Social Exclusion and Knowledge

Abstract

This article offers a critical examination of the repercussions of the different ways in which the poor have been defined and positioned by the governments and the international organizations that fund them, resulting in the application of rigid and homogeneous categories, as well as wrong and inconsistent policies for fighting poverty. At the same time, the article points out that efforts have been made recently to understand the specific demands for social justice, equity, tolerance, and respect for diversity, as well as for true integration, put forward by the excluded populations. In this respect, the author calls for an acknowledgement of the phenomenon of exclusion as the condition which adds to poverty the impossibility of fully participating in social life and exercising citizenship. To be excluded means more than just being poor. It means being absent from the political action that defines a society's path at a given time and in a given territory. The author concludes with a declaration of the need to revise and reformulate our understanding of the forms taken by the excluded populations' presence in society, with recognition of those populations' diversity, contradictory expressions, demands and exercise of rights, as a basis for formulating policies that will effectively support the right to collective well-being and hope.