A report from the symposium (28 February 2025) by Thomas van Gaalen.
From miners’ strikes to environmental demonstrations, and from cold war congresses to the writings of Anton de Kom: the term “solidarity,” which roughly denotes a relation of mutual support based on shared political interests, has held a central place in leftist political discourse from the last 150 years.
But what happens when such a resonant—and slippery—political concept is translated into actual practices and actions? When implemented on the ground, in the streets or in the union hall, expressions of solidarity have become the basis of a wide and diverse array of practices and tactics. It is this issue—the translation of expressions of solidarity into implementable, on-the-ground practices—that lies at the heart of my dissertation. The symposium “Solidarity in Action,” which I organized in concordance with the RSPH and the Radboud Institute of Culture and History, offered the chance to unpack and discuss the dynamics that shaped historical practices of solidarity with a wide and interdisciplinary range of scholars and students.
The symposium, held at Radboud University on 28 February, delved into varied instances in which expressions of solidarity were translated into on-the-ground political action. Case studies ranged from anarchist grassroots networks in Latin-America and German far-left organizations in the 1970s to contemporary projects aimed at countering cultural appropriation. The aim: to unpack the processes, power dynamics and obstacles that came into play during such processes of translation. The event kicked off with an inspiring workshop hosted by the RSHP and led by Bram Mellink (UvA) and René Koekkoek (UU), which centered how political practices and political ideas—as well as the interrelation of the two—featured in the work of PhD candidates and RMA students.
Following the workshop, the symposium opened to a full room of colleagues, interested scholars, and students. In my opening lecture, I highlighted several key findings from my research so far, and presented a tentative framework in which I distinguish between “horizontal” solidarity practices—that is, practices focused on constructing egalitarian imagined political communities—and “vertical” solidarities, or relatively hierarchical practices in which one group supports a less powerful ally from a considerable distance.
After the opening, two research panels, which featured an interdisciplinary mix of advanced and early career scholars, zoomed in on particular cases of solidarity in past and present. Taken together, the panels highlighted several important dynamics and findings: firstly, the tendency of effective solidarity practices to combine sustained negotiation with material redistribution; secondly, the understanding of solidarity as a precarious balancing act between the different interests of those involved; thirdly, the insight that practices of solidarity were hindered and shaped by political rivalries, competitions and clashes playing out differently on various scales—from the arenas of international and national politics to on-the-ground labor dynamics.
With one foot firmly planted in the dynamics of solidarities past, we then took a step in the direction of solidarities past and future: in the form of a roundtable, academics involved in various movements and social causes—from unions to grassroots academic exchange networks and the Palestine movement—discussed their experiences with regard to academic practices rooted in solidarity. The roundtable offered insight into what it could mean to practice (political) history with a keen and critical eye for the political context in which one’s work is grounded, and a willingness to reshape one’s academic practices according to both professional experiences and scholarly insights garnered through research. After keynote and special guest Kirwin Shaffer closed the symposium with a rousing and insightful lecture on different phases of Latin-American anarchist solidarity, the curtain closed on a successful and invigorating day of academic discussion as well as reflection on scholarly practices in the here and now.
Solidarity and access
The symposium provided an immense boost in energy, insight, and reflection to my PhD project. My dissertational project, tentatively titled Breaking Borders. Struggles over solidarity in the global Caribbean, 1918-1960, relates practices of solidarity to the politics of access—that is, who gets to access which resources, people, networks, institutions, and other channels of influence, and when. When a diverse group of people invokes mutual solidarity based on a shared political interest, access matters: not everyone might be able to bring the same (amount of) resources to the table, which, consequently, may affect relations between the diverse groups involved in a relation of solidarity. Observed from a focus on access, practices of solidarity also highlight the different implications for the different people involved. Interwar movements that lacked access to vital political resources and means, for instance, saw solidarity as a pragmatic route towards material support and political back-up. Meanwhile, for powerful collectives or institutions, a declaration of solidarity with a marginalized community could be an effort to rectify power differences—but also a subtle attempt to cultivate dependence and exert influence.
In my dissertation, I hope to offer a more thorough understanding of how the diverse ways in which people formulated, negotiated, and practiced solidarity related to the politics of access. I focus on movements in the early twentieth-century Caribbean; these provide a valuable lens to study how solidarity was formulated in an interplay with complex, intersecting dimensions of power that shaped access to resources, networks, and institutions. As a region of hyper-diversity, absorbed into global trade and exchange, the Caribbean saw a high density of connections and interactions. Racialized hierarchies, gendered divisions and labor exploitation turned the Caribbean into a fertile soil for radical socialist, anti-colonial, and feminist movements, which actively sought to unite diverse groups through invocations of solidarity. By studying solidarity practices located at dividing lines of class, race, gender, nationality, and religion in this geographical context, I thus aim to generate insight into how solidarity was practiced and reshaped in response to different conditions of access experienced by different people.