# 1.4. CONTEXTUALIZING SOCIAL COHESION WITHIN RELATED CONCEPTS

In describing relationships across society, social cohesion is related to other aspects of socio-political dynamics, including social capital, social resilience, and social contracts. In this section, we examine definitions of these concepts and how they relate to social cohesion.

## SOCIAL CAPITAL

Social capital refers to the norms and networks that enable people to act collectively (Woolcock and Narayan, 2000). While often used synonymously with social cohesion, it is broadly recognized as a critical subcomponent of social cohesion. Initial conceptualizations of social capital focused on its positive manifestations in communities – such as local and civic organizations, where a higher density represented higher levels of social capital. The networks view stressed horizontal and vertical community linkages, while with acknowledging some of the possible negative aspects of group dynamics. (for example strong intra community but weak intercommunity ties could encourage narrow sectarian interests). The institutional view considered that political, legal and institutional environments influence community networks. Finally, the synergy view, which integrates the institutional and networks views, acknowledged that states, firms, and communities are not singlehandedly capable of promoting broad-based sustainable development, and that complementarities and partnerships forged within and across them are therefore critical. This view is based on the concept of complementarity or mutually supportive relations, facilitated through supportive overarching formal and informal institutions and embeddedness or the extent of ties connecting citizens and public officials.

A key distinction between social capital and social cohesion is that social capital generally focuses more on the level of individuals, with an emphasis on networks between and across individuals and the strength of these ties, whereas social cohesion focuses more on society-level manifestations (King et al., 2010; Dayton-Johnson, 2003). Social capital includes an individual’s sacrifices made in an effort to cooperate with others. In contrast, social cohesion is a societal characteristic that depends on social capital – more socially cohesive societies will include communities with higher manifestations of social capital – both horizontally and vertically (Oxoby, 2009). Nonetheless, the precise boundaries between social capital and social cohesion are blurry, and have at times been used interchangeably (Mansuri, et al., 2004), including by the World Bank (Beauvais, 2002).

The concept of bonding, bridging, and linking used to organize this paper’s discussion of the different dimensions of social cohesion, was first introduced in the context of describing different forms of social capital (Woolcock et al., 2000; Putnam, 2000). In its original usage, bonding social capital refers to trusting and cooperative relations between members of a network who see themselves as being similar. Bridging social capital, by contrast, comprises relations of respect and mutuality between people who know that they are not alike in some socio-demographic sense. Woolcock (2004) further refines the category of bridging, by introducing the subset of linking – defined as norms of respect and networks of trusting relationships between people who are interacting across explicit, formal, or institutionalized power or authority gradients in society.

Over time, this conceptualization of social capital theory has expanded to social cohesion. Colletta et al. (2000) use the concepts of bonding and bridging not only in the context of social capital, but also in the context of broader social relations, using case studies from Rwanda and Cambodia to understand the nexus between violent conflict, social capital and social cohesion and identify social capital as a subset of social cohesion, drawing from the work of Kawachi et al. (2000). King et al. (2010) draw a contrast between interpersonal social 10 | P a g e