Aruqaj Bujar
Institut Für Soziologie, Arbeitsbereich Makrosoziologie, Freie Universität Berlin, Garystr. 55, Raum 314, 14195 Berlin, Germany.
Soc Indic Res. 2023 May 25:1-37. doi: 10.1007/s11205-023-03110-z.
The core sociological subject of 'social cohesion' (hereafter SC) has re-emerged as a key concept in the social sciences. On the one hand, SC is thought to be influenced by a society's degree of inequalities and the quality of its welfare state. On the other hand, SC is thought to be instrumental in its own right to other factors such as economic growth, institutional quality, and individual well-being. In recent years, a few attempts have been made to measure SC empirically. Many current indices have not been sufficiently theoretically substantiated, and do not consider the importance of different 'social levels' when explaining and measuring SC as both cause and effect of other correlates. Very often, SC is simply defined as a 'social quality' or a quality of a collective. As a result, measures are often aggregate macro-indices leading to a loss of the information base of any social 'units' below the macro-societal-level. Contributing to this important methodological debate, this paper provides a conceptual reformulation of SC. Hence, when assessing SC based on a multi-dimensional index, it is insightful and feasible to evaluate both its internal variation as well as its holistic validity. In fact, it is proposed that these two aspects of measurement stand in direct relationship to one-another. The paper starts out with a discussion of SC as a 'social fact' in the Durkheimian sense. In addition, three bridging propositions on the measurement of SC are advanced: (a) SC as outcome or consequence at the level of individual attitudes and orientations ('micro'); (b) SC as degree of dissimilarity and presence of latent conflict within a society at the level of salient social categories ('meso'), and (c) SC as predictor, social determinant and hence antecedent at the societal-level ('macro'). Using all rounds of the European Social Survey with a very large sample size, the advantages of this approach are illustrated by singling-out the important link between socio-economic inequalities, social cohesion and individual subjective well-being in a path of action.
“社会凝聚力”（以下简称SC）这一核心社会学主题已再度成为社会科学中的关键概念。一方面，人们认为社会凝聚力受到一个社会的不平等程度及其福利国家质量的影响。另一方面，社会凝聚力本身被认为对经济增长、制度质量和个人福祉等其他因素具有重要作用。近年来，已经有人尝试对社会凝聚力进行实证测量。目前许多指标在理论上并未得到充分论证，并且在将社会凝聚力解释和衡量为其他相关因素的因果关系时，没有考虑到不同“社会层面”的重要性。通常，社会凝聚力仅仅被定义为一种“社会品质”或集体的品质。因此，相关测量往往是综合宏观指标，导致宏观社会层面以下任何社会“单位”的信息基础丧失。为这场重要的方法论辩论做出贡献，本文对社会凝聚力进行了概念重构。因此，在基于多维指标评估社会凝聚力时，评估其内部差异以及整体有效性既具有启发性又切实可行。事实上，有人提出测量的这两个方面彼此直接相关。本文首先讨论了涂尔干意义上作为“社会事实”的社会凝聚力。此外，还提出了关于社会凝聚力测量的三个衔接命题：（a）社会凝聚力是个体态度和取向层面（“微观”）的结果或后果；（b）社会凝聚力是突出社会类别层面（“中观”）社会内部的差异程度和潜在冲突的存在；（c）社会凝聚力是社会层面（“宏观”）的预测因素、社会决定因素以及因此的前提条件。通过选取样本量非常大的欧洲社会调查的所有轮次，在一个行动路径中突出社会经济不平等、社会凝聚力和个体主观幸福感之间的重要联系，说明了这种方法的优点。
