On Social Closure

AbstractThe book presents an entirely new approach to the theory and analysis of social closure that provides a sociological tool for analysing the three critical forms of closure in the world today: exclusion in the context of neoliberalism, exploitation/new slavery in the context of global capitalism, and elimination in the context of the ongoing legacy of settler colonialism. The approach moves social closure from a descriptive approach to an explanatory concept that transcends society-centred, Eurocentric, or Western-centred analyses of processes of social closure. A mechanismic approach allows us to identify two critical social mechanisms—denial of access and intervention into community closure—that operate in all kinds of social closure struggles. While the former explains how human beings, social groups, or communities are denied access to resources, rights, or critical networks/institutions, the latter brings a fundamentally new dimension into closure analysis. It argues that the powerful in social relations of exclusion, exploitation, and elimination not only deny access but also implement strategies that directly control or suppress social groups and communities. This control keeps them in an underprivileged position, leaving them vulnerable, unable to fight back, and exposed to the arbitrariness of the excluders, exploiters, and eliminators.