Exclusionary Cohesion? Rethinking the Nexus between Social Cohesion and Xenophobic Violence in South

ACMS senior researcher and co-director Dr Jean Pierre Misago examines the relationship between social cohesion and xenophobic violence in SA.

This article examines the relationship between social cohesion and xenophobic violence in South Africa. It challenges the conventional wisdom that social cohesion is inherently a panacea for violence by demonstrating that, under certain conditions, social cohesion, enacted through collective efficacy, drives xenophobic violence rather than preventing it. It argues that intersections between migration-induced diversity, severe socio-economic deprivation, and local governance deficits transform pervasive bonding cohesion into “exclusionary cohesion,” under which, aspects of social cohesion become drivers of xenophobic violence. It makes a three-fold scholarly contribution: i) it introduces the concepts of “exclusionary cohesion” and “deprivation-induced cohesion” (an extension of Weber’s ‘social closure’) that capture the essence of aspects of social cohesion making it a driver of xenophobic violence; ii) it provides empirical evidence that supports calls to reconceptualise social cohesion as its conventional understandings become increasingly anachronistic; and iii) it extends the debate on the social cohesion – violence nexus by beginning to identify factors linking specific forms of cohesion to specific forms of violence.

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