Ignoring the dark side: social inclusion and social capital in Australia
Lou Wilson
Centre for Labour Research / Centre for Social Science Research, University of Adelaide
Contact Email:   lou.wilsonadelaide.edu.au

The concept of social capital has been deployed by Australian policy activists since the mid 1990s to buttress Commonwealth and State programs that seek to strengthen families and communities and increase social inclusion by building networks, together with shared norms, values and understandings. But the relationship between social capital and social exclusion, or the so-called “dark side” of social capital, is rarely discussed in the Australian context. Much of the scholarship on social capital seems influenced by an uncritical, backward looking, idealisation of the family and community coupled with naive appeals to solidarity, empowerment and inclusion. The flip side of social capital is its capacity to protect paternalism, sexism, racism, maintain power structures and exclude people outside of the mainstream from work and community. Mobilising social capital as a repair mechanism against the ravages of neoliberal economic policies risks exhausting community spirit in an asymmetrical, localised fight against global capitalism, and may create ghetto economies that do no more than recycle welfare income. This paper seeks to re-open discussion of both the light and the dark side of social capital and its relationship with social inclusion and social exclusion.

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