By Andrew Passey

Social exclusion and poverty, while interconnected, is not the same thing. Social exclusion is a broader concept, which 'adds value' to studies of poverty. There is, though, a danger of focusing on individuals and small communities, in a way that highlights their flaws/problems, while underplaying structural issues that can lead to social exclusion.

A limited set of papers dealing with the social economy, were presented in sessions on the third sector (itself, fairly narrowly conceived as essentially charities and service providers). Although papers on social capital emphasised the importance of family and friendship networks, there was little about the role of institutions in fostering (or not) social capital.

While policy directed, much of the research stemmed, either from (i) evaluations of programs, (ii) using government-funded and generated datasets for social research, and (iii) conceptual studies (poverty, social capital for example), there was little about policy innovation, policy diffusion, or the links between research and policy. More details, abstracts and papers, can be found at: http://www.sprc.unsw.edu.au/ASPC2003/program.htm.