The phrase "social cohesion" has become one of the most fashionable expressions in modern politics. Governments invoke it, think tanks study it, and commentators treat it as the magic ingredient that will somehow hold modern societies together. Yet the more one examines the concept, the more it begins to resemble a comforting slogan rather than a serious description of how contemporary societies actually function. In political debate both the Left and the Right invoke the phrase as if it referred to some tangible social property that governments could engineer through the right mixture of policy, messaging, and community programs. But the deeper problem is that the concept itself may be fundamentally misplaced in the context of modern mass societies.
In academic language, social cohesion is usually defined as the "glue" that binds people together through trust, shared identity, and commitment to a common good. Researchers typically describe it in terms of belonging, mutual trust, and cooperation among citizens. Yet the sheer vagueness of these definitions already hints at the problem. Scholars themselves disagree about what social cohesion actually consists of, how it should be measured, and whether it even describes a coherent social phenomenon. The concept is therefore less a precise social-scientific idea than a kind of political aspiration: the hope that societies made up of millions of strangers with different histories, identities, and interests might somehow feel like a harmonious community.
The problem is that modernity itself undermined the very conditions that once made cohesion possible. Pre-modern societies were small, culturally homogeneous, and structured by dense networks of kinship, religion, and tradition. Social order emerged organically because people shared the same myths, customs, and authorities. Modern societies, by contrast, are what sociologists call mass societies: large-scale systems dominated by bureaucratic institutions, impersonal economic relations, and mass communication networks that replace traditional social bonds. Individuals interact not primarily with neighbours and extended family but with vast anonymous systems — corporations, governments, and global markets.
In such environments the expectation that millions of individuals will feel deep social solidarity begins to look unrealistic. Mass societies do not generate cohesion; they generate fragmentation. People sort themselves into professional classes, ideological camps, and lifestyle communities. Instead of one shared culture, there are hundreds of overlapping subcultures competing for influence. The internet has intensified this process by allowing individuals to cluster into increasingly specialised communities of interest.
Indeed, some sociologists have argued that modernity produces not unity but what might be called a new form of tribalism. The French sociologist Michel Maffesoli famously described contemporary societies as consisting of "neo-tribes" — fluid communities formed around lifestyle, identity, or shared beliefs rather than traditional kinship structures. Far from dissolving group identities, modern mass society multiplies them. The result is not a single cohesive public but a landscape of competing micro-tribes.
Political rhetoric about social cohesion therefore often reflects a nostalgic longing for a social structure that no longer exists. Both sides of politics deploy the idea, but in different ways. On the Left, social cohesion is invoked to justify policies aimed at inclusion, anti-discrimination, and multicultural harmony. On the Right, it is often used to defend national identity, immigration limits, or cultural assimilation. Despite their disagreements, both sides share the assumption that governments can somehow manufacture social unity through legislation, education programs, or symbolic gestures.
But there are good reasons to doubt this assumption. Social cohesion is not something that governments can simply decree. It emerges historically from shared experiences, common institutions, and long-term cultural evolution. Trying to impose it through policy often produces the opposite effect: resentment, politicisation, and deeper division.
The empirical research on the subject is itself inconclusive. Studies examining the relationship between diversity and cohesion produce mixed results, with some suggesting reduced trust in highly heterogeneous communities and others finding that the relationship depends heavily on context and measurement. Even the attempt to measure "cohesion" scientifically turns out to be fraught with conceptual difficulties, because the idea contains multiple dimensions—trust, participation, belonging — that do not always move together.
What the political rhetoric therefore obscures is a deeper structural reality: modern societies are not designed for cohesion in the traditional sense. They are designed for complexity, pluralism, and competition among interests. Liberal democracy itself assumes disagreement and diversity rather than harmony. Its mechanisms — elections, parties, courts, and free media—exist precisely to manage conflict rather than eliminate it.
The real question, then, is not how to create social cohesion but how to maintain stability in a society that is inherently fragmented. Historically the answer has been institutions: the rule of law, economic opportunity, and political systems that allow competing groups to negotiate their differences without violence. These mechanisms do not produce social unity, but they allow societies to function despite deep divisions.
In that sense the modern political obsession with "social cohesion" may reflect a misunderstanding of modernity itself. Tribal societies require cohesion because survival depends on shared identity and loyalty. Mass societies operate differently. Their stability depends less on emotional solidarity than on institutional frameworks capable of managing diversity and conflict.
The irony is that the very forces that modern governments celebrate — globalisation, mass migration, technological change, and cultural pluralism — are precisely the forces that make traditional cohesion impossible. The more complex and diverse a society becomes, the less likely it is to share a single identity or moral consensus.
The language of social cohesion therefore functions largely as a rhetorical comfort blanket. It reassures citizens that societies can remain unified even as their underlying structures become more fragmented. Yet modernity and postmodernity point in the opposite direction. They produce not a shared tribe but a sprawling network of competing tribes, identities, and narratives.
Rather than pretending that governments can manufacture cohesion, political leaders might better focus on the more realistic task of maintaining workable institutions in a society that will inevitably remain divided. The modern world does not resemble the cohesive tribal communities of the past. It resembles a crowded marketplace of identities and interests held together not by shared sentiment but by fragile institutional arrangements. And those arrangements, unlike the comforting slogan of social cohesion, require constant maintenance if they are to survive.
https://theconversation.com/we-cant-coerce-our-way-to-social-cohesion-heres-what-else-governments-should-be-doing-277734