Regimes of Social Cohesion and Citizenship
Public Lecture by Prof. Dr. Jan Germen Janmaat, University College London
| Date: | 9th October 2024 |
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| Time: | 18:15 - 19:30, an apéritif is offered after the lecture |
| Place: | University of Lucerne, Lecture hall 2 |
Regimes of Social Cohesion and Citizenship
From the very beginning of the social sciences, scholars have been interested in the question what holds societies together. In this lecture, Professor Janmaat examines how scholars have explored this question. How have they conceptualised social cohesion and how have they sought to measure and explain it? He will argue that theoretical, multidimensional and utopian understandings of the concept predominate and that relatively little attention has been paid to empirically observable manifestations of social cohesion, let alone to factors that might explain possible differences between societies in their social cohesion profiles. He will then continue by contrasting two very different theoretical approaches to the concept – the universalist and particularist approach – and will examine the evidence for the different patterns of social cohesion they predict. Especially the particularist approach is novel as it suggests that societies do not only differ in the level but also – or primarily - in the nature of social cohesion. This approach is particularly evident in the study by Green and Janmaat (2011), who drew on Esping Andersen’s Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism to identify and find evidence for a liberal, a conservative and a social-democratic regime of social cohesion. They found these regimes to predominate in the English-speaking, German/Dutch speaking and Scandinavian countries, respectively. Professor Janmaat will explain what the methodological issues are in exploring qualitatively different «regimes» of social cohesion and which methods can be used in this respect. He will also make an excursion to attitudes on citizenship, as an important component of social cohesion, to investigate whether «regimes» can also be detected for such attitudes. Professor Janmaat finds that support for the universalist or the particularist perspective depends on the vantage point: analysis on the global scale supports the former, with an identifiable syndrome of social cohesion / citizenship attitudes being correlated with indicators of socio-economic development; zooming in on Europe, however, some patterns emerge that correspond to the proposed regimes in the literature. The implications of this for policy and practice will be discussed.
Prof. Dr. Jan Germen Janmaat
Jan Germen Janmaat is Professor of Political Socialization at the Department of Education, Practice and Society, Institute of Education, University College London. With a background in human geography from the University of Amsterdam, his research focuses on nationalism, ethnic conflict, and the role of education in shaping civic values and fostering social cohesion. He is the author of pioneering research on social cohesion. Among other contributions, he co-authored the book Regimes of Social Cohesion with Andy Green, which made significant advances to the study of social cohesion through an original and highly interdisciplinary mixed-methods approach. More recently, his research has focused more closely on the role of education in fostering civic values.
