Solidarity and Social Justice
Summary
Key terms from the lectures and the literature of weeks 1 – 4 (2021)
Week 1: Introduction
Solidarity: how you define solidarity depends on your point of view (e.g. sociological, philosophical or
psychological). At its foundation, solidarity is about common identity and sameness, feelings of
brotherhood and a willingness to share resources.
Social justice: provides the rules through which people can be solidaristic. Social justice is concerned
with questions of allocation: who is deserving of what, and how is this to be achieved? Social justice
has four dimensions: distribution, procedures, interaction, and recognition. Rawls’ view: social justice
is about the equal distribution of resources.
Social inequality: the uneven allocation of burdens and valued resources across members of society
based on their group membership.
Welfare states: states that protect citizens’ social rights by providing government-protected
minimum standards of income, nutrition, health, housing, and education.
Social policies: are used by welfare states to identify and address social inequalities and social risks.
They take the form of service, facilities and broader support of social groups, which are provided for,
financed by and/or regulated by the welfare state.
Social dilemmas: situations in which short-term self-interests conflict with longer-term societal
interests (e.g. the prisoner’s dilemma).
Self-transcending motives: motives that extend beyond the self (like social justice and solidarity).
Homo economicus: the idea that humans are basically self-interested.
Rational choice theory: poses that humans are rational beings that weigh costs and benefits and
strive for maximum net benefit. This theory is in line with the idea of the homo economicus and
favours selfishness.
Theory of evolution: poses that natural selection causes the fittest species to survive. This theory is
in line with the idea of the homo economicus and favours selfishness. Therefore, according to this
theory, only selfish people would survive and replace cooperative people. In reality, this is not the
case.
Social value orientation: states that people are more often oriented prosocially instead of
individualistic, and therefore challenges the idea of the homo economicus.
Concept of justice: an abstract idea or notion of what justice is, on which people generally agree.
Conceptions of justice: perceptions of justice that can differ between individuals and societies.
Principles of justice: the fundamental truth or foundation for a belief system. Rules of justice that
provide the foundation for different perceptions.
, The initial/original position (the veil of ignorance): a hypothetical situation that assumes that no
one knows their place in society. In this position, everyone is equal, and therefore, it follows that
principles of justice are needed.
The difference principle: inequality of distribution is only acceptable if the least advantaged benefit
from this.
Social contract: an implicit agreement of how to cooperate.
Justice as fairness: the principles of justice are agreed to in an initial situation that is fair (in Rawls’
case: with the veil of ignorance). People agree on certain principles of justice from an initial position
of equality.
Week 2: Solidarity
Solidarity as ‘Gemeinschaft’: solidarity that is based on shared life experiences, present in
communities.
Solidarity as ‘Gesellschaft’: solidarity as a moral principle underlying society, develops when
communities become a society.
Mechanical solidarity (Durkheim): present in pre-industrial/traditional societies in which everyone is
alike and there is a sense of a common consciousness.
Organic solidarity (Durkheim): present in industrial/modern societies where there is a high degree of
differentiation and division of labour, which makes people interdependent of each other. There is
also a sense of individual consciousness.
Social risks: situations that prevent us from maintaining a minimum level of subsistence.
Welfare state solidarity: institutionalized social risk protection, the key to social policy responses to
social risks.
Social identity approach: classical theorizing about individual and social identity, of which social
identity theory and self-categorization theory are part.
Social identity theory: a theory on intergroup behaviour of which the main premise is that people
strive for a positive self-concept, and that social change is the result of this.
Self-categorization theory: a theory on intragroup behaviour which states that different parts of the
identity of a person are being activated dependent on accessibility and fit in the context this person
is in.
Deindividuation: occurs when we identify in terms of a social group, the extent to which your own
identity and the group identity overlap. This process can explain solidarity, conformity and group
commitment.
Depersonalization: something that can happen as a result of deindividuation, it can explain why
people engage in protest behaviour (because it is prototypical of what their group should do).
Identity fusion: an extreme form of group commitment in which the identity of the self is completely
fused with the group identity. Consequences are willingness to sacrifice yourself for the group and
willingness to invest in the group.
Social exclusion: consists of two types: rejection (explicit, like discrimination) and ostracism (implicit,
like ignoring the other). This process has three stages: the reflexive stage (in which the rejected
