Wellbeing, inclusion & diversity

Generally I don’t like definitions.

In definitions, you always omit or forget something really, really important. There’s always aspects that are are left outside. Nonetheless, we have to set a framework into which we can understand the concept of exclusion.

So we can start by saying that exclusion is a multidimensional issue. It has a moral, ideological, social and institutional / legal dimension.

Exclusion, basically it starts from a moral perception that understands the different other, as someone that cannot should not be recognised by a community, but any community that understands itself as such. This other can be an individual or can be a group.

Moreover, exclusion is an ideological principle that is internalised in the values and belief systems of people, and it’s performed through the judgments and actions.

Exclusion threatens mainly those who can be considered as vulnerable, it…

…basically, threatens the vulnerable other. This vulnerable other is someone who usually, not always, but in most cases, is one who is in first of all different and B is an an inferior power position towards the dominant community.

Exclusion is historically determined in the sense that it takes different forms in different societies and in different historical periods. For example, you have…

…The ancient Greek community, the polis, from which the woman and the slave is excluded. For example, you have the mediaeval community into which the disabled or the mentally ill or the leper is excluded.

Nowadays we live in a far more complex society, so the picture of the vulnerable other has changed as well. It is more subtle, but nonetheless even more ubiquitous.

We can say that we have reached a level of moral maturity where we do not hide the vulnerable other anymore simply possibly because we cannot do that. It’s everywhere ,our societies has changed, they’re multicultural and in a sense, multiethnic.

Therefore, the vulnerable other has changed. Now exclusion occurs through gender, through ethnic origin, through sexual orientation, etcetera etcetera etcetera. Now one thing we should also understand is that…

…Exclusion does not…

…Happen at some points of society. It happens everywhere. It occurs everywhere at the macro level, which is the society in general.

For example, we have cases of legalised exclusion. One can think only of the apartheid.

All the racial segregation laws that existed in the USA until the 60s.

Also, we have at the Meso level. For example, we can have a school to come to our context that uses exclusionary practises or in the micro level which is the classroom where the person who’s excluding can be the teacher or… 

…the children themselves. In this sense, and to go back to the ideological aspect that we said, one can speak of an exclusive mentality.