On social solidarity

Abstract

We believe it is necessary to understand solidarity as one mode of relation or operation among others in human social life. It is not the only mode of human relations in social life, but it is also a distinct type of human relating that is fundamental and necessary. In contrast to this multimode view of different types of human social relations, sociological theory has long been tempted to reduce all of human social experience to one or another mode of operation. One approach frames human social life as all about the group struggles for domination and status on fields of contention. Another theorizes social existence as all about actors following norms toward the meeting of the social system’s functional requisites to ensure society’s survival and proper functioning. Still another conceives of humans as atomistic, rational cost-benefit calculators seeking to maximize their own utility. The list of reductionistic theories that compress the complexities of human social life into one-dimensional descriptive and explanatory frameworks could be lengthened. By contrast, we approach the question as critical realists, understanding the task of social science to be best described by the philosophy of critical realism (Bhaskar 1979, 2008; C. Smith 2010; Danermark et al. 2002; Archer 1995; Sayer 1992). That means in part that we understand reality to be differentiated, stratified, emergent, and complex; that the job of theory is to well describe what exists in reality and how it works; and so theory must strive toward “adequate complexity” in its descriptive and explanatory accounts to capture and represent the real multidimensional nature of human life and experience, instead of providing what turn out to be simplistic accounts in the name of parsimony.