In spite of having been popularised in sociology by Durkheim at the end of the nineteenth century, it was not until the 1980s that ‘social cohesion’ became a central point of interest in European policy-making and academic research. This happened when a perception emerged that societies were losing the bonds that kept them together, among groups and individuals, according to some commentators due to structural changes in European welfare states. The rise of individualism and an unbridled market economy were charged with eroding ties among social groups. The idea of cohesion as a general and desirable goal for policy-making became particularly attractive in EU circles.
While the rise of social cohesion to the centre of EU concerns has been well documented, Jan Dobbernack's book focuses on its development as an imaginary in national politics in three West European countries: Germany, France and the UK. He associates it with the discourses of cohésion sociale in France, Bürgergesellschaft in Germany and community cohesion in the UK, through which governments have put forward new logics for understanding the relations between individuals, communities and the state. In all cases, this discourse has emerged as a reaction to social changes identified with an imaginary of decline and social dissolution (p. 26), caused by profound structural transformations through which these countries went in the latter decades of the century. The rise of social cohesion was attached to a new social imaginary, that of social activation, as a way to govern and regulate society – in tandem with new ideas such as that of governance in political science and public policy (p. 53) – where old forms of top-down government were to be substituted by new approaches in which active and mobile small components of the large social fabric are free to move and care for themselves. Government intervention, in these relations, would be executed primarily through promoting activation (p. 58).
In France, the concern with social decline was ingeniously used in Jacques Chirac's 1995 presidential campaign, which brought the concept of fracture sociale to mainstream French political language (p. 69). It captured the sense of loss that reflected the ending of the three decades of growth and prosperity experienced after the end of the Second World War, the trente glorieuses (p. 79). The solution was proposed as Republican solidarity, an ideal of social activation loosely used as background justification for a set of socio-economic policies during his term. In Germany, the crisis was perceived in connection with unexpected difficulties with the reunification process, and with the loss of economic competitiveness in relation to other European countries. The sense of loss, here, is identified with the fear of a paralysis that had affected the country's economic development and threatened the future of its socio-economic status (p. 110). Economic performance became the essence of German national identity in the post-war period, and the activation argument was framed by a need to execute deep reforms in state and society in order to recover the country's status (pp. 122–123). The British crisis had its roots in a perception of the failed integration of immigrants and minorities, and declining levels of social capital (p. 128). It was articulated by Tony Blair's New Labour to the effect that Thatcherite individualism had led the country into a situation of moral decay where material interests were predominant over social ties (pp. 135–136). This moral decay was associated with the riots that happened in a series of British towns in the early 2000s, and the official solutions proposed were based on the idea of the state as a facilitator of good behaviour and practices by local actors in each community – the agents ultimately responsible for the recovery of community cohesion (p. 156).
The Politics of Social Cohesion in Germany, France and the United Kingdom has two main criticisms of these policies. The first lays out how the imaginary of cohesion coming from political actors invents the social in a specific way and imposes it on the citizenry. In this imaginary, a good society starts to be described as one where ‘people feel a shared responsibility for the rights and welfare of all’ (report by the Council of Europe, ‘Revised Strategy for Social Cohesion’, 2004, cited in p. 50). This idealises post-war Europe and makes a call to action to stop the decay. The second main critique of these policies is normative: they often demand action from those citizens who are precisely the most vulnerable in society. Discourses on social fracture are always made, the author argues, in reference to urban areas where the majority are poorer and of minority backgrounds. Placing the responsibility for improving the quality of social life on these individuals, while removing from the state explicit duties of action, puts the burden on the most vulnerable groups of society of being accountable for the ideal goal desired by the strongest members in it.
This normative critique is theoretically compelling, and intuitively appealing. Indeed, once governments and political actors encourage a social imaginary based on citizens caring for one another, the highest load falls on those who have the least favourable conditions for doing so. However, while the book has an empirical orientation in tracing the roots of social cohesion in public discourse, it refrains from actually showing how this was the case, and what consequences it might have had, in any of the three cases. In fact, in all countries the social cohesion imaginary is said to have been eventually abandoned, either after its usage as discursive justification for social reforms (in France and Germany), or after a traumatic experience shifted the perception of what constituted actual social threats (the 2005 London bombings in the UK). Dobbernack does a very fine job of tracing the roots of the concept in each case and showing how it entered political discourse and policy-making. However, the reader is left wondering exactly what toll the implementation of these policies had on the vulnerable groups which were supposed to be affected by it. Taking the British example, we see that community cohesion was put forward as a solution to riots happening in minority areas in some urban regions. Nevertheless, besides the idea of activation permeating these official reports, there is little evidence that, in the end, this amounted to consequences on the ground.
As important as the rise of social activation imaginaries through social cohesion is the demise of this discourse in the three countries in question. And, at the end of the book, this point is left in need of more thorough explanation. As mentioned, in EU policy-making and research, social cohesion had been a common topic for decades. Several EU documents make reference to it either as a trend towards which the region is advancing, or as a desirable goal to be attained through its policies. It has become limited, especially after the financial crisis brought more urgent concerns to the table, but can still be found in the Council's rhetoric, as mentioned by Dobbernack (p. 178). In the cases analysed, however, the social cohesion discourses were a much more ephemeral phenomenon. They were usually associated with electoral politics by one of the political forces, and lasted less long than these single political actors’ terms in office. In France and the UK, cohésion sociale and community cohesion had been abandoned before Chirac and New Labour left power.
The major issue at which this hints, ultimately, is that it is unconvincing that ‘social cohesion’ is a relevant analytical category for these cases. What we observe, in the end, is that the only common trend among the three countries analysed is actually social activation. Social cohesion is but one form through which social activation has been promoted in Europe. This leaves the question, which Dobbernack poses in his conclusions, of whether it is still relevant to study social cohesion after its demise (p. 178). The author's answer is affirmative. For him, social cohesion represented the kind of discourse adopted by actors promoting social activation in the face of perceived social crisis and decline. This means that it can be brought back, perhaps under other terms, to promote other sorts of activation when facing new perceived or constructed social issues.
If that is the case, however, then the actual relevant analytical category is social activation, which preceded cohesion in practice, and has remained alive longer. It is part of the political discourse on the European financial crisis, for example, that indebted states and, importantly, their populations must be willing to do more in order to get out of their economic problems. We do not depend on social cohesion for engaging in discourses on activation. Now, this would be an innocuous issue if the only question were that of naming. It would be possible simply to say that, well, the three countries analysed were three examples of how social cohesion was used for activation. The further problem is that, if activation is the single topic connecting the three, then cohesion might not have been centrally relevant even in these scenarios to begin with. Let us consider, for example, the accounted experiences of Germany and the UK.
In Germany, Bürgergesellschaft was primarily economic. According to its own discourse, the country had stagnated due to an anachronistic corporatist welfare state, and citizens should become more active in order to promote economic growth. They should change a culture of being dependent on state funds. Therefore, policies to call for action, for example, from recipients of unemployment benefits, started to be enacted. The British experience, in its turn, had nothing to do with economics: it was about ethnic integration and multiculturalism. Second, the cause of social crisis was not seen as the welfare state, but precisely the earlier demise of the welfare state through unbridled individualism under successive Conservative administrations. New Labour charged Thatcher's ideology with having eroded social ties in Britain. Her ideology, however, had also been one of social activation. Moreover, it was one which called for individuals to act and care for themselves, in order to overcome economic stagnation presented as caused by a bloated welfare state. If anything, this was an activation experience closer to that seen in Germany than the community cohesion example used by Dobbernack.
Social cohesion, as its students have already noticed, is another of a series of social-scientific terms to have multiple definitions, not always with much overlap between one another. This book illustrates how it has been used differently in distinct contexts and how, in the three cases analysed, it functioned as little more than a rhetorical device to an actual call for social activation. Jan Dobbernack tells an important story, going deeply into how governments have constructed social crises and imposed certain declinist social imaginaries, which had as their solution an ‘active society’ discourse used to justify their policies. It is a relevant contribution to understanding, both from academic and policy perspectives, the uses of cohesion imaginaries.