Towards a Communitarian Integration

Author: Henry Tam

Whenever ‘integration’ is mentioned, there are commonly two polarised reactions. One is to press for uniformity to eliminate whatever differences that have been highlighted. The other is to recoil from any hint of imposed sameness and insist that differences must be left alone.

But those who are keenest to do away with diversity in customs, religions, and beliefs, tend to defend differences in wealth, social status, and political power. Others hold precisely the reverse of those views. In the absence of any universally accepted abstract principle to determine what differences should be eliminated or retained, how are we to go about developing a sense of togetherness in society?

We should start by recognising that there are differences which are not only quite harmless, but add richness to the variety of life, and help with the exploration of new and better options. But where differences can lead to damaging clashes, we need to turn to communitarian integration – to involve people in an informed, empathic manner to reflect on the nature of specific differences, their implications for one another, and ascertain what could be done to address the underlying problem.

Let us look at four areas where communitarian integration can assist. 

First, in the ethical-cultural domain, what are we to do when people cite their different religious, traditional, personal affinities as ground for divergent attitudes regarding what they praise or condemn, seek to make obligatory or rule out as unacceptable? No group can just declare they are the embodiment of the ‘whole nation’, the ‘one true religion’, the ‘correct culture’, and impose their demands on everyone else. There is no basis for such wild claims which can as arbitrarily be made by other groups. But to suggest people must be left to their own ethical-cultural views would be a mistake as it would open the door to people harassing, insulting, discriminating, denigrating others in the name of ‘that’s our culture/religion’. What is needed is moral leadership to facilitate mutual understanding – to help people see how their attitudes and assumptions may adversely affect each other, and also why certain variations in customs would serve us better than blinkered intolerance. 

Throughout history, moral development advances when people take advantage of opportunities to share their experiences and adapt their outlooks for the sake of more constructive co-existence.

Next we turn to the field of learning. Some traditionalists like to suppose that there is one set of ‘long-held’ beliefs which should be respected, and anyone putting forward different ideas should be made to accept the ‘established truths’. In reality, many beliefs once firmly embraced by a large number of people have long been discarded. Since no one is infallible, anyone’s beliefs can be questioned. Beliefs shape how we behave, and one individual’s mistaken views can cause harm to others. In practice, what constitutes our collective learning comes from a process of connecting, reconciling, testing the assertions and doctrines that are in circulation, and through critical, evidence-based, exchanges people get to see over time what stands up to scrutiny and what needs to be revised. Nothing should be shielded from critical discussion because it is proclaimed by a forceful individual. All beliefs, if they are to inform action that affects others, must be open to objective, uncoerced, systematic examinations. Consequently, we get to discover what merits our reliance, what requires further consideration, and what should be rejected.

Thirdly, we have hierarchical differences in organisations. Looking across and within the many organisations in society, we see people with different status, power, pay, working conditions, etc. None of these organisations can function well if everyone in them has to do the same work and get the same pay regardless of their ability. But that does not mean that those who have secured the top management positions should be able to give others greater demands and lower rewards irrespective of the impact that has on people. Communitarian integration would require deliberative reviews at two levels. At the intra-organisational level, all involved should be empowered to develop a common understanding of the role of their organisation and their relationship to it. This paves the way for cooperative discussions to consider priorities, problem-solving, assignment of responsibilities, setting of pay and other benefits, etc. Where this approach is adopted (e.g., in worker cooperatives), it has led to higher performance and greater satisfaction, not because all are made the same or differences are ignored, but because changes are made on the basis of shared understanding. At the inter-organisational level, different groups are engaged in exploring how they can support each other better with new arrangements to meet their collective concerns.

Lastly, in the socio-political realm, we have divisions in terms of wealth and policy influence across society. Failed communistic experiments have revealed that superficial uniformity imposed on the general population cannot mask the dominance of a powerful ruling vanguard. Meanwhile, naïve anarchistic movements never take off on any scale because the rejection of authority and leadership takes out the capacity for timely and complex decision-making. As for Anglo-American style market democracy, corporate irresponsibility generates persistent deprivations, periodic economic crises, and socio-economic insecurity. Communitarian integration, on the other hand, would (as demonstrated for many decades in the Nordic countries) connect citizens and governments in a mutually supportive process that is designed, not to keep socio-economic differences as they are or eliminate them completely, but to nurture a shared commitment to redistribute wealth and power more productively for everyone through taxation, benefit, and regulation.

The global surveys that place Nordic countries on top of every key quality of life indicator suggest that this kind of cooperative integration should be safeguarded and deepened in the Nordic countries, and widely adopted elsewhere.

Integration is important to underpin society’s togetherness. But it is not only, or even primarily, about getting everyone to speak the same language or celebrate the same festivals. It is about appreciating what differences are healthy and helpful to have, and discerning what requires informed alteration. The communitarian approach focuses on the cultivation of shared understanding and cooperative exploration of options to help shape policy thinking. It may not offer a sweeping soundbite like ‘everyone must be the same’, or ‘all differences must be preserved’. But when an issue is complicated, it is far better to deal with it sensitively and effectively, than to head down a blind alley with a grand slogan.

Note: Many of the core ideas behind communitarian integration can be traced back a century or so to the pioneering work of thinkers such as Emile Durkheim, L. T. Hobhouse, Mary Follett, and John Dewey. Many others have since produced detailed studies and recommendations of how we should respond to differences of varying kinds in society by connecting people in familiarisation and constructive deliberation. For an outline of these ideas, see The Evolution of Communitarian Ideas (Henry Tam, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). There are also a range of articles in the Citizen Network Library that illustrate how mutual understanding and collaboration can be cultivated in support of the development of citizen democracy and societal togetherness.

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The publisher is Citizen Network. Towards a Communitarian Integration © Henry Tam 2026.