Marginalization

Marginalization as a concept is ubiquitous across the social sciences and humanities and it refers to the ways in which specific sections of society are rendered powerless and pushed to margins of economic, social, political, and cultural life. While such a notion certainly captures important aspects of marginalization, this essay argues that there needs to be a greater awareness of ways in which (a) the marginalized are selectively included into the economy as sources of super-profits and sites of exploitation, (b) economic and political marginalization of certain groups and classes can be paradoxically accompanied by their seemingly greater cultural and symbolic presence, and (c) marginalization can be inherent to processes of deepening electoral democracy and national integration, making it a more intractable problem than we possibly realize.