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FORMS OF DIFFERENTIAL SOCIAL INCLUSION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 June 2017

Jonathan Wolff
Jonathan Wolff*
Affiliation:
Public Policy, Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford
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Abstract:

Advocates of social equality need to develop an account of the society they favor. I have argued elsewhere that social equality should be conceived negatively: in terms of opposition to asymmetric and alienating relations such as hierarchy, domination and social exclusion, rather than in terms of a positive model of equality. This essay looks in detail at social exclusion, or rather “differential social inclusion,” and especially at the mechanisms that create exclusion and bind excluded groups together, and the consequent effects these mechanisms have on the reinforcement of inequality of opportunity and failure of social solidarity. Possible policies, such as improved social mobility, assertive self-affirmation, validation of subcultures, integration, and the creation of a large public sector are considered as possible responses to differential social inclusion in order to move closer to the idea of a society of equals.

Keywords

EqualityExclusionInclusionSolidarityOpportunityStigma
Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , Summer 2017 , pp. 164 - 185
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 2017 

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Footnotes

*

I am very grateful to Shepley Orr and Michael Stewart for discussions of the themes of this paper, and Andrea Sangiovanni and Gry Wester for their written comments. I’d also like to thank Robin Celikates, Tamar de Waal, Roland Pierik and others who contributed to a discussion of this paper in Amsterdam, as well as audiences in Cambridge and London. I would especially like to thank an anonymous referee for excellent, encouraging, comments as well as the other contributors to this volume.

References

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2 Wolff, Jonathan, “Social Equality and Social Inequality,” in Social Equality: On What It Means to Be Equals, ed. Fourie, Carina, Schuppert, Fabian, and Wallimann-Helmer, Ivo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 209–225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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4 I owe the suggestion to use this term to Robin Celikates. Apparently its conceptual origin is to be found in the work of Stuart Hall, for example Hall, S., “Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 10, no. 2 (1986): 5–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Hall uses the term “differentiated forms of ‘incorporation’,” 25. For different ways in which the term “social exclusion” is used, see Hills, John, Le Grand, Julian, and Piachaud, David, eds., Understanding Social Exclusion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).Google Scholar

5 For many such examples see Pateman, Carole and Mills, Charles, Contract and Domination (Cambridge: Polity, 2007).Google Scholar

6 In Wolff, Jonathan, “Social Equality, Relative Poverty and Marginalised Groups” in Hull, George ed. The Equal Society (London: Lexington, 2015), 3–23Google Scholar, I was particularly concerned with how being a member of a subgroup presented difficulties for people who were also struggling to avoid relative poverty (not having the resources to achieve what is expected or encouraged in their society). Here I generalize the analysis to all marginalized subgroups, even those whose members are economically more successful.

7 Barry, Brian, “Social Exclusion, Social Isolation, and the Distribution of Income,” in Understanding Social Exclusion, ed. Hills, John, Le Grand, Julian, and Piachaud, David (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 13–29Google Scholar. Barry points out that although limited opportunities and diminished solidarity typically go together they need not, using the example of Jews in the West London suburbs in the 1940s of his childhood to illustrate this point. Economically and materially their prospects seemed no different from the general population, so they were not “opportunity excluded,” yet Barry reports that there was a level of casual anti-Semitism that amounted to a failure of social solidarity (13).

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13 Barry, “Social Exclusion, Social Isolation, and the Distribution of Income,” 14. Indeed it has been argued that groups can form simply in virtue of being shunned by the mainstream, even if they have nothing else in common. See Elias, Norbert and Scotson, John L., The Established and the Outsider 2nd ed. (London: Sage, 1994)Google Scholar. I thank Tamar de Waal for drawing this to my attention.

14 In the 1980s on the standardized UCAS forms, which were the basis for undergraduate university admissions throughout the UK, candidates were required to state their father’s name and occupation. Possibly this was a well-meaning attempt to allow universities to give special consideration to those from what are now called “nontraditional” backgrounds. But of course it need not have been used — consciously or unconsciously — in that way.

15 Willis, Paul, Learning to Labour (Farnham: Ashgate, [1978] 1993)Google Scholar.

16 Ibid., 128. This analysis is worth comparing with Cohen, G. A., “The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 12 (1983): 3–33Google Scholar. However, it is not completely correct that there cannot be class mobility under capitalism, for as Robert Putnam points out, the changing shape of the labor market by, for example, the thinning out of manual jobs, can cause a shift in absolute social mobility. Naturally, though, there are limits and Willis’s point remains true for the most part (Putnam, Our Kids, 42).

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20 Goffman, Stigma, 165.

21 Shelby, Tommie, in We Who Are Dark (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, attributes essentially this observation to Martin Robison Delany, writing in 1852, and Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton, writing in 1967, 108–109.

22 Putnam, Our Kids, 231–34.

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25 Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984)Google Scholar. For an earlier version of related arguments see Veblen, Thorstein, The Theory of the Leisure Class (Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1899] 2007)Google Scholar.

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27 Lareau, Annete, Unequal Childhoods, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Nicola Rollock, David Gilborn, Carol Vincent and Stephen J Ball, The Colour of Class: The Educational Strategies of the Black Middle Classes (London: Routledge, 2014).

28 Wolff, “Social Equality, Relative Poverty and Marginalised Groups.”

29 On the “shame” of poverty as virtually a cultural universal, see Walker, Robert, The Shame of Poverty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. However, for a claimed counterexample, see Tangwa, Godfrey B., Elements of African Bioethics in a Western Frame (Mankan, Bameda: Langaa Research and Publishing, 2010), 66Google Scholar.

30 I have discussed direct and indirect discrimination in chapter 6 of my Introduction to Political Philosophy, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

31 Elias and Scotson, The Established and the Outsider, xviii.

32 Marmot, Michael The Status Syndrome: How Social Standing Affects Our Health and Longevity (London: Bloomsbury, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In most countries a social gradient in health is observed with health and life expectancy correlating with economic prospects. One perhaps surprising counterexample is the United States where although the average income of Hispanic households is substantially lower than those of White Americans, life expectancy for Hispanics is about four years longer than White Americans. It is very likely that social solidarity accounts for part of the health advantage. See Kaiser Family Foundation (n.d.) Life Expectancy at Birth (in years), by Race/Ethnicity http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/life-expectancy-by-re/ Viewed April 9th 2015 and U.S. Census Bureau “Money Income of Households —Percent Distribution by Income Level, Race, and Hispanic Origin, in Constant (2009) Dollars: 1990 to 2009.” http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0691.pdf viewed April 9, 2015.

33 Tilley, Charles, Durable Inequality (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999)Google Scholar. Elizabeth Anderson insightfully builds on Tilley’s theory of durable inequality, renaming it “categorical inequality” in The Imperative of Integration (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).

34 Frankfurt, Harry, “Equality as a Moral Ideal,” Ethics 98 (1987): 21–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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36 ONS 2012 Ethnicity and National Identity in England and Wales 2011 http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171776_290558.pdf Viewed April 9th 2015Google Scholar.

37 See Sangiovanni, Andrea, “Solidarity as Joint Action,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 32 (2015): 340–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Sangiovanni’s account some of the illustrations given here would not count as examples of solidarity, strictly speaking. See also Shelby, We Who Are Dark, 67–71, for something approaching a composite account.

38 Goffman, Stigma, 165.

39 Ibid, 17.

40 Anderson, The Imperative of Integration, 2.

41 Ibid, 112.

42 Ibid., 118–22.

43 See, for example, Shakespeare, Tom, Disability Rights and Wrongs Revisited (London: Routledge, 2013).CrossRefGoogle Scholar