Disability & the Majority World: Towards a Global Disability Studies
Manchester, 7-8 July 2011
Debating ‘inclusion’:
learning from development
and poverty scholarship
Nina Marshall
PhD candidate, School of Sociology, Politics and
International Studies, University of Bristol
nina.marshall@bristol.ac.uk
The rise and rise of ‘inclusive development’
• Increasingly hegemonic assertions of ‘inclusive development’
in policy, research and practice arenas (c.f. Barron & Amerena
2007; Lord et al 2010)
• Background of lack of cross-over between disability studies &
development scholarship (c.f. Grech 2009; Yeo & Moore 2003)
• ‘Inclusion’ has particular meanings for disability activists and
scholars but also has a history within development research
and practice
• Cannot assume ‘inclusion’ is a positive for disabled people or
accept it as a concept that needs no challenge (c.f. McRuer
2007; Dingo 2007; Power 2001)
• To understand how ‘inclusive development’ has come about
and consider its potential effects , suggested we can explore
the genealogy of in/ exclusion within the development and
poverty literature and see what connections can be made
Overview
• The history of social in/exclusion in development debates
• Historical origins
• Conceptualisation and definition
• Linking to development debates
• Debating social in/exclusion in development
• Value added?
• Adverse incorporation and social exclusion
• Implications for and connections to ‘inclusive development’
• Conceptual baggage
• Transformative potential
• Avenues for critical reflection
Bringing social in/exclusion into development
• Social exclusion’s European conceptual origins
• Silver’s (1994) three paradigms:
• Solidarity paradigm
• Specialisation paradigm
• Monopoly paradigm
• Common definitional characteristics (de Haan, 1998)
• Exclusion as opposite to social integration
• Multi-dimensionality
• Exclusion as a state or situation but frequently process, with focus on
role of institutions
• Linking social in/exclusion to development
• to poverty
• to social justice
• to capabilities approach (e.g. Sen 2000)
Debating social in/exclusion’s utility
What does it add?
• Focus on (institutional) processes not individual attributes (Kabeer 2000)
• Widening the issue areas considered in comparison with poverty:
widening concerns, broadening explanations, focusing on multidimensionality, historicising and politicising poverty (Hickey & du Toit
2007)
• Promoting self-reflexivity in the policy domain (Kabeer 2000)
BUT critiqued for
• Exportation without critique – relevance in the global South?
• Whether it challenges the mainstream policy agenda (Clert 1999): is it an
affirmative or a transformative remedy? (Kabeer 2000)
• Potential to categorise into ‘the included’ and ‘the excluded’ without
differentiation or acknowledging agency (Porter 2000)
• Underlying ‘moral meta-narrative’ (Hickey and du Toit 2007)
Adverse incorporation: a more appropriate concept?
(e.g. du Toit 2004; Hickey and du Toit 2007)
Implications for ‘inclusive development’
• Within the development world, ‘inclusion’ is conceptually
associated with particular paradigms of development:
development actors come to the idea of ‘inclusive
development’ with conceptual baggage.
• ‘In/exclusion’ may positively shift focus onto the institutional
processes which exclude disabled people and produce them as
a vulnerable, impoverished and marginalised group.
• The diversity and vagueness of conceptualisations of
in/exclusion may dilute its transformative potential and allow
a dichotomous perception that focuses only on the excluded.
• ‘Inclusive development’ presents both opportunities and
constraints for disabled people in the global South: the
tension between these requires recognition and exploration
(c.f. Simon-Kumar and Kingfisher 2011).
Reversing the Q&A hierarchy: over to you…
• In what ways do you think ‘inclusion’ as conceptualised within
disability studies differs from how in/exclusion is
conceptualised in development studies?
• What might we gain from the development studies debates
when considering the issue of ‘inclusive development’?
• In what ways might a disability perspective add to the
theorisation of in/exclusion within development studies?
Bibliography
• Barron, T. and P. Amerena, P, (eds) (2007) Disability and Inclusive
Development, London: Leonard Cheshire International.
• Clert, C. (1999) ‘Evaluating the concept of social exclusion in
development discourse’, The European Journal of Development
Research 11 (2): 176-199
• Dingo, R. (2007) 'Making the 'Unfit, Fit': The Rhetoric of
Mainstreaming in the World Bank's Commitment to Gender Equality
and Disability Rights', Wagadu, 4 (Summer 2007): 93-107.
• Grech, S. (2009) 'Disability, poverty and development: critical
reflections on the majority world debate', Disability & Society, 24
(6): 771-784.
• de Haan, A. (1998) ‘’Social Exclusion’: An alternative concept for the
study of deprivation?’, IDS Bulletin 29 (1): 10-19
• de Haan, A. and Maxwell, S. (1998) ‘Poverty and Social Exclusion in
North and South’, IDS Bulletin 29 (1): 1-9.
Bibliography (cont.)
• Hickey, S. and du Toit, A. (2007) ‘Adverse incorporation, social
exclusion and chronic poverty’, Chronic Poverty Working Paper 81
• Kabeer, N. (2000) ‘Social exclusion, poverty and discrimination:
towards an analytical framework’, IDS Bulletin 31 (4): 83-97
• Lord, J., Posarac, A., Nicoli, M., Peffley, K., McClain-Nhlapo, C. and
Keogh, M. (2010) Disability and International Cooperation and
Development: A Review of Policies and Practices, SP Discussion
Paper, No. 1003, Washington D.C.: World Bank.
• McRuer, R. (2007) 'Taking it to the Bank: Independence and Inclusion
on the World Market', Journal of Literary Disability, 1 (2): 5-14.
• Porter, F. (2000) ‘Social exclusion: what’s in a name?’, Development
in Practice 10 (1): 76-81
• Power, M. (2001) 'Geographies of disability and development in
Southern Africa', Disability Studies Quarterly, 21 (4): 84-97.
Bibliography (cont.)
• Sen, A. (2000) ‘Social exclusion: concept, application, and
scrutiny’, Social Development Papers No. 1, Asian
Development Bank
• Silver, H. (1994) ‘Social exclusion and social solidarity: three
paradigms’, International Labour Review 133(5-6): 531-578
• Simon-Kumar, R. and Kingfisher, C. (2011) ‘Beyond
transformation and regulation: productive tensions and the
analytics of inclusion’, Politics and Policy 39 (2): 271-294.
• Yeo, R. and Moore, K. (2003) 'Including disabled people in
poverty reduction work: "Nothing about us', without us"',
World Development, 31 (3): 571-590.