7th CASA Biennial Conference, 2023 – SOLIDARITY

Formative crises of the last decades, such as the global financial crisis of 2008, the Europe’s ‘migrant crisis’ of 2015 (and the Belarus-EU border migration crisis of 2021-22), the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, or the accelerating climate catastrophe, have one thing in common: despite the different causes, and the different social, economic and political impacts of these crises, they re-animated the public debate on solidarity.

The multiplicity of crises we experience creates various inequalities, relationships and disconnections. Whether we understand solidarity as a normative affirmation of one’s commitments to others, reciprocity, or as a gift that creates and reproduces social bonds, solidarity has multiple forms. From expressions of intergenerational solidarity, development aid, social policies, and activities aimed at protecting the environment to extending rights and recognition to actors whose agency has long been overlooked. Embedded in recognition of interconnectedness, solidarity can disrupt or, conversely, make visible social boundaries, while, inversely, solidarity practices might re-establish boundaries and differentiations. Indeed, this is the point of contention when different solidarity logics come into conflict.

Solidarity does not only have to be an object of detached reflection. Solidarity can be the starting point of political concern for others, or of applied and engaged research. Solidarity is also an essential part of the field research experience. We find it in local and expert imaginations and practices as an expression of concern and care for others, for those we care about and those with whom we are connected. Solidarity thus refers to processes of articulation of moral commitment and its connection to those who are the object of our recognition.

At the conference, we would like to invite you to explore the different solidarity practices and logics:

• How is solidarity constructed/enacted/performed, and why?
• What forms of solidarities across socio-material contexts does ethnography capture?
• How does the notion of solidarity reflect ideas of social, political and economic order?
• How has the concept of solidarity influenced theoretical thinking in the social sciences?
• What manifestations does solidarity take?
• How do different forms of solidarity transform thinking about core anthropological concepts?
• What are the interfaces of the concept of solidarity in contemporary anthropological practice? How do these solidarity positions intervene in research practice, and how do they transform the role of the researcher?

We invite proposals for thematic panels as well as individual papers that would relate to the central theme of the conference.