Negative Aspects and Consequences of Solidarity
In sociology solidarity has primarily been conceived as an inherently
positive concept. In most theories of solidarity its beneficial effects to
the group members are stressed. From the early theories of TЁonnies and
Durkheim on, it has been assumed that acts of solidarity are directed at
achieving a common good and generate feelings of interconnectedness,
a “conscience collective,” and a shared identity. These theories emphasize
the benefits deriving from a Gemeinschaft of strong communal ties
and shared interests, or from a sound Gesellschaft in which mutually
dependent individuals profit from a functional division of labor that
strengthens their feelings of organically belonging together.
However, solidarity is not predominantly or exclusively the warm and
friendly category we usually assume it to be. Various types of risks may be
involved in group solidarity (Komter 2001). While several authors have
discussed internal risks that threaten solidarity from within the group,
its external risks – risks for those who are not participating in the solidary
group as a consequence of the behavior of the participating group
members – have received far less attention. Internal risks are, for instance,
free riding, the decay of the overall salience of solidarity as a consequence
of the high costs involved in executing solidarity (Lindenberg 1998), conflicting
interests internal to the group (Ostrom1995), or strong emotional
reactions to losses that could result due to the uncooperative behavior of
other group members. In strongly tied networks this maylead to vendetta
and endless feuds (Uzzi 1997).
Other internal risks to group solidarity are pressures toward conformity
and egalitarianism. Strong group norms may impede innovation
in organizations. In his discussion on relations of trust, Coleman (1990)
mentions as an example the financial community in London. In some
financial companies in which trade secrets play an important role there is
a general norm against hiring an employee who has left a sensitive position
in ac ompeting firm; this group normmay reflect ingroup solidarity,
but at the same time the ensuing practice reduces innovation because
many good ideas remain unexploited. Although firm groups may successfully
mobilize resources in order to maintain themselves, they may at
the same time put under restraint the innovating potentialities of individual
group members by enforcing conformity to group norms. In addition
to harboring tendencies toward conformism, the group may adopt behavioral
codes of egalitarianism by sanctioning individuals who perform
better or attempt to excel over their fellow group members. Dominant
group norms may threaten the individual freedom of the group members
by isolating them from the surrounding culture. Among American
immigrant communities a person who has aspirations to surpass
his or her own group is teasingly called a “wannabe.” In their description
of what they call a “hyperghetto”Waquant andWilson (1989) stress
the same phenomenon: solidarity based on a common adversity discourages
individuals from taking advantage of possible chances outside
the ghetto.
What negative external risks may be involved in solidarity? A first example
concerns the negative norms and beliefs toward nongroup members.
While strong ingroup solidarity favors acting in accordance with
the rules of honesty, acceptance of authority, and mutual respect, it may
discourage such attitudes toward outsiders. Strong feelings of ingroup
favoritism may encourage differential moral standards toward in- and
outgroup members: values and behavior of outgroup members are not
measured by the ingroup moral standards but are seen as a deviation from
these and therefore not as worthy of acceptance or toleration. Groups
with strong religious convictions come to mind here (with fundamentalism
as an extreme consequence), but also rival football clubs or groups
with strongly contrasting cultural backgrounds. Ingroup solidarity may
also result in concrete inimical behavior toward outgroup members. The
stronger the inclusive power of solidarity, the more pronounced will be
the boundaries that separate the ingroup from the outgroup, “us” from
“them,” and the stronger and more concrete the exclusion of outgroup
members will be.
Some attempts have been made to elucidate the relationship between
solidarity and exclusion – in particular, those originating in the traditions
of economic sociology and anthropology. A representative of the
former school of thought, Roger Waldinger (1995), for instance, studied
the interaction between economic activity, ethnicity, and solidarity
amongAfricanAmerican, Caribbean,Korean, and white entrepreneurs in
the construction industry in New York. Embeddedness within informal
networks of one’s own ethnic group engenders social capital promoting
people’s capacity to obtain scarce resources. Social capital is taken to
refer to the advantages ensuing from relationships of mutual trust and
cooperation. When somebody has similar ethnic, class, or gender characteristics,
he or she is simply perceived as more trustworthy. Mutual
trust promotes cooperative behavior and the exchange of information
and allows people to profit from their networks (Raub 1997; Raub and
Weesie 2000). Waldinger concludes that solidarity has two sides: on the
one hand, embeddedness within informal networks fosters economic
activity within one’s own ethnic community; on the other hand, it is
a powerful means to exclude newcomers: solidarity reinforces informal
resources for group members but impedes membership for outsiders by
refusing them access to these resources. Also Portes and Sensenbrenner
(1993) have recognized this phenomenon; they discovered that the same
social structures facilitate goal-directed activity for some but put restrictions
on the activities of others. The foregoing examples make clear that
strong ingroup solidarity may be dysfunctional from the perspective of
the wider community: the achievement of the interests of the wider collectivity
may be thwarted by the strongly felt ingroup solidarity of its
subgroups.
In many cases a combination of internal and external risks occurs,
as is shown in de Swaan’s (1988) sociological-historical account of the
rise of collective state-based solidarity arrangements in various European
countries and the United States. From his analysis of the spontaneous
associations for mutual financial assistance in case of unemployment
formed by Dutch citizens in the nineteenth century, it appears that
authentic mutual solidarity was at the same time a strength as well as a
weakness of this form of collective care. Although homogeneous membership
was a source of solidarity, it could also cause new risks – shortage
of expertise, insufficient inspection, no fixed rules and procedures.Moreover,
the autonomous collective arrangements resulted in the exclusion
of the less privileged citizens.
Strong ingroup solidarity, then, may not only generate pressures toward
conformity and egalitarianism, it may also contain the potential
for defining other groups as enemies and engaging in conflict with them.
Conflict with another group may, in turn, serve to increase the ingroup
solidarity of both groups, thereby intensifying the conflict between them
(Wrong 1994). More generally, as Georg Simmel (1950 [1908]) already
made clear at the beginning of the twentieth century, social ties necessarily
imply both bonding and exclusion, namely of those who do not
share the distinctive group characteristics and who are allowed neither to
share the group aims and interests nor to participate in the activities to
achieve these aims and interests. Solidarity and exclusion, then, are two
sides of the same coin.