Identity Sociology Otherness and Diversity Essay

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Especially in socially stratified societies, otherness is the quality of being labeled, perceived, and treated as different from the dominant group. Otherness is a relational construct that hinges on the construction of a hegemonic default: whether that hegemony is based on gender, ethnicity, social class, or any other designation the dominant culture deems valuable or important in maintaining its own superior status. Both a sociological and a psychological phenomenon, otherness has tremendous implications for how social institutions function, as well as how each individual forms self-concept, self-esteem, and identity.

Otherness can therefore entail the internalization of the qualities the dominant group projects onto out-groups. In some cases, internalizing otherness leads to a sense of alienation and isolation; in other cases otherness can lead to embracing one’s status as a form of personal or group pride, forming an identity that is aligned not with the dominant culture but with a stigmatized other. The process of “othering” can be used to incite discrimination via the construction of hierarchical categories, but othering can also be used to project seemingly positive qualities that serve the cognitive schemas of the dominant group. For example, Edward Said (1978) first demonstrated how “orientalism” is a process whereby “Westerners” project qualities like exoticism on people from “Eastern” places. Orientalism is the quintessential form of othering, whereby the European hegemony deems anything outside of its realm of existence as being other, exotic, weird, or bizarre. Qualities like exoticism may be perceived of as “positive” stereotypes, as when people claim that Asians are good at math, but there is no such thing as a “positive” stereotype. The fact that they are stereotypes at all precludes the ability of individuals to take control of their own identity construction, to determine how individuals are perceived, or simply to coexist in an egalitarian world. Otherness is a status as well as a stigma, preventing the realization of social justice and equity.

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The fundamental tenet of otherness is creating in-group and out-group statuses. Otherness has been reinvented to promote the construction of positive personal identities that subvert the dominant culture and its biases, prejudices, and assumptions. Unfortunately, the use of otherness as a springboard for group identity is oppositional and therefore has the potential to exacerbate segregation in the society. Ultimately, otherness is a discursive practice, one that necessarily entails continually questioning social norms and relationships (Staszak, 2008). What is deemed other or different in one generation may become integrated into the dominant culture in the next. Even when, as Madrid (1995) points out, the other is invisible, an inner psychological dialogue takes place, informing personal identity.

Otherness entrenches hegemony, acknowledging that there are categories of dominance and subordination. Yet otherness can also be transformed into an ironic source of social and cultural capital. Being the other can shape a person’s personality and outlook on life in ways that can subvert or even enrich an impoverished dominant culture. Otherness can be dichotomous, particularly when a person is a member of an invisible minority group that vies for recognition as being other than the hegemonic group. When a person is a visible “minority,” a non-white other, the status as an outsider may be “permanently sealed,” as Madrid (1995) puts it (p. 5). When a person longs to blend in or be considered independently of one’s ethnic, national, linguistic, or cultural heritage, otherness can be debilitating. Yet so too can the need to assert one’s difference; when invisibility is undesirable. Bi-racial, bi-cultural, and invisible minorities may struggle with identity even more so than members of a dominant cultural or social group.

Negotiating the dichotomies and paradoxes….....

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