Drawing on nearly two decades of multi-case and comparative qualitative research, this article examines the relationship between social cohesion and xenophobic violence in South Africa. Echoing emerging scholarship, it challenges the conventional wisdom that social cohesion is inherently a panacea for violence. It demonstrates that, under certain conditions, social cohesion, enacted through collective efficacy, is linked to xenophobic violence, not as a solution but as a driver. The article argues that intersections between migration-induced diversity, severe socio-economic deprivation, and local governance deficits turn existing bonding cohesion into “exclusionary cohesion,” thereby rendering aspects of social cohesion (i.e., social cohesion itself) a driver of xenophobic violence in South Africa. 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’) which 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.
Jean Pierre Misago (Wed,) studied this question.