| In 1992, the European Union (EU) adopted the term "social exclusion" to describe the interactivity and multiplicity of social problems---poverty, poor health, high and chronic unemployment, low educational attainment, high crime and poor environmental conditions---faced by people living in areas defined as deprived. The member states, of which the UK was one, subsequently embarked on a myriad of social regeneration programs to address and eradicate the problem identified as "social exclusion". This research shows how the concept of "social exclusion" changed from being a structural critique that advocated broad-based social change to a central organizing concept of social policy that described the inadequacies of poor people and advocated the need for government interventions on their behalf. In the process, concern for the material conditions of poverty was superceded by concern with "social cohesion" and active "citizenship". Having thus defined the problem, interventions targeted "communities", aiming to "build capacity" and "social capital.";Using ethnographic data, the research illustrates how the discourse of "social exclusion" and its attendant concepts of "community", "social capital" and "capacity building" operate in the context of interactions among community representatives, workers in local government, and consultants in regeneration partnerships to limit the participation of "socially excluded" people, creating as a "side-effect", a regeneration industry attended by a need for "experts", whose self-created and self-legitimizing role simultaneously reinforced "social exclusion" as a central organizing concept for social policy. |
