Solidarity

The Work of Recognition

Solidarity

The Work of Recognition

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Description

Celebrated thinker Rowan Williams explores the shared hopes and burdens that make solidarity possible.

From its use as a rallying cry by the labour movement to its central place in struggles for racial justice, the idea of solidarity is often invoked as the answer to inequality and conflict. And yet, as both a term and a practice, solidarity is tantalizingly slippery. We are encouraged to 'show solidarity', but how can we truly realize it?

As Rowan Williams argues in this impassioned book, solidarity is not something fixed to be achieved, but a process of mutual recognition. From its origins in the French Revolution to the Nueva Solidaridad in Mexico City and the Solidarnosc movement in Poland, Williams traces solidarity's myriad forms through its deep influence on Catholic social thought, its transformation in the hands of thinkers like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Jan Patocka and the creative struggle so central to the writings of Gillian Rose.

He reveals solidarity to be a constant exercise in self-scrutiny and dialogue in which we find that true recognition lies not in asserting that others are 'just like us,' but rather in affirming their claim to be 'fully themselves'. It is in this work of recognition, this possibility of communion, that true hope can be found.

Prologue
Introduction
Chapter 1: Recognizing Strangers: Who Counts as Human?
Chapter 2: Understanding Strangers: Empathy and Its Paradoxes
Chapter 3: The Claims of Strangers: Debating Human Rights
Chapter 4: Solidarity: the Making of a Discourse
Chapter 5: The Solidarity of the Shaken: Jan Patocka and the Care of the Soul
Chapter 6: Solidarity Without Enemies: Jozef Tischner and the Conversation of Human Labour
Chapter 7: Solidarity, Responsibility, Guilt: Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Helplessness
Chapter 8: Solidarity, Co-inherence, Communion
Conclusion
Acknowledgements

Product details

Published	May 26 2026
Format	Hardback
Edition	1st
Pages	320
ISBN	9781399431514
Imprint	Bloomsbury Continuum
Dimensions	234 x 153 mm
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing

Author

Rowan Williams

Rowan Williams is a former Archbishop of Canterbur…

A humane and heartening book.

Guardian
A magisterial vision of true comradeship.

Slavoj Žižek author of Quantum History
Here is classic Rowan Williams. This is a significant work of compassion and wisdom, one that – I dare to guess – will stand out even among the great range of writings that he has produced.

Church Times
A treasure trove of wisdom and insight. Its quiet optimism brings, in darkened days, a guiding light which gives the reader hope, despite the encircling gloom, that we might learn to live together with growing understanding, awareness, and a renewed sense of self.

A. N. Wilson author of Goethe: His Faustian Life
With his customary vision and unique form of attention, Rowan Williams... draws on the widest, carefully focussed, range of thinkers, each one illuminating the same dilemma – how to be together on a shared and bitterly contested planet? Rowan Williams has written a guide book and a plea. For anyone struggling with these issues, Solidarity should be indispensable.

Jacqueline Rose
In this pioneering book, Williams argues for solidarity as a genuinely new ideal and something that cannot be reduced to some combination of compassion and communalism. It is at once a window on the human condition and justice in action. This is vintage Williams.

James B. Murphy, Professor of Government, Dartmouth College, USA and author of How to Think Politically