The theme of the seminar was "Social Inclusion in Southern African Society".
Silver (2007) conceptualizes social exclusion (or marginalization) as “detaching groups and individuals from social relations and institutions and preventing them from full participation in the normal, normatively prescribed activities of the society in which they live”. As the converse, social inclusion focuses on enabling groups and individuals to participate fully in such activities. Trauth (2017), renowned for her work on social inclusion and gender, and founding president of the AIS SIG Social Inclusion, states that the relevant aspects of human diversity to the social inclusion debate include “age, disability, ethnicity, gender identity, nationality, race, religion, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status” (2017: 10).
Trauth (2017) suggests that in researching and, preferably, addressing social inclusion, we must focus not just on barriers to inclusion, but also on how people can exercise their own agency to resist exclusion and on understanding how interventions can be put in place to overcome barriers to inclusion. Thus, part of our role as a community of IS scholars may be to offer support and interventions, but we are yet to understand what form these may take. This seminar aimed to address the inclusion and exclusion issues that Southern African’s may face in this changing world of digital innovation and to explore our role as academics in offering support for fostering greater inclusion.
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