Socio-Ecological Solidarities In Times of Multiple Crises

Recent years have been marked by overlapping crises, including climate breakdown, rising inequalities, war and militarization, and the resurgence of authoritarian and nationalist politics. These developments are often associated with processes of desolidarization, such as the fragmentation of transnational alliances, the weakening of collective infrastructures, and the erosion of practices of mutual support. At the same time, however, new forms of solidarity are emerging in response to these very crises. Across diverse contexts, communities are developing collective practices aimed at sustaining wellbeing, resilience, and survival under increasingly precarious conditions.

This symposium explores these dynamics through the concept of socio-ecological solidarities. We are interested in how solidarity is being reconfigured in relation not only to human communities but also to ecosystems, more-than-human beings, and ecological processes. Such practices can be observed in environmental activism, community-based adaptation initiatives, care networks, and other forms of collective socio-ecological engagement.

The symposium brings together scholars from different sociological fields and empirical contexts to examine how solidarity is enacted, experienced, and imagined amidst multiple and interconnected crises. By placing solidarity studies in dialogue with research on socio-ecological practices, mobilizations, and environmental movements as well as on development strategies and alternatives to development, we seek to expand the concept of solidarity beyond the human and investigate how it is redefined in relation to the more-than-human world.