Barbara Prainsack is Professor for Comparative Policy Analysis at the University of Vienna’s Department of Political Science, and is director of the university’s Centre for the Study of Contemporary Solidarity. Dr Prainsack’s research focuses on the concept of ‘solidarity’ applied to public policy and institutions, as well as the politics of health and science & technology. Dr Prainsack also currently serves as the Co-Director of the Vienna Centre for Advanced Studies, and as an Honorary Visiting Professor at the Practical Justice Initiative at the University of New South Wales. She is also a member of the Austrian Academy of Social Sciences and the European Commission advisory group the European Group on Ethics and New Technologies, among others. Her latest book, ‘States of Solidarity: How To Build a Society’ delves into the concept of ‘solidarity’ as an essential idea for addressing the challenges of the current world. In this interview, we discussed the inspiration for this book, as well as how solidarity could address the problems arising in today’s polarised world.
First of all, could you explain the concept of solidarity?
Lots of people have written about the concept of solidarity over the last century, and there are also lots of practices that map on to these concepts from non-Western societies. What our contribution at the Centre for Contemporary Solidarity has been is to treat solidarity not primarily as a value but as a practice. I am very strongly influenced by philosophical pragmatism, and I find treating solidarity as a practice makes solidarity much more tangible and definite, rather than a catch-all term referring to everything that we deem desirable. We defined solidarity in such a way that it becomes specific enough to be distinguished from other prosocial practices, and at the same time usable as a guiding principle and an analytical frame.
So, I think solidarity is best understood as practices by which people support others they see as like themselves in a relevant respect. This ‘relevant respect’ is quite important, because it doesn’t mean that people need to be ‘the same’ to enact solidarity with each other. Solidarity happens when they support each other despite all their differences – if they have the same problems; the climate crisis, inequality or others, then that is the relevant similarity. Then there are three tiers of solidarity as a practice: person-to-person, group-based, and institutionalised solidarity. In my recent book I dig into institutionalisation more, looking at how states can incorporate solidarity in their institutions.
Do you think that solidarity is particularly needed in today’s world, and what is your book responding to now?
I think solidarity is more needed than ever. There is a narrative in scholarship that attributes many of the issues societies face today as the results of a structural lack of care. Many different terms are used for this, but they boil down to the fact that the ways societies are organised today have eroded capacities for care, in a twofold manner: First, even textbook welfare states have stopped ‘caring’ for people in the sense that public services and other public infrastructures designed to satisfy important needs are being eroded or fully defunded in the name of cost saving. Second, our economic system has reduced the ability of people to care for themselves and for others sharply reduced in recent years. People who are constantly worried about how to make ends meet do not have a lot of capacity to care for themselves and for others.
The answer that many authors give to this challenge is that we need more care. I agree; but we need more. Care is strongest where it meets specific needs of people in specific contexts, but it doesn’t scale well into larger institutions. Practices that are tailored to a specific need of a specific person that is cared for might not be appropriate for other contexts. Solidarity is an important complement to care. If institutions took a solidarity-based approach to care where similarities are identified between people then policies can be built around what people have in common. When it comes to designing systems of healthcare, education and governance, you build that on what people have in common, and through an inclusive process. I’m not saying that solidarity is needed in every aspect of our lives, but in some aspects it is essential – especially in the context of policies and institutions designed to meet important needs of people.
Your book ‘States of Solidarity’ is perhaps the broadest and most philosophical approach to solidarity of your publications. What philosophies have you looked to for inspiration, and where do you see the idea of solidarity fitting alongside other philosophies of political governance?
This book is an attempt to extend my work on solidarity beyond its earlier anchoring in medicine and healthcare – a focus that emerged less from a deliberate choice than from the collaborative and funding environments in which the work developed. Another motivation for writing this book was a growing sense of unease when engaging with works on justice produced in contexts marked by profound and persistent injustices. One of the reasons for this is that justice usually has much more emphasis on vertical relations than horizontal relations, and is much more of an abstract concept. Solidarity, in contrast, is an action term. You can’t preach solidarity without doing it, whereas you can talk about justice without changing anything. This is not to diss justice and say it is no longer relevant – we need it more than ever. But we also need solidarity – it gets us to the places that justice cannot reach.
For this book I have also engaged with a lot of the literature on care, and I learnt a lot from it. Care is essential for solidarity; without it solidarity has no soul, but when it comes to scaling up care into institutions solidarity becomes the most important.
Outside of this, I have also been very influenced by philosophical pragmatism, by thinkers like John Dewey, and by the work that the Global Health Solidarity Project under the leadership of Caesar Atuire has been doing. I have learnt a lot from non-European perspectives, especially African philosophies that may not use the very term ‘solidarity’ but which refer to practices encapsulating the same mechanisms. These perspectives break down the relational ontologies underpinning European perspectives, such as the assumption that we are all first and foremost individuals who then ‘choose’ to be solidaristic or not. Relational ontologies assume that our relationships to others – humans and non-humans – define who we are and what our interests are; relationships come ‘before’ the individual if you will.
Much of your work on solidarity addresses European governance specifically. Is there something about solidarity that fits well within a European political tradition, or has the problems that Europe faces today shaped your discourse on solidarity?
This is a difficult question, and there are some scholars that claim that solidarity has a particular connection to European institutions and governance ethics. I agree that most European-style welfare institutions, for example, are a paradigmatic example of institutionalised solidarity. But saying that solidarity is a specifically European value or practice would be an unduly narrow understanding of solidarity. There are a lot of non-European contexts in which solidarity is practiced and thought about despite different labels. Overall, I would say that countries which more value non-calculating relations that are constitutive for people and institutions, are also more receptive to solidarity. To turn this on its head, the worst threat to solidarity is the idea that people are not deserving of it. And using this perspective, you can go through the world and see where solidarity easily fits and where it doesn’t.
From your perspective, how does solidarity respond to the current fracturing of the global political system and challenging of international norms?
Solidarity requires agency that is in some way anthropomorphic, and this means that in a technical sense, institutions can’t enact solidarity with each other. So, institutions don’t lend themselves to non-calculating, empathetic behaviour that is needed for solidarity. However, institutions can act in a solidaristic spirit if the humans within those institutions choose to use a rationale that goes beyond rational calculating behaviour. For example, an institution could support another institution beyond trying to maximise their own benefit if the humans in the institution believe that there is a collective good in doing so. This sounds very idealistic, and perhaps it is, especially in a global context that appears to be moving in the opposite direction, marked by increasing self-interest, disregard for rules, and growing conflict.
The term ‘democracy’ is often used in the context of decentralising technologies such as AI. What are your thoughts on this governance philosophy?
First, equating decentralisation and democratisation is fundamentally wrong. Democracy is not just majority rule; it always requires an organising entity or ‘centre’ that has the power to design and order. Secondly, I am very much against the idea that the power asymmetries in the digital sphere are resolved when data is given property rights. I believe data should be a commonly owned and commonly governed resource, not just because of the negative impacts for the poor that monetising data would have, but also because my data is relational, and it was created socially through the work of many people. Data should therefore be a jointly owned resource where the benefits of data flow back to the society it came from.
When it comes to large platforms, I am very against monopolies – but calling for more state control is not always a solution. Look at the United States – here, more government control would not improve the situation. So another question is how do we deal with problematic or non-democracies using global platforms like X for political means? Public procurement has been suggested as a method to control tech monopolies, but effective oversight remains limited, as we still lack public auditors capable of scrutinising these platforms and their practices.
The subject of interrelation and horizontal social relations is a big part of your thought. Why do you think current governance models fail to acknowledge this aspect of society?
I think this is partly due to lobbying, partly due to the vested interest of authoritarian regimes in reducing horizontal connection between people, and partly due to a bias in Western thinking. The way that we have traditionally conceived of justice and governance is through this direct relationship between the ordering entity and the individual. This very top-down approach comes at the cost of focusing on the horizontal dimension, and what we can gain from addressing horizontal organisation.
What are your thoughts on the impact of AI on the relation of society to systems of governance in data and elsewhere?
The world of AI is driven by a very small elite of people who, as my colleague Jensen Sass put it, are now fighting for legitimacy by undermining democracies, reducing diversity and undermining public deliberation. Therefore, the political economy of AI is very problematic, and the far reach into society it has is very threatening. In terms of the role it plays in our lives, I agree with those who have pointed out that the lack of care about truth and humanity will have deep implications. The concept of agency is also now being questioned, as it becomes more difficult to distinguish between human and non-human agency. Our work on data solidarity tries to address some of these issues, by giving a clear way to reassert democratic control over digital practices and infrastructures to ensure outcomes that benefit society as a whole.
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