Click Here for a pdf of the Institute on Social Exclusion's Spring newsletter.

The Institute on Social Exclusion (ISE) was created in 2005 to integrate the concept of "social exclusion" into U.S. public policy discourse and to serve as a key institutional vehicle in the pursuit of The Adler School's vision to promote social justice. The overarching aim of the Institute is to pursue social justice by working to integrate the social exclusion framework, with its structural orientation, into American public deliberations about social disadvantage. Our intent is to facilitate a shift in national beliefs about and policy responses to the root causes of social disadvantage beyond the heavy emphasis on "personal responsibility" towards more progressive, structural orientation.

WHAT IS SOCIAL EXCLUSION?

Social exclusion is a concept that is used in many parts of the world outside the United States to characterize contemporary forms of social disadvantage. At the ISE, we use the phrase to refer to processes by which entire communities of people are systematically blocked from rights, opportunities and resources (e.g., housing, employment, health care, civic engagement, democratic participation and due process) that are normally available to members of American society and that are key to social integration.

Questions of agency - that is, who or what is responsible for systematically-imposed disadvantage - loom large in the social exclusion literature. Typically, responsibility is attributed to structural features of society, such as laws, public policies, regulations, institutional practices, organizational behaviors, and culturally-rooted values, beliefs and attitudes. These structures often convey unjust social outcomes resulting in disparate social consequences for different communities of people.

PREMISE OF THE WORK OF THE ISE

Societal structures fundamentally impact human welfare, often in ways that convey extreme and persistent relative disadvantage to some social groups; and addressing social disadvantage requires a thorough analysis, understanding and tackling of its structural origins.

THE GOALS OF THE ISE ARE TO:

• Analyze the ways in which structural features of society condition human welfare;
• Engage in practical work that brings to light and addresses structurally-induced social disadvantage; and
• Stimulate public dialogue on the structural causes of disadvantage and on possible solution.

THESE GOALS ARE ACHIEVED THROUGH THE FOLLOWING ACTIVITIES:

• Applied Research that informs policy and programmatic responses to structurally-induced social disadvantage;
• Community Outreach (e.g., advocacy, activism and technical assistance) that addresses specific forms of community-identified disadvantage; and
• Public Education that increases public awareness of the ways in which social structures condition human welfare.