Social Cohesion and the Sustainable Welfare Society

1
Social Cohesion and the Sustainable Welfare
Society

• David Phillips
• (with Yitzhak Berman)

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Background to Social Cohesion

• Tönnies
• Gemeinschaft - cohesion by the family and peer
  group
• Gesellschraft - formal authority structures keep
  society together.
• Durkheim
• Mechanistic solidarity - common values, beliefs
  and experiences enable people to co-operate
  successfully.
• Organic solidarity - shared expectations embodied
  in the law and market and maintained through
  interdependence people cannot survive in
  isolation.
• Talcott Parsons
• Normative integration - the highly complex,
  differentiated modern social system is kept
  together by peoples internalisation of, and
  attachment to, abstract common normative values.

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Contemporary versions of social cohesion

• Marxists collective consciousness, produced by
  the division of labour in society it is class
  consciousness.
• T H Marshall provision of political, legal and
  social equality - also used to legitimise
  economic inequality.
• Liberal flows from the rights and mutual respect
  of people interacting in pursuit of their own
  individual ends.
• Neo-liberal provided by buyers and sellers
  coming together in the market.
• Communitarians provided by the neighbourhood
  community
• Wilkinson countries with high levels of
  egalitarian social cohesion have lower mortality
  rates than countries with similar economic
  resources but lower levels of social cohesion.

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Social Cohesion in Social Quality

• Social quality is defined as the extent to
  which citizens are able to participate in the
  social and economic life of their communities
  under conditions which enhance their well-being
  and individual potential (Beck et al., 19973).
  
• The notion of the social is central to social
  quality it is the outcome of constantly
  changing processes through which human subjects
  realise themselves as interactive human beings.
  
• Central to this is the relationship between
  individual self realisation and the formation of
  collective identities.
• The social is central to all the four
  conditional factors of social quality
  socio-economic security social inclusion social
  cohesion and social empowerment.

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Definition of social cohesion

• Social cohesion can be defined as
• the nature of social relations based on shared
  identities, values and norms (Phillips,
  2006a178)
• or, more dynamically, as
• the extent to which social relations, based on
  identities, values and norms, are shared (van
  der Maesen, 20069).
• The notion of social relations is central to two
  other conditional factors too social inclusion
  is about access to and integration into
  institutions and social relations and social
  empowerment is about the enhancement of ability
  and capabilities by social relations. Herein lies
  the fundamental theoretical justification for the
  centrality of social cohesion to social quality.

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Domains of social cohesion

• Social cohesion understood metaphorically as
  the glue that binds society together or as
  societal solidarity or, more prosaically, as
  being to do with social relations, norms, values
  and identities is central to social life
  because the notions of communities and the social
  world itself are impossible without social
  cohesion.
• Its domains are
• Trust
• Other integrative norms and values
• Social networks
• Identity

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Trust sub-domains

• General trust follows a similar logic to
  Fukuyamas notion of trust as a generic moral
  resource, the strength of which can be measured
  by applying Fukuyamas notion of the radius of
  trust. A similar approach, labelled generalised
  trust is used in Halls (1999) powerful analysis
  of social capital in Britain (and as updated by
  Grenier and Wright, 2003).
• Specific trust can be subdivided into two
  institutional trust and personal trust.
  Institutional trust relates to trust by
  individuals, families and communities in the
  civic and societal institutions within the public
  domain, formal institutions and community
  frameworks. Personal trust relates to trust by
  individuals in significant others in their lives.

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Trust indicators
Generalised trust Extent to which most people can be trusted
Specific trust institutional Trust in government elected representatives political parties armed forces legal system the media trade unions, police religious institutions civil service major companies financial institutions banks Trust in community leaders
Specific trust personal Trust in family friends neighbours peers (work colleagues etc.) people in daily interactions
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Other integrative norms/values sub-domains 1

• Altruism is one of the most important and
  integrative social norms and is central to
  normative integration. Indeed it is difficult to
  conceptualise how a society with high levels of
  altruism could possibly have low levels of social
  solidarity and social cohesion.
• Commonality and reciprocity, including shared
  values civic responsibility and civic norms.
  These all relate to a feeling of belonging to
  society, community, family etc.
• Social contract relates to civic engagement and
  covers the fundamental question of how much we as
  citizens are willing to spend and to do in order
  to foster commonality. In the public sphere this
  relates to what we will do for our community and
  how much we are willing to pay in taxes while in
  the private sphere it relates to household tasks,
  child rearing and caring for dependent relatives.

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Other integrative norms/values sub-domains 2

• Social justice or fairness brings together
  commonality and social contract in institutional
  form. It is linked to the extent to which rights,
  duties and obligations are commonly accepted in
  society.
• Tolerance is an apparently paradoxical aspect of
  commonality because instead of focusing on
  togetherness and bonding it relates to respecting
  difference.

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Other integrative norms values indicators 1
Altruism Volunteering number of hours per week Blood donations Charitable contributions
Commonality reciprocity Extent of reciprocity Expectations of others
Social contract Willingness to pay taxes to help disadvantaged groups Willingness to undertake practical activities in neighbourhood (e.g. picking up litter) Division of domestic responsibilities
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Other integrative norms values indicators 2
Justice formal legal framework Adherence to UN Declaration of Human Rights Index of civil liberties Gastills Index of Political rights independence of judiciary
Justice practice Integrity in administration of justice extent of arbitrary imprisonment bribery index of corruption percentage of population facing political discrimination index of intensity of political discrimination civil rights activism contract enforceability, access to information
Tolerance Views on immigration, pluralism and multiculturalism Tolerance of other peoples beliefs, behaviours and lifestyle preferences
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Social networks sub-domains

• Horizontal networks operate separately at each of
  the micro, meso and macro levels. family and kin
  associations of civic engagement and
  integration / bonding. The most classic examples
  of horizontal associations are informal and
  voluntary associations.
• Vertical networks operate between levels. and are
  variously referred to as linkage, ties and
  bridges. These are at their most effective where
  local communities have networked links with
  national organisations or regional or national
  government agencies.
• Cross-cutting ties are of central importance to
  effective and holistic social integration. High
  levels of social capital within communities can
  lead to animosity between them. It is the
  presence of cross-cutting ties that reduces this
  risk.

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Social networks indicators
Horizontal networks Number and type of associations or local institutions extent of membership extent of participatory decision-making reliance on networks of support.
Vertical networks Links between local/community and national organisations links between local/community organisations and government agencies
Cross-cutting ties Extent of cross-membership of groups and associations (a) horizontally (b) vertically. the former can be measured using standard social network analysis techniques
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Identity

• Identity, is the most complex and perhaps
  problematic of the potential domains of social
  cohesion. Its importance is undoubted indeed
  collective identities pervade the whole notion of
  social quality.
• Sub-domains
• The identity component is unique in that it
  involves a potential conflict between identities
  at different levels of collectivity. Each of
  these forms a sub-domain
• National
• Regional / community / local
• Interpersonal

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Identity indicators
National Sense of national pride support for national sporting teams percentage of population involved in separatist movements
Regional / community / local Sense of regional / community / local identity identification with cultural, religious or ethnic identity
Interpersonal Sense of belonging to family and kinship network
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Universality of domains, sub-domains and
indicators?

• Problematic indicators e.g. residential care
  for older people?
• Problematic sub-domains e.g. commonality and
  reciprocity underplays the family?
• Are any sub-domains missing - e.g. supranational
  identity?
• What about domains e.g. social sustainability?

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Sustainability, social quality and quality of life

• Sustainability
• First it is necessary to pin down the meaning or
  meanings of sustainability which will be used.
  Two dimensions of sustainability are addressed
  here environmental sustainability and social
  sustainability. No apologies are made for not
  addressing economic sustainability which, as Alan
  Walker so cogently reminded participants at the
  first Asian conference on social quality, has
  already been give disproportionate attention

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Environmental sustainability

• Weak environmental sustainability focuses
  strongly on technological fixes,
  substitutability, expanding resources and
  replacing renewables, and places limited emphasis
  on conservation.
• A middling approach raises the profile of
  conservation above renewability and
  substitutability and aims to sustain those
  aspects of the natural world whose loss would be
  irreversible.
• Stronger notions of environmental sustainability
  place an intrinsic value to nature which must be
  sustained at all costs. Conservation is the
  primary strategy here. It requires contraction of
  consumption and the adaptation of human behaviour
  to fit in with the finite resources of the
  planet. These have the most profound consequences
  for social quality.

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Social sustainability 1

• If environmental sustainability is about the
  survival, nurturing and thriving of the physical
  environment of the planet then social
  sustainability is about the survival, nurturing
  and thriving in other words the well-being of
  all the people living on the planet both now and
  in the future. Again there is a continuum from
  rather timid through to very robust formulations.
  The most cautious formulations focus on the
  present and near-future and stress the importance
  of safety nets whereas the most forceful
  approaches require redistribution in contemporary
  society and strong safeguards for the future.

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Social sustainability 2

• Weak a path along which the maximisation of
  human well-being for todays generation does not
  lead to declines on future well-being (OECD). It
  highlights the worry that the goals of socially
  sustainable development may conflict with
  economic efficiency and the effective operation
  of markets.
• Aspirational Ballet et al. socially sustainable
  development guarantees an improvement of the
  capabilities of well-being for both present and
  future generations through the aspiration of both
  intragenerational distribution and transmission
  across generations.
• Robust formulations of social sustainability have
  the goal of enabling all people, present and
  future, to pursue their well-being. Many of these
  approaches to social sustainability have strong
  resonances social quality.

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Social and environmental sustainability

• One of the major challenges in the conceptual
  and theoretical development of sustainability
  lies in teasing out and explicating the
  relationship between environmental and social
  sustainability a seriously under-analysed
  relationship. At face value it seems that there
  is little difficulty in integrating the weak
  versions of both facets of sustainability whereas
  the requirement for a contemporary baseline of
  equity, even before moving to socially
  sustainable equity in the future, is sure to pose
  a major challenge for the middling version of
  environmental sustainability and, unless there
  are to be major constraints on population growth
  in the near future, there appear to be
  intolerable strains between the strong versions
  of social and environmental sustainability.

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Social quality and sustainability the story so
far 1

• Walker sets the scene by identifying social
  quality as being transformative in relation to
  sustainability in that a social quality
  discourse. He suggests
• a completely new way of understanding
  sustainability by asking if the constitution of
  society, including the particular institutional
  arrangements it has put in place to promote
  welfare, lead to a sustained level of social
  quality. Moreover it challenges policy makers
  to subject all policies, economic as well as
  social, to the test of social quality impact and
  to examine the costs of failing to achieve a
  sufficient level of social quality. This does not
  remove the question of the financial
  sustainability of social policies but it
  subordinates it to the overarching issues of the
  nature of society and the well-being of
  citizens. (Walker, 200614)

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Social quality and sustainability the story so
far 2

• van der Maesen (200626) sustainable welfare
  societies are predicated on the four normative
  considerations of social quality
• (i) human dignity,
• (ii) solidarity,
• (iii) social justice and equity,
• (iv) democratic based citizenship.
• These are intrinsically linked to the four
  conditional factors of social quality. Thus, at
  least in terms of intent, sustainability is
  central to social quality. This is unarguable in
  that the notion of a social quality which is
  ephemeral or temporary or unsustained has to a
  worse social quality than one which is sustained.
  The challenge for this conference is to begin to
  tease out, articulate and elucidate this central
  relationship.

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Conclusions Social cohesion, social quality and
sustainability the way forward? 1

• The next important step is to analyse the
  tensions in the relationship between social
  quality and sustainability. In principle this
  should not be too difficult a task because the
  overriding normative principles to social quality
  are consonant with at least the weaker versions
  of environmental sustainability and hopefully
  the strongest versions of social sustainability.
• In practice though the will be difficulties
  because strong environmental sustainability is
  predicated upon an understanding of the finite
  stock of natural resources, and it is clear that
  at least one of the conditional factors of social
  quality, socio-economic security, requires the
  availability of tangible natural resources. The
  relationship between social cohesion and finite
  environmental resources is more opaque and much
  less tangible.

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Conclusions Social cohesion, social quality and
sustainability the way forward? 2

• Indeed it is worth noting that there is a very
  different relationship between environmental
  sustainability and, on the one hand,
  socio-economic security and on the other hand
  with the other three social quality conditional
  factors. this is because social inclusion, social
  cohesion and social empowerment are exclusively
  social and non-material and can therefore, in
  principle, be enhanced and optimised via social
  intervention alone without having to use natural
  resources. Of course, in practice, it is often
  most beneficial to use more tangible resources,
  particularly financial resources, in this
  endeavour. but this is not a necessary
  requirement.

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Conclusions Social cohesion, social quality and
sustainability the way forward? 3

• However, material resources are absolutely
  central to socio-economic security and
  therefore transcend the purely social as
  epitomised in what could be termed the essence of
  social quality as individual self-realisation and
  the formation of collective identities. This
  transcendence is consistent with the original
  definition of social quality give above as the
  extent to which citizens are able to participate
  in the social and economic life of their
  communities under conditions which enhance their
  well-being and individual potential It is the
  tension between the finiteness of natural
  resources and the requirement for adequate
  socio-economic security for everyone in the world
  which poses an intellectual challenge for social
  quality theorists as well as being one of the
  if not the most pressing practical challenges
  facing the world today.