From Organic to Segmented Solidarity
Themultifariousness of solidarity precludes any general statement about
an increase or decline of solidarity. As the American historian Thomas
Bender said, “How many times can community collapse in America?”
(1978: 46). Among the many manifestations of solidarity some will always
be decreasing, and others increasing in significance or level, making
it impossible to give a final assessment on the level of solidarity in a certain
society. A phenomenon like solidarity is therefore mainly interesting in
its qualitative aspects and dimensions. Just as Durkheim saw a transformation
in solidarity from mechanical to organic solidarity in the course
of the nineteenth century, a similar change can be perceived at the turn
of the twentieth into the twenty-first century.
An essential change compared with solidarity in Durkheim’s times
is, of course, the rise of the organized, formal solidarity of the welfare
state.Whereas in cases of illness, unemployment, or poverty nineteenthcentury
citizens had to fall back on charity and other forms of mutual
assistance and care, at the beginning of the twenty-first century in most
Western welfare states (the European more than the American) there exists
a reasonably well organized social safety net for those who are not
able to care for themselves or provide for their own livelihood. This has
diminished the pressure on informal solidarity and thus increased the
independence and freedom of citizens. But, in addition, changes have
occurred in informal solidarity itself, which cannot be accounted for by
the availability of the organized solidarity of the welfare state. In this
book we have, for instance, seen that due to various societal transformation
processes informal solidarity has become more individualized,
abstract, and global, whereas, at the same time, many traditional forms
of solidarity have remained. Despite the great variety of expressions of
solidarity, a trend may be observed. As noted in Chapter 8, motives
based on self-interest and reciprocity have become more prominent in
some forms of solidarity, like the assistance offered to people sharing
one’s fate. This development is possibly related to the increased emphasis
on the self and the new assertiveness. We saw the same emphasis
return in the developments of civil solidarity, which we tentatively interpreted
as indicating a decline in people’s capacity to take the imaginary
position of another person. On the other hand, we observed that
the anonymous solidarity of writing a bank check has increased: autonomous
citizens decide themselves if and to which charity they give
money, regardless of what others do. Key words are autonomy and independence,
or – put differently – ast rengthening and reinforcement of the
self vis-`a-vis others. Although this does not necessarily mean that others
are less recognized, this combination does occur, as we have seen in
Chapter 8.
This tendency toward growing independence and fortification of the
self indicates that the basis of modern solidarity has fundamentally
changed. In Chapter 5 we saw that in Durkheim’s view the interdependency
of citizens for the provision of their needs was the foundation
of organic solidarity. In the course of the nineteenth century societal
roles and tasks had become more differentiated and, at the same time,
functionally more interwoven. The relationships between citizens were
characterized by mutual dependency, and forms of social organization
were interconnected. At the start of the twenty-first century this interdependency
is clearly declining. An important domain where the decreased
interdependency becomes visible is work, as Sennett has observed. Indeed,
in large, bureaucratic institutions the organizational conditions are
not particularly favorable to interdependency and mutual commitment,
and feelings of social connectednesswill seldom arise.Recognition of personal
value is often rare in these settings. One is an anonymous particle
doing one’s job more or less independently from other particles.
As a consequence of the individualization process, the better social
provisions and the increased wealth, modern citizens’ societal opportunities
and possibilities have increased in a range of domains – education,
mobility, relationship forms, and procreation, to mention just a few –
and have therefore contributed to their greater autonomy. Due to these
developments the significance of people’s mutual dependency as a basis
for solidarity has greatly diminished, despite statements on the growing
impact of the “network society.” Seen fromDurkheim’s functionalist perspective
solidarity had an apparent survival value: the continuity of the
community was dependent on it. This situation has clearly changed at
the end of the twentieth century. Individuals inWestern societies are no
longer uniting in solidarity because they need one another for their survival
(here thewelfare state can provide solace) but because they choose to
do so themselves. Personal considerations have partly replaced perceived
group advantages as determinants of solidarity. Solidarity has become
less based on the mutual recognition of desires and needs, and more
on voluntariness. As a consequence, solidarity has also become more
noncommittal: individuals no longer express their solidarity because they
have to, but because they feel free to do so.
Not only have individuals become more independent in their activities,
but also the larger segments of society like family, neighborhood,
and church – the “organs” in Durkheim’s terminology – have come to
function more independently from each other due to processes of differentiation
and increasing scale. As a consequence cities, villages, quarters,
and neighborhoods have become hybrid and fragmented. Families can
do without aneig hborhood if they like, and neighborhoods do not need
families. There is a growing diversity of organizational forms that people
use to give shape and meaning to their lives. This applies, for instance,
to the variety of religious affinities, each with their own place to pray,
but also to the fields of leisure and social services. For all these fields the
principle holds: everyone to his or her own liking. The mosque and the
Protestant church exist alongside each other in the same neighborhood,
each serving their own group of believers. Similarly, alternative and regular
circuits of health care services lead their own independent existence,
and on each conceivable domain – sports, volunteer work, theater, film,
music – there is a multitude of organized and nonorganized opportunities
to spend one’s free time.Many sorts of labor have become less tied
to a specific urban or regional area. Worldly contacts, whether oriented
to work or of a private nature, have become context-independent and
can, in principle, be realized from behind any desk with a computer. The
different, formal and informal, organizational frameworks of human activity
have become less interwoven. They no longer form an “organic”
whole from which solidarity arises automatically, as it were, but have
become independent, autonomously functioning segments.
In brief, both individuals and forms of social organization in which
individuals function have come to stand apart. The basis of solidarity is
no longer organic in the Durkheimian sense but has grown independent.
One might therefore describe the ongoing change as a transformation
fromorganic to “segmented” solidarity: separate, autonomous segments,
connecting (if at all) with other segments no longer out of necessity and
mutual dependency but on the basis of voluntariness. The segmented
solidarity differs both from Durkheim’s mechanical and his organic solidarity.
Whereas the “homogeneous segments” of mechanical solidarity
were based on mutual likeness and congruence between individual and
group identity, the segments on which contemporary solidarity rests are
not homogeneous anymore but characterized by diversity and plurality.
We still have families, neighborhoods, and churches, but their internal
variety is greater than ever. Also the connection between the various social
segments has become more loose and less “organic” as we have seen.
As in Durkheim’s times it is not the case that segmented solidarity
has entirely substituted organic solidarity. The distinction is analytical
in kind, and in reality forms of organic as well as the old mechanical
solidarity can still be observed. Family solidarity, for instance, is still alive
and kicking as we saw in this book, and in particular wheremutual assistance
and care within immigrant communities in Western societies are
concerned, elements of need and survival are still strongly involved. But
generally speaking, in contemporary solidarity the aspect of voluntariness
has come to supersede that of necessity. The question is, of course,
what are the survival chances of a society that rests predominantly on segmented
solidarity. The answerwill unfold in the course of the twenty-first
century.