Discourses of exclusion and inclusion in the south: limits and possibilities

The primary purpose of the article is to look at how current thinking in the social sciences conceptualizes discourses of inclusion and exclusion in education and what the value of this thinking is for policy development in countries like South Africa and India. The article argues that the main conceptual weakness of current understandings is a failure to adequately engage with social justice concerns. While current approaches promote the achievement of certain kinds of rights, they are often complicit in the denial of others. This is because, the article seeks to show, the policy text in many countries, including countries of the South, invariably defines individuals and groups in essentialized terms and fails to engage with the complexity of their identities