Understanding togetherness as a social fact

This is the most extensive chapter as it deals with the most important problem, namely that of conceptualizing and defining social cohesion. In the first part of this chapter, the historical roots of the concept in the works of seminal classics from antiquity to social contract theorists, and onwards to more modern sociologists and political theorists, are briefly addressed. After that, the book continues with a more focused review of Émile Durkheim's approach to social cohesion and what he termed "collective consciousness" more broadly. His conceptual and analytical insights provide the starting point for further conceptual development. Although social cohesion is at times discussed in terms of different "levels", the functional contribution and interdependence of these levels are rarely addressed, and even more rarely operationalized empirically. Here, two questions of utmost relevance for the concept are addressed: Does social cohesion refer to an aggregate of characteristics at the individual level? And can social cohesion be measured at the societal level alone? The analytical solution provided is to regard social cohesion as a set of generalized attitudes (social bonds) shared by individuals in a society. Thus, the difference between concept (collective) and measurement (individual) "level" is emphasized. This implies that although social cohesion can only be defined as a quality of a collective, we should not limit our self to measuring it only at this aggregate level. Three core analytical propositions are advanced. First, cohesion can be measured at the individual level as an outcome of other factors influencing individuals' situation and hence their attitudes conducive to cohesion (cohesion as outcome). Second, measuring social cohesion across groups within societies provides an essential insight into the quality of social relations, the lack of latent conflict, and hence the cohesion of that society (cohesion as dissimilarity). Third, the societal aggregate of cohesion can be defined as the quality of a society in terms of social cohesion which also allows it to be viewed as a social determinant in its own right (cohesion as predictor). Thus, we can think of all these levels as providing an important understanding of how cohesion is established and eroded, and we can determine that the measurement of the concept should reflect this. In the second part of this chapter, I try to narrow down the possible indicators that could be used to measure soc