Conclusion: Beyond Cohesion?

Abstract

This book has examined how images of society were brought into public circulation, entered political agendas and facilitated the adoption of new requirements of behavioural adequacy and active conduct. Although agendas of social cohesion responded to different circumstances, their common thrust was to request exertions of activity that would produce — the argument goes — much-needed social glue. These requirements, and how they were placed on the doorstep of particular social groups, indicate a selectiveness that is evident in all three cases. It is a shared feature of the different agendas investigated here that they conceptualized social spaces where particular individuals and groups, no matter what their respective capacities or resources, were asked to aspire to forms of conduct that were said to safeguard cohesion.