PROJECT

A sense of unity and solidarity are essential to achieve collective ends that are otherwise unobtainable and to motivate citizens to support policies that promote social goals such as justice and welfare. Today, with citizens increasingly unwilling to support redistributive policies, building and sustaining strong and inclusive solidarity is an urgent problem. By focusing on the nation-state, this project will explore how the sense of unity and solidaristic tendencies among citizens can be accounted for in a more inclusive and diversity-sensitive way.

What unites a society? The purpose of this project is to answer this question by proposing a hybrid conception of social unity and solidarity, the one which theorizes national identity and the joint (material and cultural) productive activities of people together. In political philosophy, the general approach is to explain social unity by largely emphasizing a single source―either universal values or national identity. Yet, in any society, individuals are related to one another with respect to many ties, bonds, interdependencies, and attachments. This project aims to address this shortcoming in the literature. In this respect, the research adopts a novel theoretical strategy: it offers to strengthen solidarity in society by highlighting not the ways we might happen to be “similar” or identical, but the many ways that in fact we are related, interdependent, and cooperating in society. Many admit that national identity is powerful for motivating people to pursue social and collective goals, but they at the same time admit that national identity might lead to serious consequences such as exclusion, division, and even violence and aggression. Yet, national identity is still decisive both in politics and in the daily experience of individuals, also effective in motivating citizens to make sacrifices for the common good. In this respect, the project aims to see whether an emphasis on the existence of ongoing society- wide social cooperation in society can help bridge ethical, cultural, and ideological differences without jeopardizing social diversity, curb the exclusion potential of national identity, and lead to a more inclusive social unity.

The research questions are:

1- How does the work we do in a society, or the way we participate in productive social cooperation have an impact on our sense of belonging and unity, and on civic solidarity among the citizens?

2- How can we conceptualize cultural production/creation activities as the collective activity of people in a society?

3- How can national identity be constructed through the joint productive/cultural activities of citizens?