Presentation 1: Applying everyday interactions of solidarity to the research sphere

• In Event: Imagining an unknown future through methodologies of solidarity

Proposal

In this presentation, we offer three examples of everyday interactions of solidarity and apply them to the research sphere with the goal of elucidating the methodological relevance of solidarity. These three everyday experiences embody our own wrestling with this concept. Our approach is aligned with our epistemological disposition of critical communicative pragmatism (e.g. Habermas, 1984, 1987), which centers the communicative context and social action as the “starting point” of social inquiry since we always inevitably find ourselves already in a communicative situation. The pragmatist aspect of this stance values the connections between everyday experience and formalized research processes; universally oriented communicative structures and the hermeneutic understanding of meaning inherently connect the two aspects that differ with degrees of explication and formalization of those processes. In other words, everyday experience already has the conditions and structures of social actions implicitly embedded, which become formally investigated in social inquiry. Therefore, we believe everyday experiences can provide accessible contexts from which theoretical and methodological discussions can be built upon. In this presentation, we highlight one ordinary experience from each of the co-authors and then we draw methodological “lessons” and implications from them.

First, we share an experience from March 2021, in the wake of a shooting spree in a number of Atlanta-area spas that left 6 Asian women dead. As Author 1, describes, she wasn’t quite sure how to reach out to two good friends and collaborators, both Asian women and immigrants to the United States. Pondering how to express her feelings, she thinks through the implications of claiming solidarity with her friends in that moment. Our second experience is from Author 2’s experiences of loving and acting with her teenage daughter who identifies as Black (Author 2 identifies as white). Our third example is an experience when Author 3 noticed how she engaged with a person who makes a living as a mover.

Drawing on these examples from our own everyday experiences, we suggest that, as a methodological concept, solidarity emerges intersubjectively within specific contexts and reflects a form of praxis. It cannot be claimed unilaterally nor understood externally, but must emerge through the relationships among all individuals involved. The examples further illustrate the limitations of viewing solidarity from an identity lens, particularly one that essentializes social identities in binary fashion. We further elaborate on these understandings of solidarity in presentations 2 and 3, and as part of the roundtable, we invite attendees to reflect on their own everyday experiences about solidarity as an experiential entry point to explore solidarity in reflexive and more intimate ways.

Author

• Meagan Call-Cummings, George Mason University