Solidarity Projects Research Articles

International solidarity in the GDR and transnationality: an analysis of primary school materials for Namibian child refugees

As part of a solidarity project between the South West African People’s Organization (SWAPO) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR), approximately 430 Namibian children were brought to the GDR from 1979 to 1989 to be trained as an elite for a future liberated Namibia. The children attended school in the GDR until they were brought back to Namibia in August 1990. The school lessons intertwined topics about Namibia and SWAPO with the usual GDR school curriculum. The linchpin of this intertwining was the socialist ideal of international solidarity. This article uses an objective-hermeneutic analysis to show how the school materials produced transnationality.

Lost in Translation? Pussy Riot Solidarity Activism and the Danger of Perpetuating North/Western Hegemonies

This article critically discusses solidarity actions in support of Pussy Riot within the global North/West, arguing that most solidarity projects within popular culture as well as within the queer-feminist counterculture are based on a lopsided interpretation of Pussy Riot as Russian version of Riot Grrrl feminists. This onedimensional interpretation of the performance art group as Riot Grrrl-identities further leads to labelling their performance at the Christ the Saviour Cathedral as anti-religious. Within this framework the group’s negotiation of Orthodox religion within their song lyrics, performances as well as statements is ignored, supporting the binary construction of The North/West as progressive – tolerant and secular – and Russia as backward – dogmatic and fundamentalist religious. We attempt to complicate the view on Pussy Riot’s performances and reread them within the Russian context, highlighting several political statements that got lost in North/Western translations. The focus of the analysis concentrates on the ‘Punk Prayerr’, its mimicry of religious language and references to the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church as well as the local public critical discourses.

Racial Norms: A Reinterpretation ofDuBois' “The Conservation of Races”

AbstractIargue that standard explanations ofDuBois' theory of race inappropriately characterize his view as attempting to provide descriptive criteria for races. Such an interpretation makes it both susceptible to Appiah's circularity objection and alienates it fromDuBois' central project of solidarity—which is the central point of “Conservation.”Ipropose that we should understand his theory as providing a normative account of race: an attempt to characterize what some races should be in terms of what other races are. In providing such an accountIwill also show how my interpretation ofDuBois' criteria avoids the circularity objection by making the criteria central to the project of solidarity. Thus, this interpretation avoids whatItake to be the two main problems with standard descriptive explanations ofDuBois' criteria.

Identity Categories as Potential Coalitions

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw ends her landmark essay “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color” with a normative claim about coalitions. She suggests that we should reconceptualize identity groups as “in fact coalitions,” or at least as “potential coalitions waiting to be formed.” In this essay, I explore this largely overlooked claim by combining philosophical analysis with archival research I conducted at the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Historical Society Archive in San Francisco about Somos Hermanas, the solidarity project of the Alliance Against Women’s Oppression, based in the San Francisco Women’s Building (1984–90). I extend my analysis into the present by drawing on the oral history and published works of Carmen Vázquez, a key organizer in both Somos Hermanas and the Women’s Building. I argue that conceptualizing identities as in fact coalitions—as complex, internally heterogeneous unities constituted by their internal differences and dissonances and by internal as well as external relations of power—enables us to organize effective political coalitions that cross existing identity categories and to pursue a liberatory politics of interconnection.

Antiracist Solidarity in Critical Education: Contemporary Problems and Possibilities

This paper argues that antiracist solidarity in education remains urgent, but that in framing solidarity projects critical educators have not been sufficiently attentive to the shape and extent of racism as a global ordering of social life. We describe the paternalism that has determined historical efforts at solidarity between African Americans and Whites and then extend our analysis of whiteness to the contemporary context, outlining its expressions in schooling and the challenges they pose for solidarity projects. Drawing on recent work in cultural studies and philosophy, we describe whiteness as a basic ordering of human being as well as a system of material and cultural oppression, and suggest that antiracist solidarity has to involve a reorganization of ways of being and knowing as well as a vision of global coexistence that respects epistemological difference and autonomy. On this basis we identify several key principles that should guide projects of antiracist solidarity in the present. The paper describes the most important implications of these principles for teaching, focusing in particular on the differing costs to teachers of color and White teachers of participation in antiracist activism, and outlining a form of solidarity without guarantees that can orient critical work in schools.

Las organizaciones de migrantes mexicanos en Estados Unidos y su estrategia de desarrollo local con enfoque transnacional: avances y desafíos

El programa “Tres por Uno” de remesas colectivas en México, con sus variantes, conflictos y dificultades, ha sido un gran avance como esfuerzo organizativo transnacional de promoción del desarrollo social en las comunidades de origen. La clave de su éxito radica en la solidaridad de las organizaciones de migrantes hacia sus comunidades de origen en asociación con los tres niveles del gobierno mexicano. Esta filantropía transnacional se inicia desde los años sesenta del siglo anterior de manera espontánea y hasta treinta años después comienza a recibir apoyos paulatinos de los diferentes niveles del gobierno hasta su institucionalización como programa federal en el 2002 dependiendo de la Secretaría de Desarrollo Social. En el 2010, luego de más de tres décadas de experiencia de proyectos solidarios las organizaciones migrantes mexicanas se plantean avanzar hacia una nueva fase de desarrollo local con enfoque transnacional en sus regiones de origen buscando un mayor impacto en la estructura económica y social.

ANÁLISE DAS RELAÇÕES ENTRE O FINANCIAMENTO PÚBLICO E O CRESCIMENTO DO MERCADO DE PLANOS DE SAÚDE NO BRASIL

Durante muitos anos o Sistema Único de Saúde não possuiu fontes está- veis de financiamento. Em paralelo, o mercado de planos vem sendo incentivado por meio da renúncia fiscal com despesas de saúde. O presente estudo objetiva compreender as relações entre o financiamento do Sistema Único de Saúde, a renúncia fiscal com despesas de saúde e o mercado brasileiro de planos de saú- de no período de 1990 a 2008. Trata-se de um estudo de caso, com abordagem qualitativa, no qual foi realizada uma triangulação de fontes de dados coletados a partir de entrevistas, documentos e bases de dados oficiais. Os resultados mostram o crescimento do mercado brasileiro de planos de saúde no período de 1990 a 2008, o incremento da renúncia fiscal referente às despesas médicas, além do pe- queno aumento de gastos diretos na saúde em relação ao PIB, que juntos parecem distanciar o país de concretizar o projeto solidário de saúde para todos, escrito na constituição cidadã.

Gendered Projects of Solidarity: Workplace Organizing among Immigrant Women and Men

Drawing on an ethnography of organizing among Latina/o immigrant janitors in Los Angeles, I argue that constructing workplace solidarity between women and men is a dynamic, gendered project. I demonstrate both how this project unfolds and how it can be halted, with varying implications for gender and class inequality at work. Organizational restructuring upsets gender‐segregated divisions of labour making solidarity between women and men possible but restructuring also allows workers to reinforce gendered divisions and cultural distinctions. The mechanism pushing workers one way or the other is the degree to which the process of organizing recognizes gender inequalities.

Tamil Refugees in Pain: Challenging Solidarity in the Norwegian Welfare State

This article discusses issues of power, stigmatisation and marginalisation associated with social structures and values promoted as part of a welfare project of individual rights and solidarity. Based on my fieldwork in northern Norway, the encounters of Tamil refugees with the Norwegian welfare state are described, focusing on the difficulties they experience in consulting health officials in the diagnosis and treatment of various aches and pains. From this perspective, the welfare state effects a subtle blend of toleration and exclusion by offering individual support and assistance in becoming ‘like us’. By giving credit to cultural differences, health personnel might instead appreciate that, although biomedicine and Norwegian ways and values may address many Norwegians’ pain, they do not ease the pain of many others. Exploring pain beyond pre-defined schemes not only gives the patient a sense of humanity and personhood but, it is suggested, teaches us new truths about the social relations of which we are all part.

Dying for Ireland: Violence, Silence, and Sacrifice in Dorothy Macardle's Earth-Bound: Nine Stories of Ireland (1924)

Dying for Ireland:Violence, Silence, and Sacrifice in Dorothy Macardle's Earth-Bound: Nine Stories of Ireland (1924) Jennifer Molidor Although the Irish struggle for independence provided increased access to the public sphere for republican women like Dorothy Macardle (1889–1958), women's political activism also frequently provoked scorn from male nationalists. William T. Cosgrave, for instance, responded to Cumann nam Bán's opposition to the Anglo-Irish Treaty by publicly blaming the bitter Irish Civil War on women's interference. Cosgrave claimed female activists were no "ordinary females"; quieting this "women's war" meant instigating a so-called "war on women."1 In 1922, this antagonism was demonstrated in a series of raids aimed at weakening the IRA by arresting female republican advocates like Dorothy Macardle, Maíre Comerford, and Mary Mac Swiney. Though Macardle and others protested their detention by going on a hunger strike, many were held without charge until the end of the civil war in 1923. Writing to the Freeman's Journal, the Irish Times, and the Irish Independent from Mountjoy Prison in 1922, Dorothy Macardle responded to Cosgrave's remarks on the detention and hunger strike of her friend, Mary Mac Swiney. "We were maintaining the Republican idea as writers, speakers, editors and members of the Publicity Departments Staff,—we were, that is, engaged, like Miss Mac Swiney, in speaking truths which the Provisional Government desires to keep concealed."2 By documenting the events of the Irish Civil War as an historian; by addressing injustices as a journalist; and representing the conflicts between nationalist and feminist agendas in her fiction, Macardle's life was devoted to "speaking truths." Most of Macardle's short story collection, Earth-Bound: Nine Stories of Ireland (1924) , was written during her internment in Mount joy and Kilmainham Gaols. The collection draws attention to overlooked sacrifices made by women [End Page 43] in the Irish cause. Stories like "The Brother" and "The Prisoner" present heroic male narratives of rebellion, while other stories, like "By God's Mercy" and "A Story Without An End," address women's experiences as wives and mothers of male republicans. Macardle's stories "The Return of Niav" and "The Portrait of Roisin Dhu," however, attend to the relationships between women, and demonstrate what Gerardine Meaney calls "an acute awareness of the dangers of women's symbolic function in nationalist ideology."3 The received narrative of Irish nationalism has tended to presume the masculine nature of the fight for an Irish republic, though recent scholarship has shown that women fought and suffered alongside their male compatriots, and that they did so amid gendered discourses of sacrifice—for example, the myth of Mother Ireland.4 Macardle's writings challenge such representations by linking violence against women with images of women in nationalist iconography. As Anne McClintock and others have argued, in the process of decolonization "women serve as the visible markers of national homogeneity" and as such "they become subjected to especially vigilant and violent discipline."5 For women, the noble sacrifice of "dying for Ireland," in the context of a masculine project of national solidarity, meant the sublimation of sexual difference. Dorothy Macardle's literary reputation rests in large part on her substantial 1937 history of the independence era, The Irish Republic.6 Only limited attention has been paid to her other works. Gerardine Meaney provided an intelligent discussion of Macardle's short story "The Portrait of Roisin Dhu," which is reprinted in the fifth volume of the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing. Macardle also features briefly in Margaret Ward's Maud Gonne: A Life and Unmanageable Revolutionaries, in Terry de Valera's recent memoir, in Sinéad McCoole's No [End Page 44] Ordinary Women, and in a notable article by Peter Beresford Ellis. In 2007, Nadia Smith published the first full biography of Macardle in Dorothy Macardle: A Life; Macardle also featured in Smith's study of Irish women historians. A number of encyclopedia entries make reference to Macardle, but many contain factual errors.7 Despite her complex participation in feminist and republican movements, no full-length study has yet directly addressed Macardle's novels, poems, plays, stories, and literary criticism in the...

Negotiating the politics of difference in the project of feminist solidarity

AbstractThe article is concerned with the constitutive tension between solidarity and difference in feminist practice. It is argued that while a ‘politics of difference’ has dogged efforts to build feminist solidarity across the boundaries of class, nation, ethnicity and religion, this does not refute the continuing importance of the concept of solidarity in understanding the dynamic interaction of agents in transnational political space. Drawing upon a number of illustrations from contemporary feminist practice, it is further argued that differences among women do not preclude solidarity. On the contrary, respect for difference is a necessary condition for forging solidarity. Moreover, conflict need not be divisive and can be creative in this process.

Solidarity projects of Mexican migrants in the United States and their prospects

Collective remittances and impact from the 3x1 ProgramThe remarkable increase in family remittances received in 2004 Mexico, over 16.6 billion dollars according to the Bank of Mexico1, and expected to reach 20 billion dollars in 2005,2 created great expectations. It generated a debate of the impact of these remittances on the economic development of Mexico and its different regions. A valuable point of reference, for the future development of the Mexico, could be based on the long history of Zacatecas residents' emigration to the United States. In addition, it must be considered the silent integration brought by the creation of the binational labor market that has been on the making for the past last fifty years. It must also be taken into account the addiction to remittances on the part of the state economy and the accelerated rate of the region's incorporation into the international migration process. The latter has brought diverse consequences, including dependence to the resources generated by Mexicans working outside the country.Recently, the phenomenon of international migration to the United States has generalized to the entire country -reflecting the precarious state of the Mexican economy, and the growing integration of the two countries. A significant number of studies have been conducted, in Mexico and in other countries, focusing on the causes and consequences of the phenomenon. In particular, what has become clear is the potential of remittances through the transnational transfer of wages. The shift improves the livelihood of the family of the immigrant in food consumption, health, education and housing.3 On one side, this has a positive impact on the population where these resources are received. There is also a negative effect because social inequality is generated between the recipients and those who do not. Nevertheless, significant experience has been gained by Zacatecans who have channeled collective remittances (contributions by members of Zacatecan clubs in the United States) to finance public infrastructure projects in their communities of origin. This practice has been taking place since the 1960s, and more details will be provided later in this article.Zacatecans have a long history of emigration to the United States. It is now more than 100 years old. Recently, this history led to the formation of Zacatecan clubs. At the core of the process is migrants' shared sense of belonging to their places of origin and their linkages to their communities of destination. Both instances motivate Zacatecanos to engage in joint activities for the benefit of their places of origin. There is an antecedent to these clubs, specifically in Southern California during the 1960s. Then, immigrants organized in Los Angeles to provide solidarity assistance to the sick, those injured in accidents, and to help return the dead to their homeland.4 During this stage, initial efforts developed to carry out projects in public infrastructure. These included repairing plazas, churches, sports facilities, and cemeteries. Such activities were financed exclusively by immigrant contributions. Some Zacatecan immigrant leaders refer to this stage as the 0x1 period: immigrants' dollars were the only financial support. In the 1970s, progress was made by combining funds from some local governments with resources from immigrants. In this way, community projects used a 1x1 modality.During the last 15 years, the Zacatecan Clubs that originated in California, and then spring up in different places of the United States: Illinois, Texas, Colorado, and Nevada, among other locations, have moved to a new phase of development. At the beginning of the 21st century, clubs of Zacatecans could be identified as one of the most important developments of Mexican hometown associations in the U.S. This is because of the number of clubs established (more than 230) and the systematic financial assistance for public infrastructure projects they provided to their communities of origin. …

Solidarity: From Civic Friendship to a Global Legal Community (review)

Reviewed by: Solidarity: From Civic Friendship to a Global Legal Community Paul Hendrickson The University of South Carolina. Hauke Brunkhorst. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005. Pp. xxv + 262. $42.50, hardcover. Public appeals to solidarity have been pervasive throughout the storied history of political dissent and democratic politics. From the French Revolution and the European revolutions of 1848 to decolonization, Polish Solidarność, and the antiglobalization movement, solidarity has been invoked as a means of reinventing citizenship, rights, and community. Yet political theorists have not generally accorded the concept of solidarity a degree of attention comparable to that afforded other core political concepts, such as freedom, equality, and deliberation. In Solidarity, Hauke Brunkhorst seeks to remedy this neglect, arguing that the concept of solidarity should be deemed fundamental to democratic theory and practice: "In modern societies, solidarity coincides with the concept of democracy" (xxiii). Brunkhorst presents this thesis as a corrective to current theory, but he also develops it—in the spirit of much Frankfurt School theorizing—as a Zeitdiagnose, as a timely diagnosis, regarding the threats globalization poses to democratic self-governance: "Power, law, and money are globalized [today] at the expense of democratic solidarity" (7). Solidarity, as Brunkhorst understands it, is a thoroughly modern concept. The "ideas of 1789"—in particular, the fraternité of the French Revolution—provided the historical foundation for an egalitarian and democratic model of solidarity. Over the course of the nineteenth century, the concept of solidarity [End Page 343] gradually replaced that of fraternity in the wake of industrialization. Drawing on Marx, Brunkhorst argues that what promoted working-class solidarity was "not the local sympathy of communal relations or the friendly affection . . . of a tightly structured polis," but rather the railway, the steamship, and the telegraph (60). Brunkhorst's historiography is woven into a broad social-theoretic framework. Following Durkheim, he reasons that the modern division of labor is not founded on the mechanical solidarity of Gemeinschaft, on a shared sense of affinity, ritual, and communal belonging, but on the organic solidarity of Gesellschaft, on the integration of an individualized, pluralist, and functionally differentiated society. To readers acquainted with contemporary German appropriations of the sociological tradition, many of Brunkhorst's conceptual moves will seem familiar. But his unique fusion of social-theoretic and historical argumentation yields a fascinating and novel characterization of solidarity. For Brunkhorst, solidarity is not a form of sentiment or emotional bond; it is not premised on compassion for "tormentable bodies" (Brecht) or on a "flexible feeling of sympathy" (Rorty); rather, "it is nothing but the democratic realization of individual freedom" (3). This normative model of solidarity is guided by the regulative ideal of a political association without domination; it envisages a polity in which the individual is neither servant nor master to her compatriots. As modes of governance become increasingly globalized, democratic forms of solidarity must reach beyond the rights traditions of particular nation-states to include a "human-rights patriotism." Brunkhorst traces this ideal back to Greco-Roman antiquity and the Judeo-Christian tradition. Drawing principally on the writings of Greek and Roman philosophers, he argues that civic friendship (philia) provided a space for mutual freedom, emancipated individuals from the bonds of kinship, generalized friendship into a form of patriotism (philia politike), and realized the universal essence of man as a political being. But this civic-republican model remained profoundly elitist, excluding the many on the basis of gender, class, and citizenship status. More suggestive and original is Brunkhorst's treatment of Jewish and Christian thought. The intersection between rhetoric and philosophy is central to his interpretation of the Exodus story and covenant theology as a form of collective countermemory and as a prophetic practice of critique. Through his reading of the Jotham fable and other biblical narratives, he argues that the Jewish prophets and the Christian New Testament avowed "the equal proximity of all humans to God" and contributed to a "prophetic project of egalitarian solidarity" (33, 36). [End Page 344] Brunkhorst's historical reconstructions culminate in the French Revolution. On his view, the otherworldly universalism of the Judeo-Christian tradition was secularized and institutionalized in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789) and the first French...

VOICES OF DIALOGUE: Participatory Action Research Crosses the Border: Economic development and solidarity between Latinas in New Mexico and Maya women in Chiapas, Mexico

This article describes the work of activist anthropologist Christine Eber whose participatory action research in Chiapas, Mexico led to the development of a cross‐border solidarity project. Eber established the Las Cruces–Chiapas Connection, an advocacy organization that assists women of Chiapas with their grassroots economic development projects. Centered on women's artisanal craft production, the project helps create marketing networks for Maya women's hand‐crafted weavings, an effort that grew in significance for the women and their families with the passage of NAFTA in 1994. Since that time, the project has emerged into a cross‐border project with the Chaparral Family Development Center in New Mexico. Creaciones Yuca (Yucca Creations) involves low‐income, immigrant women in the U.S. working in direct economic collaboration with Maya women weavers in Mexico.

The ghost of Saddam and UN sanctions

Events in the past 10-15 years have meant that Iraq's once highly sophisticated health-care system has fallen to rack and ruin. To fight the very low morale, Iraqi people are making use of many approaches, some of which are unconventional, such as circus entertainment to raise spirits in paediatric wards. This Reportage looks at the events that have lead to the current health-care crisis in Iraq through the eyes of those living and working there. It is based on interviews done by Jo Wilding, an independent humanitarian activist and writer working on various grassroots rehabilitation and solidarity projects in Iraq, in Al Mansour teaching hospital, Shahid Adnan hospital, the centre for Nuclear Medicine, and the Ministry of Health in Baghdad.

Pour comprendre la professionnalisation dans les ONG : quelques apports d'une sociologie des professions

Anne Le Naëlou — Understanding the professionalizing in NGO's : Some contribution from the sociology of professions. The general tendency to professionalize and market international solidarity during the 1990's and the increasing importance of the liberal model weakened the initial mobilizing bond in the ngo's and, instead, reactivated the sectoral and corporatist logics of the professions which govern their actions. Such a development is evident in the tendency to present technicality (expertise) and professional competence as a capital attribute of ngo's, at the expense of the social transformation goals which animate them. The prevailing functionalist approach limits the abilities of the NGO's to ensure the redeployment of competences and structuring that they require in dealing with specific projects of international solidarity.

Emaús, una organización de acción social

Emaús Bilbao Cooperative Company is a social economy and solidarity organization for socio-labour insertion. It is dedicated to the comprehensive management of solid urban waste. It has its headquarters in Bilbao and carries out its work in Vizcaya. From 1970, the year in which Emaús established itself in Vizcaya, to the present day, the organization has experienced an evolution which has led it to change its management direction. Gone are the days when they were only known as "the rag and bone men of Emaus" with all the connotations that were associated with that name. At present we find a company which has adopted new management formulas without losing the characteristics of its social and solidarity project. This has enabled it to face up to the prevailing conditions in today economic climate. In this way it has been able to guarantee its survival. The comprehensive management of solid urban waste is made up of four diverse parts: The location of the urban solid waste through the receiving of telephone calls, its collection and selection, and the final elimination of those things that can not be incorporated again into the consumer chain. Through this case, the problems that arise for the organization with reference to the management of Human Resources are analysed. These are related above all to the motivational and decision making aspects due to the diverse characteristics as much in their own workers as in the organization.

Europe de la Défense : y a-t-il encore une ambition française ?

Europe and Defence: Does France still Have an Ambition for it?, by Gilles ANDRÉANI After 50 years under the aegis of the United States, Europe has begun seriously, through the European Councils at Saint-Malo and Helsinki, to take over its own defence. This evolution was made possible by the end of the cold war, the warming of relations between London and Paris on transatlantic relations, and, finally, through the priority given to military capabilities, the key to independence on defence matters. But, after September 11 and the reaffirmation of the US hegemony on the international scene, a European defence policy must confront a major issue: does Europe want and can it become a genuine international player, capable of standing up to the challenges of global security? By proposing a transatlantic and European solidarity project that allows a European defence policy to coexist along side the US hyperpower, France will be able to play a once again a leading role on the old continent.

The work of friendship: Rorty, his critics, and the project of solidarity

The work of friendship: Rorty, his critics, and the project of solidarity

The Solidarity Project: Integrating Labor Studies, Writing, and Fieldwork

The Solidarity Project: Integrating Labor Studies, Writing, and Fieldwork