Marginalization

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This article is about the sociological concept. For the use of the word marginalization in probability theory, see marginalization (probability).

Marginalisation or marginalization (US) refers to the overt or covert trends within societies whereby those perceived as lacking desirable traits or deviating from the group norms tend to be excluded by wider society and ostracised as undesirables.

"A marginal person is...one who does not belong...the marginal man...[dwells] at the margin of two cultures and two societies...[and possesses] a marginal mentality...[with its] unresolved identity crises."^[1]

The idea was also amply expressed by Louis Wirth speaking of minority groups thus: "A group of people who, because of their physical or cultural characteristics, are singled out from the others in the society in which they live for differential and unequal treatment, and who therefore regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination."^[2]

In this respect, what is apparent first is a distinctive social group, with their own characteristic features, then the singling out or victimisation by the more numerically dominant members of the host society, and hence the subsequent unequal treatment leading to acts of discrimination, social ostracism, etc. This is the essence of marginalisation.

Within the Developed World, racial, or ethnic minority groups, stand out as being the most marginalized social groups. This also includes the elderly, the sick, the disabled, the obese, homosexuals and lesbians. All these groups tend to suffer from some forms of marginalization and a typical host of social ills; poverty, unemployment, poor education and poor health. They each tend to be ostracised and so suffer various forms of social exclusion. In fact, much of the progressive reform of the last century has been driven by the need for societies to mitigate damaging internal unrest, by a deliberate reversing of previous trends that engendered political and social marginalisation of racial and political minorities and to a certain degree women.

In terms of free will and self-determination, marginalisation comes in two distinct forms: by the chosen action of the marginalised, and by the wants (or claimed needs) of the society. At one extreme end, those in the Third World, under impoverished conditions, through no choice of their own, being far removed from the protectionism that exists for people in the First World, are often left to die due to hunger, disease, and war.

In the context of the term marginalisation, common subjective terms can be better defined: "war" might, for example, be seen as the expression of a macroscopic social violence, aimed at the marginalization of a perceived enemy. The "enemy," in essence, is the personification of a peer as posing a threat of marginalisation; hence, either by "their own choosing", or by a choice of targeted aggression, the enemy is a marginalised entity. Marginalisation is at the core of more general human social conflict issues, which have various terms for their aspects and incarnations: racism, ethnism, etc. Eugenics was the name given to a set of so-called science-based ideas that advocated the marginalization of people deemed inferior, by criteria of their race or disability or some form of perceived inferiority to the wider population.

1 Conservatism and marginalization
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Conservatism and marginalization

The views of some people, often described as "conservative philosophy" are based on a concept that marginalization of other peoples is both a fact of life and therefore a necessary act. This view arises from the traditional and survivalist perception that "limited resources leads to limited supportability"; therefore "by definition, self-preservation is inherently marginalizing" toward others. In essence, this relativist aspect of conservative thought extends from the individualist claim that "better they perish than I perish," which itself scales by ethnic boundaries to the collectivist view of "better they perish than we perish."

"Conservatism" is a very subjective political term, has subsequently any number of variants; many conservatives describe themselves as "practicalists" and among those there are differing views of human marginalization as "practical" or not, depending on the context allowed in the hypothesis. Thus, for the above description, "conservatism" refers to those general political views which claim that human conflicts are unavoidable, and the circumstances on which those conflicts are based are unchangeable.

[edit] See also

Social exclusion

[edit] References

^ http://www.regent.edu/acad/schcom/rojc/leung.html Wing Leung, 1995, Survival of the Marginal Person from a City in Transition: Resolution of the Hong Kong Mentality in Films set in America, Sync vol. 1 number 2
^ Wirth, L. "The Problem of Minority Groups." pp. 347–72 in R. Linton, ed., The Science of Man in the World Crisis. New York: Columbia University Press, p. 347, 1945.