The first thing that comes to mind when I hear the word fabric is the material used to make clothes or linens or other woven items. This kind of fabric is so much a part of daily life, I don’t give it much thought unless it is difficult to care for. But when combined with the word social, the word fabric becomes abstract and hard to define.
In its definition of social fabric, Business Dictionary lists a bunch of components that make up the “composite demographics” of an area – things like race, wealth, education level and regional values. This definition leaves me cold. You don’t weave a cohesive piece of anything with demographic statistics.
A company that uses Social Fabric as a name defines it in a way that makes more sense to me. It says that Social fabric is the glue that holds a society together. The glue is shared bonds that make it possible to “form a culturally rich and socially cohesive community.”
I see social fabric as people who are united by common values or purposes. The individual threads that make up the fabric can be quite different from each other. Some are quite colorful. Some are smooth, while others have a lot of texture. Some are more durable than others. But if the various threads agree on their mission and values, they can be woven into a cohesive whole.
Photo Credit – Engin Akyurt via Pixabay
Innermost Being 