The Role of Breaking Events and Feelings in the Generation of Solidarity

The presentation aims to focus the link between turning points in individual biographies and social change focusing on the role played especially by compassion and empathy. We aim at investigating how biographical specific rupture events can lead to specific forms of social solidarity enabling sustainable, supportive social bonds generating new possibilities in people involved in them. To this end, we build a theoretical framework that integrates the perspectives of M. De Certeau concept of “founding ruptures” and the G. Simmel “sociology of sense impression”. The theoretical framework of De Certeau theory of “founding ruptures” allows us to identify the process and specific conditions that can lead an individual from a biographical turning point to social forms of solidarity in which compassion and empathy build responsible and free social bonds, able to change not only the own personal life but also the social context. Simmel’s analysis of sensitivity in the interaction space suggests the important role of our sense impression that brings about feelings in us becoming a bridge over which we feel the human condition in a deeper way. The mutual perception that takes place from the senses is the site where emotional experiences (feelings) and meaning attribution (knowledge) to the other and the human condition generate not only an unexpected subjective resonance or biographical change but also reciprocal actions and relationships having relevant social effects. We consider a set of life stories marked by biographical ‘founding ruptures’, showing that this shift was facilitated, above all, by unexpected encounters with human fragility and a living compassion and empathy. The stories were collected during an exploratory and qualitative research project and relate to founders or members of organizations, associations, or communities operating ‘on the borders’ of the rationalized, technically developed contemporary social reality.