Social construction of inclusion

Elena Yarskaya-Smirnova made a presentation "Social Construction of Inclusion" at the RANEPA All-Russian Scientific Conference "Inclusive Discourses in the Performative Arts: aesthetics, ethics, politics, ecology, gender".

Inclusion is an extremely controversial concept primarily because there is disagreement in society about who, where and how to include. How to identify those worthy of help and inclusion, and who needs to be isolated? How to control the boundaries of this imaginary mainstream community? The search for answers to these questions in different historical and national contexts has generated various ways to implement and legitimize exclusion and selective inclusion. Having become an element of the political agenda, the concept of inclusion acquires a large symbolic capital and is filled with a variety of local interpretations.