Visi už vieną, vienas už visus: 2019 metų Lietuvos švietimo srities protestų solidarumo sampratos ; All for one, one for all: concepts of solidarity in protests of lithuanian educational system in 2019

Abstract

All for One, One for All: Concepts of Solidarity in Protests of Lithuanian Educational System in 2019 The thesis analyzes how the motivation and goals of the participants' relations during the 2019 protest for education reforms can be explained with regard to solidarity functions. The study systematizes the typologies of solidarity, paying special attention to the solidarity functions. Interpretation of the analysis material – semi-structured in-depth interviews with protest activists – reveals their concepts of solidarity. Special attention is paid to the reasoning why protesters maintain commonality relations and what is the significance of political collective identity in the resistance activities. In this study, the actions of the 2019 protesters are approached as a symbolic expression of solidarity. Solidarity is a strategy for proving community membership and can be implemented in both interpersonal and intergroup relations. According to Rainer C. Baum, when two individuals share the norms of commonality, the solidarity performs autotelic, instrumental, socio-moral, political functions, and thus mutual benefits are obtained. If the structure of protesters solidarity corresponds to all of these features, then it is full-fledged, and if some aspects are absent, then the potential of interpersonal and intergroup commonality is not actualized. The study revealed that various macro-level collaboration strategies, most often dominated by one or more functions, were used in 2019 protests. Usually, the intergroup commonality performed a political function, because the external goals seemed to be the most important and the interests of the group were being pushed to the foreground. Cooperation among various organizations took place to overcome the antagonist, improve the conditions of the group by participating in the political sphere, thus strengthening the political identity which promoted active participation and leadership. However, the intergroup solidarity did not perform a socio-moral function that should have helped to imbue the commonality with moral values. In the absence of this function, power games began to take place among groups prioritizing political identity, leading to a lack of unity. Contrarily, a group of protesters with an excess of socio-moral function was putting too much focus on maintaining one's identity, forgetting external goals. The commonalities with instrumental and autotelic functions revealed that solidarity was scarce if the group or intergroup collaboration did not perform other functions. The groups with the instrumental function dominance had too much focus on the pursuit of the goal, did not foster the loyalty of the members, did not care for personal identities and different interests of individuals. Whereas communications of the groups sharing a commonality with the autotelic function dominance could be equated to networking. On the other hand, in such cases, the strategies of the group members were aimed at maintaining collectivity and shared a sense of respect and commitment. The cooperation of several groups performed almost all the functions of solidarity. Their strategies did not lack the desire to preserve both personal identity and group values. Thus, clear goals were pursued, each participant had and could contribute in a certain way, there was a will to maintain the group's discourse in the political sphere. However, the study revealed a number of 2019 protest weaknesses, an excessive willingness to demonstrate power, intergroup divisions, and a lack of balanced relations. It's hard to say that one or other solidarity strategy undermined the protest, but it has been showed that solidarity can function only by maintaining a balance of relations, and in some cases, this did not happen. That may have been one of the reasons why the protest did not achieve its goal.