Deconstructing the 'Other': Otherization in the 21st Century

We’ve all felt it at some point- the confusing, uncomfortable feeling of being pointed out as different from those around us, alone and helpless in trying to convince anyone otherwise. This kind of experience is often a response to what is termed as ‘othering’, a common communicative practice that results in some person or group being made to feel as if they are different from what is ‘normal’ or ‘accepted’.

A relatively recent term, ‘othering’ can be used to refer to a ‘set of common processes and conditions that propagate group-based inequality and marginality’. Distinct from a particular axis of marginalization such as race, caste or gender, it is a broader phenomenon underlying any kind of marginalization: ‘othering’ partly explains the mechanics of how marginalization takes place in a society.

To an extent, othering is simply a function of identity construction through classification and attachment of labels to new entities encountered in the social world, a differentiation drawn between ‘us’ and ‘them’, who we are and who we are not, who is ‘ours’ and who is not. This type of thinking is symptomatic of all human beings- it simplifies our social lives, and gives us a clear, coherent picture of our identity in the social context. However, when othering informs certain types of social and political action, it ceases to be natural or harmless- it is most often based on narratives depicting particular ideas of how and why one should differentiate between ‘us’ and ‘them’, that are constructed by one section of society, often one that is dominant in some way. At this level, it runs the risk of making the short transition between ‘us’ and ‘them’ to an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ mentality, which may legitimize exclusion and treating the ‘other’ as inferior, which may in turn lead to inter-community alienation, inequality, tension, hostility, and finally, devastatingly violent conflict.

This article shall engage in a brief discussion of the process of othering, how it comes about and why it is of special relevance in the twenty-first century. Secondly, it shall discuss some manifestations of othering in an India that has been subjected to the globalization experiment over the past three to four decades. It shall then focus upon how othering can take place in the microcosm, in everyday settings such as the classroom, before moving on to a short reflection on how we can seek to counter othering in our lives and in our societies.

March led by anti- racist protesters on the streets of Oakland, California, on Aug. 12, 2017 in response to a series of violent clashes that erupted at a white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Photo Source: Osh Edelson/ Getty Images

Deconstructing the ‘Other’

Otherness is a concept essential to our social identity (who am I when I go out into the world?) - for it is very difficult, we quickly realize, to construct any idea of the self if the idea of what is not self is not clearly defined. In this sense, the concept of the ‘other’ lends us a method to define our own self or our own identity in relation to others. We may use various criteria to differentiate between our own social self and ‘others’ in our social world, but the very act of differentiation forms the core of othering. It is important to note here that ‘difference’ in itself is an ambivalent word- the fact that the other is different from me can be viewed positively, negatively or neutrally. Thus, at the level of individual cognition, drawing the distinction between the self and the other does not necessarily rest upon any value judgement.

Yet, speaking of an ‘individual cognition’ veils the fact that any criteria for making this distinction is largely constructed by social, cultural and political processes, making any ‘individual’ construction of the self and the other necessarily affected by all of these processes, even if the links are far from obvious or simplistic. Therefore, a variety of encountered phenomena shape our understanding of our identities- social interactions, cultural practices, political regimes, educational processes, as also interaction with other agents of culture such as media, literature, art and so on.

A particularly visible agent of conveying specific ideas of otherness to us are stereotypes, which provide us with fixed mental images of groups of people, often lending us a justification or rationale for specific types of behavior towards these groups. Any type of stereotype instantly marks out the group in question to be something different and distant (eccentric, in a particular way) from us, and accords a name, face and characteristic to a created ‘other’.

The process as described so far appears relatively harmless. However, it takes on a new, threatening nature when juxtaposed with another prominent aspect of human thinking- anxiety. As Powell notes, human beings can process only so much change at a time, and the rapidly changing world we live in today creates an upsurge of collective anxieties. One of the changes that define the twenty-first century is migration, with many more people living outside their countries and regions of origin than ever before. This forces many more people to encounter new, different categories of people, and hence, it is unsurprising that the conception of the ‘other’ and the collective anxieties of people are closely linked in present times.

Unsurprising, but not natural. As noted, viewing social identities in specific categories is natural, but the methods of forming these categories and choices about how to perceive them are not. It is here that political and other leaders play a hugely significant role in signaling to the rest of society how the ‘newcomers’ are to be viewed- whether they should be seen as ‘one of us now’, or as ‘others’, and whether as ‘threatening others’ or ‘unthreatening (often pitied) others’. Powell puts it well when he says ‘people don’t just figure out on their own that collectively they need to be afraid of another group’.

In a democratic regime where electoral advantage is the single most important source of legitimacy, access to this determining power lends political leaders space to construct narratives that first, validate the culture of the dominant group, secondly, divert anxieties away from more intractable causes such as low productivity and inequitable resource distribution, towards a new scapegoat, and thirdly, manufacture both an all-condemnable ‘other’ and a self-feeding anxiety directed towards that other. Examples are countless, including, apart from open references to specific communities that are othered, an increasing use of terms such as ‘outsiders’ and ‘infiltrators’ in public discourse.

A question that has often arisen in response to these trends is that of why globalization, once seen as promising a viable substitute for communal identities, has had precisely the opposite effect in many parts of the world- in other words, why has globalization made the figure of the ‘other’ more threatening than before, when many expected it to dilute boundaries of ‘us’ and ‘them’?

While the manufacturing of anxieties related to the other (migrants) by political leaders offers one answer to this question, it fails to take into consideration a number of other phenomena that are unique to the twenty-first century, to a globalizing world. It also undermines the importance of individual agency in critically evaluating political discourse, which is an important flaw to keep in mind generally in discussions on diversity, difference and discrimination.

Photo Source: Deanna Dent/Reuters

Othering in India- The Diffusion of the Global in the Local

The broad conceptual framework of othering, however, also offers us a more nuanced perspective with which to understand the tension between globalization and the figure of the ‘other’.

In a paper on the 2002 Hindu-Muslim riots in Ahmedabad, Ipsita Chatterjee makes a compelling argument for approaching the question from the perspective of how ‘locally embedded global narratives socioeconomically and socio-culturally produce the “other”’. In prefacing the discussion of the conflict with a narration of how the city underwent significant changes since the 1980s and 1990s, the years in which India’s economy was privatized and liberalized, she locates some of the socio-economic roots of the conflict in the closing down of a large number of textile mills in the mid-1980s, which pushed thousands of workers into lower paid, informal jobs. Apart from rising economic hardship for both Hindu and Muslim workers, this change also altered solidarities between the two communities. While workers of both religions had worked in the factories together, had had a functional relationship and experienced everyday inter-community interaction earlier, the shutting down of these workplaces ‘dissipated’ a relatively united working class into ‘solitary informal activities which were now carried out in ethno-cultural networks rather than around class solidarities’.

A second change brought about in the process of integrating the city within the rapidly globalizing economy was the trickling of global anti-Islamic discourses following the September 11 attacks of 2001, the Iraq War and the USA’s ‘War on Terror’ into local perceptions. The paper notes how these developments lent, to one section of people, some degree of legitimacy to components of the BJP’s Hindutva-oriented narratives and policies, including the exclusion of Muslims from certain housing allocation schemes for economically disadvantaged families.

A striking example of a ‘strategic reversal’ of othering strategies is also noted in the paper in its description of how the BJP, by naming public housing after characters from Hindu mythology and locating ‘lower’ caste families within them, undertook a strategic reclaiming of an erstwhile ‘other’ in a historically caste-ridden society. Chatterjee argues that this was an effective mode of ‘appropriating the caste “other” in order to expand an army of foot soldiers against the other “other”, the Muslims’.

While a satisfactory analysis of the conflict is outside the scope of this article, these examples show both the relevance of ‘othering’ strategies in the contemporary world, as well as the interaction between the processes of globalization and social realities of the local arena in producing fertile ground for new forms of othering.

Photo Source: Mahesh Kumar A./Associated Press

Othering in the Microcosm

A momentary shift away from such large-scale contexts for the discussion is useful for solidifying a foundation for a concluding reflection on how we can counter ‘othering’.

While much of the literature on the subject looks at othering in the context of a nation or society, othering can well take place- in fact, even thought to start- from everyday experiences in an individual’s life. One study notes how students with different abilities, international students and students identifying with other minorities face othering in the classroom. One of the frequent experiences of being ‘othered’ in class discussions involved feeling forced to become a spokesperson for their ‘group’ (not dissimilar to the figure of the native informant of the colonial era). Another involved feeling singled out- one respondent, for instance, was asked to sit in the front row in order to take their exam with the accommodations they were entitled to use on account of being differently abled, leading them to feel uncomfortably distinguished from their classmates.

Countering Othering

It is perhaps easier to suggest remedies to ‘othering’ at the individual level than at that of a society. At the former level, Collias argues for the power of empathy in reducing the tendency for othering, by ‘thinking beyond the individual limits of those like us’. In the same vein, Saltaga makes a case for dialogue between the different groups in question, because a genuine willingness to ‘hear and be heard’, and to ‘affirm and be affirmed’, promotes ‘understanding [‘others’] as individually distinct in their identities, or living at the intersections of multiple identities; not as [having singular or] fixed identities’.

However, given how deep-rooted and fundamental questions of identity often are, both empathy and dialogue must essentially be rooted in something that comes, like one’s attachment to one’s identity, from within. To this end, Lesser makes a case for the importance of dialogue to be precluded by a personal realization in each of us that first, one’s own identity is one of many, and secondly, that there is no ‘natural’ or obvious reason why one should be suspicious of (or feel superior to) anyone that is different from us.

Taken to the level of society or a nation, such a realization would show us that there is no ‘natural’ reason why anybody different should be ‘othered’ to the extent that they are assumed not to ‘belong’ to the (in any case) imagined collective of the ‘nation’. But this is a realization that is best arrived at through socialization and educational experiences, rather than imposed through a culture of hyper political correctness, which often loses real meaning and foments backlash from unconvinced groups.

Conclusion

Most fundamentally, it is important to realize that while it is a very human tendency to desire coherence and a sense of belonging in one’s social life, ‘othering’ processes as they play out in most contexts, particularly those of migration and national identity, are manufactured by certain groups for certain ends. Each of us ultimately has the freedom to decide whether to ‘other’ any person or group, and with what consequences. It is vital that we are conscious of this freedom and exercise it with empathy, compassion, wisdom and a genuine belief in the idea that a diverse society, where everybody belongs, is a culturally richer, more peaceful and happier society. The alternative is a much darker picture, albeit one closer to the present reality- of a world rife with endless conflict between millions of ‘us’s and millions of ‘them’s.

Niharika Mukherjee is a student of law at National Law University, Banglore. She finds meaning and interest in learning about contemporary political and social situations. She is also a volunteer at Diversity Dialogue.