Sharing Social Identities and Solidarity. A Study on the Example of Polish Civil Protest Movements

Abstract

We will discuss the theoretical mechanisms of behaviour that constitute a form of “sharing society” and are defined as “identity sharing”. The authors propose to identify factors that induce some people to an act of social solidarity with excluded or culturally marginalized people under the pressure of dominant political practices. In the empirical aspect, the project is inscribed in the specific determinants of cultural homogeneity and Pols national ethnocentrism as the foundations of the political conservatism of the ruling right wing in Poland. In these conditions, we can operationalize indicators of “civic solidarity” and manifestations of practices of “identity sharing” that characterize the attitudes of people protesting against neo-authoritarian attacks of the power camp on free media, independent courts, or cultural minorities (including refugees) in their politics. Do the manifestations of “identity sharing” have the ability to overcome the social fears of people who are divided by differences in worldviews – or maybe they strengthen them? These problems will be theoretically analysed using a conceptual framework referring to the following: motives of R. Girard’s mimetic rivalry theory; theories of J. Haidt’s social morality and ethical intuitions; the effects of sharing identity in the inclusive social networks (R. Putnam); dramatic models of the public scene and the role of a stranger for social actors (E. Goffman); the symbolic experience of a community of values for structuring the conflict of identities (A. Giddens, Z. Bauman). The conclusions will be illustrated by examples of local (Polish) acts of solidarity initiated spontaneously by the participants of civic forms of protest against the language of cultural domination and political stigmatization of cultural opponents. We will examine the hypothesis – important for the final conclusions – that “identity sharing” requires the presence in a common space of actors making gestures of “solidarity” and social media are a secondary and necessary but not sufficient tool to generate such practices.