Research

Theorists routinely bifurcate solidarity into ‘symmetric’ (reciprocal, fate-sharing) and ‘asymmetric’ (unidirectional, deferential) types. I argue this taxonomy is conceptually flawed and politically misleading. Through an analysis of cases from labor strikes to campus encampments, I show that all solidarity involves role differentiation and asymmetry in stakes and leverage. The expectation of strict reciprocity is a mirage; even in tight-knit unions, contributions are non-exchangeable and non-fungible. Obligation in solidarity flows from commitment to a joint interest, not a ledger of reciprocal exchange. Abandoning this bifurcation reveals the unified, non-reciprocal logic of solidarity across the phenomenon's diverse instantiations. 

Following in the footsteps of Robin Zheng’s 2023 methodology of theorizing solidarity “from below,” I use this paper to argue for a new understanding of solidarity as a relationship of cooperative meaning-making, distinguishing solidarity from the popular, rival framework of allyship. In doing so, I elucidate how solidarity and allyship are structurally incompatible relationships, further arguing that only solidarity can sufficiently resist oppression as theorized. If overcoming oppression requires dismantling unjust hierarchical power structures, then relationships based on established meaning—those that only aim to change behavior and shift attention, like allyship—act as tools of oppression themselves, entrenching injustice in the name of justice. Thus, I conclude that resistance to oppression is only realizable through collective meaning-making practices—i.e., solidarity. This conception of solidarity holistically explains its social and personal benefits, entangling solidarity’s unifying and empowering mechanisms (Zheng 2023; Dishaw 2024; Viehoff 2025), while grounding both in concrete cooperative practices of solidary groups (DuFord 2022).

“Same struggle, same fight” is the essence of solidarity; not comparable struggles and comparable fights, but one struggle, one fight—with roles to play for every subject who creates their part in it. In this chapter, I argue for a novel social-ontological conception of solidarity as the ironic production of unity—an immanent ethical practice in which groups, individuals, and their roles are co-constituted intra-actively, in response to material contingency. Solidarity is not a function of identification, as solidarity’s practices create identities. The entangled subject potential at the base of a solidary group makes the individual identities within illegible to those without access to the group’s construction of meaning. Instead, solidarity names a relationship among people who voluntarily undertake a project of cooperatively redefining their reality and, in doing so, redefining what’s possible.

Solidarity's collective empowerment relies on a productive tension between our individual differences and our shared desire(s). Through collective (solidary) practical deliberation, participants create new values and give events new meaning, developing new capacities for collective action and selfhood as effects of the solidarity practice itself. Far from erasing the individual, solidarity creates individual political subjects through good-faith conflict, thereby differentiating individuals from one another without the existential stakes of public debate. Further, solidarity creates political subjects in a uniquely valuable way: it clarifies who we are by elucidating our distinctive role in the struggle—not revealing, as though already there, but constituting, contingent on our voluntary commitment. Solidarity is not a unity of individual action for our struggle, but the differentiation of individual, interdependent actions for one struggle.

Nationalism is often rhetorically framed as solidarity. I provide a social ontological demarcation to show this as a category error. Nationalism grounds unity in shared identity—a pre-political, often mythic "who we are"—which inevitably trends toward exclusion and suppression of internal conflict. Solidarity grounds unity in a shared cause—a politically constructed "what we face together"—which enables inclusion, internal critique, and affective openness.

Solidarity entails a necessary commitment to materiality and locality as conditions for its emergence and sustenance. Drawing on post-humanist and new materialist insights (Barad, Haraway), I demonstrate that solidarity is not a purely ideational or virtual phenomenon but is fundamentally embodied, situated, and ecologically embedded. The shared obstacle that mediates solidarity is always a material obstacle: an unjust distribution of resources, a physical threat, a structure of violence inscribed in space and infrastructure. Similarly, the solidary meaning through which subjects interpret this obstacle emerges from embodied practices of co-presence: the picket line, the encampment, the assembly. I then turn to digitally-mediated organizing as a limit case that illuminates the norm. Digital spaces, by abstracting from materiality and locality, reveal what is lost when solidarity is untethered from its embodied ground: the affective feedback loops, the trust built through shared risk, the "collective effervescence" that transforms individuals through a new "we."

If solidarity is necessarily exclusionary (us vs. not-us) and requires something shared among members, can it help us combat problems that directly threaten all humanity? Can we use it to overcome issues that primarily threaten non-human subjects, such as animals or even the earth itself? In this project, I elucidate the role of solidarity in social perseverance amid environmental crises, focusing on two potential avenues of solidary perseverance—a solidarity with all of humanity and solidarities with non-human subjects.

Building on my dissertation, my first book will argue for an ethics of solidarity that foregrounds collective obligations. Solidarity offers participants a practical, non-identitarian collective in which one is voluntarily accountable to the shared end. Then, I turn to discuss the ethical questions surrounding group defense—the justifiability of using otherwise immoral tactics to successfully resist oppression and injustice. Using my theory of personal identity, I position the phenomenon of group defense as analogous to self-defense. In this light, I intend to argue that group defense is more ethically justifiable than self-defense. Only solidarity can sufficiently ground the practical deliberation required to assess a defensive action’s feasibility and proportionality to the ongoing harms. Justified defensive actions—both self- and group- defense—require the freedom of sharing in solidarity’s cooperative meaning.