Social Cohesion Contested. D.Swain and P.Urban, 2024. Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield. xvii + 137 pp, $95.00 (hb)

Social cohesion has become a frequently used concept in social research and technical political discourse.It is commonly described as a necessary feature of social life for trust, cooperation, solidarity, and the welfare state, with some political theorists evoking social cohesion as a necessary condition for distributive justice.Readers who have encountered the term social cohesion likely did so in its negative form, portrayed as frail and decaying, vulnerable to external pressures, like immigration or interference, and internal risks, like social discontent and tribalism.How we problematise and address those pressures in political theory is sensitive to our understanding of social cohesion.However, Swain and Urban's latest book invites readers to take a critical, even dismissive stance on the concept of social cohesion.It challenges its theoretical usefulness, arguing that it obscures and masks values and interests under the veil of scientific authority, making it scientifically unsound, de-politicising, and uncritically legitimating select social policies.The book offers an insightful critique while tracing the conceptual evolution in social sciences and institutional use over the last three decades.The book exposes how demands by political institutions have moulded interdisciplinary research on social cohesion.The result has been a concept that serves as a metric that is both measurable by social research and subject to policy monitoring and influence.However, the authors argue that, in their pursuit of an operational concept ready for policy intervention, researchers have obscured the concept and entangled it with problematic ontological and normative assumptions.Moreover, although seemingly neutral, prominent accounts of social cohesion commit to specific values and assumptions, including individualism, economic efficiency, and nationalism.The first two chapters provide the groundwork for conceptual analysis.Chapter 1 specifies how researchers respond to policymakers' demands for an operationalisable concept and presents a typology for different approaches.Chapter 2 criticises common approaches 'not so much in their explanatory value but the way in which they interact with, shape, and are shaped by policy concerns' (p.38).Prominent theories puzzlingly portray social cohesion at the same time as an evident good in itself and a tool to achieve other goods.Thus, it becomes 'normatively overdetermined' by assuming the value of social cohesion in different ways without substantial justification.The following chapters provide a historical critique of institutional discourse on social cohesion.Chapter 3 tackles the EU and the Council of Europe (CoE).The EU primarily conceives social cohesion in economic terms, often conflating it with labour market inclusion and economic efficiency.In contrast, the CoE portrays social cohesion as essential for welfare and individual wellbeing, while lacking a clear definition of welfare.Ultimately, it devises an ideologically charged understanding of social cohesion that commits to a highly