Cohesive Societies: Scoping Concepts and Priorities

The first phase of the British Academy’s programme of work on Cohesive Societies aims to capture existing work related to social cohesion and five key themes, with a view to undertaking further analysis and developing a programme of events, workshops, briefings and research in phase two.

The five themes of the programme are:

1. Cultural memory and tradition

2. Social economy

3. Meaning and mechanisms of social responsibility

4. Identity and belonging

5. Care for the future

To explore the key themes of the Cohesive Societies programme, the British Academy commissioned two landscape reviews.

The Literature Review surveys a wide range of literature across humanities and social science disciplines to build an up-to-date picture of academic writing relevant to societal cohesion and the five themes.

The Policy Review maps out current policy relevant to societal cohesion and the five themes at different levels of government in the UK.

The findings of these landscape reviews were presented at a Scoping Seminar held at the British Academy on 30 January 2019. This report summarises the discussion at the Scoping Seminar.