Diversity as a Source of Cohesion
Delia Baldassarri and Maria Abascal recently published an essay at Science on “Diversity and prosocial behavior” that explores how diverse, multi-ethnic societies may achieve social cohesion. Seeing clear overlap with our book, we were delighted they agreed to discuss common themes and help us identify important topics for further research. Delia and Maria challenge us to think of diversity as a source of cohesion rather than division. Read on to learn how. Welcome to the blog, Delia and Maria!
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Cyrus & Elisabeth: You make an important point that social cohesion or division outcomes depend “as much on microinteractions on the ground as on the economic and political institutions that govern these processes” and we would like to ask more about the compatibility of the mechanisms you explore and discuss with our work.
Maria & Delia: Thank you for the opportunity to share our work with your readers! Our research really complements yours. In our review, we focus on micro-level dynamics, with the literatures on social contact, discrimination, and immigrant integration in mind. When we do consider macro-level processes, like economic interdependence, we do so thinking about its capacity to foster intergroup contact through purposeful economic exchanges. It was therefore very stimulating for us to learn from your book about the effects of ethnic recognition (and non-recognition). We also appreciate your effort to clarify how leaders engineer institutions strategically, as well as the role of demographic factors and power configurations.
A second complementarity concerns the nature of “diversity.” We review literature that has focused mostly on Western Europe and North America, and we point out that diversity in these settings stems from recent immigration alongside longstanding racial and ethnic minorities, like Black Americans and Native Americans in the United States. Indeed, in other work, we make the case that many of the claims that this literature makes about the effects of diversity are actually about responses to immigrant and minority shares. Your study, by contrast, is mostly centered on countries with multiple, native ethnic groups; in precisely these settings, we believe it is appropriate to talk about “diversity” rather than group shares. Interestingly, in both cases ethnic cleavages are politically salient: in Western societies because non-White populations are recent or currently growing; in your case because violent ethnic conflicts have taken place in recent times.
Can you explain to readers the two cohesion-promoting processes -- social differentiation and economic interdependence -- that you highlight in your review? What are micro-level mechanisms through which these can contribute to cohesion? We list the study of micro-level mechanisms as a key “to do” in our conclusion, and your analysis appears especially useful in this regard.
We start with the observation, which goes back to Émile Durkheim, that solidarity and cooperation in complex, heterogeneous societies stem from interdependence and the division of labor, rather than from close-knight ties or cultural similarity. In particular, we argue that cooperation in diverse societies may be facilitated by both social differentiation and by economic interdependence. Social differentiation, refers to the growing array of identities and affiliations people hold in complex societies. (Think about Marissa, a hypothetical Black woman, who is straight, cisgender, married, a lawyer, a millennial, a DC native, a runner, and so on.) When these identities and affiliations cut across each other––that is, when some but not all lawyers are Black and (equivalently) when some but not all Black people are lawyers––differentiation can promote cohesion across ethnic boundaries through several micro-level mechanisms. One of these is by promoting contact and common interests with people from different racial or ethnic groups. Marissa, for example, will interact and have interests in common with people who are lawyers (Black and not Black); she will also interact and have interests in common with people who are Black (lawyers and not). In addition, when identities and affiliations cut across each other, another mechanism comes into play: other people have a harder time framing encounters in “us versus them” terms. This is true even for people who have little in common with Marissa, e.g., those who are neither Black nor lawyers, but might share her passion for running. Moreover, they may also be more likely to treat Marissa as an individual because she subverts their categorical stereotypes of Black people, lawyers, etc. In sum, differences, rather than sameness, can be a basis for social cohesion, when those differences are configured in certain ways. In fact, and somewhat counterintuitively, one can demonstrate formally that when lines of differentiation are cross cutting, as they increase in number, the overall outcome is greater integration, not division.
The second factor, economic interdependence, refers to productive intergroup interactions that emerge from market exchanges. The core idea is that in complex societies people cannot easily satisfy their material needs within their familial, ingroup networks, and thus must turn to outgroup members. We do not deny that people may retain a tendency toward ingroup favoritism, as shown by a large social psychology literature. At the same time, however, we posit that economic interdependence has the effect of pushing people outside the boundaries of their group. This makes it possible for them to experience mutually beneficial interactions with diverse others. Among other things, adopting this perspective means embracing the idea that prosociality emerges from cooperation in strategic encounters. This is different from the kind of ingroup solidarity that glues homogeneous communities together.
One mechanism for building social cohesion in diverse contexts, which you discuss, is the formation of a "superordinate" (perhaps national) identity. To some, ethnic identities are hindrances or even antithetical to a superordinate identity. We reason, though, that it would be difficult to establish a superordinate identity for a country if one or more groups feel like they are excluded by the state.
In your view, to what extent could ethnic recognition strategies be a way to make people feel included and thereby increase subscription to a superordinate identity? Or, by contrast, do you think that strategies that reference ethnic identity mostly hinder the formation of a superordinate identity?
Social differentiation can also promote social cohesion when it enables identification with higher-level (“superordinate”) categories that span ethnic and racial boundaries. As you note, national categories are one possibility. Take the category “American”: if Americans are commonly thought to be White, Black, Latino, Asian, Native American, etc., then research suggests that getting people to identify as American may lead them to be more equitable to ethnic and racial outgroups. However, this is not a perfect (or easy) solution for two reasons. The first is that superordinate identification can trade (a) favoritism toward one type of group (subnational ethnic and racial identities) for another (nationalistic), and (b) division at one level (subnational) for another. The second reason is that superordinate categories need to be perceived as inclusive (i.e., Whites, Blacks, etc. need to be thought of as Americans, and ideally, equally so); these categories do not only need to be formally inclusive (i.e., Whites, Blacks, etc. are officially counted as “Americans”). Historical and present-day policies and rhetoric can undermine this perception (think about the birthers who vocally questioned Barack Obama’s citizenship). In contrast, when governments engage in ethnic recognition, they can signal that diverse groups belong to, and have a stake in, the collective community.
As you suggest, not everyone agrees that strategies that recognize ethnic and racial identities can promote cohesion. Some think these strategies are a hindrance, by default. That is the position of some government officials and intellectuals in France today, extending a long-running debate about whether to collect racial statistics and, more broadly, about how to incorporate immigrants and visible minorities. These questions have no simple answers, but, in line with your findings, we think strategies of ethnic recognition can promote cohesion under certain conditions.
As a final note, the claim that the mere act of identifying with an ethnic or racial group precludes identification with and commitment to a higher-level, national community has been tremendously harmful to immigrants and minorities throughout history. It is also untrue. Research on later-generation immigrants in the United States, for example, shows that they do not see their ethnic identities and their American identities as being at odds, and many of those who retain ethnic ties and identities also identify strongly as Americans.
Finally, you note that “diversity, as both a concept and measure, treats groups interchangeably; a community that is 80% white and 20% Black is as diverse as one that is 80% Black and 20% white.” You go on to make the point that “where there is differentiation, there is hierarchy.”
In our work, we find that both the adoption and effects of recognition depend on the ethnic power configuration, which we define in terms of whether power is in the hands of minority or plurality group leaders. This is one way to distinguish different forms of hierarchy, although by no means the only way. Do social differentiation and economic interdependence operate in different ways depending on how they relate to a society’s power configuration? What would you recommend to policy-makers in regards to designing strategies that are sensitive to different forms of diversity and hierarchical power configurations?
In our view, one of the major challenges to studying the effects of diversity in Western societies stems precisely from the overlap, or “consolidation,” between ethnicity, on the one hand, and resources and power, on the other. In the United States, for example, native-born Whites are, on average, more affluent and better-represented in political institutions than non-Whites or immigrants. As a result, it is hard to assess whether ethnically heterogeneous communities have lower levels of trust and public goods provision because they lack homogeneity or because economic resources and political resources are relatively scarce in communities where non-Whites and immigrants are concentrated.
One way to deal with this is to home in on societies where ethnic groups that are numeric minorities have significant access to resources and power. It is hard, however, to make predictions concerning how society’s power configurations might interact with differentiation and market integration because these same configurations are likely to be deeply intertwined with the distribution of resources across majority and minority groups.
In general, an important thing to keep in mind is that both social differentiation and market integration, under specific circumstances we cover in our review, can promote integration by reducing the salience of ethnic boundaries. Differentiation––in the case of cross-cutting social cleavages––renders ethnicity one of multiple identities that guide interactions and opportunities. Market integration, combined with opportunities for economic mobility, facilitates exchanges across ethnic lines, thereby creating economic interdependencies. The question then becomes whether political leaders have an interest in promoting equality and exchange between groups, or whether they prefer to keep ethnic divisions salient for their political gain. Indeed, ethnic grievances that map into socio-economic and/or territorial divisions are more easily mobilized.
Complementary to the study of recognition strategies, we should also study policies that promote desegregation and market inclusion (starting with education). We would expect recognition to promote peace, and possibly prosperity, when combined with initiatives that weaken, rather than reinforce, ethnicity’s role in determining people’s opportunities and outcomes. Such policies would favor spatial and social desegregation, as well as economic reforms that make markets more interdependent and less stratified.
We suspect that, similar to the recognition puzzle you explore in the book, the leaders of numeric minorities might face an integration puzzle as well: assuming their group’s political power is matched by economic advantages, they would have to be willing to share part of the latter in order to prevent numeric majorities from coalescing around economic and social issues in a way that eventually threatens their hold on political power.
