The Sociology of Social Inclusion

This article looks at social inclusion from a sociological perspective. It argues that sociology complements biological and other natural order explanations of social stratification. The article interrogates a variety of forms of social integration, including ostracism within 5th century b.c. Greece, 19th-century solidarism, and Goffman’s mid-20th-century work on stigma. It does so to demonstrate how in each of these contexts, social inclusion and exclusion can function as apparati that problematize people on the margins, and by extension, contribute to their governance and control. The article proposes that sociology provides a valuable orientation from which to consider social inclusion because it illuminates how social integration maintains and manages the ways in which people move about and through their socially stratified worlds.

We live in the state and in society; we belong to a social circle which jostles against its members and is jostled by them; we feel the social pressure from all sides and we react against it with all our might; we experience a restraint to our free activities and we struggle to remove it; we require the services of other [people] which we cannot do without; we pursue our own interests and struggle for the interests of other social groups, which are also our interests. In short, we move in a world which we do not control, but which controls us, which is not directed toward us and adapted to us, but toward which we must direct and adapt ourselves. Gumplowicz, 1963, p. 6 This article considers the concept of social inclusion from the perspective of sociology. In doing so, it aims to complement the work of historians, economists, psychologists, and natural scientists to better understand the origins of the social inclusion concept. It argues that action and efforts to include or exclude individuals and social groups are fundamental to society as forces that govern through the oppressive or liberating effects such inclusionary or exclusionary actions promote.
As a discipline from which to consider the social inclusion and exclusion concepts, sociology offers an excellent vantage. Sociology is well oriented to consider facets of social equality and inequality, social integration and stratification, social mobility as it relates to social inclusion and exclusion, and the functional contributions of the periphery relative to the social core. Sociology provides a needed vantage from which to consider social inclusion as it lends itself to extension beyond economic or natural fitness.
In the social world, whether one is welcomed, represented, or provided for by the mainstream, or whether one is ostracized, ignored, or bemired, the outcome is a collection of social practices. These social practices result from various degrees of intimacy and interactions between friends, strangers, families, colleagues, kinship groups, communities, cultures, and even whole societies-all of which lend themselves to sociological study.
This article begins with a consideration of exclusion and inclusion societies across time and place, including gated communities, closed institutions, and caste systems. The article delves into what is described as the natural order of social inclusion and exclusion. It explores some of the theories and findings that have come out of such an approach, including the evolutionary and sociobiological work in the area. To make its case for a sociology of social inclusion, the article then gazes back in time to three examples: ostracism in 5th-century Athens, solidarism in 19th century France, and contemporary considerations of stigma as influenced by the work of Goffman. Building on this, the article proposes that societies which emphasize differences in social integration are structured by architectures of inclusion that govern and manage how marginal women and men inhabit social space, while functioning to maintain many of the attributes of the status quo.

Exclusion Hierarchies
More than 50 years ago, the anthropologist and sociologist David Pocock (1957) reflected that processes of inclusion and exclusion were features of all hierarchies. Pocock felt that in general terms, the discussion of inclusion and exclusion fed into efforts to define what might be called a social ontology, or the way that the existence and social positioning of groups in a hierarchically structured society would be explained. Such a social ontology has been described by Sibley (1995) as a landscape of exclusion; a form of social and philosophical geography that melds ideology with place in an exercise of social, economic, and political power that invariably results in forms of oppression, and in many instances, exploitation (Towers, 2005). Fredericks (2010) suggested that belongingness as experienced in everyday relations constructs the kinds of sentiments on which societies of exclusion (and inclusion) are based. Referencing the work of De Certeau (1984), Fredericks makes the case for the importance of the everydayness of belonging and attachment, and the memory and tradition it reinforces as means of appropriation and territorialization.
One example of such a landscape of exclusion is a gated community (Hook & Vrdoljak, 2002). Grant and Rosen (2009) proposed these communities exist as exclusion societies. They cite Flusty's (2004) argument that the community gates that enclose act to protect those inside from unforeseen and largely unwanted encounters with otherness. Examples given range from urban gated communities where exclusion is legitimized as spatial inequity (Flusty, 2004) to the present security fences undulating across Israel, or separating the United States from Mexico (Kabachnik, 2010). Herbert (2008) reflected on the ways in which urban spaces in the United States and elsewhere are turned into exclusion societies through the criminalization of public spaces outside the rarefied protected enclaves shielded within gates and walls. Focusing on the disorderly, Herbert describes this exclusion as a form of modern day prohibition that cedes out the homeless, the transient; and those who loiter, panhandle, and display public drunkenness (Douglas, 1966). Herbert found that these practices of creating exclusion societies are not new; that they have and continue to be used as justifications for forms of social cleansing (Cresswell, 2006;Dubber, 2005;Duncan, 1978;Spradley, 1970).
Essentially the physical embodiment of territorial actions, exclusion societies seek to separate and compound the favored from the disfavored, and the hygienic from the dirty (Douglas, 1966;Sibley, 1995). To do this, they collectively create spaces of inclusion and exclusion, even if not all parties cede to such collectivism.
Disability, like gated communities, is another example of the ways societies create cultural spaces structured by exclusion. Kitchin (1998) described the reproductive nature of disablist practices, as assemblies that seek to ensure disabled people are kept in certain places from where they come to understand when they may be out of place. For Kitchin, social relations between the disabled and the able-bodied function to keep disabled people in their place and to signal when they may be stepping beyond this space.
Prisons, like asylums and other places that remove individuals from broader social life are additional if somewhat more extreme forms of exclusion societies. These institutions enclose the daily lives of certain social actors from broader society, replacing wider interaction with complex subcultures (Baer, 2005).
An altogether different type of exclusion society is a caste system, which relies less on geographical separation and more on social distance. A notable example is the caste system of India (Nayar, 2007). At the root of India's exclusion society are the untouchable castes whose marginal social position is owed to their relationship to impurities associated with death and organic pollution (Deliege, 1992). Berreman (1967, referencing Davis & Moore, 1945Lenski, 1966;Mills, 1963;Tumin, 1953), held that caste systems-unlike gated communities, inner cities, orphanages, leper colonies, asylums, and prisons-are fundamentally structures through which power and privilege are allocated via interdependent social classifications ordered by stratified and ranked divisions of labor. Mencher (1974) referenced Leach (1960) in suggesting that India's caste classifications facilitate divisions of labor free of the competition and expectations of mobility inherent in other systems.
As exclusion societies, caste systems perpetuate themselves and the positions of privilege provided to those included within them. Yet they are different from other exclusion societies because across many noncaste landscapes of exclusion, mobility is conceivable and emulation of status is possible. However, in caste systems, place within the exclusion or inclusion hierarchy is ascribed at birth (Berreman, 1967, referencing Bailey, 1957Sinha, 1959Sinha, , 1962Srinivas, 1956Srinivas, , 1966. Such exclusion by ascription has an economic dimension also through the way in which untouchables are "denied control of the means of production" (Deliege, 1992, p. 170, referencing Oommen, 1984. This results in forms of deprivation and poverty that enforce dependence, deference, and ultimately acceptance. Exclusion societies are identifiable at different places in time, space, and geography. Such societies tend to be associated with differential access to social and economic well-being, and differential proximity to illness and disease. Inclusion societies, however, evolve from within such contexts. They are characterized by movements toward greater social justice, equality, and collectivism in response to the kinds of global oppressions exclusion societies embody and perpetuate.

A Natural Order
Mechanisms of social inclusion and exclusion and the effects of these have been thoroughly investigated within the field of psychology and related disciplines. Work in this area has sought to better understand possible evolutionary origins of social inclusion and exclusion, and potential sociobiological purposes to these different explanations of integration (Kurzban & Leary, 2001). Eisenberger and Lieberman (2005) and MacDonald and Leary (2005) have approached inclusion and exclusion from a psychosocial and physiological perspective in which they consider how the impacts of these social practices share overlapping characteristics with our physical pain systems. Eisenberger and Lieberman reflected that our social interconnectivity is as fundamental as our most basic human needs for fire, sustenance, and shelter and that the absence of such connectivity is experienced, literally, as pain. They propose that the pain of social exclusion, separation, or rejection share many of the experiential attributes of forms of physical pain. Referencing Baumeister (2000), Eisenberger and Liberman described how across many centuries and cultures, various forms of storytelling and artistic expression reflect how the interruption, loss, or absence of social bonds can manifest as intense experiences of human pain and suffering. They point out that the pain and suffering associated with the loss of social bonds is recognized by many legal systems also.
To help explain the social, psychological, and physical pain experienced by exclusion, Eisenberger and Lieberman (2004) developed pain overlap theory. This theory holds that different kinds of pain utilize elements of shared processing systems. As reflected by MacDonald and Leary (2005), among our less developed ancestors, both physical and social pain were functional in that they steered kin and other social groups from environmental and other threats, reorienting them in the direction of helpful others. As such, the social pain of exclusion was seen to have evolved as a means of responding to danger.
In detailing their sociometer theory, Leary, Tambor, Terdal, and Downs, (1995) explained why inclusionary and integrational practices are so fundamentally important to social interactions and how we are designed to detect them. They note that many writers have suggested that the human need to seek inclusion and to avoid exclusion is essential, and furthermore, that as a developmental trait, this orientation likely can be traced to its survival benefit (Ainsworth, 1989;Barash, 1977;Baumeister & Leary, 1995;Baumeister & Tice, 1990;Bowlby, 1969;Hogan, 1982;Hogan, Jones, & Cheek, 1985).
For Leary et al. (1995), an individual's sociometer is managed through self-esteem where social inclusion and exclusion are used as mechanisms to monitor the well-being of an individual or group's social relations. These authors use the sociometer to underscore pain overlap theory by suggesting that self-esteem is a kind of inclusion detector that meters changes in the inclusionary or exclusionary positioning of individuals. From this perspective, it would be this need for detection that ultimately drives individuals to maximize their quest for inclusion while minimizing the possibility of exclusion.
Along with the overlapping pain thesis and the sociometer/self-esteem thesis, Baumeister and Leary (1995) have posited a belongingness thesis. This suggests the need to belong is a fundamental human motivation. Here, along with base needs like food and shelter (Bernstein, Sacco, Young, Hugenberg, & Cook, 2010), belongingness is held to be a foundational human need that results in a general pattern whereby social inclusion is used to reward, and social exclusion to punish. The outcome is a gauge that structures both social values and comportment (Baumeister & Leary, 1995).
Whereas a sociological perspective might suggest at the societal level that there exist a series of motivations to design inclusive frameworks for the betterment of social life, a natural order perspective would suggest that basic human survival and reproduction benefit from the evolution of cohesive group living; that to an extent, inclusion and exclusion as components of a behavioral repertoire may have helped to ensure evolutionary and reproductive fitness . This thinking suggests that such fitness at the level of kin networks or community groups may mirror existing physiological traits for responding to physical pain, to also structure responses to social pain. From this perspective, the exclusion/inclusion continuum exists alongside a biologically driven, psychological reaction that leads to the adoption of a generalized dislike of social exclusion and a favoring of the maintenance of adequate inclusion (Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2005;MacDonald & Leary, 2005).
Such arguments present another perspective as to why different societies and social groupings across diverse historical periods and geographical locations develop intense drives to create and strengthen social institutions around various aspects of social integration and exclusion. Yet, as the examples of ostracism, solidarism, and stigmatism will reflect, any biological push with regards to social stratification is accompanied by a social world pull. The examples of ostracism, solidarism, and stigmatism will demonstrate how at different intervals in history, it is not necessarily biological forces but instead social architectures that become employed in the creation and continuance of inclusion societies.

Ostracism
Acts and practices of including or excluding others as aspects of systems of stratification may be as old as much of humanity itself. Certainly, most societies display some degree of taboos and customs concerning forms of both social rejection and social acceptance (Douglas, 1966, Gruter & Masters, 1986Lévi-Strauss, 1963;Radcliffe-Brown, 1952).
In institutional terms, a very early form of social exclusion is evident in the scholarship of the role of ostracism in Athens, Greece, during the 5th century b.c., when the provision of an official mechanism to institutionalize ostracism was enacted.
Although there is some debate within the works of Aristotle and Androtion as well as subsequent scholars about whether the law of ostracism originated with Cleisthenes prior to the first official ostracism of Hipparchos, son of Charmos, in 488 b.c. (Kagan, 1961;Raubitschek, 1951;Robinson, 1939Robinson, , 1945Robinson, , 1946Robinson, , 1952, there is consensus that the law appeared sometime in the 20 years surrounding the battle at Marathon. The law of ostracism was instituted as a means to protect young democratic institutions from the resurgence of tyranny (Raubitschek, 1951). It did so through the enactment of an ostrakophoria (Goligher, 1910, p. 558, referencing Carcopino, 1909Rehbinder, 1986, p. 323). Thus, ostracism was considered a democratic process in which those who were qualified to vote would "scratch onto a clay shard the name of a party leader to be banned (hence the name ostrakismos = shard judgment)" (Rehbinder, 1986, p. 323).
As an initial incident in a series of expulsions driven by the desire for political control (Kagan, 1961), the very first political ostracism was followed by the successive exclusion of Magakles in 487-6, Xanthippos in 485-4, and Aristeides in 483-2.
As institutionalized more than 25 centuries ago, ostracism was used almost exclusively as a political weapon against male generals (Raubitschek, 1951), as a means to mitigate the influence of political rivals (Kagan, 1961) and to police and control the well-being of the state. Rehbinder (1986) suggested the main aim of ostracism was to "exclude the losing party leader from the state" as "early democracy could not integrate the continuous action of opposition parties into the political process" (p. 321). To address this and to solve party conflicts, a law of ostracism essentially functioned to banish the leader of the opposition.
Importantly, Athenian ostracism was levied against an already elite class who for tyrannical activities or suspicions of tyranny were considered political liabilities or dangers. These acts did not bring shame on the recipient, but rather were prestigious, even honorable-a status reflected in the convention for the ostracized individual to retain his property, and, after his return, to regain his elite personal and social status (Rehbinder, 1986).
As Aristotle wrote in Politics: Democratic states institute the rule of ostracism [because] such states are held to aim at equality above anything else; and with that aim in view they used to pass a sentence of ostracism on those whom they regarded as having too much influence owing to their wealth or the number of their connexions or any other form of political strength. (Barker, 1952, p. 135, referenced in Masters, 1986 Ostracism as it came to be enacted in Attic democracy was not an event applied lightly or arbitrarily. It required careful deliberation, a large quorum, and the immunity of an ostracized person's family. In essence, ostracism acted like a safety valve that ensured a smoother, more peaceful, and less tumultuous running of the state (Kagan, 1961).
As instituted at the time, the law of ostracism was seen to be successful. It so weakened the ability of potentially disruptive subversive groups to wreak havoc on society and its political systems, that in the more than 90 years between 508 and 417 b.c., no more than 20 official ostracisms took place (Ostwald, 1955).
Given that modern industrial societies increasingly tend to frown on the kinds of excluding practices as reflected in the legal practice of ostracism (Rehbinder, 1986), it can be challenging to acknowledge that ostracism exists in contemporary societies also, legally through, for example, formal punishments such as imprisonment, or racial prejudice, scapegoating, and xenophobia (Gruter & Masters, 1986). For Kort (1986), ostracism can be considered as coerced or involuntary exit of an individual or individuals from the society in which they live that manifests as a range of exclusions. Thus, a society demonstrating variation in ostracism practices reflects a society with solidaristic strategies for the exclusion of its members from participation and from occupying positions of respect (Kort, 1986, referencing Masters, 1986).

Solidarism
To turn from the ostracism of 5th-century Athens to the solidarism of late-19th-century France, allows for the contrast of an early institutional approach to social exclusion with an equally enlightening historical era of inclusion.
The concept of solidarism evolved in the late-19th-century in France during a period of social, epistemological, and ontological change. It was an age when understandings of autonomy were being reconsidered by "scientism, political ideologies (especially Marxism) and the Roman Catholic Magister," entities united in their intent to denounce an increasing vanity-like individualism (Vincent, 2001, p. 414).
Although, within this period, the idea of solidarity was not an established ethical reference, French Protestants united around this new form of solidarity known as solidarism. In doing so, the Protestants defined a path forward in their transformed identity as a social minority (Vincent, 2001).
For this underclass, being an excluded minority was not seen as a stance from which to claim social or human rights. Rather, exclusion was seen as igniting the kind of freedoms of thought and associations, which lent themselves to the reconciliation of identity-lending conceptualizations like justice and liberty (Vincent, 2001).
Although French Protestants were bound by religion, their move to solidarism is not seen as being directly related to religious teachings or directives. If anything, French Protestantism of this period was wary of "religious pietism and political liberalism and generally suspicious of any institutional expression of the desire for social justice" (Vincent, 2001, p. 415). As a result, they turned instead to groups not known as religious in connotation, such as trade associations, unions, and left-of-centre political parties.
It has been suggested that the story of solidarism is essentially the story of France's move to the welfare state. In opposing collectivism because it potentially threatened individual liberty, while promoting the empowerment of the working class, the new philosophy of solidarism countered the individualism of laissez-faire liberalism and social Darwinism. In time, solidarism would come to help to dismantle existing resistance to social reform and to usher in this new era of Welfarism (Sheradin, 2000).
Léon Bourgeois's book Solidarité (1998), which first appeared in 1896, is held to be a form of manifesto for the solidarism movement. In the decades prior to the First World War, the newly empowered French Radical Party were looking for a philosophy that would help them to maintain central power against the right-leaning individualists and the left-leaning collectivists (Hayward, 1961(Hayward, , 1963. In 1895-1896, during the short-lived Radical government of Bourgeois, he published a pamphlet titled Solidarité based on a series of his public letters that had appeared earlier. The main intent of this document was to advocate for a new approach, between "retreating laissez-faire liberalism and ascendant socialism." The aim of the particular piece of writing was to shine a light on "the duties that citizens owed to each other" (Koskenniemi, 2009, p. 285).
Bourgeois's Solidarité is seen as representing what has been described as a belle époque within the Third Republic (Hayward, 1963). Solidarism became the main social philosophy of his new radical party (Koskenniemi, 2009), orienting it and the nation toward what in time would become a new more inclusive state. As a new political and collective philosophy, solidarism was seen as reflective of a modernization of the revolutionary maxim: liberty, equality, and fraternity.
Notably, solidarism's narrative features the influences of democracy and humanism, through its belief in the development and contributions of every individual, and through its assertion of the inherent dignity of all of humanity (Sheradin, 2000).
Solidarism was committed to democracy, to the empowerment of the working class, and to 19th-century understandings of human reliance and interdependence (Sheradin, 2000). In being so committed, one can find a second meaning in this movement, one interwoven with concern over balancing selfinterest with the era's philosophical humanistic ideals.
It is not surprising that among the principles of French solidarism was the belief that the liberty of human kind was not freedom absolute, but rather an understanding that free individuals were also in debt to society, to every other citizen, and to future generations (Koskenniemi, 2009).
In time, with the passing of World War I, the French Radical Party fell from favor as many of the working class shifted their allegiance to the Socialists following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 (Hayward, 1963). Ultimately, the harshness of World War I ended much of the utopian inclusivity inherent within the solidarist approach, and by the 1920s, much of the impact and influence of solidarism had been depleted (Koskenniemi, 2009).
However, for the generation or two of those in France moved by the solidarist approach to social integration, one of the most persuasive elements of the philosophy and one that lent to its fashionableness was what Hayward (1961) described as an open sesame inclusive approach to mitigating the social conflicts of the era. The philosophy was meaningful to the time also because as an approach, it was not really radical at all. Rather, it melded elements of community, inclusivity, and social solidarity-all useful mechanisms to help the populace attain security against poverty, illness, unemployment, and war (Hayward, 1961).
The broad solidarism movement was oriented to the reconciliation of individual and social ethics with the belief that all citizens had the free will to interact and develop relationships with others (Vincent, 2001). Solidarism in essence acted as a shared and uniting philosophy-a precondition of the era's new approaches toward social contractuality (Foschi & Cicciola, 2006) For Koskenniemi (2009), the influences of these preconditions would be felt at home and abroad, playing a defining role in solardistic evolutions throughout the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the beginning forays across the continent toward the establishment of the European Union (EU), and ultimately, as the sociological lens helps reveal, trickling through Goffman's 1950s work on stigma and France's 1970s social inclusion as promoted by René Lenoir.

Stigmatism
Stigma and the act of stigmatizing is a common and recognizable form of social exclusion, yet, efforts to contend with some of the prejudices and discriminations recognized as components of stigmatization reflect forms of social inclusion.
Inherent within Goffman's (1963) work: Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, is a belief in the universality of stigma and social exclusion. Stigma as a process leads certain individuals to be "systematically excluded from particular sorts of social interactions because they possess a particular characteristic or are a member of a particular group" (Kurzban & Leary, 2001, p. 187). The concept embodies the functionality of "outsiderderness"; and the utility of why humans, as "an inherently social species with a strong need for social acceptance should be so inclined to reject members of its own kind" (Kurzban & Leary, 2001, p. 187). For Goffman and those influenced by him (Crocker, Major, & Steele, 1998;Elliott, Ziegler, Altman, & Scott, 1982;Jones et al., 1984;Kleinman et al, 1995;Schneider, 1988), stigmatization occurs when the evaluation of an individual results in that person being discredited (Kurzban & Leary, 2001).
As a sociologist, Goffman's approach was both dramaturgical and oriented toward a symbolic interactionist perspective. His main interest was in the structure of social interactions and the rules that governed them (Goffman, 1967). For Goffman, social structures provided the context for interactions, as it was social structure that steadied and sustained social hierarchies (Scambler, 2009). Yet some have suggested that Goffman may not have sufficiently attended to political economy, or to elements considered traditionally beyond the foci of symbolic interactionists such as class, power, gender, and ethnicity (Scambler, 2006(Scambler, , 2009. From a functional perspective, stigma in the natural world reflects certain biological elements. Kurzban and Leary (2001) suggested that this world is structured by a series of interconnected interactions that result in variable costs and benefits (see Whiten & Byrne, 1988. As reflected earlier, there is a universality to stigma in the sense that it has been observed in most human cultures and even in the animal kingdom (Behringer, Butler, & Shields, 2006;Buchman & Reiner, 2009;Dugatkin, FitzGerald, & Lavoie, 1994;Oaten, Stevenson, & Case, 2011). Examples of this near universality include territoriality in fish, birds, reptiles, and mammals, and cross-species status hierarchies and social ostracism.
Some like Kurzban and Leary (2001) sought to frame the exclusion of stigma from the perspective of biological determinism. That is, as psychological rather than social systems structured by natural selection to ease some of the challenges of sociality. The proposition is that these systems or exclusionary mechanisms often influence individuals to subconsciously exclude dangerous others from social structures and interactions (Archer, 1985). Thus, from this biologically deterministic perspective, stigma is not so much owing to the kind of negative evaluation as theorized by Goffman and colleagues, but rather to a form of protective disassociation.
Another deterministic approach to stigmatism has considered the exclusion of stigma from the perspective of disease, and specifically as a mechanism of disease avoidance. Here, the basic claim derives from several observations. First, that we tend to evaluate those who are infectious in the same way as we would evaluate other kinds of stigmatized individuals (Snyder, Kleck, Strenta, & Mentzer, 1979). Second, that the most severely stigmatized groups (i.e., those who are most avoided) are individuals who are evidently ill or who demonstrate characteristics of the ill or diseased (Oaten et al., 2011referencing Bernstein, 1976Heider, 1958;Kurzban, & Leary, 2001;Schaller, & Duncan, 2007). Leprosy and smallpox are but two examples. For these authors, envisioning stigma as disease-avoidance does not negate other processes that contribute to discriminatory or exclusionary behavior. Rather, it suggests that beneath or antecedent to other processes is an avoidance system that seeks to limit possible contact with infectiousness and disease (Oaten et al., 2011). Parker and Aggleton (2003) reflected that often stigma goes undefined in academic scholarship or reverts to somewhat of a stereotypical, two-dimensional description of exclusion. In a series of articles, these authors have argued for the development of a more nuanced conceptual framework that would go beyond the works of Goffman and of biological determinists (Parker, 2012, referencing also Parker & Aggleton, 2003, and Maluwa, Aggleton, & Parker, 2002, to think beyond evolutionary stigma or differentially valued stigma and more directly about stigma as a "social process fundamentally linked to power and domination" (Parker, 2012, pp. 165-166). Parker (2012, referencing Stuber, Meyer, & Link, 2008 reflected that theory and research has tended to operationalize stigma either as discrimination (as in the work of Goffman, 1963) or as prejudice (as in the work of Allport, 1954). Subsequently, over the second half of the 20th century, the two foci evolved along parallel but distinctly separate directions, with the work on prejudice tending much more to tackle race, ethnicity, and associated social relations.
Yet as Parker (2012), Parker and Aggleton (2003), Link and Phelan (2001), and others have argued, discrimination and prejudice, as components or forms of stigma, share key relations with the production and reproduction of power relations.
It is arguably owing to this revisioning beyond dramaturgical performance and biological determinism that stigma can be envisioned as a somewhat supplanted component of the contemporary discourse of social exclusion and inclusion.
The suggestion that stigma is not (or not only) performed and not (or not only) determined but rather is culturally produced as a social, relational, and powerful artifact is a compelling argument (Buchman & Reiner, 2009). Equally compelling is Scambler's (2009) reflection that stigma can be a very convoluted social process, one for which sociology is well-oriented to imagine as a combination of experience, anticipation, and perception, of the harms of blame and devaluation; the fears and pain of rejection and exclusion; and the hopes and desires for acceptance and inclusion.

Social Inclusion
How cultures and societies stratify and divide; how they account for customs around inclusion, exclusion, belonging, and togetherness; and how the processes that include and exclude are talked about, described, understood, and experienced, all provide some clues as to the role of social integration and stratification within a given society. Indeed, how stratification is conceived and discussed can obscure the very nature of the processes by which such divisions come to be. This is precisely why the discipline of sociology is so useful. Unlike natural order sciences, it does more than identify and posit explanations for social divisions. Sociology, in addition to this, can reflect also on the disciplinary discourses encircling discussions of these social partitions. For example, one of the means by which stratification is conceptualized and discussed could take as a reflective example, the pre-World War II writings of Sorokin (1998), who in considering stratification differentiated between horizontal and vertical social mobility. Sorokin suggested that horizontal mobility related to changes in occupational position or role, but not to changes within a social hierarchy, whereas vertical mobility did describe changes within the social hierarchy. Sorokin summarized his theory by reflecting that within systems of vertical and horizontal mobility, there could be individual social infiltration as well as collective social movement. Furthermore, that although it was possible to identify forms of mobile and immobile societies within different geographical and historical contexts, it was rare for a society's strata to be closed absolutely, and rare for the vertical mobility of even the most mobile society to be completely free from obstacles.
As proposed by Sorokin, these types of social movements could often vary across time and space, yet even across time, trends-particularly as they might apply to vertical mobility-were unlikely to be writ in stone. Although autocratic societies might be less mobile than democratic societies, the rule was not fixed and could have exceptions (Sorokin, 1998).
While often used to describe low or zero labor market involvement (Foster, 2000), early definitions of social exclusion in time broadened to consider barriers to effective or full participation in society (Du Toit, 2004). These types of barriers were considered to contribute to progressive processes of marginalization that could lead to deprivation and disadvantage (Chakravarty & D'Ambrosio, 2006). As the exclusion concept took on currency, it began to reflect more than a simple material nature and to begin to encompass the experience of individuals or communities who were not benefitting or were unable to benefit relative to others in society (Davies, 2005;Levitas, 1998). In time, the concept would evolve to reflect lapses in social integration and social cohesion that plagued advanced capitalist societies (Chakravarty & D'Ambrosio, 2006). It would evolve also to refer to processes that prevent individuals or groups from full or partial participation in society, as well as the crippling and reifying inability to meaningful participation in economic, social, political, and cultural activities and life (de Haan & Maxwell, 1998;Duffy, 1995Duffy, , 2001Horsell, 2006)-a definitional approach that imbues exclusion in terms of neighborhood, individual, spatial, and group dimensions (Burchardt, Le Grand, & Piachaud, 1999, referenced in Percy-Smith, 2000. March, Oviedo-Joekes, and Romero (2006) suggested that one of the elements that unify the divergent definitional approaches to social exclusion and inclusion is that social exclusion is a process as opposed to a static end state. Further, that inclusion, in addition to being a context-based social and historical product reflective of social and national history, tends to mirror also what Silver (1995) proposed were the very limits of the borders of belonging.
Despite attempts at globally applicable definitions of social exclusion and inclusion, it has been suggested that there will always be patterns of border shaping that are particular to specific contexts. This is in part because the weight of inclusion versus exclusion is dependent on the particulars of any given society (de Haan & Maxwell, 1998;March et al., 2006;O'Brien, Wilkes, de Haan, & Maxwell, 1997). Such society-specific particulars might take the form of traditional and historic patterns of stratification, or be based on how individual groups and/or characteristics may be valued over others. Less clear, however, is which, if any, elements of a given society or social structure may mitigate the kinds of exclusion/inclusion dynamics that may be held aloft as representative of normative practice. For example, in some social contexts, patterns of inclusion and exclusion may reflect different stages of social and economic development. Alternately, these patterns may vary by type and/or political orientation of governments, or by the religious, ethnic, or cultural makeup of a given society.
Ultimately, however, the use of inclusion and exclusion concepts has evolved to the point where within a number of contexts, they are used as a descriptor for those who represent a particular kind of threat to social harmony (Silver & Miller, 2003). In sum, the terms social inclusion and social exclusion have been used throughout the social science and humanities literature in a number of different ways-to describe acts of social stratification across human and animal societies, as a principle to reflect the ordering that occurs within societies to determine social position, and as a narrative to explain and at times justify why one or more groups merit access to the core or the periphery, to the benefit or expense of others.
Initial discourses of social inclusion are widely attributed to having first appeared in France in the 1970s when the economically disadvantaged began to be described as the excluded (Silver, 1995). The preliminary uses of this new parlance appeared as a means to refer to a variety of disabled and destitute groups. The government of France was among the earliest adapters of exclusion terminology, and it is there that most often the concept is suggested to have found its contemporary meaning (Silver & Miller, 2003).
As a fully documented policy response, the concept of social inclusion to counteract social exclusion emerged toward the end of the 1980s, when the European Community (EC) first used the term social exclusion (Wilson, 2006). The appearance of the term social inclusion in the rhetoric of the EC was in itself a key point of departure, in that exclusion was suddenly held to be a reflection that "poverty was no longer the right word to use to describe the plight of those marginalized from mainstream society" (Williams & White, 2003, p. 91).
Ascertaining the contemporary use of the terms social inclusion and social exclusion involves a study of diffusion of, most importantly, the applications of René Lenoir, France's Secretary of State for Social Welfare in the Chirac government of the 1970s (Davies, 2005, citing Lenoir, 1974Pierce, 1999;Silver, 1995).

L'Inclusion Sociale
In 1965, a French social commentator, Jean Klanfer, published L'Exclusion sociale: Étude de la marginalité dans les sociétés occidentales [Social exclusion: The study of marginality in Western societies] (Béland, 2007). Described as an anthropology of poverty (Cl, 1968), Klanfer's work argued that society rewarded personal responsibility with inclusion and personal irresponsibility with exclusion. If the work of Bourgeois was a primary influence on the soldarism movement almost 100 years earlier, the writings of Klanfer would fuel the imagination of René Lenoir (1974), most notably in his book Les exclus.
In his political tome, Lenoir contended social exclusion was a result of France's postwar transition from a largely agricultural society to an urban one (Davies, 2005). While the belief was that these events could lead to poverty, Lenoir argued that they could lead to a brand of social polarization also, which challenged the Liberté, Egalité, and Fraternité ideals of the French Republican project.
Many have suggested that if there were a birth of the modern rhetoric of social inclusion, it would be here, in French thought that sought a means to reintegrate the large numbers of ex-industrial workers and a growing number of young people excluded from opportunities to join the labor force in the new economies of the 1970s and beyond.
According to Silver (1995) and Silver and Miller (2003), one of the reasons the inclusion and exclusion concepts resonated so strongly for the French was that in their society, the Anglo-Saxon idea of poverty was seen to essentially insult the equality of citizenry contained within the Liberté manifesto-an equality that, as reflected in France's late-20thcentury welfare state, operationalized charity as basic social assistance in response to poverty, and as essentially a right of citizenry. Furthermore, what would come to be seen as an inclusive welfare state was held to be the most effective and civilized way to eliminate absolute material deprivation and the risks to well-being such deprivation could cause.
However, as the 1970s progressed, and as unemployment became endemic, the passage of time brought even greater numbers of those considered excluded, and with them everincreasing reiterations of the new exclusion discourse (Silver, 1995). The result in France was a movement to protect les exclus. The movement was so strong that by 1998, the French posited legal codification to prevent and combat social exclusions (note the plural) as a means to foster universal access to fundamental human rights.
Within French Republican thought in particular, social exclusion was seen to reflect ruptures in solidarity and the social bond (lien social), something essentially tantamount to heresy within the French social contract. Heresy because the French social contract of the time was seen to hold (and some may argue continues to hold) reciprocity, both between the social obligations French citizens have for the French state and the obligations that society has in return, to provide reasonable livelihoods for its members. Here, though, the accepted exceptions, as in many welfare regimes, were restricted to those who could not work due to older age, disability, or ill health, and did not extend to those whose deliberate actions and/or deliberate tendencies toward illicit pleasure, removed them from broader labor force opportunities or expectations.
In some respects, the mutuality and reciprocity evident in elements of French Republican thought reflected a social contract that favored the already-included in its definition of society. For the positioning of reciprocity within the social contract, such a context has implications for the creation of biases against the failings of the excluded. In particular, against those who vary from society's includable norms. In the place of any such consideration leading to action, appeared a sort of stoic romanticism. Thus, for the French, the excluded came to represent a martyred or punished sector of a society against whom the included had failed to live up to their side of the social contract.
As the concept of exclusion grew to gain broader credence beyond France, the EC and the subsequent EU, it increasingly incorporated target groups who were not simply poor or without sufficient resources. It incorporated those segregated also from the social core through attributes such as ethnicity or race, age, gender, and disability, and whose characteristics could contribute to justify the need for deliberate social inclusion programs (Omidvar & Richmond, 2003). That these attributes tended to be noncriminalized and relatively politically correct, as opposed to criminalized and/or contested, is a feature that should not be lost.
Even though the concepts of citizenship and social integration in the French tradition may present some challenges for Anglo-Saxon manners of thinking, this did not, according to Gore, Figueiredo, and Rodgers (1995), prevent the wider adoption of exclusion frameworks across Western Europe. These authors suggested that in appropriating the concept as integral to modern and meaningful social development, the EC was linking the concept of social exclusion more closely with evolving thoughts around the implications of unrealized social rights.
While EC and EU directives sought to carve out greater social inclusion, other countries, particularly Commonwealth countries-notably the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa-were beginning to roll out their own interpretations of this rhetoric.
In its initial contemporary use, the exclusion terminology adopted in France and subsequently diffused elsewhere, was meant to refer to those individuals who were considered to be on the margins of French society of the 1970s. That is, individuals considered society's social problems, who tended to share a particular social reality, a less than successful material existence compounded with real barriers in accessing benefits provided by the French welfare state (Daly, 2006). So great were the social problems, that Lenoir, would suggest that a full 10% of the French population were exclu, or outcast. According to Davies (2005), "the novel characteristic of les exclus was not that they were poor (although most were), but that they were disconnected from mainstream society in ways that went beyond poverty" (p. 3). This disconnect, it was argued, was facilitated by their relative social positioning and by factors related to poor health and social, economic, and geographical isolation from active engagement in politics. From this perspective, to be socially excluded was paramount to being of the underclass; to be among those people who did not fit into the norms of industrial societies, who were not protected by social insurance and who were essentially considered social misfits. (Silver, 1995;Stegemen & Costongs, 2003). Beliefs about social conformity aside, Silver's (1995) near definitive list of the socially excluded reads in some regards as a full 50% of the world's population. In doing, so it lends credence to Labonte's (2004) assertion that the socially excluded are liable to comprise everyone who is not middleaged, middle class, and male.
It follows that just naming who is at risk of social exclusion, based on identity, vulnerability, membership, or biology will not suffice without some reflection as to who is naming the excluded, where those who label or define the excluded stand ontologically relative to their own or others' exclusion, and what if any the influences of personal, political, stereotypical, or xenophobic biases may be. It is an element of the conceptualization of social inclusion and exclusion particularly well-suited to sociology's contribution.

A Sociological Lens
In many ways, despite the contribution of the psychological and life sciences, and even the contributions of social policy, the concepts of social inclusion and exclusion are profoundingly sociological. This is because at the very root of both classic and contemporary sociological thinking are concerns with social stratification, social inequality, and social classkey concepts which the social inclusion literature repeatedly touches upon. Witcher (2003, referencing Burchardt et al., 1999 reflected that social inclusion and exclusion were concepts that were often poorly defined or theorized. Daly (2006) has suggested that although there is nothing inherent in the inclusion and exclusion concepts that defy or negate theorization, in general, sociology's attempts at their theorization could be inconsistent or facile. Horsell (2006) referenced Crowther (2002) in suggesting that the contemporary interest in social exclusion and inclusion were reflective of similar attempts to conceptualize the dual influences of poverty and social deprivation. As such, these concepts signaled that somehow the cumulative impacts of poverty and social deprivation (or the cumulative effects of social exclusion in the absence of social inclusion) could represent a threat to social order. Horsell's (2006) suggestion was that, in purely operational terms, the exclusion/inclusion paradigm acted to reinforce neoliberal ideas about social actors and agency as well as to harness principles of mutual obligation and active participation; that the discourse, broadly speaking, had both symbolic and physical dimensions. In its consideration of the ways in which contemporary social policy analysis treats social position as stratification, deprivation, and inequality, attempts to tease out the causes and consequences of social exclusion relative to inclusion could risk becoming muddled by mixing together attempts to better the lives and living conditions of people living below poverty lines, with the illusion that more were being done than might be. Horsell's suggestion of illusion hinged on the reflection that those who may ultimately benefit from the application of such inclusion-speak when operationalized as policy could tend to be those who already enjoyed a number of inclusion's benefits. Levitas (1996Levitas ( , 1998 has reflected that the overall flavor of the social inclusion rhetoric is strongly Durkheimian. She has stressed that Durkheim and the exclusion/inclusion discursive continuum demonstrate a tendency to repress conflict as well as a tendency toward an approach to inclusion that subversively critiques capitalism in a way that would be lacking from a purely Durkheimian analysis. Owing in part to this, Levitas (1998) labeled the rhetoric of social inclusion "a new Durkheimian hegemony" (p. 178), given that most contemporary views of inclusion correspond to scholarly interpretations of Durkheim's sociology, including Durkheim's emphasis on an alternative attempt to navigate an understanding of society between unacceptable free market capitalism and an unacceptable state socialism.
Such hegemony, according to Bowring (2000), leads us to think of elements of exclusion like deprivation and inequality as phenomena that occur at the very margins of society, and by extension, to ignore social structures that influence the included as well as the excluded. Bowring's point was that the exclusion/inclusion rhetoric risks being somewhat of a red herring, because exclusion at the societal level could be indicative of systemic deprivation and not just a deprivation experienced or reported by those defined as socially excluded.
For Wilson (2006), it was important to recall that social integration per se was not a focus of Durkheim. For Durkheim, inequality and social stratification were natural results of society, components of a solidary system he divided into mechanical and organic: the former being a fountain of social cohesion and the latter a well of social inclusion. Together, they were envisioned as the kinds of dependencies that social actors within advanced societies share with one another. Wilson's point was that although Durkheim associated increases in solidarity with social progress, he would not necessarily associate the same solidarity with social inclusion, since in theory, advanced societies characterized by mutual dependence would exhibit the kinds of mutual and shared bonds that would defy the need for social inclusion in the first place.
The emphasis of these authors, and arguably of a Durkheimian perspective as applied to social inclusion also, is that new or reborn ways are not necessarily different ways. That despite its focus on the socially disenfranchised and their position relative to a status quo, there remains a hollow echo to the rhetoric around social inclusion. A void that is both redolent of discussion of the hollow state (Barnett, 1999;Davies, 2000;Della Sala, 1997;Holliday, 2000;London Edinburgh Weekend Return Group, 1980;Rhodes, 1994;Roberts & Devine, 2003;Skelcher, 2000), as well as a void that references one of Levitas's (2000) and Labonte's (2004) salient points: that it is one thing to promote an inclusionary utopia. However, in the event that such a utopian vision comes to pass, how likely is it that the result will be the kind of social world foreseen? In other words, even if a utopian ideal were within the reach of real-world, applied social policy, what are the odds, as Kenyon (2003) suggested, that attaining an inclusive society would result in the banishment of all inequality.
It was Young's (1999) argument, and Wilson's (2006) reiteration that although much of the West's social inclusion rhetoric may address many things, the root cause of social exclusion is not one of them. In this, the rhetoric fails because to address these causes would require acknowledgment that even within real-world inclusion societies, people frequently continue to experience poverty in a context that envelops them with messages of the meritocracy that surrounds them-a meritocracy that suggests that anyone with desire and ambition can succeed through acceptable behavior and hard work. For these authors, this represents a relative process of deprivation-one that includes an encounter with a form of culture shock where the culture in which the excluded experience their day-to-day existence actively reinforces the notion that they are receiving a much lower standard of living than others.
Here then, one could contend, is reflected the relative deprivation that leads to social exclusion "through a subjective experience of inequality and unfairness as materially deprived people seek to obtain the unobtainable" (Young, 1999, p. 401, cited in Wilson, 2006. In a twist on the variations in social inclusion discourses presented earlier, this view holds that social exclusion morphs into "a cultural phenomenon arising from dialectic relationships between identity and social acceptance and the contradiction of a supposed meritocracy in which the poor lack the material means to meet the aspirations they are encouraged to embrace" (Wilson, 2006, p. 343). In other words, exclusion becomes social status contested between a hierarchical valuation of different kinds of social identities (socially hazardous vs. socially accepted) within a social world attempting to remedy the inherent challenges embedded in an inequitable division of resources within an acquisitive, material world.

Residuus Exclusion
In discussing the problematization of exclusion, the sociologist Nikolas Rose wrote that the mid-19th century wore the mantle of "a succession of figures that seem to condense in their person, their name, their image all that is disorder, danger, threat to civility, the vagrant, the pauper, the degenerate" (Rose, 1999, p. 254). As the 19th century gave way to the 20th, there appeared efforts to create universally shared forms of social citizenship. Yet even within this drive toward universality, there were those who were cast as unincludable, just as there are today. Within the new liberal thinking, universal citizenship did not emulate fully the fact that the notion of universal was still a somewhat relative concept and that a boundary between the includable and the excludable would not only continue to exist but would be reinforced also.
From this arose "notions such as 'the residuum,' 'the unemployable' and 'the social problem group'" (Rose, 1999, p. 254), that is, states of embodied being, through social roles, social strata, and entire classes that would, in time, become integral to these new forms of liberal thinking. From such vantage, the rhetoric of exclusion/inclusion, and the array of notions and underlying beliefs about the utility of integration, would become parts of the organizing, and traceable mainstays of reform. From older, perhaps simpler conceptualizations of inequality were born new ways of understanding what Rose, citing Levitas (1996), described as a "two-thirds, one-third social order" where a seemingly continually widening gap between the included two thirds and the excluded one third would continue to unfurl (Rose, 1999, p. 258). Rose (1999) differentiated the new excluded from previous form of unequals. Whereas minorities that arose from the welfare state had claims to unity and solidarity, the new excluded have few of these, and it is perhaps from this lack of unification that the new expertise underlying inclusion's emphasis is born. Challenged from forging identity and right of place based on shared exclusion, this new underclass is "like Marx's peasants, individualized like potatoes in a sack, incapable of forming themselves into a single class on the basis of a consciousness of their shared expropriation" (Rose, 1999, pp. 254-255).
In moving from a welfare to a postwelfare, advanced liberal order, social control is reconfigured into control that moves beyond repressing or containing individual pathology. It becomes both about knowledge and access to the production of knowledge. This is because-to paraphrase Marxaccess to the production of knowledge provides for the definition of what is and is not includable (Rose, 1999, referencing Ericson & Haggerty, 1997. Thus, the new labor force of control is no longer one that is either purely reactive or purely punitive. Rather, it takes on a form of administrative function whereby it oversees the marginalia comprising the bounds (and bonds) of inclusion and exclusion, of risk and safety and permissibility (Rose, 1999). It was Rose's vision that for the excluded underclass "a politics of conduct is today more salient than a politics of class" (Rose, 2000, p. 335, citing Mead, 1991, p. 4, and Procacci, 1999.
Although Rose's discourse is compelling, one should consider also whether all of the excluded are created equal. Do they all share the same position within the underclass? For example, across the Western world, special interest groups have sprung up since the softening of the welfare state, groups which include not only those that are socially excluded-drug users, sexual deviants, the poorly socialized-but also the physically excluded such as those who are bodily or mentally challenged.
In order for the work of Rose and those who have influenced his arguments regarding the inclusion/exclusion divide to be applicable (these influences include the works of Foucault, 1979aFoucault, , 1976Foucault, /1979bFoucault, , 1985Foucault, , 1991Mead, 1991;O'Malley, 1992O'Malley, , 1999O'Malley, , 2004Valverde, 1998), the work will need, in part, to account for diversity and social stratification within the underclass-that is, to help shed light on how and why certain social hierarchies of the status quo become replicated within the margins, leading to some of the marginal experiencing, in a sense, double marginality. At the same time, even those who achieve core or nonperipheral social status risk facing constraining hierarchies and limits to social mobility that function to either deny or defy full integration.
Extrapolating from the work of Rose, the inclusion society would not be a utopian dream, but rather a development that to varying extents would further institutionalize themes of inclusion, permissible rights, and the breadth of acceptable conduct.

Conclusion
This article has reflected on social inclusion from the vantage of sociology. It has reflected on exclusion and inclusion societies, across time and place and has demonstrated the importance of considering the physical world's exclusion and inclusion societies not only from a natural order perspective but from a social order perspective also.
Many of the considerations explored here have embodied measurable, objective approaches to the sociological conception and consideration of exclusion and inclusion. Du Toit (2004) has suggested current definitions, and their applications within individual country contexts allow social scientists and policy makers to present social exclusion as a single outcome of potentially multiple determinants of deprivation. Yet, this article has considered arguments that position inclusion and exclusion as much more than the fodder of contemporary policy. Indeed, it has demonstrated how human integration and expulsion are both highly historical and deeply sociological; that forms of social deprivation as well as social entitlement span many hundreds of years, if not the full course of human history itself.
For all that is known about social stratification, the tendency, particularly from the perspective of sociology, has been to consider inclusion and exclusion from an observational standpoint. This has occurred through policy analysis, historical analysis, and even consideration of some of the sociobiological correlates of inclusion and exclusion. What is less well known and less well developed are approaches for understanding the subjective experiences of social inclusion and social exclusion. For example, how exclusion and inclusion are experienced socially? How experiences of inclusion and exclusion are produced and reproduced socially? How different social labels impact the experience of inclusion and exclusion, and what the role of stigma may be?
For the reader, understanding the journey from social exclusion to social inclusion sociologically is an undertaking across potentially difficult terrain. Among other things, it requires a critical eye capable of accounting for individual and group participation and lack thereof (Daly, 2006).
And what of poverty? For some writers who have sought to unpack social inclusion and exclusion, these concepts are but alternate ways of recasting the notion of poverty. Others suggest economic poverty need be seen either as only one of an interrelated group of dimensions which work in tandem together to contribute to an individual's inability to successfully access the overall labor market. Such an approach would envision poverty as one factor in a multifaceted approach to understanding the experiences of society's lower strata (Sirovátka & Mare, 2006;Woodward & Kohli, 2001).
As prescribed approaches to policy and practice, efforts to contend with contemporary social exclusion often come to be framed by a rhetoric of reformation, imbued with different traditions in terms of how poverty is framed around either relational or distributional issues (Murie & Musterd, 2004, referencing van Kempen, 2002. It is a vantage that capitalizes on Marshall's (1963) model of postwar social rights, where, rather than focus on forms of postwar poverty, the focus on social exclusion is on redistribution, access, and participation (Murie & Musterd, 2004). Then and now, sociologically speaking, when poverty rather than social structure is held up as the cause and consequence of exclusion, such deprivation is presented as a failure of capabilities as opposed to a manner of being within a social structure or society. Chakravarty and D'Ambrosio (2006) suggested that an emphasis on the shortfalls of economic thresholds as an explanation for exclusion is not the same as emphasizing structured inabilities to participate. This is because a focus on structural inabilities allows for a more complex, multidimensional understanding of the interplay, overlap, and social distance between money, work, and belonging. As a reconceptualization of social disadvantage, such a perspective provides an important framework for thinking out alternatives to the welfare state. It links poverty, productivity by means of employment and social integration that in turn emphasizes integration and insertion into a labor market, active and personalized participation, and a multicultural national citizenry (Gore et al., 1995). It broadens also the notion of inclusion beyond biological or economic fitness alone.
In this regard, the suggestion that social inclusion exists not necessarily as a mechanism of sociobiological well-being only but more viscerally as a reflection of outcome of economic empowerment holds much in common with Richard Parker and Peter Aggleton's post-Goffman work on stigma. Although good arguments exist-and many have been presented hereabout why integration and ostracism can be interpreted through both natural order and economic lenses, inclusion and exclusion do not represent free-floating views. Like stigma, inclusion and exclusion also exist at "the historically determined nexus between cultural formulations and systems of power and domination" (Parker, 2012, p. 166).
As systems of social power, these formations constitute architectures of inclusion; that is, means and ways that inclusion and exclusion are both enacted and talked about. Such architectures exist as literal and figurative coalitions of action, reaction, governance, control, and power which together comprise how a policy aim like social inclusion is wound, entwined, draped, and displayed for public rendering and consumption.
In what can be described as a political economy of inclusion, the hierarchies embedded in these architectures of inclusion not only ascribe value to who is to be considered includable but also reflect value structures that can lead to forms of ideologically based interpretations about whether inclusion is as good or better than exclusion (Rodgers, 1995) based on variation in social power, the ability to hold rights, and the representation or embodiment of hazard.
As with more traditional, physical forms of architecture, inclusion's architectures function to both limit and facilitate the movement and interaction of people through hierarchies of integration. Enclosed within these architectures are worlds of inclusion and exclusion that push and pull amid new forms of allowance, constraint, and conflict (Gumplowicz, 1963). Parallel yet interconnected worlds in which, are reflected, the socially excluded, reduced, and idealized as somewhat two-dimensional occupiers of social space (Spina, 2005). Gillies (2005) reflected that societies have a tendency to normalize the sins of the included while penalizing the sins of the excluded. This suggests that even if discourses about social inclusion are effectively rendered as policy and translated into practice, the act of revaluating the biases society's hold for marginal underclasses of excluded social actors may well remain. This is to say that were society able to find room within its social architectures for its marginal women and men (Park, 1928), the fact of their powerlessness coupled with their comportment could still relegate them to the periphery, occupying colonized spaces stratified on one side by accusations of nonnormative or deviant behavior and on another by power relations.
For the contemporary open thinker trying to grapple with social inclusion and exclusion as a set of potentially complex concepts between those who study and profess a natural, an economic, or a social order, ideas about power would seem to be of particular importance-be it the power of the elite or the empowerment of those with special needs. Power seems to fuel the wheels of integration. Although power can be shown to have a decisive role in both the natural and the economic orders, it is in the arena of the social where it is perhaps best understood. One only need look at the history of philosophy and social theory for evidence of how power and proximity to it can enable or bar integration. Power allows proximity to the means of inclusion-essentially, to inclusion's apparati.
Of course, simply thinking openly about social worlds as variations of inclusionary or exclusionary societies does not lead to societies that are more inclusive. It does, however, allow for a more open lens with which to consider the past as well with which to view the present.

Author's Note
Portions of this article were written during visits to the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria; the University of Pretoria and the University of the Western Cape, South Africa; and the University of Namibia.