A LIBRARIAN’S ORIENTATION
What this book explores
A framework for building belonging without defining community through exclusion, domination, or forced sameness.
EDITORIAL NOTE
Why it’s in the Library
It names a central challenge for communities: inclusion that does not depend on producing an outsider. The book offers shared language for moving beyond both forced assimilation and permanent fragmentation.
Good starting place if…
You want a practical social framework for building belonging without requiring sameness, erasing difference, or creating a new excluded group.
Know before you begin…
powell and Menendian write from law, policy, systems thinking, and the Othering & Belonging Institute's work. The framework is broad and aspirational; applying it requires attention to local power, accountability, and material conditions.