This paper explores New Labour's desire to refurbish the physical and social fabric of excluded neighbourhoods through its New Deal for Communities (NDC) programme. It begins by examining three key concepts that embody and underpin this policy intervention – community, agency and exclusion and proceeds by contrasting these conceptual dimensions with a set of discordant, intra-neighbourhood processes of conflict, contestation and division, identified by recently conducted fieldwork in an NDC area. I argue that such processes produce a complex social terrain that is inhabited by social agents with a diverse range of needs, values and experiences, before discussing how this challenges and de-stabilises NDC's aspiration to ‘promote’ community, change individual behaviour and tackle exclusion effectively. The paper concludes by questioning whether New Labour's desire to implement a ‘community’ project, shaped by theoretical precepts, constrains NDC's ability to deliver lasting change to excluded areas.

In most democratic countries people with intellectual impairments are denied the right to vote in national elections. One important reason for this is that they are perceived as incapable of making independent political judgements and may thus fail to vote on the basis of their own preferences. Their exclusion is consequently defended by appeal to the need to protect the ‘integrity’ of democratic elections. In this article, this assertion is critically examined. The conclusion is that this argument does not hold sway once the connections between political equality and democratic elections have been clarified. Whilst political equality requires that elections are fair in the sense that everyone's preferences are given equal weight, fundamentally political equality also requires that everyone's opportunity to vote securely and without undue interference from others is recognised. Hence, as long as such opportunities have not been granted to people with intellectual impairments, they cannot consistently be excluded by appeal to the values of political equality.

This paper explores bias in the use of evidence in policy. It argues that existing models of the evidence–policy relationship neglect the tendency for attention to be paid only to that evidence helpful to the interests of powerful social groups. An evolutionary analogy is used to explain how this bias arises, without the need for irrationality or conspiracy on the part of policy makers. Examples are given in the fields of drug, asylum and other policies, and the possible responses by researchers to the biased use of research evidence are discussed.

This paper reports on pilot study research for an ESF funded project. It examines the experiences and perceptions of 12 women in relation to the concept of ageism in paid employment. The women were all aged 50 or over at the time. The results show that whilst most of the women had faced (to differing degrees) or observed gender and age based discrimination, the experiences and interpretations revealed were not static, nor isolated from the wider historical, cultural and social contexts in which these women had grown up and grown older. It is therefore argued that policy attempts to combat age discrimination will need to take account of the gender dimension of ageism as well as the different ways in which it impacts on older women. For this to occur, more research and debate are needed on the issues raised in this paper.

Equality law is in a state of ferment in the UK with a Westminster bill having laid the ground for a single Equality and Human Rights Commission, new European Directives on Equality, a debate in Northern Ireland over the adoption of a Single Equality Act (OFMDFM, 2004) and a stalled debate in Northern Ireland over a Bill of Rights. (O'Connell, 2006: 3).

This paper summarises the way equality has featured in the disciplines of social policy and political theory leading up to the presentation of a new egalitarianian framework for thinking about and acting for equality. The paper presents a broadly chronological, integrated review of the place of equality within the subjects concerned. The longstanding problems of universalism and targeting are themes which recur throughout, and in New Labour's approach to equality and social justice.

This paper explores issues of social and multiple identity and their implications for equality law and practice. The paper considers three principal dilemmas – passing, groupism and the limitations of participatory justice as a political strategy for the achievement of equality. The objective is to contribute a ‘thick’ understanding of issues of identity and identification with which to inform and situate the development of the UK's ‘single equality approach’. The paper argues that the negotiations of identity required of members of minority groups is a form of work.

When the measurement of inequality is being considered in Ireland and the UK the poor and socially excluded are routinely the focus of debate. Building on methodology developed in New Zealand this paper outlines the development of a more wide ranging approach through the construction of a Northern Ireland Living Standard Index (NILSI). It then utilises this tool to explore dimensions of inequality in Northern Ireland and present findings on the living standards of different subgroups.

One way of measuring the deprivation or poverty of persons is to use money-based measures: a person is regarded as ‘poor’ if his/her income (or expenditure) falls below a poverty line value. Such an approach – usually termed poverty analysis – has spawned a large literature embodying several sophisticated measures of poverty. The downside to this is that low income or expenditure may not be very good indicators of deprivation. Another way, usually termed ‘deprivation analysis’, is to define an index whose value, for each person, is the number (or proportion) of items from a prescribed list that he/she possesses: persons are then regarded as ‘deprived’ if their index value is below some threshold. This offers an alternative method of identifying deprived persons. The disadvantage of deprivation analysis is that it measures deprivation exclusively in terms of the proportion of deprived persons within the total number of persons. The purpose of this paper is to bridge the gap between poverty and deprivation analysis by constructing a wider set of measures of economic inequality and by showing, with data for Northern Ireland, how they might be applied. The result is an analysis sensitive to intra-population heterogeneity.

This paper reviews the development and nature of one of the two components of the UK's equality regime – equality law. The origins of equality law lie in the postwar consensus on non-discrimination. The paper reviews the limitations of non-discrimination or negative equality duties. It documents the expansion of equality law at the turn of the twentieth/twenty-first century, when seven UK Acts and two European Directives introduced additional negative equality duties, provided for a new enforcement authority and introduced positive equality duties in respect of some social statuses. Many of these duties were introduced as part of devolution arrangements. UK equality law leads the field in European terms. The nature of positive equality duties and New Labour's approach to equality in general are also critiqued.

Contributors to this themed section of Social Policy and Society have referred to a range of published sources within the sphere of equality studies research. The sources below provide additional useful information for those interested in further research on equality and inequality