Anthropological Perspectives of Solidarity and Reciprocity

Description

The concept of solidarity is ambiguous: it includes mechanisms of taxes and redistribution, charity, altruistic contributions and political support, social policies, concessions, grants, funds, food, clothes, social entrepreneurship, sponsorship, NGOS, etc. Communitarianism, equality and progress are their ideological pillars. Anthropology initially used the expertise of European sociology, political science, law and economics. Anthropologists have reported about internal balance, "social security" and cooperation in a number of non-European and preindustrial communities, which have been by default referred in the west as archaic. Anthropology never definitively adopted the concept of solidarity, at least not in the same manner as sociology and economics. Economic anthropology proposed the concept of reciprocity – a continuum of moral obligations along the processes of exchange. Reciprocity has ever since been loaded with meanings and usages. Reciprocity has become a general concept, specific moral obligations of primitive, preindustrial societies, which must be recognised and used in our time. For Marcel Mauss, reciprocity was a “third-way” political project as alternative to “two extremes”: individualist liberalism and collectivist communism. A hundred years after Malinowski and Mauss, and after several decades of neoliberalism, the anthropological third-way appeared in the form of human economy, related to alter-globalisation movement from Puerto Alegre. In France, the Mouvement anti-utilitariste dans les sciences sociales (M.A.U.S.S.) promotes a similar approach. Prior to that moral economy dealt with questions of social scope and ethics. From a point of view of economic anthropology, it is worth studying reciprocity and solidarity as forces of integration and group building. The volume brings together articles on different kinds of group building and bonding. The authors use various concepts to describe specific scopes of (economic) activities: human economy, moral economy, solidarity economy, even leisure commodity, or higher cause. Volume also seeks to contribute to recent discussions on socio-economic crisis by employing anthropological theory and ethnographic experience. Peter Simonič - Alter Political Economy 9 Jadran Kale - Komunjsko, Skupno, and Seljansko - Legacy of Eastern Adriatic Commons 19 Peter Simonič - Communitarian Institutions in Trenta Valley 31 Silvia Contessi, Cristina Grasseni - Co-Producing Participatory Guarantee Systems: Limits and Potentials 45 Hosaralmo Collective - Cooperative Practices: Survival Strategies, “Aternative” Movements or Capitalism Re-Embedding ? 57 Valentina Gulić Zrnić, Tihana Rubić - New Transition: Community Gardens and Civic Engagement in the City of Zagreb 69 Irene Sabaté Muriel - Reciprocity and Solidarity in the Face of the Spanish Home Repossessions crisis 83 Cirila Toplak - For a New Social Order: A Genealogy of Self-Management in SFRY 95 Nina Vodopivec - Solidarity and the Feelings of Belonging: Textile Industrial Workers in the Socialist and Post Socialist Slovenia 113 Gorazd Kovačič - Trade Unions’ Fragmentation in Slovenia: The Causes and Practical Lessons 131 Tanja Ahlin - ‘Repaying the Suffering’ in Transnational Families from Kerala, South India 145 Eugene Richard Sensenig - Looking for a City with Foundations: Intentional Urban Communities as a Christian Response to Justice and Power 159 Boštjan Kravanja - The Spirit of Social Cohesion and Sharing in Relation to Dance Consumption Practices in Contemporary Swing Dance Communities 173 Dan Podjed, Daša Ličen - Orgunity as a New Form of Cooperation: Case Studies of Two Environmental NGOs 189 NAME INDEX 210 SUMMARIES 215 ABOUT THE AUTHORS 221 ZUPANIČ LIBRARY (TITLES in the SERIES) 223