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Paper short abstract:

Drawing on fieldwork of an LGBTIQ trading group, and a socialist soup kitchen, I investigate the relation between kinship practices and politics, particularly through investigating social 'containment' of biological, social and political life within ‘solidarity economies’.

Paper long abstract:

In liberal society, the market holds an enduring monopoly on the reproduction of social and biological life. In its interstices, we find practices and social movements that find place for, and represent its subaltern underside. Failing to provide for the most vulnerable in society, grassroots organisations providing food, ‘solidarity economies’ in particular, have filled gaps in diminishing welfare states, and have simultaneously effloresced into movements that question the centrality of markets.

This paper explores life and political agency channeled and sustained through these ‘solidarity economies’ - economic systems that exist adjacent to markets, that politicise their economic assistance, and in doing so, problematise the separation between charity and social movement. Drawing on ethnography from an LGBTIQ trading group / mutual aid facebook site, and a socialist soup kitchen, who sustain life through biological, psychological, social and political care, drawing from Lazar’s concept of containment developed in ‘The Social Life of Politics’, I investigate how such work drawn from the anthropology of trade unions can be applied to social movements, and thereby understanding the relation between kinship practices and politics.