(Re)framing education exclusion and inclusion discourses: limits and possibilities

摘要

Social injustice is a feature of all human relationships and is present in all societies. How one talks to it and about it. however, is notoriously difficult, because implicit in the language one uses and the assumptions that underlie one's languageare frameworks of reference which, inevitably, find their origins in one or other understanding of the world and the people within. As a result of this realisation, discussion of the concept of social exclusion Is underway in numerous contexts to assessits value in expanding understandings of injustice and inequality. While the concept is 'celebrated' in the North and has led to the introduction of Social Exclusion units in all UK government departments, its usage is less common in the South where very much more specific phenomena are made the subject of policy attention. Betts (2001: 2) argues, to illustrate the point, that the discourse of poverty 'provides a much more powerful frame' (Betts 2001: 2) for many countries. In South Africa, the new government has deliberately established gender and affirmative action units. The primary question being posed in the South is whether indeed the concept of social exclusion adds value to understandings of complex phenomena such as poverty (de Haan 2000).