Loosening the Social Exclusion Knot and Exploring the Chemistry of Social Inclusion

This working paper examines some of the historical origins of social exclusion and attempts to provide a suitable framework for open discussion on how to assess and define it. It promotes several reservations about its current definitions especially those concerning the acclaimed obsession with poverty and unemployment and the evolution to its categorization and classification. The paper illustrates the evolution of social exclusion from ancient times and its development especially in the early 60s and 70s in France and Britain. The relationship between the individual and society and relative membership is discussed making reference to multi-class theories and models including Marx, Weber, Warner, Fussell and Bourdieu. In the search for a universal definition of social exclusion the authors promote the concept of the chemistry of social exclusion. In this concept it is suggested that exclusion is not just about defining and measuring the chemical elements that generate it or mathematically analysing them rather it is also or maybe more about understanding how the combination of such elements determine the success of relative corrective policies by local and national governments. In this paper a table of 18 arbitrary elements have been collected and divided into three groups, denominated Macro-Economic, Personal-Cultural and Social-Cultural. Through the correct combination of these elements and subsequent monitoring it is claimed that corrective policies have a greater chance of delivering the necessary changes for improvement. In essence by first building the table of elements and understanding their fundamental behaviour and value in society it is then feasible to correctly select-prioritise them to provide the right reaction and minimise by-products