Description

Building on Green and Janmaat's previous work on education, equality and social cohesion, this book, now in paperback, analyses the various mechanisms that hold different societies together and how these are withstanding the strains of the current economic crisis. In an original, and highly interdisciplinary, mixed method approach, drawing on evidence from historical sociology, political science and political economy, Green and Janmaat identify four major traditions of social cohesion in developed western and east Asian societies, each with specific institutional and cultural foundations. An extensive statistical analysis of contemporary administrative and attitudinal data for over 30 countries demonstrates that there are still distinctive 'regimes of social cohesion' in 'liberal, ' 'social market' and 'social democratic' countries and that they achieve social bonding in quite different ways. As the crisis of globalization unfolds in the wake of the global financial crisis, social cohesion in each regime is vulnerable at different points.