Contemporary societies, globalization and social cohesion
By Danijela Vuković Ćalasan, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences at the University of Montenegro
Only a cohesive society is a long-term stable society
Contemporary societies face a challenge of ensuring the social cohesion. In order for a society to be held together and to be socially cohesive enough, all those elements that integrate and connect its members must be stronger than disintegrating potentials, which can come both from outside and within.
“There are no completely cohesive societies in practice, nor is something like that possible to expect. However, this does not diminish the need for all socio-political actors to focus their efforts on maximising the degree of cohesiveness, in order to ensure the long-term stability and successful dealing with challenges of the modern age.”
Understanding its characterstics well is crucial for detecting the factors that in one context weaken or potentially strengthen the social cohesion. At the same time, it also implies a clear insight in the globalisation processes, their activities and ways they manifest in a certain national-state context with all its historical, cultural, economic, political and other specificities.
Hence, our societies and we, as individuals, function in the contexts created by the globalisation processes in different dimensions, and that is something that has been quite often overlooked in dealing with individual, local and national problems and challenges. No dimension is spared from such influence. The economic, political, cultural, identity, ecological and other dimensions of society’s and state’s life, are directly being impacted by the global processes and events in these areas.
Successful management of new risks is becoming significant in a process of strengthening the social cohesion
If we were to look for a basic characteristic of the mentioned processes, it would be contradiction and not only in the way they work, but also in the consequences they cause. On the one hand, these are the processes that homogenise, unify and connect. At the same time, they often cause the opposite tendencies, which are reflected in disintegration, fragmentation, separation and strengthening of everything that is particular and different, that represents disintegration of classical forms of political connection and togetherness. The transforming and contradictory impact of these processes actualises the social cohesion issue.
“New risks, coming from different dimensions of social life, are immanent to the modern civilisation, which accumulates potentials for self-endangerment.”
Climate change and irresponsible exploitation of natural resources, which are being depleted to the extreme, as well as global risks in the field of security and health, present a challenge to modern states to successfully deal with them. It is reflected in increasing the degree of resistance to risk, but also in distribution of risks that will be perceived as fair by the members of a political community.
Successful risk management in a specific nation-state context, becomes one of the most important challenges for modern societies and a precondition for achieving the social cohesion. A risk society creates new antagonisms, but it also produces new forms of connection and unity. According to Beck, one of the most significant theorists of risk society, new antagonisms are created between those who produce risk and those who are affected by risk, as well as between those who produce definitions of risk and us who consume them. Due to the complexity of modern risks and the fact that they present a potential danger to most of humanity, Beck implies that for assessing their destructive potentials and explaining their actions, the “sensory organs of science” and the media are necessary.
“Both science and the media seem to be very significant actors in the risk society. Without science and the media, most of the new risks would not be visible.”
On the one hand, scientific research provides a certain assessment of risk, the degree of its destructive power, as well as an assessment of potentially negative consequences that may occur for society as a whole or its individual parts. On the other hand, the media make risk visible to society and can significantly increase or reduce the fear of risk.
Fear, Trust, Solidarity
Given that fear is what sells the media, it is very important for the media to respect the professional standards while reporting on the risks and danger posed by them and be aware of their possible impact on population. It is necessary to resist the logic of profit.
At the same time, Sigmund Bauman calls such fear a “low-intensity fear”, one that is not intense and has a more character of mood and expected danger. Fear potentially erodes trust, so that in parallel with the loss of trust in another, the need for risk insurance increases. Trust is one of the very important elements of social cohesion and it is present in both its vertical and horizontal dimensions. In the first dimension, it refers to the institutions and policy decisions makers.
“The cohesive society implies that significant number of citizens’ trust in those who make decisions and manage risks, trying to distribute them in a socially acceptable and legitimate way.”
In the horizontal dimension, it is all about trust in other individuals and social actors, and it can also concern relations between ethno-cultural communities, as well. It is very important, from the perspective of achieving social cohesion, whether the ethno-cultural communities are getting closed in relation to other ethnic and national communities or interactions and exchanges increase and social networks, that go beyond an ethno-cultural affiliation, are getting stronger. Also, in order to achieve the social cohesion to a satisfactory extent, it is important to determine whether there is an increase in ethnic distance, that is, erosion of trust and perceiving the other.
If we talk about the risk society, trust in the horizontal dimension is a precondition for the existence of solidarity, which is another very important element of the social cohesion. The events related to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has the character of a globally present risk, have shown the importance of solidarity both within the individual nation-state contexts and between countries. Although in debates on social cohesion and risk society, solidarity is very often in the background, it has become clear that it has to be strengthened in order for a society to successfully face the challenge of new, global risks.
“From the aspect of achieving social cohesion in a specific context, the active role of the state in correcting the distribution of risks is very important.”
Namely, risks tend to intensify the class antagonisms in a sense that they are accumulated by those who are at the bottom of the economic pyramid and who are already in a bad economic position. Successful risk management, which would have a positive impact on social cohesion, would mean protecting the most vulnerable and the poorest parts of the population, in order to reduce the destructive consequences of risk actions. In addition to the specific state aid, it would also mean activities to encourage empathy and help of the wider social community.
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Danijela Vuković Ćalasan is an Associate Professor at Faculty of Political Science at the University of Montenegro. She teaches courses on Political Theory, Globalization, Ethnicity and Ethnic Relation and Political Culture. Her scientific fields of interests are ethnic and national relations and identities, globalization and contemporary political theories (including theory and politics of multiculturalism). She did a research at the Political Science Institute, University of Vienna. She was a visiting professor within ERASMUS+ programm at Opole University, Poland and University of Beira Interior, Covilhã, Portugal. Vuković-Ćalasan is the author of a monography and several scientific papers.
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this blog post are those of the individual involved and do not reflect official policy or position of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Montenegro and its Diplomatic Academy.