Social Cohesion Contested: Living Together Beyond the Neoliberal Regime (Off the Fence: Morality, Politics and Society)

In recent decades social cohesion has emerged as a major concern of states, policymakers and researchers. Social cohesion is represented as a desirable policy goal and as the basis for everything from economic growth to individual well-being. At the same time, it is increasingly presented as a single substance, which can be measured, tracked, and compared across diverse societies. But why should we think of the complex ways in which we can live well together in terms of a single substance? Social Cohesion Contested challenges this way of thinking, suggesting that social cohesion has become a buzzword that obscures more than it illuminates.
Dan Swain and Petr Urban trace the rise of the concept through the policy agendas of transnational and international bodies, and analyze the reactions of social researchers to the demands of policymakers for a clear and operationalizable concept. They argue that the term is frequently used in a way that assumes broad understanding and agreement, while in practice it is subject to contradictory definitions and often loaded with various implicit and explicit values, which become masked behind a veneer of scientific authority and normative legitimacy. The more that social cohesion is treated as a single substance with a clear and uncontroversial meaning, the more it narrows the space for debate and contestation around both the policies adopted in its name and the understanding of the social on which it rests. In contrast, if social cohesion is to mean anything it ought to be understood explicitly as a contested concept, and actively subject to contestation. The book thus provides not only a critique of a popular concept, but an example of engaged philosophical criticism of social research and policy.

Dan Swain is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences and assistant professor in the Department of Humanities of the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague. He is the author of None So Fit to Break the Chains: Marx’s Ethics of Self-Emancipation and Alienation: An Introduction to Marx’s Theory and co-editor of Unchaining Solidarity: On Mutual Aid and Anarchism with Catherine Malabou. As well as Marx and Marxism, his research focuses on the theory and practice of social movements, radical democracy and utopianism.
Petr Urban is a senior researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on political theory of care, applied ethics and phenomenology. His work has appeared in journals such as Frontiers in Psychology, Ethics and Social Welfare, Environmental Philosophy, Horizon: Studies in Phenomenology, Philosophies or Humana Mente. He is a co-editor of Care Ethics, Democratic Citizenship and the State, Unchaining Solidarity: On Mutual Aid and Anarchism with Catherine Malabou and Play and Democracy: Philosophical Perspectives.