5 - Social Exclusion

• Social Exclusion


  This is where people are socially excluded by being poor, lacking education and lacking sense of engagement. They are deprived in different ways like education, crime rates, family breakdown, discrimination etc. This affects opportunities, not lifestyle.
• Evaluation:

  • Offers no direct explanation for inequality, just denial.
  • Statistics show divisions between the wealthy and the poor are wider than they have been for many years and appear to be growing.
  • Notion of 'social exclusion' provides government with a convenient way to gloss over these statistics and large numbers of certain social groups really do experience poverty and lack access to the basic necessities in British society.
  • Postmodernists arguments can be used to justify inequality and poverty so encouraged by the government to view the problem as individual instead of social.
• Evaluation:

  • Some identities are not lifestyle choices and not changeable like gender, age and racial backgrounds that can affect opportunities and other lifestyle choices.