CASCA/SANA2016 panel CFP: Solidarities at the Edge of Exclusion

Solidarities at the Edge of Exclusion

Solidarity is usually celebrated as a good thing and something that
ought to be promoted. But the forging of solidarity movements
necessarily sets one locus of collective values and commitments
against others and can lead to marginalization, rupture, scapegoating,
and exclusion. This panel engages with the irresolvable tension
between inclusion and exclusion in the forging of solidarities by
paying particular attention to their exclusionary sides, broadly
understood. It invites contributions that ethnographically investigate
how troubled forms of social difference are produced, lived, and
interpreted at the level of everyday practice. We will be especially
interested in the following questions: How do the dualities of
solidarity making – inclusion and exclusion – play out in practical
contexts? When solidarities collapse, how do social actors make sense
of the breakdown of collective attachments and commitments? How do
individuals and collectives navigate the everyday tensions that might
develop when they are allied in one context or moment, but opposed in
others? How fixed are group boundaries, and even in cases of deep
collective antipathies, is group membership always or ever an "all or
nothing matter"? When social actors engage in exclusionary boundary
work, what justifications do they give to these practices? Finally,
are there particular theoretical, methodological, or other challenges
associated with ethnographic investigations of solidarity's
exclusionary sides?

Please send inquiries or abstracts of 150 words to Laura Eramian
(Sociology and Social Anthropology, Dalhousie University) at
leramian@dal.ca by January 18, 2016.