A Comprehensive Framework for Diagnosing the Hidden Patterns of Social Cohesion
Key facts
Middle East and North Africa
South Asia
Latin America and Caribbean
Sub-Saharan Africa
East Asia and Pacific
North America
Intergroup relations
Identity/feeling of belonging
Participation
Equality/Inequality
Orientation towards the common good
Solidarity
Shared values
Cooperation
Tolerance
Overview
Social cohesion is the ongoing process of eliminating task and relationship conflicts and their potentials, between and within the spheres of societal tolerance and social adaptability, accompanied by the effective capacity for social decontamination of societal intolerant spillover effects.
Social cohesion is the ongoing process of eliminating relationship conflicts and their potentials that take the forms of deeply held values and beliefs, ideological perceptions, leadership styles, personal tastes and preferences, and task related conflicts and their potentials arising out of the differences in the interpretation of facts, processes and procedures; between and within the spheres of societal tolerance and social adaptability, accompanied by the effective capacity for social decontamination of societal intolerant spillover effects.
Societal tolerance is the willingness and understanding to accept or tolerate opinions or behavior that a community may not agree with, because it does not clearly identify with the deeply embedded mindsets and standard norms of that community, or with people who do not share the same societal values and or beliefs of that community.
Social adaptability is a community’s ability to accept change in order to deal successfully with new, and perhaps more challenging situations.
Social decontamination is a community’s collective capacity to eliminate or reduce to the lowest possible level, behavior and or activities that are harmful or potentially harmful to that community. This may also mean reducing to the barest minimum, activities and or behavior that directly or indirectly promote anti-social activities and or unproductive behavior that might be contagious or highly contagious to that community and even beyond.
In this regard, paramount to the understanding of social cohesion is to investigate the comprehensive roles of societal tolerance, social adaptability, and social decontamination, and their causal relationships and alignments in building or rebuilding social cohesion.
So the target to attain social cohesion is to continuously keep low levels of task conflicts or potential task conflicts, while thriving to continuously keep relationship conflicts or potential relationship conflicts at its barest minimum, or if possible, eliminate it.
