Solidarity as a political resource: Keeping it real, feasible, and effective

Politics at any level relies heavily on genuine sentiments of solidarity and allegiance citizens have for the political community. But how could solidarity be kept real, feasible, and effective while remaining judiciously open to cosmopolitan ideals of global citizenship? Drawing on Kwame Appiah’s concept of ‘cosmopolitan patriotism’ and cognate insights on political identity and its construction, the essay argues that patriotic solidarity and cosmopolitan solidarity are not mutually exclusive. It shows how patriotic solidarity embodies a ‘glocal’ duality – both local and global. Accordingly, to be a patriot is to have overcome the ethnocentric shortsightedness that blurs a global vision. A patriot is a veritable cosmopolitan. But a patriot ought to be a ‘rooted’ cosmopolitan and not a ‘rootless’ cosmopolitan. A patriot’s commitment to the local should never be undermined. To unpack these ideas, the essay explores the concepts of concentricity and political ‘cost-effectiveness’ in a novel fashion. Since this whole question of patriotic solidarity has particular implications for Africa, the essay addresses and problematizes the ‘state’ in postcolonial Africa.