Description
International Relations (IR) lacks a consistent theoretical account of ‘solidarity’ as a meaningful international phenomenon. Building on Catherine Lu’s analysis of “Solidarity and Structural Injustice,” this paper offers historical and conceptual clarity on ‘solidarity’ in the international system using the case study of Afro-Asian solidarity during the critical, yet underexplored, period from 1960-1965. I advance two interrelated aims. First, I provide an account of Afro-Asian solidarity as it emerged in two parallel arenas: the United Nations (UN) and the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organisation (AAPSO) conferences to trace its meaning and impact in the UN. Second, I draw from historical insights to reconceptualise “solidarity” as an unstable and polymorphic category that, when performed by political elites, is capable of producing radical political imaginaries and shifting diplomatic norms, yet bounded by contradiction, contingency, and institutional constraint. Approaching solidarity historically and sociologically, I put forward a subtype called “bounded solidarity” which argues that political elites navigate diplomatic affairs through a constrained version of justice as they balance their ambitions with the realities of colonial legacies and enduring global hierarchies. Taking a practice-oriented approach, it aims to recover the ambitions and ambivalences of a pivotal yet underexamined moment of anticolonial world-making.
