The Social Origins and Development of Social Cohesion Traditions

Abstract

It is one thing to identify different intellectual traditions of social cohesion, as we have attempted to do above. But to identify ‘regimes of social cohesion’ is a more difficult task. To begin with, the term regime implies more than a body of ideas. It also connotes a structure of rules and regulations that must be underpinned by particular institutional forms. This is implied in many of the policy definitions of social cohesion we discussed in Chapter 1. It is also implicit in Durkheim’s actual analysis of social solidarity, even though he at one point defined social cohesion as a purely moral phenomenon, as we quoted above. So, while we may use the term ‘regime’ as an ideal type - in Weber’s sense of a stylized model which captures the key and defining characteristics of a particular set of actual social forms - we must ensure that the model points to both ideological and institutional features of specific social systems, even though it may not fully correspond to any one of them.