Public Request for Solidarity: Historical Retrospective and Modern Reality

Abstract

It is assumed that in the present-­day individualized and culturally diverse society there is an urgent need for a new form of solidarity to bring people together. During transitional periods the need for people to stick together is increasing. Losing the opportunity for real cooperation in solving problems in the sphere of social well-­being and in searching for new goals and purports, makes people look back, discover new senses in the long-­forgotten past, and move ahead. At such times, the phenomenon of solidarity is becoming the major factor in the development of mutual aid institutions for individuals, social groups and communities, which is well traced in scientific discourse. The research of the solidarity phenomenon is becoming all the more complicated because it is discussed across the most diverse types of discourse, including ideological and political ones. While interpreting the phenomenon of solidarity in every concrete event of social reality, whether it is registered or not, it is important not to be involved into only one or the other. Since it is a well-­established fact that ideological and political discourses are often confused, this approach seems an important methodological problem, most difficult to solve. The article is aimed at assessing the prospects of civic participation and at creating an institutional environment of interaction in which readiness for solidarity practices is manifested. The research is based on the assumption that at the time when a new social reality is being created and when individuals and groups of people simultaneously exist in two dimensions (traditionally institutionalized and virtual), there appear some new ways of causing joint actions. With the help of the methodological approach whose aim is to examine the phenomenon of solidarity from three angles (social, political and economic) the research demonstrates the birth of new types and forms of solidarity that open up new vistas for consolidation, as well as risks of undue risks.