Social Cohesion

In contemporary multicultural Britain, the concept of social cohesion has been a pressing priority for not only politicians and sociologists but also for the various British ethnic minorities. Race riots like those of 2001 in Northern Britain and the events of 7/7 in London (2005) put into question the allegiances of different British ethnic populations. They equally shed light on the real or perceived lack of social and cultural communication between the established British host population and the British ethnic and immigrant communities. Hence, social cohesion came to the fore as the new jargon of governance in contemporary Britain. This article analyzes on the concept of social cohesion and its applicability within an officially declared multicultural community like that of Great Britain. The concept will be reviewed, defined and approached from different liberal political perspectives while paying special attention to the British context. Bhikhu Parekh’s conception of the different theoretical approaches to the issue of social cohesion that are pertinent to liberal capitalist societies in general and the British context, in particular, is investigated. The aim of this study is to highlight the complexity of the normative accounts of the political scientists regarding the challenges that face multicultural Britain in coming to terms with its endeavor of creating “unity within diversity”. The 2002 White Paper and security speech of David Cameron (2011) political discourses are analyzed and evaluated to decipher how they understood national identity in relation to cultural diversity and social cohesion.

Purpose - Rural municipality, as an organization for sustainable rural development, is supposed to be a public entity for rural administration supervised by villagers through the Islamic Council. Capital inputs are vital for achieving the best performance of rural municipalities in order to realize the development in rural areas. The main purpose of this article was to investigate the effect of social capital on the performance of rural people. Design/methodology/approach - The study area of this research is located in the villages of Sonqor and Kolyai Counties in Kermanshah Province. The statistical population of this study is 180 villages with rural municipalities, and 123 samples were determined by Cochran's formula. 28 items for rural performance of rural municipalities and 30 items for social capital were utilized to design the questionnaire. Cronbach's alpha method was used for the reliability, and experts’ opinions were used for to determine the validity. The correlation for the collected data was analyzed by Pearson Correlation Coefficient. Finding - The findings confirm that there is a significant relationship between the level of social capital and the performance of the rural municipalities. Among the indicator of social capital, social participation has the highest correlation and social trust has the lowest correlation with the performance of rural municipalities. The variables entered in the regression equation were able to explain 32% of the variance of the dependent variable. In addition, among them, the dependent variable is affected by the social participation at the highest and the social trust at the lowest.