Solidarity, yesterday and today

While solidarity has a rich theoretical and empirical background in Europe, as an ongoing political/cultural accomplishment, it has had an episodic history in the United States, but presently has gained new interest in the social sciences and social philosophy. In this chapter we first look at its origin in the creative phase of the French Third Republic, where it emerged as both a social philosophy in a political action program, and as a scientific program in Durkheimian sociology. As will be noted, solidarity has been for modern industrial society a democratic “third way” between economic liberalism and militant socialism or Marxism. Although a continuing institutionalized presence in later phases of republican France, it reemerged into a larger public awareness and sociological attention, particularly in France, with the Polish trade union movement that took on the name Solidarność in 1980.

Duke Scholars

Author Edward A. Tiryakian Sociology

Author Jonathan Morgan