Theorising Social Exclusion

Ann Taket, Beth R. Crisp, Annemarie Nevill, Greer Lamaro, Melissa Graham, Sarah Barter-Godfrey, Ann Taket, Beth R. Crisp, Annemarie Nevill, Greer Lamaro, Melissa Graham, Sarah Barter-Godfrey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781135285197
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Public Health, Administration & Care

Social exclusion attempts to make sense out of multiple deprivations and inequities experienced by people and areas, and the reinforcing effects of reduced participation, consumption, mobility, access, integration, influence and recognition. This book works from a multidisciplinary approach across health, welfare, and education, linking practice and research in order to improve our understanding of the processes that foster exclusion and how to prevent it.

Theorising Social Exclusion first reviews and reflects upon existing thinking, literature and research into social exclusion and social connectedness, outlining an integrated theory of social exclusion across dimensions of social action and along pathways of social processes. A series of commissioned chapters then develop and illustrate the theory by addressing the machinery of social exclusion and connectedness, the pathways towards exclusion and, finally, experiences of exclusion and connection.

This innovative book takes a truly multidisciplinary approach and focuses on the often-neglected cultural and social aspects of exclusion. It will be of interest to academics in fields of public health, health promotion, social work, community development, disability studies, occupational therapy, policy, sociology, politics, and environment.

PART 1
Introducing theories of social exclusion and social connectedness

1.1
Introduction

Overview

This research-based book is aimed at a wide range of different readerships globally. The book addresses issues of concern for those engaged in debates about the provision of health and social welfare services, the case for collective responsibilities, and the public service ethos more generally. Our focus is particularly upon the role of social and cultural factors in the creation and recreation of categories of exclusion and inclusion; this finds relevance in a wide range of fields (health sciences, public health, health promotion, occupational therapy, disability studies, social work and social policy). The exploration of implications for policy and practice will make the book of relevance to a practitioner audience as well to academics.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that there are a plethora of books on social exclusion. Why another? The outline above indicates the particular approach that we wish to take, which we believe is not covered in any depth in any of the competing titles. Most of the existing titles are very strongly focused in terms of discipline and/or geography, for example (we could extend this list to several times its current length): Pierson (2001), Collins (2003), Weiss (2003), MacDonald (2004), Levitas (2005), Williams et al. (2005), Feldman (2006), Harness Goodwin (2006), Ryan (2007). Others, while being more multidisciplinary in approach, focus on the economistic aspects of social exclusion and do not fully address the important role of cultural and social factors in creating and re-creating categories of inclusion and exclusion, for example: Byrne (2005) and Hills et al. (2002). Few seek to address both issues of theory and professional practice.

The concept of social exclusion attempts to help us make sense out of the lived experience arising from multiple deprivations and inequities experienced by people and localities, across the social fabric, and the mutually reinforcing effects of reduced participation, consumption, mobility, access, integration, influence and recognition. The language of social exclusion recognises marginalising, silencing, rejecting, isolating, segregating and disenfranchising as the machinery of exclusion, its processes of operation. By way of contrast, the language of social connectedness recognises acceptance, opportunity, equity, justice, citizenship, expression and validation as the machinery of connectedness. As we will argue later, we see connectedness as the preferred conceptualisation of the opposite of exclusion, finding the concepts of inclusion and participation problematic both theoretically and in terms of policy formulation and implementation.

This book works from a multidisciplinary and intersectoral approach across health, welfare and education, linking practice and research to our growing understanding of the processes and principles that foster exclusion. We develop existing theories of exclusion and connectedness through reflection, analysis and commentary, across international perspectives and experiences recognising both global and local issues. Our focus on the role of cultural and social factors in theorising social exclusion implies a particular focus on the psychological, individual and symbolic elements of exclusion as experienced by different groups.

In this first part of the book, we review and reflect on existing thinking, literature and research into social exclusion and social connectedness. Theories of exclusion are developed concentrically across areas of action and experience, moving from the person as an excluded/connected agent, through structural, shared communities and places, to the upstream, culture, population and society. The links between these spheres of exclusion and connectedness are also discussed, to theorise an integrated framework for understanding the dynamics of social exclusion across dimensions of social action and along pathways of social processes.

The second part of the book presents a series of chapters, addressing areas of interest and knowledge gained through the experience and research of the authors. These chapters are presented so that, as readers, we come first to know the machinery of social exclusion and connectedness before coming to know the pathways towards exclusion, and finally come to know the excluded through their experience of exclusion and connection.

The third and final part of the book draws together the chapters thus far, finding points of congruence and dissension between spheres of action and applied areas of interest. In this short concluding part, we explore some of the implications for policy and practice, drawing on the chapters and research studies presented in Part 2 of the book. We also consider briefly a research agenda for the future.

A linguistic and cultural turn

At the outset, it is important to say something about the theoretical resources we use in our focus on social and cultural factors. Our understanding is that all social experiences and narratives about them are discursively constructed. This sets limits and constraints on the positions of exclusion, inclusion and connectedness that individuals and groups can take up. However individuals and groups are active, resistant agents in these processes and can shape the realm of discursive possibilities. Such a position recognises the importance of language, requiring a shift in view from language as a ‘neutral tool, out there’ to language as highly contingent: ‘the fact that there is no way to step outside the various vocabularies we have employed and find a metavocabulary which somehow takes account of all possible vocabularies, all possible ways of judging and feeling’ (Rorty 1989: xvi). We make sense of the world, our understandings of it, and our place in it, through language; our use of language creates, contests and recreates power, authority and legitimation.

Connected to this is the importance of a shift in view about identity, as Butler expresses it:

the reconceptualisation of identity as an effect, that is, as produced or generated, opens up possibilities of ‘agency’ that are insidiously foreclosed by positions that take identity categories as foundational and fixed. For an identity to be an effect means that it is neither fatally determined nor fully artificial and arbitrary. That the constituted status of identity is misconstrued along these conflicting lines suggests the ways in which the feminist discourse on cultural construction remains trapped within the unnecessary binarism of free will and determinism. Construction is not opposed to agency; it is the necessary scene of agency, the very terms in which agency is articulated and becomes culturally intelligible.

(Butler 1990: 147)

This notion of identity is taken up again in Chapter 1.2.

In terms of the analysis of social exclusion we present below, the foregoing should alert the reader that our analysis is based on a position of theoretical pluralism, which we argue is necessary to do justice to the complexity of the forces and relationships that shape individuals’ and groups’ experience of exclusion and being excluded. Suitable conceptualisations of notions of power are also required, and this is discussed later in Chapter 1.5.

Defining social exclusion

The notion of ‘social exclusion’ is a relatively new concept and is embedded in the economic, political and cultural/social structures of society; thus we need to be mindful of different interpretations of social exclusion, as well as of social inclusion and of social connectedness. It is a contested concept, with multiple meanings. We reserve discussion of social inclusion and connectedness for later, and here consider only social exclusion, Box 1.1 offers a short sketch of the history of use of the term, while Box 1.2 summarises some of the most often quoted definitions of social exclusion.

A number of different approaches to defining typologies that can assist in understanding social exclusion have been produced by various writers. Table 1.1 presents three rather different approaches. In the first, the approach focuses on defining different forms of exclusion; the second focuses on defining different types of participation, and the third on different types of exclusionary relationship.

Box 1.1. A brief history of social exclusion

• Term ‘social exclusion’ originated in France (Lenoir 1974) initially; French socialist politicians used social exclusion to refer to individuals who were not covered by the social security system.

• Over time the term broadened to cover other groups seen as excluded, for example, disaffected youth, the unemployed and the homeless. Reflected in Durkheimian philosophy, ‘exclusion threatens society as a whole with the loss of collective values and destruction of the social fabric’–a ‘deficiency in solidarity’. During the 1980s in France, the definition of social exclusion expanded to include the term les éclus, ‘the pariahs of the nation’, which gave rise to xenophobia, political attacks upon and restrictions on the rights of immigrants. In 1990s, exclusion included the issue of ‘les banlieues’, the deprived outer suburbs, which gave rise to combating ‘urban exclusion’ (Silver 1994).

• The terminology of social exclusion was adopted by the European Commission in its mandate to report, on a European-wide basis, about prevailing levels of poverty and unemployment. ‘Social exclusion’ was substituted for ‘poverty’ within European Union poverty programs from the 1990–4 programs onwards (Room 1995).

• There is a range of international European-based government agency programmes set up to ameliorate the impact of social exclusion: European Commission; World Bank; International Labour Organisation; United Nations Development Agency, which all have funded initiatives in place. These pan-national organisations tend to utilise the term in a broad sense to denote individuals and groups who are unable to secure adequate material (i.e. financial) and cultural capital (i.e. education and knowledge). In other words, social exclusion is used to describe those without the resources to access employment and educational networks.

• A moral discourse of ‘social solidarity’ saw ‘The Third Way’ emerge (Finlayson 1999; Jordan 2001; Levitas 2004), ‘that would reconcile individual rights with state responsibility and socialist rejection of exploitation’ (Silver 1994: 537). Social exclusion was adopted in Britain as a central notion in the UK Labour government’s policies, post its 1997 election success. That year it established a government policy-making, multidisciplinary Social Exclusion Unit with the mission of tackling social exclusion.

• Mid-1990s, UK Economic and Social Research Council adopted ‘social integration and exclusion’ as one of its nine thematic priorities in social science research (Marsh and Mullins 1998: 759).

• 1997 – an Economic and Social Research Council funded ‘Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion’ was set up at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

• 2006 – Social Exclusion Knowledge Network (SEKN) set up, one of nine knowledge networks set up under WHO’s Commission on Social Determinants of Health.

• February 2008, the final report of SEKN was produced (Popay et al. 2008).

Box 1.2. Frequently quoted definitions of social exclusion

• original French definition (‘exclusion sociale’), as a ‘rupture of social bonds’ (European Foundation 1995, cited in de Haan 1998: 12)

• ‘a shorthand term for what can happen when people or areas suffer from a combination of problems, such as unemployment, poor skills, low income, bad housing, high crime, poor health or lack of transport’ (Social Exclusion Unit and Cabinet Office 2001: 2)

• ‘inability to participate effectively in economic, social, political and cultural life, alienation and distance from the mainstream society’ (Duffy 1995: 17)

• ‘the dynamic process of being shut out … from any of the social, economic, political and cultural systems which determine the social integration of a person in society’ (Walker and Walker 1997: 8)

• ‘sense of social isolation and segregation from the formal structures and institutions of the economy, society and the state’ (Somerville 1998: 762)

• ‘an individual is socially excluded if (a) he or she is geographically resident in a society but (b) for reasons beyond his or her control he or she cannot participate in the normal activities of citizens in that society and (c) he or she would like to participate’ (Burchardt et al. 1999: 229)

• ESRC Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (Hills et al. 2002) suggests four dimensions: consumption – capacity to buy (now and future); production – participation in economically or socially valuable activities; political engagement – in local or national decision-making; social interaction with family, friends and community

• ‘the continuous and gradual exclusion from full participation in the social, including material as well as symbolic, resources produced, supplied and exploited in a society for making a living, organizing a life and taking part in the development of a (hopefully better) future’ (Steinert 2007a: 5)

• ‘Social exclusion is a complex and multi-dimensional process. It involves the lack or denial of resources, rights, goods and services, and the inability to participate in the normal relationships and activities, available to the majority of people in society, whether in economic, social, cultural, or political arenas. It affects both the quality of life of individuals and the equity and cohesion of society as a whole’ (Levitas et al. 2007: 9)

• ‘Exclusion consists of dynamic, multi-dimensional processes driven by unequal power relationships interacting across four main dimensions – economic, political, social and cultural – and at different levels including individual, household, group, community, country and global levels. It results in a continuum of inclusion/exclusion characterised by unequal access to resources, capabilities and rights which leads to health inequalities’ (Popay et al. 2008: 2)

In terms of particular disciplinary stances on social exclusion, Todman (2004) and Morgan et al. (2007) provide useful overviews of social exclusion (and its measurement) for social policy and mental health respectively. In examining Box 1.2, we can see conceptualisations of social exclusion as a state, a process or both. The definitions emphasise a varying list of factors that give rise to social exclusion which work together in such a way that often they end up reinforcing each other.

As a result of this inability to clearly define social exclusion, the term is often used in an indefinite way that is laden with economic, political and cultural nuances (Silver 1994). Further to this, attempts to establish a typology of social exclusion have been described as reductionist (Silver 1994). Social exclusion can be seen as a dynamic multi-dimensional process (Peace 2001; Steinert 2007a). As Bhalla and Lapeyre emphasise:

Anglo-Saxon thinking is rooted in the Liberal paradigm and views society as a mass of atomized individuals in competition within the market place. Therefore, exclusion may reflect voluntary individual choices, patterns of interests or a contractual relationship between actors or ‘distortions’ to the system, such as discrimination, market failures and unenforced rights.

(Bhalla and Lapeyre 1997: 415)

Importantly, no matter how social exclusion is conceptualised or defined, the notion often lends itself to the idea of deviance or non-conformity. This is particularly evident in current Australian welfare policy, for example, ...

Table of contents

• Contents
• List of Authors
• List of Illustrations
• PART 1 Introducing theories of social exclusion and social connectedness
• Part 2 Insights into social exclusion and connectedness: theory, policy and practice
• Part 3 Conclusions and reflections
• References
• Index