At the time of writing, ‘solidarity’ is used in popular discourse to acknowledge and inspire person-to-person assistance as well as anonymous commitment to global health as the COVID-19 pandemic wears on; it announces the commitment to racial and gender justice; it serves as a reminder that people around the world face adverse effects of climate change and that we have the power to change; it is a political statement for citizens and governments to recognize the needs and contributions of migrants; and it compels creative response from a distance to the victims of a brutally unjust war.

These ordinary language uses of solidarity point to something distinct and elusive. As theorists, we try to pin down relevant criteria to help understand what is and ought to count as solidarity. At times, misguided popular usage of the term will feed off of that distinct and elusive quality, hoping perhaps to persuade through rhetoric that there is something present that is not; these parasitical solidarities risk weakening the importance of solidarity as a social, moral, or political concept (Scholz 2008, pp. 46–8). Most public calls for solidarity, however, are doing something different. Most calls for solidarity are not just unintended signaling or meaningless rhetoric. The communicators conceive of themselves, in the first personal singular, as an ‘I’ in relation to a we; the first-person plural is also often present, as a ‘we’ in relation to the world. ‘Solidarity’ declares an individual's commitment to something and proclaims a hope that others will similarly commit, while also communicating a collective relation that proclaims the hope that others will likewise see themselves as part of the we-collective. Invocations of solidarity assert the value of a particular human relationship, sometimes in order to inspire its reformation or extension, sometimes in an effort to highlight its presence, and sometimes in a plea to create it when it appears lacking or necessary.

Solidarity is not about the things that we do, it is about the way things are done by ‘us’ even while our relation is mediated by the doing. As a relation, solidarity cannot be reduced merely to actions. Relations or relationships are transformative. In that sense, ‘actions in solidarity’ can only tell part of the story, actions offer only a glimpse into the outward manifestation of solidarity. Living in solidarity, existing in solidarity or the lived relation of solidarity, points to the way the relations to self, others, and the world are made different because of solidarity.

Calls for solidarity and ordinary appeals to solidarity reveal something important about the transformative value of solidarity. They distinguish solidarity from society per se and in doing so create what might be called a new social or a new social space, a new form of sociality, or a new social imaginary (Hall 2017). Of course, they also remind us or invite us to renew existing social relations. Solidarity is a lived relation that changes or transforms how we live, how we relate to one another, and how we see the world. Surely there are times when the word is used when ‘support’ or ‘sympathy’ would reflect better the project at hand. However, I think there is wisdom to be found in the calls for solidarity. A wisdom that signals the possibility of a collective experience that opens a different future, an inducement to others that, together, we can transform the possibilities in front of us to a new set of possibilities, or we can extend the possibilities we encounter to others who lack them. In this, there is hope.

In this chapter, I explore four facets of solidarity's transformative value. Each contributes to or is drawn from the common understanding of solidarity, and each suggests how the experience of collective transformation opens new possibilities. Part phenomenology and part social philosophy, I argue that there are multiple overlapping transformations at work in relations of solidarity. The social transformation for which the collective is engaged in action in concert is the most obvious and tends to be the focus of accounts of solidarity, but other transformations help to explain the unique and varied aspects of the solidary relation for individuals as well as fellow participants. These facets of transformation or transformative experiences within solidarity point to a distinction between living in solidarity and acting in solidarity. The transformative lens through which to understand solidarity contributes to the distinctness of it as a social relation. The common understanding of the term, as it has been used in racial justice movements, climate change activism, gender justice campaigns, migrant rights efforts, anti-violence or anti-poverty social justice work, as well as in day-to-day social expectations and civic obligations, relies on the sustenance of transformative and transforming solidaristic relations – on living in solidarity. Collective transformative experience – and transformative hope – recollects relationships in a civic or social whole through foregrounding the social ‘we’ or social togetherness. Throughout, I suggest that even if relations of solidarity are made manifest through acts, the uniqueness of living in solidarity exceeds acting collectively. Ordinary invocations of the concept demonstrate an understanding of both the transformative power and the relational endurance of living in solidarity. ¹

In the first section, I consider aspects of solidarity's transformative value relevant to individual selves. The second section considers the solidary group and is followed by a discussion of the transformative experience of solidarity itself in section three. In the fourth section, I focus on the facet of transformation pertinent to other social relations. The fifth section concludes.

Transforming selves

There is a sense in which solidarity is grounded in personal transformation: something compels an individual to consider social relations or to seek opportunities to bring about social change. In such contexts, collectivizing – uniting one's actions with the actions of others in solidarity – may be the most promising means to accomplish a transformation of society or, in those societies that already have strong communal ties, to reignite the lived experience of solidarity within the community. In other words, the moral transformation of individuals might be one of the factors compelling the formation of relations of solidarity. ²

In addition to this possible grounding of solidarity in personal transformation, solidarity itself may be personally transformative for each individual participant. The experience of working with others reveals the power and agency individuals contribute to collective action. In addition to this impact on personal empowerment, the personal transformation of solidarity entails a change in how individuals understand the meaningfulness of particular decisions that they enact individually. Actors in solidarity understand social and material relations and enact their moral commitments in different ways when informed by the collective relation of solidarity.

The personally transformative facet of solidarity, in other words, may be understood as part of the grounds or the value of solidarity. In this section, I reflect on the personally transformative facet of solidarity (a) as the basis for conceiving the self as part of the social in a different way, (b) as a power within solidarity activities, and (c) as a valuable source of personal empowerment or agency.

Conceiving the self in the social in a different way

Solidarity is a relation unlike any other. However, like other relations, the relation is transformative for the self in response to or alongside other participants. Although it is impossible to be in solidarity with oneself, relations of solidarity affect what it means to be as an individual in community with others. Something fundamental about how one exists in the world, with others, and with oneself – opening new possibilities and foreclosing others – is embraced in the solidary relation. Opening oneself up to solidarity, accepting the invitation that is issued in at least some of the ordinary uses of the term, entails opening oneself up to the transformative potential of a unique relationship with others that asks one to consider the good of all those others prior to (albeit also in addition to) the good for oneself. In turn, those others similarly accept the risk that collective engagement entails, as well as the risk that the relation will similarly have a transformative impact on the self.

In my work on political solidarity, as well as an essay on personal transformation, I posited that the commitment to solidarity – which is sometimes experienced rather than consciously adopted – is inwardly transformative and outwardly manifest in the activity of solidarity (Scholz 2008; 2010). Through commitment to solidarity, individuals conceive of their relation to the social world in a different way. Within political solidarity, for instance, the moral relation that mediates between individuals and a group united for a cause, commitment to a shared end creates a ‘unity of peoples on a range of interpersonal to social-political levels with a social justice goal of liberation of the oppressed, cessation of injustice, or protection against social vulnerabilities; it simultaneously fosters individual self-determination, empowerment, cooperative action, collective vision, and social criticism among those in solidarity’ (Scholz 2008, p. 58). Given the wide array of reasons that compel individual participants to commit to political solidarity, I argue that ‘personal transformation may be as unique as the individuals involved’ (Scholz 2010, p. 26).

Other forms of solidarity similarly exhibit the transformative potential for the self in relation to the social. Solidarity is sometimes contrasted with individualism, isolation, selfishness, or autonomy. The self does not disappear in the solidary relation, but it is reconceived through the collective when looked at through that lens. In solidary relations, the question is not ‘what can I do?’ but rather, ‘what can we do together?’ and ‘what is required of me for us to be together?’

Not every type of solidarity includes sacrifice or harm, but commitment indicates something important that distinguishes solidarity from other forms of collective action: living in solidarity means committing to a sociality that is not always organized to facilitate one's own benefit. In spite of opportunities to choose alternative social arrangements that do function to benefit the self, solidarity transforms the self-interested individual into a socially minded (or collectively oriented) participant. Individuality is not subsumed in the collective, but it is committed to the collective in a meaningful way. In my earlier account of personal transformation of political solidarity, I argued that a ‘fundamental change in how a person sees the world must occur in order for that person to make a commitment that will most certainly involve sacrifice and potential harm’ (2010, p. 20). Although emphasizing choice rather than commitment, L. A. Paul makes a similar point in the important book Transformative Experience; Paul argues that big decisions ‘involve the choice to undergo a dramatically new experience that will change your life in important ways, and an essential part of your deliberation concerns what your future life will be like if you decide to undergo the change. But as it turns out … many of these big decisions involve choices to have experiences that teach us things we cannot know about from any other source but the experience itself’ (Paul 2014, p. 3).

Solidarity is usually a response to some other order or community, or a situation of opposition, or adversity, as seen in Sangiovanni's account. Solidarity's sociality may disrupt the existing order or it may reignite something within the existing order. Coming to solidarity, or living in solidarity, for some participants includes ‘new understandings of how their own subjectivities are shaped by those dynamics from which they seek to step away’ (Russo 2018, p. 132) as well as new understandings of how their subjectivities are shaped by the dynamics delineated as the solidary relation. In other words, solidarity is transformative for the self.

Some of the calls for solidarity during the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), for instance, recollect the centrality of the social for the individual self and announce a hoped-for recommitment to that collective bond. They ask individuals to be socially minded in a way that does not always facilitate the individual's own benefit but that allows for the shaping of a collective future that will reflect the individual's experiences. Not acting in solidarity may, perhaps, open different options that affect the self in alternative ways. Solidarity mediates or filters individual experience through the collective. Donning a mask or obtaining a vaccine in solidarity interprets those actions through the social, even while also potentially benefiting the self. When asked to wear a mask in solidarity with others, individuals are being asked to consider a transformed conception of the self, one that exists in and with others, as part of a social or with renewed sociality. This is not to say that the transformative impact of solidarity is necessarily permanent or even long lasting; but it is a collective relation that impacts the self, mobilized against some other possible future.

Meaningfulness of personal decisions

Another aspect of the orientation of solidarity is simply believing in something bigger than oneself. Like faith, believing in something that is bigger than oneself – the solidarity for which we risk together – allows the participant individual to let go of the desire to secure one's own person or property, to take risks alongside of committed others, and to look for the positive in collective action because one's own preservation is not the central focus. Perhaps even more importantly, belief in something bigger than oneself is what sustains hope in solidarity. Opening oneself up to solidarity has a transformative impact on one's thinking and decision making. With the relationship to others in the forefront of one's mind, other matters cede to the back. Solidarity provokes a transformation in thinking, giving a different perspective to things that in other circumstances would matter differently.

Commitment to solidarity is lived out through decisions that extend beyond the actions that are engaged jointly. During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, people around the world appealed to ‘solidarity’ in thinking about particular decisions in daily life. Simple decisions, like whether to go to a grocery store or travel outside the home, were reconfigured through the lens of solidarity as decisions with collective import. This sort of reconfiguring or filtering demonstrates the transformative impact of solidarity on the meaningfulness of individual decisions, even seemingly mundane ones. ³

Power/empowerment and agency

Relational ethics emphasize the importance of context and social position, especially with regard to social vulnerability or inequality. This is seen in solidarity through the relative assessment of risk within the relation as well as within the action undertaken in concert (Scholz 2014; 2018; 2020). Solidarity creates a new sociality. Every sociality carries risks as part of the relation itself, even beyond what those in relation undertake together. At least part of the draw of social life is that existence together is conceived to lessen overall risk to individual participants. Assuming that solidarity is a social relation, then it too carries risks within the relation itself. Rather than emphasizing equal vulnerability, the sociality of solidarity seeks to foster awareness of the varying risks within larger contexts of social inequality that solidary actors face (Scholz 2014) and the unique power that each contributes. Trust within the solidary relation is built through a continual process of evaluating risks on fellow participants and readjusting the relation to ensure an equitable sharing of the social risks of the relationship itself. Equitable sharing of social risk does not mean that all the risks in solidarity are evenly distributed; rather, it means that the risks of the relations must be adjusted to account for the social vulnerabilities and inequalities that each participant carries entering into the relation. In acknowledging and accounting for the social risks, which affect individuals differently because of their positioning in the external (i.e., outside of the solidaristic relation) social context, relations of solidarity might adjust to create conditions for the flourishing of personal agency and empowerment (Scholz 2014, p. 55).

Acting collectively does not replace individual action or subsume the power of the individual in the collective whole. Rather, the solidary relation affirms individual power and agency, collectivizing the unique contributions of each participant into the solidary relation. Among the many rich insights stemming from Catholic social teaching (CST) on solidarity as a concept is the understanding that individual actions contribute to collective power, even when those actions are private, quiet, or seemingly isolated. The reverse is also the case: individual action or inaction might be complicit in social sin or structures of sin (Himes 1986). CST encourages each person to see how action or inaction in everyday life contributes to structures and systems. Inspiring individuals to see their own power within a collective, with the encouragement that their actions ought to be conducted in accordance with justice and the common good, CST offers an account of solidarity that acknowledges the power of individuals to transform unjust structures, to take up as an obligation their role in social relations. CST addresses multiple audience levels – individuals, institutions, communities, states, and the ‘one human family’ – to affirm a delicate balance between the individual and the collective. Each level is meant to take up their moral obligations, without impinging on the ability of levels lower (or higher) to fulfill their moral roles as well. This brief portrait of solidarity for CST offers a glimpse into two aspects of the transformative value of solidarity for individual selves: it transforms the individual into a powerful agent of change, and it affirms the importance of individual agents within collective relations.

The everyday calls for solidarity may be seen, then, as reminders of individual commitment in the social body, as acknowledgments of the power of individual action within collective action, as resource signals for action that is more effectively done collectively. In other words, solidarity's transformative value is evident in how personal power and agency is reconceived; contrasting with the prioritization of self-interest in one's actions, individuals in solidarity prioritize the commitment with others, a relationship that may yield decisions and actions that do not benefit the individual at all or decrease the potential benefit to the individual in favor of the benefit to the solidary group. On the surface, at least for some participants in solidarity, the decisions and actions may not look any different. However, the commitment to solidarity transforms how the individual understands themselves and their pursuits in relation to the whole.

Transformative value for the solidary group

Solidarity has many possible forms and manifestations. Any single individual could be involved in multiple solidary relations (Shelby 2005). Moreover, each person is embedded in a series of other relations or embodied associations which may impact their involvement in any given solidarity. Rather than functioning as a weakness to the solidary relation or an indication of a lack of complete loyalty to a solidary relation, these multiple connections contribute to the richness of solidarity. Each participant effectively brings to the relation an abundant store of information and further relationships, at least some of which may be put to use toward the given solidarity. In this section, I consider some possible ways that the solidary group experiences transformation. The diversity of participants changes the group, affecting collective power and modeling counter-cultural connection. In the next section, I look at how this diversity contributes to the transformative value of the end and purpose of solidarities.

Diversity and inclusiveness

Speaking of the richness of human diversity marshalled for the cause of climate change mitigation, Pope Francis stirringly articulates the value of individual and cultural uniqueness for global solidarity: ‘We require a new and universal solidarity. As the bishops of Southern Africa have stated: “Everyone's talents and involvement are needed to redress the damage caused by human abuse of God's creation”. All of us can cooperate as instruments of God for the care of creation, each according to his or her own culture, experience, involvements and talents’ (Pope Francis, Laudato Sí, §14). His words punctuate the transformative value of solidarity understood through the contributions of diverse and unique participants and cultural practices. The solidary group exists because of the participants, and it alters or adjusts as people come and go (Doran 1996; Shelby 2005, pp. 127–8; Scholz 2008, p. 108; forthcoming). The logic of inclusion, as Doran calls it, counters divisiveness, which often plays a prominent role in other social structures.

Living the solidarity commitment, rather than through fulfilling a set of criteria, means that free-riders – those who benefit from the goals of solidarity – are not subject to punishment but might be subject to social pressure of belonging. ⁴ Importantly, my point here is about the processes of solidarity, not a comment about the social ontology of solidarity; a fully inclusive solidarity is likely an aspirational goal rather than a lived experience. Processes of inclusivity refer to the recognition of change with the inclusion of new participants. ⁵

Social relations of all sorts morph in response to the inclusion of new people. Connecting with others compels recognition of the variety of cultural backgrounds and experiences; failure at recognition creates a situation of indifference that undermines the connection. Processes of communication, collaboration, and coordination used in solidary relations challenge participants to recognize, respond, and readjust to others in the group. The commitment to solidarity entails that negotiation (Scholz 2008, ch. 3). Living in solidarity, in other words, involves active work on whatever scale is within one's power, understanding that solidarity has a dynamic nature that responds or reacts to the inclusion of differently situated people. Living in solidarity is not about adopting the identity of all those others or even deferring to the proposed actions of these others (Kolers 2016). Sandra Bartky astutely observes that ‘to stand in solidarity with others is to work actively to eliminate their misery, not to arrange one's life so as to share it’ (Bartky 2002, p. 74; emphasis added), and Tommie Shelby articulates the importance of inclusive leadership and judicious organizational structures to meet the needs of diverse participants (Shelby 2005, p. 128). Working and living in solidarity in this way pushes beyond merely acting in solidarity and suggests that taking the relational aspect of solidarity seriously requires an ongoing evaluative process to assess whether the needs of participants are met and the unique contributions valued. Solidarity is about imagining a new social wherein the risks of social existence do not accrue disproportionately on some people. A disproportionate distribution of risks within solidarity potentially exacerbates other vulnerabilities of social existence. Living in solidarity avoids ‘suppressing or excluding difference among political allies’ (Lyshaug 2006, p. 91; see also Hooker 2009, pp. 32–3). ⁶

Interconnected with the manifest purpose of solidarity, then, is an ancillary transformative impact on the solidary group itself. Christine Straehle defends a value of solidarity as providing a source of relational goods. Using the language of ‘associative solidarity’, Straehle suggests that it is part of what is owed to moral equals; relational needs are part of basic needs, thereby making solidarity important not merely for its uses but because it is a social relation and social relations are ‘form(s) of capital’ (Straehle 2020, p. 536). Inclusivity in the processes creates more capital for the solidary group to draw upon in addressing its purpose but it also potentially transforms the solidary group itself. That is at least part of Pope Francis's insight in appealing to the demonstrative need for the unique ‘culture, experience, involvements and talents’ of all in the solidaristic efforts to mitigate climate change. ‘Inclusive solidarity cannot be achieved conclusively, but rather demands an infinite process of solidary practices and inclusive ways of relating to one another’ (Schwiertz and Schwenken 2020).

Being in solidarity counters other modes of being that dominate social life. Rather than accept the common or dominant modes of social organization – authoritative/subordinate, rich/poor, citizen/noncitizen, etc. – solidarity's emphasis on the collective posits a sociality structured to avoid relations of division. The lived experience of solidarity requires a continual reassessment to avoid recreating relations of exclusion or domination while fostering the collective engagement to transform external social structures and relations. Often, the appeal to solidarity accompanies a recognition that the opposition sets up norms intended to divide. Solidarity counters that division by claiming a connection. This is evident, for instance, when Alicia Garza, one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, defines solidarity saying, ‘Solidarity means trying to understand the ways our communities experience unique forms of oppression and marginalization. It means showing up for one another to bear witness and then expanding our fight to include the challenges faced by other communities besides our own’ (Garza 2020, p. 157). Garza's comments demonstrate the transformative value of solidarity (perhaps even the transformative nature of solidarity), expanding in response to diverse needs of participants while ‘showing up’ and ‘bearing witness’ for one another, acknowledging within solidarity how social forces affect people differently. It is also a nod to the effect that encountering others has on one's own experience or the experience of the group. Dominant social practices organize social life in a way that fosters division between ethnic and racial groups. Solidarity in countering racism also counters the cultural norms of division or isolation. In addition, critical reflection and expansive readjustment challenges dominant social practices that concentrate burdens of social existence on certain groups – such burdens are themselves among the adversities that solidarity addresses.

Collective power

Emphasizing relational interconnectedness rather than sameness, the grievances and criticisms, the experiences of adversity, are collectivized and consolidated in solidarity. Solidarity is often experienced as a power: the ability to create change together, especially when individualized attempts appear futile or ineffective. Collecting the vibrant diversity of viewpoints, solidarity functions as a medium through which those viewpoints are asserted in the creation of a new or a different social space, a new social imaginary, or a new or renewed experience of sociality.

Ordinary calls for solidarity challenge the individualism and isolation so prominent in modern daily life. Indeed, the call itself is a plea to connect while the mention of solidarity in news reports, for instance, signals a recognition of relations among and between people, a relation that may have been dormant or missing. As appeals, calls for solidarity offer an opportunity to lend one's own power to a collective or to create a collective where one is missing. As signals of recognition, labeling something solidarity points to a new way to perceive or understand relations among people. The term announces the prospect of collective power, in response to adversity, opposition, or oppression. People who go through a struggle together experience something that was not present prior to the struggle. Survivors of a natural disaster, military personnel in combat, protesters seeking social change, or fellow citizens foregrounding and preserving the collective social bond discover a strength in their connection during the struggle, and the connection might endure once the moment of struggle has passed. The struggle, or the process of collective power, in these cases, is that which unites participants and potentially moves them – or some of them – to sustain a relationship beyond the struggle.

Diverse participation in solidarity, and the commitment to avoid replicating the relations of domination and division found in other social relations, means that the enactments of solidarity and communication within solidary groups are varied and diffuse. Creative enactment of solidarity from participants who would carry too high of a social cost in traditional modes of protest, for instance, might include such things as story-telling, public art, information leaks, hunger strikes or boycotts, and even festivals that disrupt dominant modes of social interaction. Each of these, and so many more subtle as well as bold public displays, illustrates how solidarity is lived across difference and performed in day-to-day events that are transformed or politicized according to the solidary commitment. Individual voices speaking up against injustice have power and may be understood as contributing to the collective power of solidarity. Solidaristic actions do not have to be in grand gestures of coordinated activity; they could be in small, personal experiences. Collective power emerges both in the bold actions performed together and in the small actions done in concert; it appears as relationships are built and sustained.

The importance of small measures done with intent to contribute to a large-scale collective effort is evident in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, the World Health Organization Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, emphasized the importance of ‘solidarity’ in remarks offered in the early days of the pandemic. Ghebreyesus's comments use the term to highlight (1) the actions of partners in ‘staying the course’ in response to the Ebola pandemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo – noting the government and the people, (2) the cooperation of governments in implementing policies modeled on successful measures of South Korea to address the COVID-19 pandemic, (3) the coalition of medical researchers studying the pandemic and sharing information globally, and (4) the collective effort to raise funds. ‘Solidarity’ unites all these disparate efforts in part because it signals collective power. The transformative experience wrought by solidarity in response to the Ebola pandemic is marshalled for a new pandemic, encouraging partners at every level of social organization to participate by lending their unique expertise to the collective project. In other words, individual power is transformed into collective power when applied to or called up by solidarity. This transformative value extends through time in the relationships built and the diverse contributions and directions made possible through inclusive processes. Collective power, then, I would argue, is more than joint action. It is living and being in solidarity, not merely acting in solidarity.

Transformative impact on the ends of solidarity

Given the variety of communities with which a person is involved, and given the daily needs of individuals themselves, it seems probable that individuals will occasionally weaken their involvement in a particular solidary relation. Rather than seeing that as lack of resolve or as failure of solidarity, through the lens of transformative experience, recalibrating involvement while maintaining a commitment may be seen as different ways of living in solidarity (Mohanty 2003, p. 161; Shelby 2005; Scholz 2008; 2010). Sometimes a solidary relation transforms into an organized or institutionalized relation. It may still be meaningful to refer to the relation as solidarity, but other organizational or associational concepts may be better suited to explain the more formalized structure of such relations. This leads to questions about the fluidity of solidarity and of the desirability of sustaining solidarity. What does it mean to sustain solidarity? Do solidarities change when the nature of the original collective changes? What about when the grounds or ends of solidarity change? In this section I consider the ends of solidarity by turning to questions of how solidarity is sustained, how connections are fostered, and how solidarity itself transforms.

Sustain

As we have seen, sustaining solidarity, living in solidarity and not just acting in solidarity, necessitates a scrutiny of the additional adversities faced by fellow solidary actors. Understanding the social, material, and political conditions with which fellow solidary actors exist reveals the complexity of adversity's effects on individuals. Sustaining the unity of solidarity is a challenge because of the need for dynamic critical awareness of shifting circumstances which impact the ends of solidarity. Moreover, the actions solidary groups pursue change the circumstances that gave rise to the solidarity in the first place. Just as individual decisions are transformative and cannot really be comprehended until they are lived, the solidarity group faces a similar condition: the impact of choices, actions, or pursuits in solidarity on the solidary group will not be fully comprehended until they are lived by the group. They carry the potential of destroying the solidary relation even while addressing the grounds and ends of the solidarity.

If, as I have suggested, solidarity reorients an individual perspective to the perspective of the solidary whole as well as the diverse parts, then part of the challenge of solidarity is maintaining or sustaining the commitments of participants while the orientation of the collective continually transforms in response to changing conditions, circumstances, and the collective itself. Discovering what we create together in solidarity involves the openness to the transformed purpose and relation as well as the realization that the collective of solidarity may cease to exist, or morph such that some participants no longer find their commitment contained in the collective project. At least some ordinary uses of the term may be seen as reminders or invitations to continue to find oneself included in the collective even while acknowledging the collective has changed. Sustaining solidarity must include fostering the relations such that the collective project can perdure.

Paul's account of personal decisions that are transformative suggests that ‘we only learn what we need to know after we've done it, and we change ourselves in the process of doing it’. For Paul, this uncertainty is embraced in the process of how one chooses. Paul argues that ‘the best response to this situation is to choose based on whether we want to discover who we'll become’ (Paul 2014, p. 4). Something similar occurs in the solidary relation. Of course, it isn't just the ‘we’ that transforms; something happens, too, to the grounds and ends of solidarity. Some of the ordinary uses of the term serve as reminders of the solidary relation when conditions within which it took shape have changed.

Activists and advocates aiding migrants in spite of laws that prohibit such aid invoke this facet of solidarity's transformative value when they call their actions ‘crimes of solidarity’. They employ (at least) a double referent: the civic solidarity of that state that declares those actions illegal and the social solidarity in aiding fellow human beings. In both cases, they gesture to the transformative value of solidarity in creating a different future (Fekete 2018; Squire 2020). The activists and advocates are doing more than expressing support or sympathy for a cause, their solidarity creates space to imagine social relations differently. In doing so, they collectively embrace the uncertainty that transformative experience brings.

Fluid connections

Seemingly distinct issues become connected as the collective forms and expands, because individual participants offer their insight into how issues are related. The praxis of solidarity transforms in response to or inspired by the acknowledgment of connections between issues. Consider, for instance, how solidarity is invoked in campaigns to end violence (e.g., Weber 2006; Russo 2018). The conditions that give rise to solidarity require meeting basic needs while also changing the social structures that cause the violence in the first place. But some participants may find their personal situation changed (by the solidarity or by something else). Calls for solidarity, in those situations, are at least partly reminders that the collective action is about more than ameliorating one's own situation – or one's own experience of adversity. Commitment to solidarity commits one to a social relation that is not always organized to facilitate one's own advantage.

Solidarity – as a collective relation with some purpose – is fluid and expanding (see also Shelby 2005). The experience of living in solidarity with others can be recalled, recollected, imagined, acknowledged, and recognized by invoking solidarity in similar contexts. Understanding it as fluid, rather than transient or institutionalized, allows for temporal and context variability in relations of solidarity. The nature of the relation, the purpose, and the individual participants are subject to transformation, and we cannot know how the experience will impact the ‘I’ or the ‘we’ until we are in or have gone through the experience (see Scholz 2010; Paul 2014). Moreover, multiple, overlapping solidarities dot the social landscape. Individuals are involved in many and bring their connections to the collective experience. The transformative experience for solidarity itself includes the ways in which the social relation merges with others, changes over time, and overlaps with or engages coalitionally with other solidarities.

Of course, even as the solidary relation itself changes, external attitudes toward it also shift. The purpose of solidarity may bring about change or the relation may expand to such an extent that solidary relations characterize the communal social relations. That points to the fourth facet of solidarity's transformative value, which I discuss in the next section.

Transformative potential beyond solidarity

One of the facets of collective transformative experience of the solidarity relation is found in the contrast with what solidarity is not. Solidarity creates a new social, a new sociality, or a new social imaginary. It is often contrasted with or counters individualism, abandonment, alienation, indifference, isolation, domination, or anarchy (among other things). The assertion of solidarity directs attention toward a collective relations and filters decision making and action through it. Ordinary or everyday calls for solidarity announce and invite a redirection of attention onto the social relations upon which or out of which more organized or institutionalized relations are or may be built. When climate activists mobilize solidarity in efforts to mitigate climate change, they create space for talking about and considering social relations in contrast to the individualism of capitalism or the nationalism of international relations. They resist the abandonment of individuals to isolation and, instead, create alternative social space (or a new social imaginary), such as a global relation or a relation that empowers both individual actors and corporate entities as consociates capable of acting together. In other words, transformative value of solidarity is found both in the transformed sociality among solidary participants in facing adversity or creating change together and in the transformative effects of solidary action on a wider community.

The solidary collective itself often provides a sense of belonging or a recognition of sociality that is sometimes lacking in the broader society. Participants may experience other social relations as unjust or alienating. They invest hope for a different future by engaging in actions with others, enacting sociality or recreating the social connection in an unalienated manner. One commonly heard refrain from people who witness solidarity either from the inside of the relation or from the outside is that it renews faith in humanity. Humans need sociality – the isolation of a pandemic, the divisiveness of racial and gender injustice, the upheaval of conflict, and the stressors of economic life make the appeal to solidarity an attractive alternative. Solidarity – the lived experience of solidarity – transforms the isolation, division, upheaval, and stress into challenges that can be overcome if faced together. Calls for solidarity recollect, imagine, acknowledge, or recognize a unique relation that connects individuals to a collective, affirms collective power, and suggests a different possible future. This last is the ‘hope’ aspect of solidarity's transformative value.

Mustering hope

Reorienting attention to the social, reminding ourselves that we exist with others, and that collective power can open up a different possible future is more than merely an expression, it is a lived experience. The four facets of transformative experience described and discussed here suggest that thinking about solidarity involves not only the power of the collective but also the value of the transformative experience on living in solidarity. Individuals do not always have the power, position, fortitude, or time for joint action in solidarity. Acknowledging the transformative value of solidarity suggests that one may be in solidarity even while taking a break from acting in solidarity. Of course, openness to the personal, collective, purposive, communal, and dispositional transformative power of solidarity likely means that one cannot help but act in solidarity through living in solidarity. Highlighting these and other possible facets of transformation for solidarity appears to point to another reason that ordinary uses of the term are meaningful: they indicate hope – hope in something different, hope in collective power, hope in the realization of community, hope in transformative change.

Teasing apart the facets of transformation announced by solidarity suggests that it is a unique relation, not one built on some other relation like family or shared identity, but one that, like them, has transformative value for how one lives in the world, with one another, and all together. Collective transformative experience also points to the creative side of solidarity. Participants create or renew a social imaginary, a sociality, a social or social space. In that sense, solidarity is potentially an active creative relation, one that entails hope that the future could be different than the present if we create and work together.

Theorists of solidarity ought to be cautious about the way the concept is discussed in academic circles so as not to exclude the wisdom emergent from its use on the ground and in order to avoid colonizing the concept in a way that excludes. The effort to decolonize concepts like liberty, equality, and solidarity highlights the way the term solidarity has sometimes been used to police membership in communities and dictate methods of appropriate activity. Lived experiences of solidarity often use the concept creatively or generatively in order to evoke a relation that is absent, challenged, or obscured.

Conclusion

Rather than dismiss ordinary uses of the term, perhaps we can look at what such uses signal. Invoking solidarity may be announcing, inviting, recollecting, compelling, or remembering a lived experience, a relation, with transformative value. Referring to different facets of that collective transformative experience under the same guise of ‘solidarity’ is not lacking analytical rigour but pointing to the complexity of a lived relation that demands openness.

Sangiovanni frames his account of solidarity as a particularly modern practice that emerges in response to the divisive forces of capitalism and industrialism. His recognition that acting in solidarity evolves into a practice, ‘a lived system of norms, rules, and expectations that gives rise to new self-understandings, new concepts, and new possibilities for collective action and social relation within complex, modern societies’ (p. 33), suggests that solidarity is a lived experience. Living in solidarity, I have suggested, involves an openness to how the experience will transform one's self or subjectivity, fellow solidary actors, the purpose of solidarity, and the larger society. Although there are many points about which we disagree regarding solidarity's nature, grounds, and value, Sangiovanni, too, implies that solidarity entails a transformation (pp. 33–5).

Certainly, the potential for abuse of the term ‘solidarity’ is great. Nonetheless, I have defended ordinary uses of the term insofar as they redirect or recollect the social, inviting or announcing the creation of a new social imaginary. These ordinary uses point to the transformative value of solidarity. They state or claim a different possible future that, as participants in solidarity, we create together. As Sangiovanni explains, ‘solidarity names a practice of collective agency and transformative mobilization’ (p. 65). The challenge is how to live in solidarity, how to move beyond mere expressions or one-off collective actions to foster the relationship that centers the social while never subsuming individuals and their singular contributions. The lens of transformation also suggests some caution in how solidarity is framed. Associative ethics tend to focus on expectations of membership; relational ethics, in contrast, tend to focus on what connects the people involved. In association, members uphold obligations of the association. In solidarity, participants create something together.

The relationship of living in solidarity brings out something that acting in solidarity does not: with living, it becomes easier to see how solidarity counters the indifference of oppression, the individualism of dominant modes of material and political existence, the abandonment of community ties, the isolation and solitude of solitary existence, the powerlessness of individuals to create social and political change – especially individuals who are positioned in subordinate positions in the social structure, the domination and authority of political power and money, and the anarchy and violence of daily life. In offering these opposites of solidarity, the rich variation of ordinary uses of ‘solidarity’ is highlighted. Perhaps more importantly, solidarity offers a collective transformative experience that allows participants to hope for, create, and live a different future.