Poor Concepts: 'Social Exclusion', Poverty and the Politics of Guilt
by Peter Saunders and Kayoko Tsumori
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It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words . . . . This was done partly by invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings. . . . Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought.
ÑGeorge Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (London: Penguin, 1954), 257-8.

A new concept, Ôsocial exclusionÕ, is displacing an older and more familiar oneÑthe idea of ÔpovertyÕ. The term Ôsocial exclusionÕ can mean almost anything and can be applied to almost anybody, and unlike the word ÔpovertyÕ, it always implies causation. Identify somebody as Ôsocially excludedÕ and you fix in advance the presumption that they are not to be held responsible for their condition. Exclusion is something that happens to peopleÑit signifies victimhood in a way that mere ÔpovertyÕ does notÑand this means it is somebody elseÕs fault. This is a language which apportions ÔblameÕ and ÔguiltÕ to justify redistributing peopleÕs money.

Problematic numbers, problematic words

In earlier papers we have looked at the measurement of povertyÑhow many Australians are ÔpoorÕ and how rates of poverty have been changing.1 Some critics have suggested that our concern with numbers was inappropriate, for what really matters is how to tackle poverty, not how to measure it.2 But the numbers do matter because they influence the sorts of policy ideas that get proposed and pursued. For example, the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) believes that more than one-fifth of the Australian population is poor, and that a substantial increase in the value of welfare benefits is therefore required to tackle the problem.3 We have suggested that no more than one in 20 people are in long-term poverty, and that most of these are ÔpoorÕ because they have failed to find or hold down a full-time job. If we are right, it makes more sense to tackle poverty by getting people off welfare and into jobs than to increase welfare benefits by raising taxes on those who are currently working.4

Getting the statistics right is therefore an important first step in the search for policy solutions. But just as important as getting the numbers straightened out is getting our concepts clarifiedÑwe must be clear what it is that we are talking about. In recent years, however, the welfare debate has become increasingly bogged down in a language that confuses more than it clarifies.

The politics of language

Recent changes in the vocabulary of poverty and welfare involve more than mere Ôpolitical correctnessÕ.5 They have been introduced in an attempt to change the way we think about public policy problems and solutions.

Sociolinguists believe that the words we use influence the way we think about the world around us. Our concepts literally tell us what we are looking at. Words are much more than labelsÑthey tell us what things are like and how to respond to them.6

This was what Orwell was driving at when he invented Newspeak in Nineteen Eighty-Four, for certain kinds of concepts generate a particular kind of understanding of the world. If we can encourage other people to apply old concepts to situations where they never applied before (ÔpovertyÕ to refer to income inequality, for example), or to use new concepts that we ourselves have invented (such as Ôsocial exclusionÕ), then we stand a good chance of influencing other people to think about things in the way that we think about them. Words do not just describe reality; they define it. Those who control the vocabulary control the agenda.

The evolution of Ôsocial exclusionÕ

The concept of social exclusion originated in France in the 1970s where it referred to those who were not covered by the countryÕs system of employment-based social insurance protection.7 Over time, its scope expanded to encompass aged and disabled people, substance abusers, abused children, unemployed workers, lone parents, immigrants, ethnic minorities and even the suicidal.8 From very early on, this was a ragbag concept.

Despite (or perhaps because of) its imprecision, the term swiftly spread throughout Europe, and today, this new terminology is widespread among Western social policy professionals and academics who claim that it has important intellectual advantages over the older terminology of poverty.

The particular strength of this concept is said to lie in its recognition that social deprivation is Ômulti-dimensionalÕ (that is, it involves more than simply a lack of material resources) and ÔdynamicÕ (that is, it is reproduced over time). The European Commission, for example, tells us that, ÔExclusion goes beyond poverty. It is the accumulation and combination of several types of deprivation: lack of education, deteriorating health conditions, homelessness, loss of family support, non-participation in the regular life of society, and lack of job opportunities. Each type of deprivation increases the other types.Õ9

But this recognition that deprivation is about more than money is not newÑthe Ôculture of povertyÕ theories of the 1960s emphasised that poverty has cultural and behavioural as well as financial dimensions,10 and even the English Poor Law commissioners were well aware of this way back in the 1830s.11 We have also known for a long time that problems associated with deprivation are inter-dependent and mutually reinforcing, that pathologies tend to be cumulative, and that poverty can be transmitted down the generations (that it often Ôruns in familiesÕ). The attractiveness of the concept of Ôsocial exclusionÕ cannot therefore be explained by its emphasis on the multi-dimensionality and dynamism of deprivation, for there is nothing new in this.12

What is new and distinctive about this concept (and the reason why it has become so popular) is its assumption that we already know what causes these problems. People who are Ôsocially excludedÕ do not simply suffer multiple deprivation; they do so because this is somebody elseÕs fault than their own. This follows from the core idea that people are being Ôshut outÕ of something. To be excluded is to be the victim of somebody elseÕs exercise of powerÑthe word ÔexclusionÕ entails agency on the part of one party and victimhood on the part of another.

This usage may have made a certain amount of sense in France where people who had not established eligibility for social insurance payments were excluded by the government from receiving them. But it makes no literal sense in an Australian context where access to welfare support requires no prior financial contributions to establish eligibility. In Australia, if you have a low income, you can claim support irrespective of your employment history. Nobody is excluding anybody.

Why, then, is the policy community in Australia so committed to using a term which seems so inappropriate to our means-tested, non-contributory welfare system? The answer lies in the political agenda that is driving this use of language.13

Exclusion and social participation

If they are not being excluded from access to the government welfare system, what is it that people are being excluded from? The answer given by those who use this term is Ôparticipation in societyÕ. In this new discourse, Ôsocial exclusionÕ and Ôsocial participationÕ constitute a binary opposition. If you are Ôsocially excludedÕ, it means you cannot ÔparticipateÕ effectively in societyÑthe two concepts are always linked:

¥ Ô[P]eople who are long term recipients of benefits tend to be excluded from participation in the economic life of the community [and] also tend to become isolated from social institutionsÕ (Mission Australia, emphasis added).

¥ ÔSocial exclusion refers to a situation in which individuals or communities are subject to multiple forms of disadvantage such that they cease to be full citizens and are unable to participate in the economic, social, cultural and political dimensions of societyÕ (The Smith Family, emphasis added).

¥ Ô[There is] a damaging fault line across our community, with those on the wrong side excluded not only from the Ôgood things of lifeÕ, but often from the very life of the community itself. It forms a barrier that severely reduces their capacity to participate socially and economicallyÕ (ACOSS, emphasis added).

¥ ÔEconomic and social participation can reduce the risk of exclusion for individuals . . . Widespread economic and social participation contributes to social cohesionÕ (McClure Report on welfare reform, emphasis added).14

ÔSocial exclusionÕ, then, entails an inability to participate across a wide range of social activities. But this just raises further questions. What kinds of activities are people prevented from participating in, who are these people, and what or who is stopping them from joining in?

Exclusion from what?

In his 1979 book, Poverty in the United Kingdom, the British socialist Peter Townsend claimed that 26% of the UK population was Ôdeprived of the conditions of life which ordinarily define membership of a societyÕ.15 To get this remarkable finding, he first asked a sample of the British population about 60 different aspects of their lives including their diet, clothing, ownership of consumer durables, housing amenities, working conditions, health and education, environment, interaction with family and friends, and recreational activities. He then selected 12 of these indicators (things like not having had a weekÕs holiday away from home in the last year, not having eaten meat at least four times in the last week, and not having had a cooked breakfast most mornings) as the basis for a Ôdeprivation indexÕ. Townsend found that peopleÕs scores on his 12-point deprivation index increased as incomes fell, and he suggested (not altogether convincingly) that an income threshold could be identified below which participation fell markedly. This threshold defined his poverty line, which turned out to be some 40% higher than the official welfare benefits level.

In Britain and Australia, the idea of Ôsocial exclusionÕ, imported from France in the 1980s, has been tacked onto TownsendÕs legacy. People are therefore considered Ôsocially excludedÕ if they are unable to participate in a style of life deemed ÔnormalÕ in their society, and researchers have devoted enormous energy to identifying what this ÔnormalÕ lifestyle might consist of.

In Britain, three different attempts to measure social exclusion appeared within just two years and between them they identified around 100 indicators of a ÔnormalÕ life. These included things like accidental death rates, divorce and suicide rates, depression and anxiety, and even cigarette smoking.16

In Australia, meanwhile, the Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC) at the University of New South Wales has compiled lists of thousands of items which most people buy and has then worked out the income that different kinds of households need if they are to purchase everything on the list.17 If most families, for instance, have a VCR, make an annual visit to an animal or marine park, own walking boots, goggles and a swim hat, have a Christmas holiday away from home, own a car, enjoy a haircut every eight weeks, purchase antacid tablets and own a pet equivalent to a neutered male cat, then all these items go on the list. If you do not have enough income to buy everything on the list, then you lack the capacity to participate at an adequate level in the society.18

This idea that exclusion entails an inability to do what is ÔnormalÕ lends itself to all sorts of applications. Michael Bittman, for example, has used the SPRCÕs data to suggest that people may be ÔexcludedÕ by shortage of time as well as shortage of money. People who are too busy to spend time on ÔnormalÕ activities like working in the garden are Ôsocially excludedÕ, even if they enjoy an adequate income. This extension of the concept brings a whole new set of people into the category of the Ôsocially excludedÕ (it encompasses most parents with young children, for example), and this opens the way for Bittman to call for more government spending on parental leave and increased government regulation of working hours in order to combat widespread exclusion.19

As this example makes clear, Ôsocial exclusionÕ is a highly elastic concept which has proved even more flexible and imprecise than the slippery concept of ÔpovertyÕ ever did. Indeed, it now routinely gets used so loosely that it has effectively lost any real meaning. We have already encountered examples of this:

¥ The Smith Family claims that ÔexcludedÕ people are Ôunable to participate in the economic, social, cultural and political dimensions of societyÕ, but if this really were the case, it would mean that a large chunk of the Australian population never goes to the shops, never speaks to anybody, never watches television and never votes.

¥ Similarly, ACOSS suggests that people are shut out of Ôthe very life of the community itselfÕ, which could only literally be true if several million people had been locked away beyond the reach of family, friends and neighbours.

Clearly, these organisations (and many others like them) do not actually mean what they are sayingÑthe emotive language of ÔexclusionÕ is simply being used without much thought. Such statements are, however, rarely challenged. We have all become so habituated to the language that we accept claims even when they defy commonsense.

Who is excluding whom?

Michael Bittman is one of the few users of the concept of Ôsocial exclusionÕ to make explicit what is usually left implicitÑthat the term contains an assumption about causation, power and responsibility. As he puts it: ÔThe concept of social exclusion emphasises agency and process. Social exclusion is an act, something that one social grouping does to another.Õ20 So who are the victims and who are the perpetrators?

It turns out that the victims can be almost anybody. There are plausibility limits to the numbers of people who can be defined as ÔpoorÕ, but switching to the concept of social exclusion enables you to escape even these constraints. One review of the literature finds that groups identified as Ôsocially excludedÕ have included the long-term unemployed, those in precarious jobs, the low-paid, the poor, school drop-outs, the mentally and physically disabled, addicts of various descriptions, delinquents and criminals, single parents, abused children, those who grew up in problem households, young people without work experience or qualifications, women, foreigners and immigrants, ethnic and religious minorities, people on social assistance, people eligible for social assistance but not receiving it, residents of disreputable neighbourhoods, the downwardly mobile and people who are isolated from friends or family.

The point about a list like this is not simply that it is conceptually chaotic; it is that it can cover most of the population. Reviewing this list, David Gordon concludes that the only person in the UK who could not be defined as Ôsocially excludedÕ is Prince Philip (the Queen qualifies on two counts, for she is old and she is female, and Princess Diana would have been eligible several times over as a female lone parent with mental health problems). In fact, on some definitions, even Prince Philip gets to be socially excluded too.21 Anthony Giddens insists that Ôsocial exclusionÕ occurs at the top as well as the bottom of society as privileged groups withdraw from participation in mass society.22 This idea has been picked up in Australia by Peter Saunders of the SPRC: ÔAt the top end, people choose to exclude themselves from the broader community by only using private schools, private hospitals, private estates and even private securityÕ.23

With all these victims, who are the perpetrators? As we noted earlier, the concept of Ôsocial exclusionÕ rules out the possibility that some people might bring their fates upon themselves. What Lucy Sullivan has called Ôbehavioural povertyÕ24 is defined out of existence at the outset, for exclusion is something that happens to you, not something you make happen. Even if you make a conscious decision to truant from school, quit your job, take heroin, have a baby without a partner to help raise it, burgle somebodyÕs house or set out on any of the other paths that qualify you as Ôsocially excludedÕ, it is always going to be somebody elseÕs fault, for the language of Ôsocial exclusionÕ is expressed in the passive voice. 25 To identify somebody as ÔpoorÕ is to leave open the question of responsibility and fault; to identify them as ÔexcludedÕ is to pre-empt it.

So who is to blame for excluding people? The familiar culprits are in the frameÑthe government, the rich and ÔsocietyÕ in general. Social exclusion is something that is caused by ÔsocietyÕ, that must be rectified by government, and that will be paid for by increased taxation on higher income earners.

Fixing the blame

In its recent Budget Statements, ACOSS spells out its programme for combating Ôsocial exclusionÕ. Income redistribution is the means (Ôclosing these inequality gaps must be our top priority as a nationÕ); political power is the mechanism (Ônational governments . . . retain a significant capacity to affect inequalityÕ); and the earned incomes of the middle classes are the targets (Ôthis responsibility is exercised primarily through fiscal policyÕ).26

ACOSS wants to tackle social exclusion by diverting an extra $6 billion to ÔexcludedÕ groups (among other things, this would pay for a big hike in the value of allowances to bring them up to the level of pension payments). This is to be funded by tax increases on higher earners (a group which ACOSS appears to define as anyone in the top 20% of taxpayers with an income above $50,000 a year).27 This raid on peopleÕs earned incomes is justified in the name of ÔfairnessÕ, for not only are Ôlarge numbers . . . locked outÕ from the advantages that Ôsome of us are able to shareÕ by virtue of the money we earn, but higher income earners are enjoying Ôunfair tax breaksÕ and Ôunfair tax deductionsÕ while those less fortunate are being left to suffer.28 Heartless plutocrats on $50,000 per annum have been using Ôaggressive and sophisticated income tax avoidance schemesÕ to get around their ÔobligationÕ to surrender nearly half of every extra dollar they earn to the government, and the government itself has been colluding with them by Ôdeliberately avoidingÕ actions against them.29 The guilty parties are therefore plain to see.

In the light of all this unfairness, aggression and dishonesty on the part of higher rate taxpayers and the government, ACOSS thinks the least we can do is to Ôchange the distributional direction of tax and spending policyÕÑsomething we should try to achieve Ôcooperatively and collaborativelyÕ.30

In earlier work we pointed to the Ôpolitics of envyÕ that seem to be driving so much of the welfare policy debate in Australia.31 The politics of envy consist of the desire to reduce the prosperity of the ÔrichÕ as much as to improve the wellbeing of the poor,32 and these ACOSS reports are a good example of it. There is an anger and resentment here about the fact that some better-off people may be finding ways of hanging on to their own money (even though on our calculations, federal government revenues in general, and income tax revenues in particular, do not appear to have dropped as a proportion of GDP).33

But there is something else as well. There is envy, but there is also guilt, for the finger of blame is being pointed at higher earners, who are shirking their social obligations, and at government, which is letting them get away with it. An ÔinclusiveÕ society requires not only that those at the bottom take more, but that those at the top withhold less. Higher earners have more than their share already, and they are expected to extirpate their guilt by giving up their ÔunfairÕ shares to other people. An unwillingness to do so is a sign of their unwillingness to ÔparticipateÕÑand as we have already seen, everybody from the top to the bottom of the society is required to ÔparticipateÕ in order to overcome social exclusion.

In the new politics of social inclusion, therefore, everybody is expected to put in what others expect of them and to take out what they think they need. Guilt is the motive for the donors, envy the motive of the recipients.34

Is anybody excluded?

The extraordinary thing about all this is that when social scientists have tried to test some of the core assumptions on which the idea of social exclusion is based, they have found no evidence to support them. It proves impossible to identify any threshold which separates those who ÔparticipateÕ from those who are ÔexcludedÕ, and the claim that there is a deprived stratum of people who cannot participate effectively in social life turns out to be empirically untrue. Social exclusion is an empty concept. It refers to a problem that does not exist.

The most significant empirical investigation of Ôsocial exclusionÕ in Australia was carried out by a former President of ACOSS, Peter Travers, together with Sue Richardson, almost ten years ago.35 Like Townsend before them, they developed a 12-item index of Ôsocial participationÕ, but unlike Townsend, they found that peopleÕs scores on this index correlated only very weakly with their incomes. Indicators like playing or watching sport, going to a pub or club, visiting friends and being able to call on support when it is needed showed virtually no association at all with income, and there was no evidence that those on the lowest incomes were in any sense Ôshut outÕ of the normal life of the community. Nor could the authors detect any threshold income that distinguished those who can participate effectively in their society from those who cannot. They concluded:

The relationships we have examined between material well-being and social participation all suggest that, for Australia, it would be too strong a statement to say that low levels of material resources exclude the poor from participation in normal social activities . . . We could not detect a threshold of income below which social activities fell away so markedly that one could speak of ÔexclusionÕ.36

This unequivocal finding was published in 1993, and similar findings have subsequently been reported for the UK too.37 Despite this, researchers and pundits continue to use the term Ôsocial exclusionÕ as if this research had never been done. This is a concept which has become so deeply embedded in social policy discourse that it seems to be immune to empirical disconfirmation.

Conclusion: The power of language

Language is not neutral. The concepts that we use enable us to construct and sustain some interpretations of reality while closing others off. Intellectual gatekeepers in strategic institutions like universities, the media and government departments decide to use one kind of terminology while rejecting another, and this structures debates and demarcates policy agendas. Sooner or later, the rest of us follow suit, and before long, the new terminology takes on an intellectual life of its own. We start to use it unthinkingly and we no longer pause to assess whether what we are saying is really trueÑor even if it makes sense. Our concepts assume a power over our minds, influencing and shaping the way we understand reality, and influencing the policies we develop to change it, and we become unaware that this is even happening.

To understand how this happens we can draw on the science of memetics,38 which applies Darwinian insights to an explanation of how ideas, beliefs and other units of human culture (collectively known as ÔmemesÕ) evolve. Memetics sees human brains as the ÔhostsÕ through which memes ÔreplicateÕ. Like viruses, memes jump from brain to brain through a process of imitation, replicating and sometimes ÔmutatingÕ as they get expressed over and over through verbal, written and electronic communication. The evolution and spread of the idea of Ôsocial exclusionÕ is an example of this process.39

We have suggested that thinking about deprivation as social exclusion misleads us about the nature of the problems we face as well as their causes. The language of exclusion leads us to see problems that are not there, to lay blame where it does not belong, and to advocate solutions which are more likely to undermine self-reliance than to encourage it. The results are likely to be policies which are at best ineffective and at worst disastrous.

The main cause of poverty today is lack of employment, and the principal solution to poverty lies in getting more welfare claimants into work. The language of social exclusion obscures these simple truths. After 50 years or more of the welfare state it is time to recognise that increasing state welfare spending does not abolish poverty, it reproduces it.

Endnotes

1 Kayoko Tsumori, Peter Saunders and Helen Hughes, Poor Arguments, CIS Issue Analysis No. 21 (Sydney: The Centre for Independent Studies, January 2002); Peter Saunders, Poor Statistics, CIS Issue Analysis No 23 (21 (Sydney: CIS, April 2002).

2 A spokesperson for UnitingCare thought that our critique of the Smith FamilyÕs figures was Ôabsurd and offensiveÕ since Ôany level of poverty should be seen as unacceptableÕ (quoted by Lyle Dunne in the Adelaide Review (February 2002) and the federal Labor shadow minister, Mark Latham, told the April Melbourne Institute/Australian conference on ÔOpportunity and ProsperityÕ that our debate with the Smith Family had been ÔfutileÕ (verbatim remark).

3 In its press release of 17 January 2002, ACOSS claims that the Henderson poverty line is Ôthe best available measure.Õ This produces absurdly inflated poverty estimates of 22% (before housing costs) and 21% (after housing costs)Ñsee Ann Harding, Rachel Lloyd and Harry Greenwell, Financial Disadvantage in Australia, (Camperdown: Smith Family/NATSEM, 2002), tables 16 and 17. ACOSS then goes on to argue that a Ôfirst stepÕ in reducing poverty should be to raise the value of all welfare benefits (a policy which would almost certainly make things worse by increasing work disincentives).

4 In Poor Arguments and Poor Statistics we set out our reasons for limiting an estimate of long-term poverty to five per cent or fewer of Australian households. Our position has subsequently been strengthened by an admission by the Australian Bureau of Statistics that its data on the lowest 10% of incomes are unreliable (see D. Trewin, Measuring AustraliaÕs Progress, ABS Catalogue No. 1370.0 (Canberra, ABS, April 2002). Even on an inflated definition of the poverty line, however, poverty is found to be heavily concentrated in households where nobody is in full time employment (only 3% of households with an adult member in full-time employment fall below the Smith FamilyÕs relative Ôpoverty lineÕ). This confirms Lawrence MeadÕs basic argument in The New Politics of Poverty (New York: Basic Books, 1992) that poverty is caused mainly by lack of employment, and it suggests that the solution to poverty must eventually lie in getting more welfare claimants into work. We shall outline strategies for achieving this in future papers, but it should already be clear that increasing welfare benefits is not the answer.

5 The 1998 Oxford Paperback Encyclopaedia defines political correctness as: ÔThe observation that language contains words and phrases that express such prejudices as racism, sexism, and hostility to homosexuals.Õ Understood in this way, few of us could have any serious objection to it, for there can be little argument with serious attempts to avoid using words that are gratuitously offensive.

6 Ever since Saussure, sociolinguists have understood that the meaning which we attach to the world is mediated by languageÑby the specific words which we use to identify things, and by the relationship between these words and others associated with them. Identifying something by a given word thus rules out certain kinds of interpretations while directing us towards othersÑcertain interpretations appear obviously ÔcorrectÕ while others seem self-evidently ÔabsurdÕ.

7 H. Silver ÔSocial Exclusion and Social SolidarityÕ, International Labour Review 133: 5-6 (1994), 531-78; A. de Haan, ÔÒSocial ExclusionÓ: An Alternative Concept for the Study of Deprivation?Õ, IDS Bulletin 29: 1 (1998): 10-49.

8 T. Burchardt, ÔSocial Exclusion: Concepts and EvidenceÕ, in D. Gordon and P. Townsend (eds), Breadline Europe: The Measurement of Poverty (Bristol: The Policy Press, 2000): 385. Also Bittman, ÔSocial ParticipationÕ, p. 1.

9 See Peter Travers, ÔWelfare Dependence, Welfare Poverty and Welfare LabelsÕ, Social Security Journal 2 (1998), p.117.

10 These theorists pointed to the way in which material deprivation may be compounded by a culture of fatalism and helplessness which is a response to poverty yet which also traps each new generation in deprived circumstances. See, for example, Oscar Lewis, The Children of Sanchez (New York: Random House, 1961) and W. Miller ÔLower Class Culture as a Generating Milieu of Gang DelinquencyÕ (in M. Wolfgang and N. Johnston, eds., The Sociology of Crime and Delinquency , New York, Wiley, 1962).

11 David Green, An End to Welfare Rights, (London: IEA Health & Welfare Unit, 1999), chapter 2.

12 See also Burchardt, ÔSocial Exclusion: Concepts and EvidenceÕ (see n. 8) who similarly finds nothing distinctively new in the concept.

13 Graham Room distinguishes the liberal tradition of Anglo-Saxon thought, with its emphasis on ÔpovertyÕ, from the continental European Ôsocial democratic vision that shapes the debate on social exclusionÕ (ÔPoverty and Social ExclusionÕ, in G.Room, ed., Beyond the Threshold Bristol, Policy Press, 1995, p. 6). Social exclusion, in other words, is rooted in European social democracy. Marxists, incidentally, see Ôsocial exclusionÕ as an ideological concept that deflects attention from the division between the Ôvery richÕ and the rest of the population (R. Levitas, ÔWhat is Social Exclusion?Õ, in Gordon and Townsend, eds, Breadline Europe). This is a concept from the social democratic left, not the Marxist left.

14 Mission Australia, Building Strengths (submission to Welfare Reform Reference Group, 1999, p. 5); G. Zappala, V. Green and B. Parker, Social Exclusion and Disadvantage in the New Economy, Smith Family Working Paper no.1, (Camperdown, The Smith Family, 2000); ACOSS, Budget 2001: Closing the Gap Paper 112 (Sydney: ACOSS 2001, p. 7); Reference Group on Welfare Reform, Participation Support for a more Equitable Society, Interim Report, (March 2000, p. 12).

15 Poverty in the United Kingdom, (London: Penguin, 1979), p. 915. Townsend was more open about his political aims than many of those who have followed himÑthe book concludes with a list of policy prescriptions to eradicate poverty including imposition of ceilings on the amount of wealth people are allowed to own and the incomes they are allowed to earn, more public ownership and Ôindustrial democracyÕ, and increased taxes on business.

16 See Levitas, ÔWhat is Social Exclusion?Õ (see n. 13). She makes the point that many attempts to measure social exclusion confuse indicators with risk factors. Cigarette smoking, for example, may be associated with social exclusion (it is a Ôrisk factorÕ in statistical language), but it is difficult to see it as an indicator of it.

17 In the SPRCÕs Ôbudget standardsÕ calculations, a Ôlow cost budgetÕ is defined as one allowing Ôa level of living which might require frugal and careful management of resources but would still allow social and economic participation consistent with community standardsÕ (Peter Saunders et al., Development of Indicative Budget Standards for Australia, SPRC Research paper no 74, University of New South Wales, SPRC, 1998), p. 63.

18 The main problem with this approach concerns a possible fallacy of aggregation. While it is true that most people buy each of the items included on the list, it does not follow that most people buy all of them. The authors allow for some substitution (for instance, households need not have enough money to buy both soy sauce and tomato sauce, even though both pass the 75% thresholdÑp.73), but they keep this very limited, recognising that extensive substitution would undermine the whole basis of their calculations. In reality, however, all households make multiple substitutions, which is why we find far fewer than 75% of households in the real world which have walking boots, a swim cap, a VCR, antacid tablets and a neutered tom cat all under the same roof. Despite this problem, ACOSS cites the SPRCÕs work in support of its claim that Ôpoverty can and does prevent participationÕ (Closing the Gap, p. 14).

19 M. Bittman, Social Participation and Family Welfare: The Money and Time Cost of Leisure, SPRC Discussion Paper No. 95 (Sydney: Social Policy Research Centre, The University of New South Wales, 1999), p. 5. In similar vein, Gianni Zappala and his colleagues suggest that access to the internet is becoming an important indicator of peopleÕs capacity to Ôparticipate in societyÕ and that people who lack IT access and skills are in danger of being excluded by an emerging Ôdigital divideÕ (Zappala et al., Social Exclusion and Disadvantage in the New Economy, p. 5).

20 Bittman, Social Participation and Family Welfare, p. 2.

21 The list, compiled by Hilary Silver, is cited in D. Gordon, The British Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey (Department for Social Development and Queens University Belfast joint seminar on ÔJoblessness and PovertyÕ, no date, www.dsdni.gov.uk/srb/dsdqub_research.html, downloaded 7.5.02).

22 A. Giddens, The Third Way (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), pp. 104-5.

23 P. Saunders, The Australian Financial Review (13 February 2002).

24 ÔMany people live entirely decent and respectable and ÒincludedÓ lives on the level of income which is the minimum received under current welfare provisions . . . Poverty in Australia today is not financial, but behaviouralÕ Lucy Sullivan, Behavioural Poverty (Sydney: CIS, 2000), p. 47.

25 George Megalogenis exemplifies this way of thinking: ÔThe disadvantaged . . . are the ultimate outsiders of society. They donÕt bother looking for a job because they suffer a mental illness, a physical disability, a drug problem, live in a depressed region or are blackÕ (The Australian 25 February 2002). Leaving aside the extraordinary notion that being black might prevent people from being able to look for work, this comment is interesting for the way it manages to treat the outcomes of peopleÕs behaviour, such as drug addiction, as if they were the social causes of their problem.

26 Australian Council of Social Service, Budget 2001: Closing the Gap, ACOSS Paper 112 (Sydney: ACOSS, February 2001), p. 7.

27 As above, p. 28.

28 Australian Council of Social Service, Towards a Fair and Inclusive Australia, ACOSS Paper 119 (Sydney: ACOSS, February 2002), pp. 5-7.

29 ACOSS, Budget 2001, pp. 27-8

30 Towards a Fair and Inclusive Australia p.5-6

31 H. Hughes, ÔThe Politics of EnvyÕ Policy 17: 2 (Winter 2001), 13-21; P. Saunders, Poor Statistics, (see no. 2).

32 See Sam Brittan in The Financial Times (13 February 2002).

33 ACOSS derives its figures from Commonwealth budget papers, but these show federal government revenue as a proportion of GDP has remained between 24.5% and 25.5% since the mid-1990s, and that income tax revenue as a proportion of GDP has also remained more or less steady.

34 Thomas Sowell suggests that the politics of guilt divorce effects from causes, for an emphasis on the ÔguiltÕ of the better-off diverts attention from what the less well-off need to do to improve their situation. The mere existence of inequality is taken as evidence that one group is ÔexcludingÕ another: ÒThe very possibility that many inequalities of result are due to inequalities of causesÉis sweepingly dismissedÉso that statistics on unequal outcomes become automatic indictments of ÔsocietyÕ (Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-congratulations as a Basis for Social Policy, New York: Basic Books, 1994, p. 245).

35 P. Travers and S. Richardson, Living Decently: Material Wellbeing in Australia (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1993).

36 As above, pp. 153 and 155

37 Burchardt, ÔSocial Exclusion: Concepts and EvidenceÕ (see n. 8) measured social exclusion on four dimensions (income, economic activity, political engagement and social isolation) over a five year period and found Ôno evidence of a group of individuals cut off from the principal activities of mainstream society over an extended period of time. Social exclusion in the sense of an underclass is not an empirically useful conceptÕ (p. 400).

38 There is a parallel here with Richard DawkinsÕ work on ÔmemesÕ (The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press, 1976); see also Susan Blackmore, ÔThe Power of MemesÕ, Scientific American 283 (October 2000), 52-61.

39 The meme originated in the specific conditions of France in the 1970s, but within two decades it had adapted to, and become widely established in, the very different policy environment of Australia. Here it has thrived because it is has proved so adaptable. It has been applied in all sorts of situations to all sorts of problems for all sorts of different purposes, and increasing numbers of hosts have therefore given it expression. This has in turn enabled it to spread (replicate) even further and to evolve (mutate) to become even more adaptable. The result of all this replication and mutation is that it does not actually explain anything any moreÑit does not even refer to anything real, and it serves no useful purposeÑbut it continues to thrive because of its adaptability.

About the Authors
Peter Saunders is the Director of Social Policy Research Programmes and Kayoko Tsumori is Policy Analyst at The Centre for Independent Studies.

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