Introduction

In this chapter, reflecting on what we have developed and discussed so far in this book, we present some of the broader implications of our work on solidarity in biomedicine and beyond. To recapitulate what we have done so far: in Chapter 1, we gave a brief overview of uses of the concept of solidarity throughout history and a summary of (English language) scholarship on this topic in bioethics and social and political theory in the last two decades. In Chapters 2–4, we developed our understanding of solidarity and situated it within pertinent theoretical debates. We then applied it to three policy contexts in Chapters 5–7, drawing out a number of implications for specific policies and practices. In this concluding chapter, we bring together some overarching conclusions from our study regarding the analytical value and the practical utility of solidarity as we understand it: as enacted commitments of people to accept costs to assist others with whom a person or persons recognise similarity in a relevant respect. Such commitments manifest themselves in practices and policies at various levels, from the inter-personal (tier 1) and group-based (tier 2) levels to the level of contractual, administrative and legal norms (tier 3). In previous chapters, we have been careful not to overstretch what our definition of solidarity can do. In this final chapter, we paint with a slightly broader brush. We want to draw out some wider claims from our work, as well as sketch out some ideas of how we envisage a solidarity-based perspective to inform conceptualisation, policy and practice beyond the cases we have analysed in this book.

We start in the opposite direction from how we have moved in our book so far. First we draw out some broader implications for the practical application of our understanding of solidarity from the case studies in this book (Chapters 5–7). We then follow up with a number of ideas for policy-making, illustrating what kinds of innovative strategies could be based on solidarity in biomedicine. The later parts of this chapter are devoted to presenting some overarching conceptual conclusions, and demonstrating how our understanding of solidarity can be fruitfully applied to broader fields than biomedicine. We close with a few suggestions for future work.