On Producing (the Concept of) Solidarity
In the West/North, there have been two dominant models for understanding community and its associated bonds of solidarity. One is preindustrial and invokes the notion of the village with its ‘organic’ ties of neighborliness and so on. The other is industrial and views community in terms of the shared situation of exploitation that is the basis of the constitution of the industrial working class. Neither model applies any longer in the West/North: in most places the village has become a dormitory suburb, and industrial production has increasingly been deproletarianized. This paper will pose the question of an alternative conception of social solidarity. Indispensable for the formation of community is its ability to function as a center of meaning for its members, and the question of how our new forms of production (informatically driven and globalized) allow these new centers of meaning to be developed. This paper will consider two models for this alternative conception. One is derived from Raymond William...