Construction Of Otherness Research Articles

‘Our common world’ belongs to ‘Us’: constructions of otherness in education for sustainable development

The aim of this article is to analyse how good intentions in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) discursively construct and maintain differences between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’. The empirical material consists of textbooks about sustainable development used in Swedish schools. An analysis of how ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ are constructed and maintained is done with help from critical race theory, whiteness studies and Popkewitz’ notion of double gestures, exclusion through intentions of inclusion. The analysis departs from five dichotomies: tradition/civilisation, dirtiness/purity, chaos/order, ignorance/morality and helped/helping. We consider these dichotomies as cogwheels operating in an ‘Otherness machinery’. Through this machinery, ‘We’ are constructed as knowing, altruistic, conscious and good. The Other is simultaneously constructed as ‘uncivilised’ or as a ‘bad’ Other in need of higher moral standards. With help from these two Others, ‘Swedish exceptionalism’ is formed. The ESD project could then be understood as a colonial and excluding project, and we ask how it is possible to avoid that ‘our common world’ only belong to ‘Us’?

Cyberbulling and otherness at scholl: A study in social representations with students from São José dos Quatro Marcos, Mato Grosso.

This article born from project entitled "The multiple faces of the violence at school" developed by the Interdisciplinary Nucleus of Research in Education and Society (NIPES), from Quatro Marcos College, Mato Grosso. The aim of this research was to approach of social representations of bullying and cyberbullying and discuss, thus, the impasses for the construction of otherness, among adolescents, students from public schools from São José dos Quatro Marcos, Mato Grosso. The empirical material was achieved by realization of interviews with participants between 14 and 17 years old, during the first semester of 2010. The Thematic Content Analysis was the method of data analysis listed for the evaluation of sense nucleus, around which, other ideas gravitated, for the explanation of social representations of bullying, cyberbullying and possible correlations of these with the dealing with the difference, at the scholar ambit. The results showed that the use of the Internet by research subjects and the intergroup relations, at school, are strongly related. The "teasing" and the placement of nicknames, among students, seemed to be the privileged way to deal with the different, who was mocked, in virtual space, for not being well-liked or accepted, within a group. Guided by discredit and disregard to the moral integrity, the teasing had teenager colleagues and teachers as main targets, being this realization justified, for the interviewees, authors of these acts, for being "something natural from adolescence."

From essence back to existence: Anthropology beyond the ontological turn

This article takes a critical look at ‘the ontological turn’. Illuminating ‘the turn’s’ theoretical point of departure, and clarifying its anthropological implications, the article argues that two key problems arise if the theory is to be taken at face value. It points, first of all, to the difficulty in studying ‘radical alterity’, in the manner proposed by the new understanding of ontology within anthropology. If anthropology is, as the ontological turn advocates, not a study of multiple ‘world-views’ but of essentially different ‘worlds’ altogether, how, we ask, does one approach this methodologically? Put in other words, if we really believe in radically essential, fundamental ontological difference with what registers can we, then, conceive and describe ontological others in ways that do them ethnographic justice? Secondly, the article ponders the issues of radical essentialism and immanence advocated by the ontological turn, and shows how an anthropological endeavour that advocates incommensurable difference, as an analytical point of departure, may be problematic in relation to the impact that anthropology has outside academia. As history has so vividly shown us, anthropological constructions of radical alterity and ontological difference offer themselves, in social terms, all too easily to political constructions of Otherness.

Theorising sexual media and sexual violence in a forensic setting: Men's talk about pornography and offending

This article reports findings from a discourse analytic study which critically explored the language of mental health nurses, and detained sexual offenders, in relation to pornography in one high-security hospital. It recognised previous empirical investigation, and pro-feminist theorising, into mediated representations and male sexual violence, but situated the research process in a forensic nursing context. Decision-making about access to, or restriction of, commercial sexual literature, as a component of therapeutic intervention and offender management, reveals tensions between service-user rights and treatment goals. The aim was to access nurse and patient talk in a specific culture. Semi-structured interviews with eighteen nursing staff, and nine patients, were used to co-construct accounts of pornography, sexual offending, and treatment. Analysis and data collection were undertaken concurrently. Interviews were audio-taped and transcribed. Data was coded to identify theoretical/conceptual themes and sub-themes representing discursive repertoires. Attention was given to how textual variation positioned respondents in relation to each other and the institution. Findings suggested collective male talk textured the environment, promoted gendered inequality, marginalised female nurses, and undermined rehabilitation. Shared discourse enabled male staff and patients to relate to each other as men, while maintaining distance through constructions of otherness. Discussion focuses on discriminatory discursive-practices, where men's talk about pornography and sexual violence embodied gendered knowledge/experience and contributed to a toxic culture. Consideration is given to ways of resisting institutional impediments and promoting positive therapeutic relations.

Movimentos de ocupação urbana: uma integração teórica através do Conceito de Happening

This article discusses urban occupations as dynamics of discourse that compose meanings and senses to the public space, through the conception of happening. It seeks to explain the dialogic processes that occur in these events and that occur in these manifestations and that count on the contribution of several psychological, cultural and historical factors. Therefore, it is the urban setting as one of the vectors that contributes to the formation of the narratives in the city, and they urge us to think about the relations of appropriation of space as creating places of experience in the social context. These events are understood as a means of interaction that put in challenge issues such as collective space and freedom of expression, a kind of communicational space frontier, in a dialogical construction. In this di­rection it constitutes the metropolis while rebuilding the environment in which subjectivities, in interactions of iden­tification and differentiation that create a dynamic construction of the notion of the self and the other. It is thought of the urban manifestations as happenings, in which the construction of otherness and therefore the relational identity gets involved with social processes with more far reaching, occupying a space of communicational frontier.

Spectral Returns and New Turns in Contemporary American Literature and Criticism

Spectral Returns and New Turns in Contemporary American Literature and Criticism Annette Trefzer (bio) Haints: American Ghosts, Millennial Passions, and Contemporary Gothic Fiction. By Arthur Redding. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama Press, 2011. pp. xii + 148. $27.50 cloth. $22.00 ebook Reconstructing the Native South: American Indian Literature and the Lost Cause. By Melanie Benson Taylor. Athens: U of Georgia Press, 2011. pp. 248. $69.95 cloth. $24.95 paper and ebook. Since Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx, contemporary literary criticism has taken a veritable “spectral turn,” and the current fascination with specters is reflected in book titles ranging from popular culture to academic studies. The new books by Arthur Redding and Melanie Benson Taylor, though very different, both rely on the metaphor of haunting for their arguments. Arthur Redding’s Haints is based on the premise that gothic fiction is experiencing a contemporary resurgence. Redding’s work builds on Teresa Goddu’s classic Gothic America, a study that links the gothic to the project of nationhood and especially to the voices that have been excluded from prevailing representations of America. Redding follows this line of reasoning into the 20th century and into the post-national era, when in the wake of 9/11 the presumed homogeneity of the national project has come under attack. The aim of the book, he writes, [End Page 132] is to contend that “contemporary gothic literature does speak cogently, if indirectly, to the sensibilities and conditions of which the attacks and the American response were symptomatic.” As an apocalyptic fictional genre, the gothic fits the current cultural moment since it offers no resolutions to the traumatic fracturing of national identity. The book’s three chapters contain familiar arguments about the nation as haunted, but unexpected and provocative new groupings of writers. In chapter one, for instance, novels by Jamaica Kincaid, Isabelle Allende, and Henry James are discussed side by side as narratives of immigration and exile that trace the contours of an American identity construed as haunted. In chapter two, Toni Morrison, Lee Smith, and Toni Cade Bambara are portrayed as awakening ghosts that arise from racial and sexual crimes. Here again, various geographies and vantage points are fruitfully juxtaposed to show how specters of otherness—African-Americans, poor white mountain folk, Native Americans, and children—haunt the house of fiction. Chapter three briefly glosses over Leslie Marmon Silko’s monumental Almanac of the Dead and Gerald Vizenor’s Bearheart as Native American novels that imagine an “apocalyptic endgame” to social crisis. The scant eight pages devoted to Native literature are followed by an analysis of E. L. Doctorow’s City of God, creating an unsatisfying imbalance and rupturing the otherwise well-rounded and nuanced readings in the rest of the book. The focus on ethnic American literature provides some overlap with Kathleen Brogan’s 1998 Cultural Haunting, and the emphasis on the contemporary scene dovetails with Mark Edmondson’s 1997 Nightmare on Main Street. Eager to distinguish his book from theirs, Redding characterizes Edmundson’s study as one in which the gothic “remains mired in a political debilitating and anxious dread,” whereas in Brogan’s book, the gothic “moves us toward an idealized cultural recovery.” Redding delineates the limitations of each of these positions and offers his own as he claims that “no individual or collective identity can be forged without reference to the dead.” Whereas Haints attempts to find new ground in a familiar field, Reconstructing the Native South outlines a brand new field of study altogether. This truly original study is the first book-length publication on Native southern studies that sets up parallels between the disciplines. Taylor argues that the U.S. South and Indian Country in particular are “imagined geographies,” each functioning to represent the national abject. Her Reconstructing the Native South clarifies that these overlapping regions have been called on to defend their integrity and autonomy, and that this position produced very particular constructions of otherness and difference. Specifically, Taylor argues, these legacies of difference are grounded in loss. [End Page 133] By linking the southern “Lost Cause” with an “Indian lost cause” these seemingly diametrically opposed narratives take on strange new echoes in shared histories of...

The social geography of ethnic minorities in metropolitan Paris: a challenge to the French model of social cohesion?

ABSTRACT In order to address the specific social challenges of immigrants and ethnic minorities in the poorest urban neighbourhoods in Paris, new policies of social cohesion have been implemented over the past three decades that focus on place of residence rather than on ethnicity or national origin. The design of a social cohesion policy that deals with socio-geographic inequality rather than with ethnicized populations as such has been a subtle way of addressing the ethnic issue without directly calling into question the postulate of republican universalism. From this perspective, Audebert attempts to understand the role of place and social geography in the formalization of collective identities that have emerged in response to decades of public policies that have been unable to respond to the social, economic and political demands of ethnic minorities. He also attempts to analyse how the French state has relied on social geography as a way to address racial and ethnic issues without directly endowing them with an institutionalized dimension. His hypothesis is that the issue of social cohesion in contemporary France and the way it is dealt with by republican institutions is above all a matter of social geography. The French approach that gives prominence to the urban territorialization of social inequalities over the ethnic categorization approach remains firmly based on republican ideals. Nonetheless, such a policy is innovative in the French context, as it differs from the French traditional assimilationist model and takes into account social and cultural diversity in large metropolitan areas. Audebert's article provides a better understanding of the influence of this integration model on the construction of Otherness. It puts into relief the role of urban geography in the emergence of ethnicity and the design of innovative policy that addresses the issue of cultural diversity.

“Who are these people?”: Anthropomorphism, Dehumanization and the Question of the Other

AbstractDiscussions of the animal have repeatedly examined both our epistemological desire and our epistemological insufficiency towards the non-human animal. In different ways Spinoza, Derrida, Nagel and Berger have shown that once the anthropomorphic layer of assumption has been peeled back, there appears the abyss of incomprehension between humans and the non-human animals. Yet the ‘abyssal difference’ does not address the scale or the scope of existing knowledge; it only points to the elusive and ultimate epistemological certainty, obscuring important distinctions between degrees and kinds of interspecies communication. This paper will consider the ground that is too often overlooked in arguments that appeal to the anthropomorphic fallacy. While we cannot share another species’ experience, we can, to some extent understand it through processes of inductive inference – that is anthropomorphism – and through studying it, broaden and deepen the ontological significance of both humans and animals. By looking at the process of humanizing the non-human as a basic cognitive method, this paper will argue that anthropomorphic reasoning can not only bridge the ‘abyss’ in crucial ways but have a powerful impact on animal ethics. Then it will link anthropomorphic reasoning to the process of othering – dehumanizing the human – and make salient the processes that inform the discursive and political practices of speciesistic and cultural hierarchization. Finally, it will examine representations of anthropomorphism, dehumanization and the construction of otherness in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2005), a novel which is based on the Morichjhani massacre of 1978–79, when animal rights came into conflict with human rights.

Критика колонијализма у „Другом острву Џона Була“ Џорџа Бернарда Шоа

Conveniently titled after a cartoon character, George Bernard Shaw’s play John Bull’s Other Island sneers at the legacy of colonialism, intolerance, and paternalism. This paper analyzes Mr. Shaw’s attempt to ‘reconcile’ England and Ireland in order to achieve synthesis between the colonizer and the colonized. It also answers whether it is possible to overcome the hostility caused by colonialism, and whether humanity can avoid and disregard the most important feature of colonial discourse Homi Bhabha wrote about: namely, “its dependence on the concept of ‘fixity’ in the ideological construction of otherness”. Finally, the reading of John Bull’s Other Island as the sovereign critique of colonialism exposes G. B. Shaw’s practical artistic solutions to stifling the symbolic and cultural violence, which continues long after the colonizers have granted the colony the right to Home Rule.

Children and the Sexualized Construction of Otherness: the Imaginary Perceptions of Russian and Romanian Immigrant Women in Cyprus

This article explores Greek Cypriot children's constructions of Russian and Romanian immigrant women in Cyprus as primarily sexualized "others." Using both qualitative and qualitative data, the article illustrates how children operate within structural and ideological constraints at the intersection of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality to construct a sense of "self" and "other" in relation to these women and to ultimately contribute to the reproduction of the nation's moral sense. The presence of these women in Cyprus gives rise to intense anxieties about national identity which is seen as being threatened by the promiscuous and often perceived immoral, sexual encounters between these Eastern European women and Greek Cypriot men. By drawing on the Greek Cypriot cultural ideologies of family, gender, and sexuality within the larger context of interethnic encounters resulting from immigration, children contribute in their own ways to the reproduction of a sense of national identity and moral superiority. The article aims to contribute to the small but emerging literature which considers children to be social actors who are able to reflect on and interpret their own social worlds and construct meaningful identities for themselves.

Negotiating frames in bilingual classroom discourse

It is well-known that socio-pragmatic motivations may cause speakers to choose a certain language code or mode or to shift to another language in conversations among bilinguals. Numerous theories have dealt with this phenomenon, among others Gumperz' (1982, 1992) theory of situational and metaphorical code switching, Myers-Scotton's (1993, 1998, 2002) distinction between marked and unmarked language choice, and Auer's (1995) conversational view on code switching as construction of otherness.

A Challenge to Critical Understandings of Race

In this article, I demonstrate fundamental weaknesses in the ability of critical understandings of race to produce reliable knowledge of how social actors use social comparisons as a way to align self with ingroup. I trace these weaknesses to two sources: The first is relying on social status as an explanation for race‐based assessments, ingroup motivations, and social constructions of otherness. This is opposed to leaning on assessments grounded in social psychological research that links properties of human cognition to the development and maintenance of social identities. The second weakness is an open support for activist research that is often situated in radical multiculturalism. Because critical race scholars openly side with racial minorities’ interests, they tend to establish incomplete assessments of social behaviors and social constructs linked to racial identities in order to maintain their stated political allegiances. To demonstrate these and other weaknesses, I draw upon the theoretical insights of social identity theory which is used to reassess Bell and Hartmann's (2007) critical race analysis of diversity dialogue in American society.

Capturing Otherness: Self-Identity and Feelings of Non-Belonging Among Educated Burmese in Thailand

This paper explores the subjective experiences of migrants engaged in producing alternative modes of self-identification and in creating a new basis for their collective identity. Through the analysis of personal narratives, this article examines the dialectic movement between complex political and social constructions of Otherness and processes of self-identification among English-educated lowland Burmese living in Thailand. It investigates the meanings and perceptions attached to the different terms used as identity frameworks in popular discourse among Thai and among Burmese themselves and looks into how these terms and
 attached meanings are appropriated and acted upon in different contexts. The migrants involved in this research come from vastly different backgrounds and ideologies, but they share in common being from the Burman ethnic majority, or having lived and studied among Burman, and identifying themselves in terms of civic identity, which is reflected by the term 'Burmese'. Once in Thailand, their situation is complicated because in their everyday life they have to face the Thai construction of being Burmese, known as 'Pama', a term associated with the historical enemy in Thai nationalist discourse. The contact that educated Burmese have with Thai classmates or co-workers is relatively limited due to the general mistrust Thai people tend to have towards them. The educated Burmese migrants also have to confront their national Other, the members of minorities from the secessionist states who compose the majority of migrants in Thailand. In this context, their own Burmeseness, which they rarely had to question before they left Yangon or Mandalay, appears suddenly as it is: an identity deeply fragmented that needs to be captured and reappropriated.

Indians, Ethiopians and Nubians in western pilgrimage narratives: mere observation or construction of otherness?

Indians, Ethiopians and Nubians in western pilgrimage narratives: mere observation or construction of otherness?

« Indiens, Éthiopiens et Nubiens » dans les récits de pèlerinage occidentaux : entre altérité constatée et altérité construite (XIIe-XIVe siècles)

Indians, Ethiopians and Nubians in western pilgrimage narratives : mere observation or construction of otherness ? ; The rise of pilgrimages, which followed the first crusade and the foundation of the Crusader States and resumed after a short interruption after the fall of Acre (1291), led to contacts between Western Christians and Eastern Christians, among whom were those that the pilgrims called Ethiopians, Nubians and Indians, considered as one group. Discovering these people in flesh and blood in their own environment enabled western scholars to know them better, for until then their knowledge was mainly based on written sources, namely Latin and Greek authors and medieval encyclopaedias. Concrete, realistic elements that commanded pilgrims’ attention were added to elements taken from ancient or contemporary traditions, like the evangelization of India by Saint Thomas or the legend of Prester John, a mythical sovereign whose kingdom was sometimes thought to be in India, sometimes in Ethiopia. These different sources of knowledge led pilgrims to mix up Ethiopians, Nubians and Indians – such confusion reflected both the specific preoccupations of each author and the complexity of medieval knowledge, which relied on the appeal of mirabilia and a questioning and critical approach of what was new and different. The fact that these Eastern Christians were increasingly present in pilgrimage narratives is evidence of their growing integration into western culture in the course of the 14th century.

"If I was not in prison, I would not be famous": Discipline, Choreography, and Mimicry in the Philippines

In 2007, 1,500 inmates in the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC) went "viral" with their online rendition of Michael Jackson's music video Thriller . Representing an exercise program aimed at building teamwork and reducing gang activity through dance, the CPDRC version circulated as performance-based proof of prisoner rehabilitation. Central to the production's worldwide popularity are narratives of discipline, colonial choreography, and the gender and sexual alterity of Wenjiel Resane, the cross-dressed leading lady. By situating these components in relation to the African American original, the actions of the prison administrators, and ideologies of Filipino mimicry, this essay examines how choreographic practices fundamentally influence the social construction of Otherness. As part of a history of intercultural performances that naturalize racial inequalities through stereotypes, the CPDRC's Thriller offers insight into both the traditions of colonialism and the powers of today's global social media.

The construction of ethnic boundaries in classroom interaction through social space

This article adds a social-spatial dimension to ethnicity construction while acknowledging the production of ethnicity as constructed through a relation of the ‘‘here and now’’ and an imagined (common) past. Empirically, social-spatial analysis is elaborated by looking at how social difference is produced in multi-ethnic schools through classroom interaction both in the USA and in the Netherlands. In our analysis, we are concerned with how ‘‘school’’ becomes evoked or produced in student discourse while ethnic positions are established. At the same time we show how spaces such as migrant neighborhoods and homelands are evoked and related to school spaces. The results show that more general mechanisms can be distinguished of how students use these spaces in their constructions of otherness across the data sets, but that the quality and complexity of these mechanisms are specific and can be related to the more general (migration) histories of the ethnic groups.

Partitions, identities and intercultural education: an exploration of some key issues

This article attempts an initial exploration of the ramifications of geopolitical partition for identity in the context of children and their education. While not an exhaustive definition, partitions may be observed to follow armed conflict between human collectivities (nation-states, putative nations, ethnic groups, etc.) and are the outcome of treaties, armistices and unilateral action. Furthermore, a comparative and historical overview suggests that such macro-political action has clear micro-sociological impact, not least upon children and their families. While there may be some overlap with the creation of refugees this is by no means an automatic outcome of partition. On the other hand, an ‘imagined community’ with refugee status may be a consequence of conflict, the drafting of new geopolitical boundaries together with voluntary or forced migration. Here, in the context of children’s education, questions are posed regarding the disintegration of collective identity, the construction of otherness and the formation of new identities as manifested, inter alia, in the dynamics of nationality, language and religion. Inevitably, while the consequences of partitions set challenges for the possibility for intercultural dialogue they may also establish the possibility of new opportunities for the development of more inclusive identities.

Childhood Sexual Abuse and Construction of Self and Others in People Who have Experienced Psychosis

This study aimed to investigate how childhood sexual abuse (CSA) affects self-construction and construction of other people in people who have experienced psychosis. A sample of 21 such people was divided into 2 groups, according to whether they had experienced CSA or not. They were compared on repertory grids that included the element “self now” and elements that represented other people. The results provided little evidence to support the hypotheses that people who had experienced CSA had lower levels of self-elaboration, saw themselves less like other people, or had greater conflict in their self-concept. The results are discussed with regard to limitations in the study and use of measures of conflict and elaboration in clinical practice.

WHY RISK WHY NOW? CONCEPTUAL PROBLEMS AROUND THE RISK PERCEPTION IN TOURISM INDUSTRY

Even though the risk perception theory has been coined by Cognitive Psychology and widely used during more than 40 years, only after September 11th 2001 the term risk was borrowed to tourism fields. The psychological and symbolic impacts that generated the WTC attacks drew the attention of many scholars concerned by the destination image. However, based on assumptions that need to be revisited, this body of knowledge rests on shaky foundations simply because its working definition of risk seems not to be correct. In addition, risk perception theory nourishes a discourse enrooted in a radicalized construction of otherness whose characteristics scare us. To some extent, risk perception theory in tourism has much to say but in fact some previous points should be previously discussed.