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Symposis
Symposium on Social Exclusion and Inclusion
Social exclusion and inclusion have been used as a framework for dealing with a large variety of issues and challenges: from poverty, well-being, employment, and culture, to gender, age, housing, and discrimination. We have yet to learn whether it is simply an intellectual fad, a political ploy, or a key perspective on which to build understanding. This symposium will further test its value by exploring the conceptualization, research, and conditions of social exclusion and inclusion in an international context. Examples of the questions to be addressed are: What have been the most useful frameworks for understanding social exclusion and inclusion? What research and policy approaches have they fostered Ð or undermined? What have we found from this research? What aspects of exclusion and inclusion are unique to rural locations and people? What are the most promising directions for future research and policy? Presenters will address these questions as a basis for plenary discussions on the topic.
Symposium Chair:
Bill Reimer, Concordia University, Canada.
Symposium Speakers:
Inclusion and Exclusion in Rural Mexico
Julio Baca Del Moral, FAO-SAGARPA, Mexico
Although the symposium addresses social inclusion and exclusion in general, we will focus on the Mexican rural environment, where this phenomenon has occurred with more intensively. This paper is structured with a first part about those whose have been excluded or included by the process of Mexican neoliberalism in the rural environment in the last 20 years. It continues with a discussion of data from Latin America, but mainly of Mexico, regarding women, mature adults, youth and indigenous people. We continue with some aspects regarding the importance of the inclusion of these groups via nourishing security; and we conclude with some recommendations.
The Power of Exclusion: Conceptualising Social Exclusion and Inclusion in a Structurationist Framework of Power
Brian McGrath, National University of Ireland, Ireland
This paper puts forward the case that the concepts of Ôsocial exclusion and inclusion' might usefully be conceptualised in terms of a dialectical relationship, incorporating the key concepts of Ôconstraint' and Ôenablement'. As a question of power, the underlying assessment leading on from this formulation is the nature and degree of actors' Ôtransformative capacity'. Social exclusion and inclusion are therefore presented in non-dualistic terms where constraint and enablement feature in all actors' lives, providing them with various degrees of transformative capacity in the courses of action (both substantive and potential) available to them. A synthetic iterative framework is presented which identifies the key ontological elements that link to constitute actors' Ôdialectic of constraint and enablement': (i) knowledgeability (what actors know and believe about their circumstances and those of others); (ii) the relational, experiential and interactional (particularly in key institutional domains); and (iii) systemic and discursive sources (e.g. nature of a local economy, provision of welfare interventions, legislation).
Social Exclusion and Social Support in Rural Canada
Bill Reimer, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University, Montréal QC, Canada
The availability of appropriate social support is critical for social inclusion. This is most important under conditions of change and stress. In order to ensure such support, therefore, we need to understand the nature of social support in rural areas, how it is used, and the conditions that facilitate or inhibit its use. This paper provides theoretical and empirical contributions to understanding those processes of social inclusion and exclusion as they are reflected in social support. Using a theoretical framework rooted in social relations and data from 1995 rural households in 20 field sites from across Canada, we examine various types of social support that are used under conditions of change, the characteristics of the households using them, and the community-level contexts that condition their use. Both policy and research implications are drawn from these results.
Rural Policies, Power, and Participation: On the Political Definition of Social Exclusion
Sally Shortall, Queen's University, Belfast, Northern Ireland
The justification of the use of social exclusion as a concept is that it is more comprehensive than previously used concepts such as poverty and deprivation. Thus notions such as participation are included to provide a wider picture of the lives of the excluded compared to the bald economic categorisations of poverty levels.
While there are advantages to broadening the definition of disadvantage, there are also profound analytical disadvantages. By abandoning narrow criteria such as poverty, which are amenable to rigorous definition, and allowing for the inclusion of more nebulous concepts, the notion of social exclusion can become so vague that it is in danger of becoming meaningless. Even more problematic is the fact that participation becomes equated with representation, and analyses of power relations or social closure are side-stepped.
An empirical example of this process can be found in Northern Ireland, where rural policy programmes identify three key excluded groups; Protestants, women, and farmers. These groups do not necessarily signify materially deprived groups, indeed quite the opposite. The Protestant community until recently was seen without question as the more privileged group in the region, and while farming is now experiencing considerable economic difficulties, it was until recently, the occupation with the highest status position in rural areas. The paper argues that the focus on inclusion of these groups has less to do with the situation of the specific groups, and more to do with the political context of Northern Ireland where considerable investment has been made in the transparency and inclusivity of new political and social structures. The existence of groups who are Ôexcluded', or under-represented, threatens to undermine the legitimacy of political structures, particularly if they have previously been the more powerful groups. However by identifying the Ôproblem' as the exclusion of the identified groups, there is a misrepresentation of the level of social integration of these groups in social networks, and misguided rural policy responses to enhance their inclusion in new political structures.
Social Inclusion and Pre-School Education in Rural Scotland
Mark Shucksmith, Janet Shucksmith and Joyce Watt, Arkleton Institute, University of Aberdeen, Scotland
This paper begins by reviewing several of the ways in which social exclusion has been conceptualised in the literature, from the active exclusion of one group by another; administrative exclusion by the state; post-industrial capitalism's need for a reserve army of unemployed labour; American notions of an underclass; to the UN conceptualisation of exclusion as a lack of basic rights. Each of these suggests differing views of agency - about who or what is doing the excluding. Attempts to operationalise these concepts have been less promising. The paper then explores these approaches in the context of the provision of pre-school education in rural Scotland. Pre-school education is viewed by government as a powerful weapon in the fight against social exclusion, but higher per capita costs in rural areas as well as the availability and cost of transport are major problems, raising questions in turn about inclusive models of provision. Moreover, many parents are sceptical about their ability to access pre-school education for their children while also continuing their own engagement in the labour market (a central pillar of government policy in promoting social inclusion). Issues of choice, quality and governance also arise. The paper concludes with some reflections on the concept of social exclusion/inclusion in the light of this case study.
Livelihood Practices in the Shadow of Welfare Reform: Poverty, Devolution, and Social Exclusion in Rural Appalachia
Ann Tickamyer, Ohio University Athens, USA
The restructuring of social welfare policy known as "welfare reform" created massive changes in the social safety net as well as in the expectations and practices of poor persons that had been in place throughout the last third of the twentieth century in the United States. Placing time limits on cash assistance meant that the majority of welfare recipients face pressure to find paid employment. Yet there is little evidence that employment, even if available, provides adequate income, especially in poor rural settings where work is scarce and additional obstacles to employment such as lack of transportation and childcare are endemic. Devolution replaced federal jurisdiction with state and local responsibility for design and implementation of new policies and programs, including those in poor rural communities that may lack the resources and human and social capital to successfully accomplish policy goals. This research examines community level differences in capacity to implement welfare reform embodied in county social and economic characteristics and human service agency operations and compares the impacts on the livelihood practices of low income rural recipients of public assistance in rural Appalachian communities at both the early stages of welfare reform and after the policies had been in place and were well-established. Data come a comprehensive multi-year, multi-method study of welfare reform located in four Appalachian Ohio communities selected to represent similar levels of poverty and deprivation but different degrees of rurality and local capacity. To examine changes in livelihood practices, we analyze data from a self-administered survey of users of human service agency services in these four counties in 1999 and in 2001. The results provide a comprehensive picture of livelihood practices, including labor force participation, informal work, self-provisioning, and use of government and private transfers both early and late in the welfare reform process with implications for processes of social exclusion and participation of the rural poor as a result of new social policy.
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XI World Congress of Rural Sociology