Project description
Understanding social cohesion
What keeps societies stable and helps people cooperate? Social cohesion is a key part of this, but its meaning and role are not well understood. Many studies focus on how groups work together towards shared goals, but they often ignore how individuals with different goals can still cooperate effectively. This gap in understanding limits how we address social stability and conflict. In this context, the ERC-funded GLUE project aims to clarify what social cohesion is and how it shapes the social world. Through descriptive and critical approaches, GLUE enriches the understanding of social dynamics, expands social ontology’s scope and proposes strategies to address social destabilisation. Ultimately, the project aims to enhance frameworks for fostering social stability.
Objective
Social cohesion is a key concept in how we think about the social world. And yet, we have a very poor conceptual understanding of what social cohesion is, how it relates to other social phenomena, and which role it plays in maintaining social order and facilitating cooperation. To date, this challenge has not been taken up by social ontology. Contemporary social ontology primarily focuses on understanding the nature of collective cooperation in which people coalesce around a joint purpose in such a way that we can attribute attitudes and actions to them as a collective rather than as an aggregation of individuals. But social cohesion is not only a function of collective cooperation but also the extent to which a social system enables mutually sustaining cooperation among agents with separate goals. Call this converging cooperation.
It seems then that social cohesion is a key concept in how we think about the social world that lies beyond the scope of social ontology in its current form. Responding to this impasse, the aim of the GLUE project is to secure philosophical clarification of the concept of social cohesion and to account for its role in constituting and maintaining the social world.
The primary research questions are:
1) What is social cohesion, and which distinct social phenomenon might it refer to?
2) What are the semantically explanatory relations between (a) social cohesion and (b) the concepts often used in social ontology and the social sciences to account for collective cooperation?
3) How can a clearer account of social cohesion be used to foster social stability?
Combining descriptive, explanatory, and critical approaches to social ontology, GLUE (a) enriches our typology of social dynamics, (b) expands the scope of social ontology beyond collective cooperation, (c) introduces concepts that can help identify and mitigate forms of social destabilisation, and (d) develops a new and integrative research method for social ontology.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-STG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
8000 Aarhus C
Denmark
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.