Tackling Marginalisation through Social Innovation? Examining the EU Social Innovation Policy Agenda from a Capabilities Perspective

Abstract

This paper demonstrates that the capabilities approach offers a number of conceptual and evaluative benefits for understanding social innovation and—in particular, its capacity to tackle marginalisation. Focusing on the substantive freedoms and achieved functionings of individuals introduces a multidimensional, plural appreciation of disadvantage, but also of the strategies to overcome it. In light of this, and the institutional embeddedness of marginalisation, effective social innovation capable of tackling marginalisation depends on (a) the participation of marginalised individuals in (b) a process that addresses the social structuration of their disadvantage. In spite of the high-level ideals endorsed by the European Union (EU), social innovation tends to be supported through EU policy instruments as a means towards the maintenance of prevailing institutions, networks and cognitive ends. This belies the transformative potential of social innovation emphasised in EU policy documentation and neglects the social structuration processes from which social needs and societal challenges arise. One strategy of displacing institutional dominance is to incorporate groups marginalised from multiple institutional and cognitive centres into the policy design and implementation process. This incorporates multiple value sets into the policy-making process to promote social innovation that is grounded in the doings and beings that all individuals have reason to value.

Keywords:

• Social innovation
• Marginalisation
• Capabilities
• Public policy
• European Union

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Stephen Sinclair and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. In addition, the authors would like to acknowledge the generous editorial support they received throughout the peer-review process.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

About the Authors

Nadia von Jacobi is a post-doctoral researcher at the department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Pavia. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics, Law and Institutions and her research areas comprise development economics, poverty and inequality and mesoeconomics, with a focus on the role of institutions for human development.

Daniel Edmiston is a post-doctoral researcher at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. Daniel holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and Social Policy and his research interests include poverty and inequality, comparative welfare reform, welfare state futures and the political economy of social citizenship.

Rafael Ziegler (Ph.D. Philosophy, McGill University) is head of research of the social-ecological research platform GETIDOS at the University of Greifswald. His research fields are in political philosophy, environmental ethics and philosophy of science with a focus on sustainability issues, specifically around water and innovation.

Notes

1. Here we continue the discussion of marginalisation as a process as proposed in Chiappero-Martinetti and von Jacobi (2015, 2).

2. Examples of studies that have treated different social and environmental factors, crucial for human development are Bourdieu (1984), Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson (2002) and Pierson (2004), including from a CA view, Longshore Smith and Seward (2009); for an overview see von Jacobi (2014a).

3. For an in-depth treatment of conversion factors and the conversion process, see Sen (1987), Kuklys (2005), Chiappero-Martinetti and Salardi (2008), Binder and Broekel (2011) and von Jacobi (2014b).

4. To pay their rent, mortgage or utility bills; to keep their home adequately warm; to face unexpected expenses; to eat meat or proteins regularly; to go on holiday; own a television set; a washing machine; a car and a telephone.

Additional information

Funding

This work is part of the CrESSI project “Creating Economic Space for Social Innovation”, which has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration [grant agreement no 613261]. The paper reflects the authors' views and the European Union is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained within.