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16 Critical Soc. Pol'y 5 (1996)

handle is hein.journals/critsplcy16 and id is 1 raw text is: ARTICLES O RUTH LEVITAS University of Bristol The concept of social exclusion and the new Durkheimian hegemony Abstract This article argues that the concept of social exclusion, which was orig- inally developed to describe the manifold consequences of poverty and inequality, has become embedded as a crucial element within a new hegemonic discourse. Within this discourse, terms such as social co- hesion and solidarity abound, and social exclusion is contrasted not with inclusion but with integration, construed as integration into the labour market. The paper analyses the operation of this discourse in recent pol- icy documents from the European Union and the Borrie Report, as well as in the work of Will Hutton. The discourse is described as fundamen- tally Durkheimian because it treats social divisions which are endemic to capitalism as resulting from an abnormal breakdown in the social co- hesion which should be maintained by the division of labour. The article argues that, within this discourse, the concept of social exclusion oper- ates both to devalue unpaid work and to obscure the inequalities between paid workers, as well as to obscure the fundamental social division be- tween the property-owning class and the rest of society. In the late 1980s, the term 'underclass' became current in both lay and sociological discourses about the state of the nation. In 1987, Michael Ignatieff chaired a televised discussion between Ray Pahl, Ralph Dahrendorf, Stuart Hall and the free marketeer Lord Harris on the question of whether there really was an underclass in Britain (Thinking Aloud, 12 November 87). The sociologists appeared to agree that while one could not strictly speaking talk about a class, since the 'group' in question lacked permanence, intergenerational continuity and hom- Critical Social Policy 46 (SAGE: London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi), Vol. 16 (1996): 5-20. 5

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