Differentiation, participation and cohesion

Social cohesion clearly depends on an intermediate level of social differentiation, since either a unitary society or a group with no common concerns would clearly be unstable. A quantitative theoretical model is set forth, defining differentiation as the sum of pairwise symmetric differences between social groups. Spontaneous social cohesion should be measured by the sum of the bonds between various social subgroups. Cohesion will be 0 if differentiation is either 0 or 1. These measures can be computed straightforwardly from ordinary census data, if their use as social indicators is desired. Modified HA.