Other/Otherness

The classification of Other and the demarcation of Otherness refer to an identification of difference based on race, ethnicity, sex/gender, often under the guise of the exotic and the strange. This Otherness can also be understood (and experienced) as forms of marginalization and exclusion. However, Othering differs from other forms of oppression as it explicitly calls attention to the power dynamics between the person/institution, defining the “Otherness” and the person/place experiences the classification of “Other.” In this entry, Edward Said's writings on Orientalism are used as a starting point for understanding how geographers working on issues of identity, urban space, power dynamics, postcolonialism and feminism approach, study, and critique the process of Othering.

Geography is drenched in imperial representations and colonial mappings of the Other. Explorations into seemingly unknown territories and populations, whether rural or urban, expose entrenched Western perspectives of geographic research. Over the past 30 years, human geography, specifically postcolonial and feminist perspectives, has critically examined the process, the placement, and the resistance generated from the position of the Other. Geographical mapping is drenched in imperial representations and colonial mappings of the Other.

The process of Othering and the demarcation of the Other are conceptually distinct yet theoretically intertwined. The process of Othering can be illustrated through Edward Said's critique of Orientalism. For Said (1979), Orientalism (generally understood as the study of “the Orient”) was a “way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient's special place in European Western Experience” (p. 1). Orientalism allowed a Western European perspective to control the image of “the Orient.” It was a way to dominate, restructure, and exert authority over the Orient through the study and classification of people and places. The Orient, according to Said, was and is not a “free subject of thought or action” (p. 3). The Orient became a static object of study through the process of Othering.

Othering produced overtly generalized perceptions of particular groups of people based on behaviors associated with a stereotypical notion of place. Othering relied and relies on relational representations of the Other. The process of Oth-ering exposes as much about the Western process of inquiry as about the object of study. Through Othering, the European culture shaped its identity and buffed what it perceived to be its strengths in relation to that which it perceived to be inadequate in “the exotic.” Othering relies on subtle methodologies of power and control.

Postcolonial studies expose how certain bodies, in relation to the hegemonic notion of whiteness, are not endowed with agency and are perpetually linked to a discursive representation of place. Debates on race and culture are not the sole conceptual framework for understanding Othering. Postcolonial studies and feminist literature influenced by Simone de Beauvoir have also described the experience and placement of the disempowered Other through the constructs of colonialism, racism, and patriarchy.

In human geography, the Other is understood through discussions of space and identity. The organization of space creates spaces of marginal-ization and exclusion, the space of the Other. For example, legislation banning panhandling distinguishes appropriate commercial uses of the space of the sidewalk. Classifying a neighborhood as “Chinatown” creates imagery of ownership, belonging, segregation, and racialization. Geographers have examined the process of Othering through situating the Outsider residing on the periphery of cities, countries, and social thought.

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