In the wake of health and economic crises across the world, solidarity is emerging as both a moral imperative and urgent social goal. This book approaches solidarity as a political good, both a framework of power structures and grounds for moral motivation. The distinct approaches to public goods and social value demonstrate how social connectedness is intricately tied to the distribution of public goods, and the moral commitments that grow out of them.
The essays in this book explore different features of the political, moral and civic approaches to solidarity. They offer moral justification for solidarity, grounded in the intrinsic value of social connectedness and epistemic deference; propose structural accounts of solidarity as action against racial oppression, or as an effective non-moral framework; propose to redefine property relations, so as to capture and redistribute property’s social value, and envision public goods as both an instrument of civic relations and as a condition to well-rounded, meaningful human lives. By providing a series of thought-provoking debates about social obligations and justice, the book reestablishes solidarity and public goods as an urgent and timely topic.
The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.
1. The theory and politics of solidarity and public goods
Avigail Ferdman and Margaret (Peggy) Kohn
2. Solidarity as environmental justice in brownfields remediation
Avery Kolers
3. Why should we care about competition?
Waheed Hussain
4. Racial structural solidarity
Mara Marin
5. What undermines solidarity? Four approaches and their implications for contemporary political theory
Charles H. T. Lesch
6. Solidarity and social rights
Margaret Kohn
7. Justice as a claim to (social) property
Rutger Claassen
8. Engaging the reluctant taxpayer
Michael Joel Kessler
9. Why the intrinsic value of public goods matters
Avigail Ferdman
Biography
Avigail Ferdman is Environmental Policy Fellow at the Israel National Economic Council where she works on climate change policy. She focuses on the philosophical and social conditions for meaningful human lives. Her work on human well-being, disruptive technologies, public goods and active mobility has been published in philosophy and planning journals.
Margaret Kohn is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Toronto, Canada. Her primary research interests are the history of political thought, critical theory, social justice and urbanism. She is the author of The Death and Life of the Urban Commonwealth; Radical Space: Building the House of the People and Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privatization of Public Space.
