Diversity and Social Cohesion

In the last few years there has been a growing tendency on the part of some social sciences researchers to adopt a broad definition of diversity (including, for instance, not only cultural values, but also gender, age, socio-economic status, and sexual orientation) and to use this term as a synonym of "the other", the non-ego. This fact has been particularly helpful both from an epistemological and an educational point of view. The relationship with diversity is a basic and continuous aspect of human experience, as the self develops through its relations with others. Thus,the meaning and the "management" of diversity are closely associated with issues like social cohesion, social and political conflict, and social/educational interventions aiming to foster social cohesion. A positive and real social cohesion in an ingroup rests on the acknowledgment of and the dialogue with the diversities of the various members of the ingroup itself, which inevitably results in the ingroup members' becoming familiar with and getting used to diversity in general. This means that diversity relating to the outgroup and to the various members of the outgroup is understood and accepted, given that diversity among the members of the ingroup is also understood and accepted. This way, cross-cultural relations within an ingroup and between the ingroup and the outgroups are fostered. That is to say, social cohesion within the ingroup is automatically extended and generalized to the relations with outgroups, which contradicts some traditional assumptions in social psychology research according to which social cohesion in the ingroup is accompanied by its hostility toward the outgroup. It goes without saying that not all kinds of diversities should be accepted. All diversities should be analyzed and evaluated, which means that some diversities can be accepted, while others should be rejected (like, for example, the diversity of a Nazi). Indeed, social cohesion should be grounded in what we might define as a " well reasoned analysis of diversities". At the psychological level, human beings' education must be fundamentally based on the awareness that at any given time the self, far from being immutable, is an entity which needs to be understood and, in case, modified as a result both of the continuous contact with others, who are inevitably diverse, and of the analysis and understanding of this contact. One of the most significant results of a research study we conducted in Italian state schools on youths' (aged 15-19) attitudes toward multiculturalism with the use of focus groups was the realization that most of our participants have lost or have never even experienced a feeling of general social cohesion (at the level of the nation, home town, or community at large), this fact being especially related to their lost confidence on public institutions and especially on political institutions. Their view can be very synthetically summarized in some participants' phrases, like "the law is wrong, the whole system is wrong", "there is no control, no security service", "the Italian state is weak", "politicians are Mafiosi", "where is justice?", and "political parties are not reliable". Besides, our data indicate that not only participants' perception of social cohesion is nonexistent or is only very partially existent, but also social cohesion itself is actually non-existent or is only very partially existing, since a real social cohesion in a group implies on the part of the members of the group a good knowledge of the various aspects of the group itself. Instead, participants' views were often characterized by a certain degree of misinformation regarding significant aspects of present Italian social reality. Frequent examples of misinformation were, for instance,