Volume 8, Issue 1

Group solidarity requires that members are committed to solidarity norms. Addressing the question of how such commitments are socially (re)produced, the starting point of this article is Lindenberg's Theory of Social Rationality (TSR) and its notion of solidarity frames. These frames consist of solidarity as a goal of action and associated stocks of knowledge and moral feelings. TSR makes it clear that solidarity frames are fragile and precarious. They must be regularly recharged with motivational energy and symbols in order to prevail over compet-ing motives. However, TSR cannot satisfactorily explain how this works. This shortcoming is addressed by Collins' Interaction Ritual Chains Theory (IRCT). It is argued that solidarity frames are a potential outcome of interaction rituals and it is clarified under which conditions this can be expected. A distinction is made between three essential types of rituals: identity rituals, governance rituals, and exchange rituals.

Loyalty is often referred to as the glue that holds collectives together in a stable and resilient way, and yet it is not rarely feared or even despised because it is participatory, exclusionary, and can exacerbate inequalities. The specific problem of loyalty is its ambivalence. Its advantages can often be a disadvantage for communities and individuals, depending on the situation and relational context. Since loyalty is a social fact, and since we as social beings would not consider a life without loyalty as a good life, it seems useful to find out how it can become a blessing rather than a curse, or under which circumstances it is beneficial or harmful for collectives and individuals. This paper explores this question and argues that loyalty(ies) promotes the cohesiveness in collectives if, in addition to the emotional bonds from which loyalties arise, a rational component in loyalties can be demonstrated that allows them to be justified and criticized and thus makes them suitable as an object of social discourse.

Currently, many authors in public and academic discourse speak of an increasing „social divide“ that threatens social cohesion. There has been a broad discussion on social cohesion in social sciences ever since: Different conceptions could be ideally classified in a scheme with a more rational (Weber, Parsons) and a more emotional pole (Durkheim, Tönnies). I explore this tension by following an affective turn in conceptions of social cohesion. Therefore, I focus on the concept of solidarity as representing the rational model of cohesion and the concept of affinity standing for the affective one. The affective turn brings about a twofold shift in the understanding of the central processes of social cohesion: from collectivity to connectivity and from rationality to affectivity. Still, this shift runs the danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Cohesion must neither be understood as exclusively reyling upon on either rational or affective processes. I propose to overcome this dichotomy by employing Hemming´s concept of „affective solidarity“. Rationaliy and affectivity must be understood as being mutually effective, the former modulating the latter, the latter energizing the former.

This paper explores the role of co-presence in the emergence of collectives with reference to corporeal communication in online conferences and seminars. It emphasizes the importance of feelings of togetherness and demarcates them from feelings of mere affiliation. The emergence of shared feelings depends on corporeal communication, and specifically on the solidary form of corporeal communication as opposed to its antagonistic counterpart. Under online conditions, both forms tend to generate illusions, since a genuine exchange of glances, which opens up corporeal communication in the first place, is not possible. The missing exchange of glances must therefore be compensated online by imagination and the concentration on linguistic meanings.

Although affect and emotion are often discussed in institutional and organizational research, they are rarely studied systematically and in accordance with their overall relevance. To investigate the decisive but subtle, sometimes barely noticeable or taken-for-granted power of institutions, we need to achieve a better understanding of the close intertwining of institutional rules, operations, and spaces with complex affective dynamics. In this article, we therefore develop an analytical framework that allows to investigate the countless affective dynamics that characterize institutions. First, this framework can help to come to terms with the multidimensionality of institutional affect and thus inform empirical studies of institutions. Second, our approach allows scholars and researchers to make visible those developments and modes of agency that run counter to the official functions and self-understandings of institutions. As a an initial step, we propose a conceptual clarification of „institution“ and „organization“ that incorporates various references to social theory which already foreshadow some dynamics of institutional affect. Further detailing this perspective, we develop an analytical grid that focuses, first, on what we call the „guiding affects“ of institutions and, second, on the internal affective dynamics of institutions. The proposed framework provides a variety of links to discussions of institutions in cultural studies and the social sciences.

The article shows that with respect to increasing complaints about the social coldness of our current society and awareness of the urgent needs in the global south it should be clear that we need a moral motivation to solidarity beyond all legal regulations. While at first glance it may seem seducing to draw on the concept of community in the sense of Tönnies, it becomes quickly clear that this is much more dangerous but useful. As the application of universal ethics may be difficult in intercultural correlations, an interpretation of discourse ethics by Seyla Benhabib seems promising. The idea of identity may provide us with a number of insights, but it leads into a misinterpretation of democracy and, in the end, it is extremely dangerous for society if it is split into a growing number of identity groups.