The Glue of Society: A Social Ontology of Social Cohesion [GLUE]

Social cohesion is a key concept in how policy-makers, social scientists and ordinary people think about the social world. Social cohesion is supposed to be essential for how societies function and maintain stability. However, we have a poor conceptual understanding of social cohesion, and it remains heavily undertheorized in contemporary social ontology. Indeed, recent social ontology focuses primarily on what we might call bonding, where agents unite around a shared purpose, whereas social cohesion also seems to require bridging, namely, sustainable cooperation among agents with separate goals. The aim of the GLUE project is to address this gap. We will, in short, secure philosophical clarification of the concept of social cohesion and account for its role in constituting and maintaining the social world.

Integrating phenomenological, analytical, and critical philosophical methods, the project is divided into three phases.

Phase 1: A Descriptive Social Ontology of Social Cohesion

Phase 1 describes which phenomenon or set of phenomena the term social cohesion refers to. We will do so by distinguishing between member-level perceived cohesion and society-level emergent cohesion. We will draw on phenomenology, philosophy of action, and complexity theory to identify and model the characteristics and relationships of these two levels of social cohesion.

Phase 2: An Explanatory Social Ontology of Social Cohesion

Phase 2 explores the semantic relations between social cohesion and selected key concepts from social ontology, everyday life, and the social sciences. The aim is, hence, to clarify the logical structure of the concept of social cohesion and map its relation to concepts such as trust, recognition, collective intentionality, shared identity, feelings of belonging, institutional facts, social norms, and team reasoning.

Phase 3: A Critical Social Ontology of Social Cohesion

Phase 3 discusses the value of social cohesion and considers how the concept applies to non-ideal social settings. This requires that we critically examine the relation between social cohesion and justice and the extent to which social cohesion is compatible or incompatible with oppression, discrimination, social polarization, and social inequality, including whether such incompatibility is conceptually necessary or a contingent effect of some of the empirical conditions that inhibit or enable social cohesion.

Research Objectives

The main objectives of the GLUE project are to

• enrich our descriptive typology of pro-social phenomena;

• give an account of bridging relations that supplements existing theories of bonding relations;

• develop a critical framework for understanding not just harms and injustices targetted at specific groups but systemic social dysfunctions;

• offer an integrated research method for social ontology that combines descriptive, explanatory, and critical methods.

Funding Acknowledgment

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 101161846 – GLUE – ERC-2024-STG). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.