Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Section 5:
Inclusion and Exclusion from a
Cultural Perspective
Section overview
This section explores inclusion and exclusion from a cultural perspective and describes
how social and political power within society influences how people or groups from
diverse cultural backgrounds are included or excluded. We will discuss how racism,
prejudice, and discrimination often prevent access to public and private services for
various groups of people.
Objectives
By the end of this section, you should be able to:
demonstrate how racism prevents access to various public and private services,
including counselling services
understand the process of the devaluation of culture and the impact it has on the
individual
recognise how the processes of prejudice operate in our minds and behaviours as
practitioners
Section Contents
Section requirements ..................................................................................................................... 1
Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 2
Politics and discourse .................................................................................................................... 3
Power ............................................................................................................................................... 4
Exclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 6
Marginalisation ............................................................................................................................... 7
Racism.............................................................................................................................................. 9
Devaluation of culture .................................................................................................................11
Prejudice and discrimination ......................................................................................................11
Social inclusion .............................................................................................................................12
Social justice ..................................................................................................................................13
Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................15
Section requirements
Activities
There are four activities in this section.
Textbook
There is no textbook for this module.
Readings
There are three readings for this section. You will find them in the readings
pack for this module:
11.
Van Krieken, R., Habibis, D., Smith, P., Hutchins, B., Haralambos, M.,
& Holborn, M. (2006). Race, ethnicity, national identity and
Aboriginality. In Sociology, themes and perspectives (3rd ed., pp. 261-299).
Sydney: Pearson Education.
12.
13.
Self-Assessment
Please complete the self-assessment questions at the end of this section to test
your understanding and knowledge against the objectives stated in this section.
Introduction
Generally, social scientists agree that most societies are in some way stratified, with
individuals and groups facing inclusion and exclusion, however, there is some debate
about how this impacts on people in terms of access to social rewards.
In this section we will examine inclusion and exclusion from a socioeconomic and
cultural perspective.
Firstly, we consider the power of political discourse in creating a national culture that
values or devalues cultural diversity and encourages inclusion or exclusionary practices.
We will briefly define power in relation to acculturation and review the consequence of
power imbalance.
Whilst some of the content has been written with the practitioner in mind, many of the
principles apply to others, including coaches and managers.
Secondly, we examine exclusion and marginalization, and the role that racism, prejudice,
and discrimination often play in preventing access to public and private services for
various groups of people. The affect of these processes on individuals and groups in
terms of cultural devaluation will also be examined.
Finally, we will identify the main legislation that exists in Australia that attempts to make
exclusion illegal.
Reading
Van Krieken, R., Habibis, D., Smith, P., Hutchins, B., Haralambos, M., &
Holborn, M. (2006). Race, ethnicity, national identity and Aboriginality. In
Sociology, themes and perspectives (3rd ed., pp. 261-299). Sydney: Pearson
Education.
This reading explores the concept of belonging to a group and the ways that
these structures influence social inclusion and exclusion, especially in relation
to Indigenous Australians.
Activity 5.1
Consider the following opinions about asylum seekers in Australia and
identify the elements that emerge from fear and prejudice or xenophobia:
These two statements reflect a fear of difference and a degree of prejudice that only
those who come from similar backgrounds will be able to integrate and contribute to
Australian culture.
Reading
Clyne, M. (2008, November 23). A linguists vision for multicultural Australia.
Eureka Street. Retrieved March 20, 2009 from
http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=9919
This reading provides a strong case for broadening the definition of inclusion
and exclusion. The author argues that unless social inclusion policy can move
beyond the socioeconomic dimension, it may further the social exclusion of
significant sections of Australian society.
Activity 5.2
The Clyne article notes that Australia has done well to develop ways to
increase inclusion. Strategies include flexible multilingual frameworks such as
SBS radio and TV, Year 12 exams in multiple languages, government schools
of languages, and telephone interpreting.
1.
Have you ever had reason to use or access any of these services? If yes,
please briefly describe the benefits. If not, reflect and note down your
reasons for not doing so.
2.
Power
The direction in which a particular culture or racial group progresses toward
acculturation is strongly influenced by the interactions between the dominant culture and
the minority culture. Various forms of power often motivate these interactions.
Diller (2007) defines power as: the capacity to produce desired effects on others
(p. 161). He further notes that the helping relationship of practitioner/client can be
viewed as one of imbalance, in favour of the practitioner. Similarly, in the workplace a
manager will generally have more power than the employee.
Diller (2007) suggests this is more likely to occur if the practitioner is unaware of his or her
own cultural identity or is uncomfortable with or unaware of aspects of the clients cultural
identity. He suggests practitioners introduce practices that equalize or reverse the power
relationship, perhaps by allowing the client to take on the role of cultural expert.
2.
3.
acceptance
2.
aggression
3.
avoidance
The result of conflict belongs to both sides although we frequently see it as the minority
reaction. In Australian society we often see and experience one or more of these
occurring from dominant-subordinate interactions. Trained cross-cultural practitioners
are likely to have mixed reactions to these conflicts. This is because they can feel
helpless or overwhelmed by the demands placed upon them as members of the dominant
culture, in the process of equalising power.
Acceptance
People in a subordinate position may attempt to become like those in the dominant
culture in order to achieve acceptance and a sense of belonging. This may mean they will
acquiesce or conform. This is especially so with adolescents due to their desire for peer
acceptance. Consequently, it is not uncommon for a second or third generation
adolescent to deny cultural identity.
Some people are relieved to be in a country without physical or political abuse and
compensate by accepting the structure of the Australian society. Sometimes acceptance
is simply the easiest response to make.
A very strong cultural value that many people coming to Australia hold in high regard is a
patriarchal system with a clearly defined family structure and specific gender roles. This
notion of family and patriarchy is often transferred to their relationships with members
of the dominant culture. Another strong value held by many immigrants from other
cultures is that of fate. Often, they do not dare to question the status quo.
The three major ways people show they accept the dominant cultural norms are:
Ritualistic adaptation: the rules and norms of the culture are stressed; people
abide by the prescriptions of the society and parents encourage their children to
take on the standards of the dominant culture.
Aggression
Aggression may be direct or indirect but it usually involves some form of retaliation.
Aggression may also be displaced or manifested by a change in goals.
Examples of aggression include people rebelling or joining a cause that is designed to
upset the power base or system. In so doing, they may become demanding and
manipulative of the system in order to get control and power. Rights may be asserted if
respect and regard are not given. In more serious scenarios, complaints and defamations
may be carried out. Antagonism may result from the slightest issues.
More indirect forms of aggression include artistic expression, using humour, passive
resistance, being inefficient or irresponsible, non-compliance, unreliability, challenging
opinions, and exaggerating or denying their ethnicity, accent or language.
Sometimes people will under-achieve or over-achieve. Over-achievers perform with the
intention of appearing to be better than the dominant group. Even within a particular
cultural group, individuals may displace aggression by scapegoating another member.
Some people form groups for legal or political means as a rebellious action. They do not
want to become part of the dominant culture, therefore they rise up in gangs, factions, or
sub-cultures. They under-achieve, refusing to put effort into the dominant cultures
expectations or social obligations.
Avoidance
Harry Kitano (1985) stated that people may avoid situations in which they expect
prejudice (p. 79). For example, people may not apply for housing in certain areas, walk
away from the opportunity to communicate, use cosmetics that enable them to pass as a
member of the dominant culture, resort to drugs, or withdraw into mental illness.
Some ethnic people change their names, accents and alter their features. They may
seclude themselves or hide by becoming excessively mobile.
In our society we have people who have migrated here and have found the tension too
much to manage. They have retreated from the social norms by becoming chronic
alcoholics, drug addicts, homeless, or social outcasts. For adolescents, dropping out of
school is another way of escaping from reality. Flight into mental illness and suicide are
extreme forms of avoidance (Kingsbury, 1994).
Activity 5.3
1.
2.
If you were a counsellor and the person related this experience to you,
how would you demonstrate empathy to the client?
Your response will depend on the experience you describe. Empathy could
be demonstrated by showing an understanding of these responses and by
explaining the psychological reasons people may respond to power imbalance
by acceptance, aggression, or avoidance.
Exclusion
Social exclusion is a concept that is used to characterise contemporary forms of social
disadvantage. It can affect one person or a community where they are unable to access
the rights, resources, and opportunities normally available to members of a society.
Social exclusion has no one definition. However for the purposes of this module we will
use the following definition:
Social exclusion is a multidimensional process of progressive social rupture,
detaching groups and individuals from social relations and institutions and
preventing them from full participation in the normal, normatively prescribed
activities of the society in which they live (Silver, 2007, p. 15)
Forms of exclusion
Peter Saunders, Yuvisthi Naidoo, and Megan Griffiths (2007) identify three forms of
exclusion.
1.
2.
Service exclusion: this refers to lack of adequate access to key public services
when needed, including health care, disability or aged care services, or private
services such as child care and utilities.
3.
Causes of exclusion
Exclusion can be caused by: xenophobia (racism), devaluation of culture, prejudice, and
discrimination. We will examine these in more detail shortly.
Issues such as educational levels, geographical location, living standards, poverty, mental
health, homelessness and family dynamics may also affect access to various
opportunities. The extent of the exclusion may vary, depending on the resilience of the
affected person or group and the power of the perpetrator. It may be covert or overt.
Exclusion applies in varying degrees to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples,
migrants and refugees, people with a disability, to minority men and women of all
cultural backgrounds, to the elderly, gays, and to youth. Indeed, anyone who deviates in
any perceived way from the norm of a society may become subject to social exclusion in
one form or another.
Additionally, there are groups who may self-exclude by removing themselves physically
from the larger community. Such groups include nuns living in a Catholic convent or a
Buddhist gompa or people who choose to live in a gated security complex.
Marginalisation
Marginalisation is an example of forceful exclusion resulting from discrimination (Berry,
Poortinga, Segall, & Dasen, 2002). It is also describes the social process of being
relegated to a lower social standing and involves people being denied degrees of power.
John Berry et al. (2002) view marginalisation as a form of acculturation (the process
individuals undergo in response to a changing cultural context):
When there is little possibility of cultural maintenance and little interest in having
relations with others (often because of exclusion or discrimination) then
marginalization is defined (p. 355).
Marginalisation can be understood within three levels: individual, community, and globalstructural/policies.
Global and structural: this includes broader social structures actors such as
globalisation, immigration, social welfare, and policy that have the potential to
contribute negatively to ones access to resources and services, resulting in
marginalisation of individuals and groups.
Racism
As an ideology, racism existed during the 19th century as scientific racism and
attempted to provide a racial classification of humanity. Although such racist ideologies
have been widely discredited after World War II and the Holocaust, the phenomena of
racism and of racial discrimination have remained widespread all over the world. Some
examples of this in present day are evident in statistics, including the higher-than-average
numbers of Indigenous Australians in custody.
Traditionally, racism has been defined as prejudice and the abuse of power based on
racial or ethnic differences. Prejudice and discrimination, which are components of
racism, referred to the negative stereotyping and treatment of people based on broader
characteristics, including religion.
The concept of race has been replaced by the term ethnicity. This is an example of a
socially constructed term that is no longer seen as valid or useful when describing
differences of cultural or ethnic background. In other words, there is no such thing as
race! There is however, still a strong use of the term racism which refers to
discrimination against one ethnic group by another based on appearance.
Types of racism
Individual racism: refers to individuals who hold prejudiced attitudes and who
act toward members of minority groups in a racist manner. The individual may
hold erroneous and negative beliefs about particular groups. Consequently they
may take action to discriminate against any member of this group.
Cultural racism: refers to the domination of one group over another in terms of:
language, norms, values, standards, attitudes, and discriminatory behaviour against
members of minority groups based on perceived cultural differences (such as dress,
music, dance, language, religion, customs, and social behaviour).
Ethnic nationalism: has as its basis the belief in a hereditary membership of the
nation. Ethnic nationalism has contributed to numerous examples of genocide
and ethnic cleansing, including the Nazi attempt to eliminate the Jewish people,
and the slaughters of millions of Armenians, Rwandans, and the Muslim
communities in the former Yugoslavia.
The following model charts the first three kinds of racism described above.
Figure 7: Kinds of racism
Source: Chambers, B. (1986). Anti-racism: A handbook for adult educators (p. 49). Canberra: Australian
Government Publishing Service.
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2.
Devaluation of culture
Racism has an impact on the process of acculturation for immigrants whose identity
may be based on an immigrant background, language, and certain cultural traditions
and histories.
Desmond Cahill and John Ewen (1988, as cited in Vasta, 1994) suggest that Australians
must face up to community racism against minority groups. This is particularly
important for the children of immigrants.
Those who are confronted with racist attitudes and remarks may have difficulty
in identity achievement as this process can be interrupted by devaluation. It is
not uncommon for second-generation youth to be ashamed of their parents
cultural background if they perceive their new host country devalues their
background. Feeling that Australians are devaluing their culture, immigrants may
accept the appropriateness of that devaluation, become ashamed of and seek to
reject their own past. In this way they think they can win acceptance by the host
country. Such a reaction can cause much harm, especially to the development of
a positive sense of identity, biculturalism and linguistic skills in the children of
ethnic immigrants (Cox, 1989, p. 5).
Devaluation may create identity dissonance. Dissonance is a condition of incongruity
between how you define yourself and how others define you. It can be seen as context
based and as a cognitive process.
Devaluation has not only occurred with many second-generation youth in Australia, it
has also affected many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
2.
3.
11
2.
3.
4.
An example of this process occurred in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in the
United States. The conflict was quickly framed in religious and cultural terms the
group alleged responsible were Muslim and Arabic speaking, the victims largely North
American. Anti-Muslim sentiment grew and within days of the attacks, Muslims were
framed as the enemies of democracy.
Some prejudice emerges from peoples fear of difference or losing what is familiar.
Discrimination
As noted, discrimination is considered a concrete outcome to the three variables of
prejudice discussed earlier in this section. Discrimination may be overt or covert.
Overt discrimination is obvious and direct. For example, failing to hire a farmer into a
conservation role because as the manager you believe farmers are inherently anticonservation.
Covert discrimination is indirect. For example, when an employer says the
organisation requires a person who has a fair complexion to sell their cosmetic line.
We will now consider the concept of inclusion.
Social inclusion
Social inclusion refers to strategies to combat social exclusion. It is a coordinated
response to the very complex system of problems of social exclusion. It does not
attempt to make reparations for past wrongs which is the intent of affirmative action.
The notion of social inclusion can vary according to the type of strategies an organisation
adopts. For example, a counselling service may seek to employ practitioners who are
open to people from different cultural backgrounds in an attempt to encourage greater
participation in counselling services. However, statistics reflect a low percentage of
people from different ethnic cultures seeking counselling services. This raises the
following questions:
12
What reasons might exist for why a particular cultural group does not seek/access
available counselling services?
Counsellors may need to reach out, inform and educate ethnic communities about their
services, and adopt other culturally appropriate counselling approaches.
Social justice
Social justice refers to what needs to be done to make health (or any other social issue)
an equal playing field for the entire population. Medicare is an example of the social
justice principles in action. It provides all members of the population with the
opportunity to access basic medical services and hospital care, regardless of differences,
including socioeconomic status, ethnic background, gender, or age. There are a number
of principles which need to be in place in a society for social justice to be functional.
They include: rights, equity (fairness vs. equality), access, and participation.
Affirmative action
People generally use the term affirmative action to describe strategies for groups who
have been disadvantaged in the past. For example, an employer may run special training
or recruitment programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, reconfigure
work spaces for people with disabilities, introduce part-time work for parents or carers,
or review promotional procedures to ensure promotions are made on the basis of merit.
Anti-discrimination
The main grounds for discrimination are based on gender and race. The majority of the
complaints in Australia are employment related. People who believe they have been
discriminated against may first talk to the person or agency that is discriminating against
them. If it is a work-related problem, the union may help. If the client is not satisfied,
they can register a complaint with the Anti-Discrimination Board.
Legislation
The main Federal laws that have been written to counter discrimination are the:
13
Reading
Anti-Discrimination Board of New South Wales (2009). ADB factsheet:
Discrimination, EEO and affirmative action. Lawlink. Retrieved August 21,
2009, from
http://www.lawlink.nsw.gov.au/lawlink/adb/ll_adb.nsf/vwFiles/Disc%20E
EO+%20AA%200106%20for%20web.pdf/$file/Disc%20EEO+%20AA%2
00106%20for%20web.pdf
Many people ask what the difference is between discrimination, equal
employment opportunity (often called EEO) and affirmative action. This
factsheet explains what people usually mean when they use these three terms
in relation to employment.
Activity 5.4
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1.
2.
Conclusion
In this section, we examined inclusion and exclusion from a socioeconomic and cultural
perspective. We defined power and considered the consequences of power imbalance
for people from diverse cultural backgrounds and discussed them in terms of acceptance,
avoidance, and aggression.
We then examined exclusion, marginalisation and inclusion, and discussed the roles
racism, prejudice, and discrimination play in preventing access to public and private
services for various groups of people. Finally, we identified the main legislation that
exists in Australia that attempts to make the practice and forms of exclusion illegal in
Australia and elsewhere.
As practitioners working in environments characterized by cultural diversity, it is important
to develop and maintain a non-judgmental and unbiased attitude and recognise exclusion,
including marginalisation, as a systemic problem, not the fault of the individual.
In order to evolve into an egalitarian society, Australians must avoid blaming and
practicing racism toward members of other cultural backgrounds. In addition, white
Australians need to become mindful of discrimination and racism against Aboriginal
Australians and Torres Strait Islander people.
Self-Assessment
Did you achieve the objectives for this section? To test your knowledge,
write brief answers to the following questions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Identify two different types of discrimination and explain how you plan
to educate clients on the laws pertaining to discrimination.
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