Smith & Sorrell - On Social Solidarity
Smith, C., & Sorrell, K. (2014). On Social Solidarity. In: Jeffries, V. (Eds.) The Palgrave Handbook of Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
The authors claim that it is necessary to understand solidarity as one mode of relation or operation among others in human social life, however fundamental and necessary it is. They advocate a multimode view of different types of human social relations that stands in contrast to reductionistic theories that compress the complexities of human social life into one-dimensional descriptive and explanatory frameworks. The question of solidarity is approached from the perspective of critical realism. That means that the authors strive towards ‘adequate complexity’ in trying to present how this complex term exists in the reality of contemporary societies, which appears as highly differentiated, stratified, emergent, and complex.
Smith & Sorrell “On Social Solidarity”