1. Reconciling Diversity and Community?
Defining Social Cohesion in Developed Democracies
Allison Harell & Dietlind Stolle

2. What makes a community and why do we care?
Valuing Community
What makes a community and why do we care?
community evokes feelings of ‘togetherness’
provides for identity and personal roots
lack of community associated with social dysfunction

3. Uses of Social Cohesion
Shared Identity
common backgrounds and values
Networks and Norms
social capital and informal social control
Access and Inequality
income heterogeneity and the welfare state

4. Critiques Assumption of Homogeneity Dominant Focus on Shared Values
Aggregation Problems
Causal Under-Specification

5. A Re-Definition
“cooperative relations among individuals and groups of individuals based on mutual respect, equality and norms of reciprocity”

6. A Re-Definition Three key components: Structural Equalities
Income inequality, political inequality and inequality of resources across salient cleavages
Extensive and Bridging Networks
The number of friends and acquaintances as well as composition questions
Facilitative Values
Cooperative norms and support for democratic process

7. Model of Social Cohesion
Structural Equality Among Groups
Quality of Democracy
Crime/Safety
Economy
Political and Social Stability
Social Support System
Population Health
Institutions
Facilitative Values
Extensive & Bridging Networks Among Individuals

8. Comparing Communities
Networks Among Individuals
Structural Equality Among Groups
Isolated and Disconnected
Extensive and Overlapping
Large Gaps
Social
Exclusion
Structural Fragmentation
Small or Non-Existent Gaps
Anomie
Social Cohesion

9. A Step in the Right Direction?
Deal with causation issues
Link micro and macro
Take account of the political dimension
Distribution of values across groups
Applies across levels of analysis

10. Reconciling Community & Diversity
Social cohesion must be reframed as…
A set of social processes and relationships that allow for peaceful and mutually respectful interaction in diverse societies
And recognize that inequality, rather than diversity, is the primary threat