Emotional Solidarity and Its Antece

Emotional Solidarity and Its Antecedents

The theory of emotional solidarity originated from the res­ earch Durkheim (1995 [1915]) conducted among Aborigi-nals in Australia at the turn of the 19th century. It was Durkheim’s idea that he would find the most fundamental attributes of religion by observing and keeping detailed accounts of life amid the most primitive form of religion of which he was aware. What Durkheim claimed was that every religion must have followers who share beliefs with one another and engage in similar practices (i.e., shared behav-ior), which serve to strengthen the solidarity of its followers. Durkheim passed away shortly after writing The Elementary Forms of Religious Life and was never able to empirically support his theory of emotional solidarity. Adding to this, at the time Durkheim wrote his book, he had more critics than followers who sought to debunk his theory given its contex-tual nature (making it difficult to generalize findings to other settings) and lack of empirical support. One exception to this was the work by Collins (1975), who conceived that Durkheim did not explicitly include interaction among indi-viduals as being central to solidarity. Throughout most of his life, Durkheim was a structural functionalist as he viewed social structures (i.e., religion, laws, etc.) serving a greater purpose of integrating society. In a sense, he possessed a holis-tic or systematic perspective of the world, where all parts fit together and complement one another to remain in balance. Such a systematic perspective has been accepted in the tour-ism field as well (Blank 1989; Leiper 1990; Murphy 1985), whereby residents and tourists make up two of the largest components within the systems model. To date, the model that Durkheim put forth following his theoretical framework remains untested.

Emotional solidarity has been conceptualized in numer-ous ways. Jacobs and Allen (2005) conceive of the concept as a feeling of solidarity that binds individuals together cre-ating an us or we sentiment as opposed to the me versus you or self versus other dichotomy that Wearing and Wearing (2001) mention. Wallace and Wolf (2006) purport that emo-tional solidarity is comparable to individuals identifying with one another. Probably the most widely accepted con-ceptualization of emotional solidarity is that of the affective bonds that individuals experience with each other, which are characterized by perceived emotional closeness and degree of contact (Hammarstrom 2005). Research surrounding emo-tional solidarity has been conducted in sociology, social psy-chology, family studies, gerontology, and anthropology, with many of the initial studies being empirical in nature (see Geiger 1955; Klapp 1959; Rosengren 1959).

Results (Indonesian) 1:

Emosional solidaritas dan pendahulunya yangThe theory of emotional solidarity originated from the res­ earch Durkheim (1995 [1915]) conducted among Aborigi-nals in Australia at the turn of the 19th century. It was Durkheim’s idea that he would find the most fundamental attributes of religion by observing and keeping detailed accounts of life amid the most primitive form of religion of which he was aware. What Durkheim claimed was that every religion must have followers who share beliefs with one another and engage in similar practices (i.e., shared behav-ior), which serve to strengthen the solidarity of its followers. Durkheim passed away shortly after writing The Elementary Forms of Religious Life and was never able to empirically support his theory of emotional solidarity. Adding to this, at the time Durkheim wrote his book, he had more critics than followers who sought to debunk his theory given its contex-tual nature (making it difficult to generalize findings to other settings) and lack of empirical support. One exception to this was the work by Collins (1975), who conceived that Durkheim did not explicitly include interaction among indi-viduals as being central to solidarity. Throughout most of his life, Durkheim was a structural functionalist as he viewed social structures (i.e., religion, laws, etc.) serving a greater purpose of integrating society. In a sense, he possessed a holis-tic or systematic perspective of the world, where all parts fit together and complement one another to remain in balance. Such a systematic perspective has been accepted in the tour-ism field as well (Blank 1989; Leiper 1990; Murphy 1985), whereby residents and tourists make up two of the largest components within the systems model. To date, the model that Durkheim put forth following his theoretical framework remains untested.Emotional solidarity has been conceptualized in numer-ous ways. Jacobs and Allen (2005) conceive of the concept as a feeling of solidarity that binds individuals together cre-ating an us or we sentiment as opposed to the me versus you or self versus other dichotomy that Wearing and Wearing (2001) mention. Wallace and Wolf (2006) purport that emo-tional solidarity is comparable to individuals identifying with one another. Probably the most widely accepted con-ceptualization of emotional solidarity is that of the affective bonds that individuals experience with each other, which are characterized by perceived emotional closeness and degree of contact (Hammarstrom 2005). Research surrounding emo-tional solidarity has been conducted in sociology, social psy-chology, family studies, gerontology, and anthropology, with many of the initial studies being empirical in nature (see Geiger 1955; Klapp 1959; Rosengren 1959).