Social Cohesion and the Challenge of Globalization

Since the mid-1990s, there has been a rapid growth of interest in the issue of social cohesion by academics and policy professionals and in public commentary. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) economist Michael Woolcock (2013) presents citation data relating to social cohesion for the period 1985 to 2009, along with data for a number of closely associated concepts, including “social capital,” “human capital,” “social exclusion,” and “civil society.” The number of citations relating specifically to social cohesion increases markedly from the early 1990s, and particularly from the mid-1990s, from a low base of fewer than 1,000 to 10,000 by 2009. The data also show a dramatic increase in citations to civil society and human capital, from a low base in the early 1990s to a peak of nearly 35,000 citations for civil society and to around 27,000 citations for human capital in 2005–2006.