Reconsidering Social Cohesion: Developing a Definition and Analytical Framework for Empirical Research

2006 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Chan ◽  
Ho-Pong To ◽  
Elaine Chan
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Analytical Framework

Integration of refugees in rural areas and the role of the receiving society: conceptual review and analytical framework

Erdkunde ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-60
Author(s):  
Birgit Glorius ◽  
Miriam Bürer ◽  
Hanne Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Research Gaps ◽  
Migration Research ◽  
Local Integration ◽  
Research Gap

Research on integration processes of migrants has until recently remained on geographical levels of observation which are not apt to reveal and explain the variety of local integration trajectories. Furthermore, most research has focused on the role of migrants within these processes, while the attitudes and behaviours of the receiving society have been rarely addressed. This research gap concerns in particular rural areas since those areas have been widely left out of migration research. This article addresses those research gaps and develops a concept for the empirical research of local receptivity processes.

scholarly journals Everyday encounters with difference in urban parks: forging ‘openness to otherness’ in segmenting cities

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 495-514 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Barker ◽  
Adam Crawford ◽  
Nathan Booth ◽  
David Churchill
Keyword(s):  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Weak Ties ◽  
Public Parks ◽  
Cultural Differentiation ◽  
Social Polarisation ◽  
Nuanced Understanding

AbstractIn a context of hyper-diversity and social polarisation, it has been suggested that public parks constitute crucial arenas in which to safeguard deliberative democracy and foster social relations that bind loosely connected strangers. Drawing on empirical research, we offer a more circumspect and nuanced understanding of the – nonetheless vital – role that parks can play in fostering civic norms that support the capacity for living with difference. As ‘spaces apart’, parks have distinctive atmospheres that afford opportunities for convivial encounters in which ‘indifference to difference’ underpins ‘openness to otherness’. As places in which difference is rendered routine and unremarkable, the potency of parks for social cohesion derives from fleeting and unanticipated interactions and the weak ties they promote, rather than strong bonds of community that tend to solidify lines of cultural differentiation. Both by design and unintentionally, regulation and law can serve to foster or constrain the conditions that sustain conviviality.

scholarly journals Deconstructing social cohesion: towards an analytical framework for assessing social cohesion policies

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 39-54
Author(s):  
Menno Fenger
Keyword(s):  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Policy Initiatives ◽  
Multiple Dimensions ◽  
Perceived Importance ◽  
Important Quality ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
High Level

Academics as well as policy-makers consider social cohesion as an important quality of cities. A high level of social cohesion is associated with a wide variety of positive characteristics of cities: for instance low crime rates, high economic growth, low unemployment and happy citizens. This has lead to a wide variety of policy initiatives explicitly or implicitly aimed at increasing social cohesion. The perceived importance remarkably contrasts with the lack of a clear definition and a widely agreed-upon analytical framework. The lack of conceptual consensus may be explained by the complexity of the concept. It has multiple dimensions and can be found on different institutional levels: from the level of states to the level of local neighbourhoods. In this article I develop an analytical framework that builds upon these multi-dimensional and multi-level characteristics and connect this with an attempt to classify policies aimed at increasing social cohesion.

scholarly journals Zusammenhalts-Regionen – zur Theorie der Weltgesellschaft in der Sozialgeographie

2021 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 449-454
Author(s):  
Peter Dirksmeier ◽  
Angelina Göb
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Spatial Differentiation ◽  
Social Geography ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
World Society ◽  
Theoretical Terms

Abstract. The essay combines the concept of social cohesion with Rudolf Stichweh's system-theoretical concept of world society. These two approaches are joint hereafter with questions of spatial differentiation. The aim is to embed empirical micro-studies in macro-theoretical terms and to make them useful for empirical research in social geography. The construct of “cohesive region” demonstrates this by using the example of neighbourhoods.

scholarly journals Community sport and social cohesion: in search of the practical understandings of community sport practitioners in Flanders

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 258-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shana Sabbe ◽  
Lieve Bradt ◽  
Ramón Spaaij ◽  
Rudi Roose
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Community Development ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Conceptual Development ◽  
Community Sport ◽  
Individualized Approach ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract Current literature suggests that community sport contributes to social cohesion. Yet, empirical research is still scant, and existing conceptualizations of social cohesion in the context of community sport are dominated by a social capital approach emphasizing the individual over the structural conditions that need to be addressed if social cohesion is to be achieved. This article aims to provide more insight into how social cohesion is operationalized in community sport practices. Qualitative research on the practical understandings of community sport practitioners was undertaken across three cities in Flanders, Belgium. The findings suggest that practitioners adopt both individual and structural understandings of social cohesion. Moreover, they experience that their efforts to develop a structural approach are pressured by a dominant individualized approach. These findings reveal a disjuncture between academic constructs of social cohesion and the practical understandings of community sport practitioners. The article proposes ways to address the need for the empirical and conceptual development of social cohesion in the context of community sport and the broader community development field.

scholarly journals Multiculturalism in Singapore and Malaysia: approaches and outcomes

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian T.H. Kuah ◽  
Chang H. Kim ◽  
Stéphane Le Queux
Keyword(s):  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Process Tracing ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Socioeconomic Outcomes ◽  
Demographic Profiles ◽  
Causal Mechanisms ◽  
National Competitiveness ◽  
Cross Case Analysis ◽  
Practical Implications

PurposeThis paper examines cases of multiculturalism in Singapore and Malaysia. Through causal sociocultural mechanisms, the authors observe how two countries in proximity, with shared histories and demographic profiles, achieve differing outcomes in regard to social cohesion and competitiveness.Design/methodology/approachThe paper employs case-centric process tracing (CPT) to build a “plausible” explanation of causal mechanisms that can contribute to social cohesion and competitiveness. The authors adopt a common analytical framework to distil the nuances of generalizability and a cross-case analysis in order to ascertain factors that enable multiculturalism.FindingsDifferent causal mechanisms result in diverging outcomes in the two countries. In managing multiculturalism, Singapore has pursued policy actions emphasizing “integration and pragmatism,” while Malaysia has followed a model of “separation and preferentialism.” Judging by a selected number of established indicators, Singapore's multiculturalism outcomes seem more successful than that of Malaysia in respect to areas of national competitiveness and interethnic tolerance.Practical implicationsThis paper sheds insights on the policy actions that promoted multicultural integration. The process tracing approach is found to be a useful tool in helping policymakers understand how intrinsic mechanisms can contribute to more/less desirable socioeconomic outcomes.Originality/valueTogether with the evidence using the CPT approach, the paper draws attention to multiculturalism evolving through distinctive sets of public policy. The authors ultimately suggest that such policies can be paralleled to the function played by institutions in leading to “varieties of capitalism” and have an impact on achieving cohesive and competitive societies.

scholarly journals Masekitlana re-membered: A performance-based ethnography of South African black children’s pretend play

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Esther Ofenste Phetlhu
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
South African ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Pretend Play ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Performance Ethnography ◽  
Black South African ◽  
Complex Relation ◽  
Solitary Play ◽  
African Black

<p><em>The extensive empirical research inspired by Piaget and Vygotsky’s theories of make-believe play has been criticised for restricting data to western, urban, middle-class children. We seek to redress this bias by researching a traditional black South African Pedi children’s game </em>Masekitlana<em>. Our data relies on embodied memories enacted by Mapelo (one of the authors), and interviews of two other informants. The analytical framework draws upon ‘emergent methods’ in ethnography such as performance ethnography, autoethnography and memory elicitation through ‘bodynotes’ within a Vygotskyian orientation to play. The findings show that </em>Masekitlana<em> shares features common to all pretend play, but others unique to it  including: i) extended monologue, ii) metacommunicative frames for realistic thinking, and iii) a complex relation between social and solitary play. These findings support Vygotsky. However, ‘the long childhood’ of Masekitlana suggests that the stages theory of Piaget, as well as  Vygotskyian ideas that have come down to us via Cole &amp; Scribner and Valsiner, require revision in the light of Bruner’s two modes of cognition, and Veresov’s reinterpretation of the theatre movement, within which Vygotsky’s central ideas are embedded.</em></p>

The Limits of “Rational Design”

2003 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 411-430 ◽  
Author(s):  
John S. Duffield
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
Rational Design ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Significant Contribution ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Current Form ◽  
Design Project ◽  
Theoretical Literature

“The Rational Design of International Institutions” (special issue of IO, Autumn 2001) makes a significant contribution to the theoretical literature on international institutions. It is important, however, to recognize the limits of both the Rational Design project in its current form and the conclusions that can be drawn from the special issue about the project's usefulness and validity. This article evaluates the project on its own terms, as a rationalist attempt to explain variation in international institutions. I identify three significant sets of limitations: those of the scope of the project, those of the analytical framework, and those of the efforts that are made to evaluate the framework through empirical analysis. Although the first set of limitations is largely a matter of choice, the last two raise questions about how much of an advance the special issue in fact represents. Nevertheless, these shortcomings are not absolute—they can be remedied through further theoretical and empirical research.

scholarly journals Book review of Love and Society. Special Social Forms and the Master Emotion by Swen Seebach. A sociological study of love: Swen Seebach’s Love and Society

Digithum ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriana García-Andrade
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Sociological Study ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
Sexual Orientations ◽  
Historical Periods

Love and Society by Swen Seebach is a sociological study of love at its best. In recent years there has been a global boom in the scientific studies of love (García-Andrade 2014). Why? How has love become so crucial in sciences as it has in our lives? This book intends to understand why and how love has come center stage from a sociological point of view. And I emphasize this is a sociological endeavor because the question at hand is what is love’s contribution to social cohesion, how do we bond with each other when we are ‘in love’ and why it is so central in our societies, contrary to other historical periods. Also, and differently from other theoretical texts, the author goes hand in hand with empirical research on love to illustrate what people say about their love bonds: “…nearly 100 qualitative interviews with people from different European countries, with different sexual orientations, and with different social backgrounds…” (p. 13, n.1)

scholarly journals Transition Pathways of Agroecological Innovation in Portugal’s Douro Wine Region. A Multi-Level Perspective

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 322
Author(s):  
Fabíola Sostmeyer Polita ◽  
Lívia Madureira
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Transition Pathways ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
Wine Region

The Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) is an analytical framework developed to explain transitions towards sustainability. This article aims to contribute to enhancing the use of the MLP to understand the transitions towards sustainability in agriculture. We propose that MLP is an insightful framework to capture particular micro-level trajectories of adopting innovations. The Douro wine region in Northern Portugal, known worldwide for the wines that are produced there, was the study area of our empirical research. This region has become the stage for developing a complex agroecological innovation, the Ecological Infrastructures (EIs). These consist of a combination of techniques that aim to expand the ecosystem services of the vineyards. The uniqueness of its development at the farm level originates a multiplicity of innovation trajectories, which are the focus of this study. Content analysis of 20 interviews with winegrowers was performed, and the results were analysed through the MLP framework. This allowed us to conclude that a process of transition towards the sustainability of region-level winegrowing is underway, and that it can be explained by the overlapping of different paths of adopting innovation. Our research shows that in-depth analysis of qualitative data, done through content analysis, can be used to amplify the insightfulness of MLP by enabling it to uncover the microscale transition pathways that shape uneven region-level transitions.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document