced by Wittigian thought, Judith Butler argues that Wittig advocated a lesbian separatism that is “prescriptive” and precludes “any kind of solidarity with heterosexual women.”6 Butler understands that Wittig’s concept of “lesbian” is open and political; but she does question what terms might then be used to discuss sexual identity. What she does not consider is how Wittig’s concepts of “lesbian” and “woman” are a reaction to histories or traditions she is seeking to rewrite. Indeed, history as much a part of the oppressive mechanism of patriarchy as the language in which it is inscribed. So by radically altering definition of “lesbian,” Wittig-the-materialist is actively forcing a reconceptualization of both words. One could even speculate that a reason she does not use “sex” and “sexuality” to define “lesbian” is not so much to deny their existence but to foster (an ongoing) debate about those concepts that would leave space for definitions that could evolve over time. Part of Butler’s concern with Wittig’s theoretical stance stems from a concern that as a category, “lesbian” may become “compulsory,” much as the “woman” has.7 Looking at how historically entrenched ideas about (the nature of) “woman” are, her fears are justified. But as I argue here, Wittig had no doubt anticipated responses of this kind, especially by the time she published Across the Acheron. In the novel she erases all marks of gender that might identify the characters by sex or sexuality and strives to transform “lesbian” into a fluid concept that is at once born of history yet also imbued with new meaning that replaces the old. She also critiques separatism and in the end depicts a community open to all subjects who strive against patriarchy. Some of the Anglo American critics who followed Butler express ideas more in alignment with Wittig. In “When Lesbians Were Not Women” (2005), for example, Teresa De Lauretis posits that “lesbian” means an “eccentric”—or better, ex-centric—subject that “deviate[s...

Solidarity, Liberalism, History

Solidarity, Liberalism, History Moon-Ho Jung (bio) David Roediger’s ASA presidential address challenges us to see through seemingly simple and easy solidarities, to dig deep into our histories and politics, to appreciate that “solidarity proceeds excruciatingly slowly and not always forward.” The word solidarity, he reminds us, has complicated and contradictory origins, and wasn’t associated with the labor movement and Marxist discourse and practice until the late nineteenth century. Those who theorized, visualized, and valorized labor solidarity, Roediger argues, notably failed to grapple with race and gender, making solidarities appear “organic” to capitalism (in Émile Durkheim’s writings) and not inconsistent with empire (in Walter Crane’s drawings). Those limitations and contradictions persisted in the US context, he continues, as Christian reformers outpaced labor organizations, including the Knights of Labor, in embracing the term solidarity and its implicit capacity to bridge racial and national divides. In the early decades of the twentieth century, the Industrial Workers of the World championed the term and the ideal of worker solidarity, but its imagery and usage relied more heavily on eliding rather than recognizing and addressing differences. Roediger concludes his essay by reflecting on how memories and interpretations of the past can “reflect a sometimes enervating desire for solidarity to be easy.” Though not framed as such, Roediger’s essay compels us to see that solidarity, when rendered easy and inevitable, affords little more than the liberal promise of universal freedom. Roediger’s essay, at root, offers a sobering account of solidarity, as a word and as a concept. Whether in listening to “Solidarity Forever” or searching for instances of solidarity in the past to inspire us in the present, he points out that we often take solidarity for granted, without considering its etymology or its contradictions. If we accept the Oxford English Dictionary’s lead definition—“The fact or quality, on the part of communities, etc., of being perfectly united or at one in some respect, esp. in interests, sympathies, or aspirations; spec. with reference to the aspirations or actions of trade-union members”—the most effective and enduring examples of worker solidarity have had little to do with social justice. Alongside Alexander Saxton, whose work Roediger’s essay cites, [End Page 257] no one, of course, has uncovered the racist origins of working-class formation in the United States more cogently than Roediger. In The Wages of Whiteness, he revealed how white workers defined themselves against slavery and blackness before the Civil War, a historical process, he argued, that expressed white workers’ simultaneous hatred of and longing for “the preindustrial, erotic, careless style of life” that they imagined black people to embody. Worker solidarity meant white solidarity, a translation and conflation that defined and shaped the US labor movement for generations.1 That is not the kind of solidarity that most of us are trying to evoke when we, perhaps all too easily and breezily, sign off our correspondence with “In solidarity.” Solidarity, at least as used by those on the left, suggests a collective struggle against the dominant order of things. But therein lies its danger, Roediger argues, for it is habitually assumed to be a historical given, a teleological force determined by the contradictions of capital and by workers’ conscious opposition. It is those Marxist assumptions that Roediger’s essay critiques, “first, that our success in producing unity lies in the logic of capital, and second, that our own voluntary action can easily secure solidarity’s triumph.” History has not proceeded so neatly or predictably. A century ago, in a remarkable essay “The African Roots of War” (written in 1915, the same year that Ralph Chaplin penned “Solidarity Forever”), W. E. B. Du Bois argued that a racial compact at the heart of the modern nation—“a new democratic nation composed of united capital and labor”—explained the new stage of “world-wide freebooting,” where “the white workingman has been asked to share the spoil of exploiting ‘chinks and niggers.’” If there were solidarities waiting to be formed, for Du Bois, they were among “the yellow, brown, and black peoples” who would “endure this treatment just as long as they must and not a moment longer.”2...

Parliamentary Reforms of 2007 and One Party Dominated Parliament of Kazakhstan (2007-2012)

This article examines a parliamentary development in post-Soviet Kazakhstan during 2007-2012 years from historical and institutional point of view. It exclusively deals with the formation and development of the sixth post-Soviet Parliament of Kazakhstan, which was technically called the fourth convocation of Parliament. Authors analyse the parliamentary reforms of 2007 and its consequences and impact for the development of parliamentarism and party system in Kazakhstan. A case study of this particular convocation of modern Kazakh legislature allows us to make an in-depth research and helps us to better understand main peculiarities of legislative development during the period of 2007-2012. Article concludes that the forth convocation of the Parliament of Kazakhstan, which functioned during the 2007-2012, proved to be even more unanimous and homogenous in terms of both party affiliations and political orientations in comparison to its predecessors. On the one hand, this kind of solidarity contributed to the political stability and smooth political reforms; on the other hand, homogeneity of the Parliament impacted the lack of competitiveness and hampered the development of party factions and deputy groups within Parliament and the development of party system per se. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s1p335

Intergenerational Solidarity in the Workplace

Starting from the main criticalities that young and old people meet in contemporary labor markets, this article analyses the principle of solidarity between generations at work, in light of a multidisciplinary (especially sociological) literature. This offers different conceptual lenses for understanding complex relationships in workplaces. They provide different ways to understand micro-level interpersonal relations and macro-level structural forces and the interactions between them, arriving to define which kind of solidarity may be realistically proposed in contemporary labor markets. Then, intergenerational relations are briefly collocated in European Union debate aiming to promote a cohesive society. In the second part, four country cases are presented to demonstrate how the matter of intergenerational relations has influenced recent labor reforms. Following van der Veen, Yerkes, and Achterberg, who found differences in the choice of justice principles and in the level of solidarity preferred by social groups living in different welfare regimes, to reduce the complexity of the analysis, countries belonging to the same welfare regime have been chosen. Finally, measures presented are critically discussed in the more general context of European labor market and social welfare crisis.

Solidarność we współczesnej bioetyce – klasyczne problemy, nowe wyzwania

Solidarity is the fundamental principle of the majority of the European health care systems. According to the classical distinction, there are three kinds of solidarity: risk solidarity, age solidarity and income solidarity. The aim of this principle is to create a community based on risk sharing, mutual obligation and care, taken especially of the suffering, the troubled and the disadvantaged. The progressive privatization of health care and the individualization of risk in health insurance motivate the question about the sustainability of this principle in many European health care systems. Concurrently, technological progress change the outlook of modern medicine and health care, inspiring the revival of the debate on the role of solidarity in health care systems and new struggles for this principle. Discussions of ethical issues, social activism and the implementation of new legislative solutions stress the importance and the unchanging value of solidarity in varying social conditions.

The Relationship between Earnings Quality and Audit Commenting on the Listed Companies in Tehran Stock Exchange

In general all beneficiary and that the users of the financial report for the results predicted events and financial assessment and future economic conditions of different kinds including economic conditions, and also assessing political and orientation behavior suitable managers analysts major Shareholders and voters credit for decision making and appropriate provision need awareness of the connection between logical and vulnerability variables are Financial. In order to in order to help understand the need in this research study for and determine the relation between the quality of items and the type of obligation report wicked, companies with regard to the information accepted in Tehran stock exchange during the years 2007-2010. This research that the kind of solidarity and method is to study and evaluate the hypothesis test for the average has been used. For the Data Analysis software spss(ver 20) has been used. The results show the existence of a link advocatus fisci quality commitment and the type of report items is wicked so that in companies with acceptable auditing report are higher quality commitment items of companies that report provided auditing. With regard to the results of the investigation to the investors advised that he returns to assess quality of items commitment to kind of comment wicked enough attention and necessary and also different auditors are comparable throughout the execution of the operations and auditing report issuance of auditing as one of the analytical methods to check quality of commitment items and the type of report that is published necessary attention.

Unions and Trade: What Kind of Solidarity?

Union solidarity is based on mutual self-interest and the logic of collective action. It requires a sense of shared identity and is created and developed in action. Workers in the North and in the South could see a mutual self-interest in opposing deep global economic integration, which reduces national policy space, weakens unions, and reduces the force of democratic institutions. They would jointly benefit from strengthened democracy and expanded national policy space. Their mutual support should focus on a basic framework, allowing nations and regions to differ. In advocating national policy space, they would also be able to join hands with many other social forces.