Solidarities at the Edge of Exclusion

Solidarity is usually celebrated as a good thing and something that ought to be promoted. But the forging of solidarity movements necessarily sets one locus of collective values and commitments against others and can lead to marginalization, rupture, scapegoating, and exclusion. This panel engages with the irresolvable tension between inclusion and exclusion in the forging of solidarities by paying particular attention to their exclusionary sides, broadly understood. It invites contributions that ethnographically investigate how troubled forms of social difference are produced, lived, and interpreted at the level of everyday practice. We will be especially interested in the following questions: How do the dualities of solidarity making – inclusion and exclusion – play out in practical contexts? When solidarities collapse, how do social actors make sense of the breakdown of collective attachments and commitments? How do individuals and collectives navigate the everyday tensions that might develop when they are allied in one context or moment, but opposed in others? How fixed are group boundaries, and even in cases of deep collective antipathies, is group membership always or ever an “all or nothing matter”? When social actors engage in exclusionary boundary work, what justifications do they give to these practices? Finally, are there particular theoretical, methodological, or other challenges associated with ethnographic investigations of solidarity’s exclusionary sides?

Please send inquiries or abstracts of 150 words to Laura Eramian (Sociology and Social Anthropology, Dalhousie University) at leramian@dal.ca by January 15, 2016.

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