Identity and social solidarity: an ignored connection. A historical perspective on the state of Europe and its nations

• Published in: Nations and nationalism 2017-04, Vol.23 (2), p.227-247
• Main Author: Strath, Bo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Accession; Capitalism; Class struggle; conceptual history; de‐Europeanisation; Emotions; Ethnic identity; Ethnic relations; Ethnicity; Europeanization; Friendship; Historical development; identity; Identity politics; Institution building; Mathematics; Nationalism; Nazism; Political development; Psychoanalysis; Reform; re‐nationalisation; Semantics; Social class; Social cohesion; Social dynamics; Social identity; Social institutions; Social integration; social nationalism; social solidarity; Social systems; Socialism; Xenophobia
• ISSN: 1354-5078; 1469-8129
• DOI: 10.1111/nana.12299

The article comments on the ongoing de‐Europeanisation and re‐nationalisation of Europe from a historical perspective. The article argues that the building of national community from the 1870s onwards focused on the problem of social integration where the development of emotional feelings of belonging and solidarity was linked to the building of institutions for social politics in mutually reinforcing dynamics. The social question emerged in the wake of the spread of industrial capitalism. Its role is underexplored in the study of the building of national and European communities. The social question draws attention to the institutional capacity of nation states rather than nations based on emotions. Nationalism did not only mean the building of friend‐ enemy distinctions through ethnicity but also national socialism as a conservative reform strategy against class struggle socialism. This contention between two approaches to the problem of social integration moulded together national communities through emotions and institutions without deploying the concept of identity. The article outlines this development, culminating in the (West) European welfare states as nation– states in the strong sense of the merger of these two terms, and how it came to an end in the 1970s when a reverse development began towards social disintegration at the end accompanied by accelerating nationalism and xenophobia. The identity concept was mobilised in 1973 as a tool in the European integration project to compensate for the erosion of social institutions by means of emotions. It was taken over and politicised from having been a technical term in mathematics and psychoanalysis. The politicisation of the identity concept was an indication of a deep identity crisis in Europe and its nations. The identity therapy failed, and the identity crisis remains, accompanied by an ever louder nationalistic and xenophobic vocabulary. Emotions replace institutions. The methodological focus of the article is on the semantics around key concepts such as social politics, solidarity and identity in their historical context as forward‐looking and action‐oriented concepts in the construction of community. This approach with a focus on past futures is an alternative to the application of the retrospective analytical concepts of ethnic and civic nationalism outlining present pasts.