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Grammars of Identity/Alterity:: A Structural Approach
... Prior to the description of each context, we will briefly discuss the symbolic role of the gitanos in the identity processes taking place in Spain and Andalusia. Following the grammatical model proposed by Baumann (2004), we will see how the relation between state and the gitano population in Spain has been traditionally marked by a contradictory combination of appreciation of the 'gitano culture' and clearly discriminatory actions, occurring above all in the area of housing. ...
... The right of these 'peoples' to have its own institutions and political representation is essentially based on the principle of territorial contiguity. According to Baumann (2004), these 'peoples' are defined by a 'segmentary grammar', by which the distinction between 'we' and 'the others' can be dissolved at a higher level of identification, where an 'us' is created: the Spanish federal (or quasi-federal) state is the classical example of this process. 1 Nonetheless, this 'grammar of identity/alterity' cannot be applied to those pueblos that are dispersed, rather than concentred on a certain territory: this is the case of the gitanos. ...
... The policy documents selected for this study often refer to the contribution of the 'gitano culture' to the "common cultural heritage" (Ministerio de Sanidad Servicios Sociales e Igualdad 2012b) or even as a "shaping element of the Andalusian cultural identity" (Junta de Andalucía 1997a). This, according to Baumann (2004), the Spanish public authorities have adopted an 'encompassing grammar' towards the gitanos: cultural differences do exist; however, they are not relevant enough to deny cultural and identity union of all Spaniards (or Andalusian). 1 Article 147 of the Spanish Constitution states that the statutes of autonomy are basic institutional rule of each Self-governing Communities and that state shall recognize and protect them as an integral part of its legal system. In Andalusia, the regional political elites, supported by intellectuals and academics, have been developing during the last three decades identity politics, with the goal to defend the 'historical uniqueness' of the region. ...
... A diferencia de la praxis psiquiátrica dominante, estas praxis clínicas y de acompañamiento producen una serie de narrativas, en forma de gramáticas de la alteridad (Baumann, 2004), sobre los sujetos otros a las que van dirigidas. Estas narrativas constituyen una parte importante de la constelación de representaciones y praxis alrededor del corpus profesional clínico o profano de acompañamiento. ...
... Gramáticas de la alteridad y producción de biografías La etnopsiquiátrica y la antipsiquiátrica son aproximaciones terapéuticas y de acompañamiento que transforman el modelo biomédico dominante mediante novedosas propuestas teóricas y prácticas, así como a través de la producción de biografías. 16 Para ello, a partir de su marco teórico-metodológico, consideramos que utilizan las tres gramáticas de la alteridad mencionadas por Baumann (2004): la orientalista de Said, la relativa a la segmentación y el estudio sobre los nuer de Evans-Pritchards y la correspondiente al englobamiento y la apropiación de Doumont y el sistema de castas en India. 17 La gramática orientalista de Said, con respecto a los imaginarios que desde Europa se tienen de Oriente en su modalidad binaria (nosotros-los otros) de inversión, se aplica tanto a la antipsiquiatría como a la etnop-siquiatría. ...
... A través de una gramática de la alteridad orientalista (Baumann y Gingrich, 2004) y desinstitucionalizada, el proyecto de la asociación L' Autre «lieu» reactualiza y sedimenta la solidaridad y los valores de convivencia en la diversidad que vehiculan los miembros de la sociedad peul en una forma de contrapoder que funciona como agenciamiento colectivo. Estas personas, excluidas por la enajenación del marco jurídico del Estado nación belga en materia migratoria y por su búsqueda de control y expulsión de la población extracomunitaria, acogen la inclusión jurídica de las personas de origen belga y la exclusión a la que estas se ven abocadas por las dinámicas de aislamiento, segregación y psiquiatrización del padecer en las sociedades fuertemente individualistas y medicalizadas, como las centroeuropeas. ...
El presente libro realiza aportaciones novedosas tanto en el panorama de las ciencias sociales como en el de otras disciplinas y campos profesionales que se enfrentan con los problemas del acceso y la adecuación de la atención médica en contextos de diversidad cultural. Una de sus aportaciones es la posibilidad de diálogo entre las diversas prácticas y modelos, y su potencial replicación y adaptación a otros contextos con problemáticas
análogas. Así, pues, se proponen y discuten tres modelos de intervención
intercultural en salud mental, que representan a las prácticas interculturales más emblemáticas en este ámbito en Bélgica y España, a partir del análisis de tres estudios de caso correspondientes a la formulación cultural de casos psiquiátricos del Hospital Universitario Puerta de Hierro (Madrid), la clínica etnopsiquiátrica del Hospital Universitario Brugmann y la antipsiquiatría intercultural de las casas comunitarias peul
(Bruselas).
... Said discussed the historical European fascination with and construction of the Orient as an antagonistic dichotomy between "us" and "them"; Evans-Pritchard, studying confl ict management among cattle nomads in Sudan, found that the Nuer had developed a segmental principle whereby kin-based groups could in dynamic ways rearrange loyalties and affi liations depending on who the opponent was in a given confl ict; and fi nally, Dumont explored notions of hierarchy and otherness in the Indian caste system, suggesting that these rest on an ability to include "others" by means of encompassment. According to Baumann (2004), these studies from the ethnographic archive demonstrate three fundamentally different ways of handling questions of identity and alterity, each of which can (as I illustrate later) be useful in discussing elements of identity politics in Denmark. However, they cannot account for the current situation, where deportation and the externalization of exogenous "others" have been incorporated into the grammar. ...
... This article began with Gerd Baumann (2004) extracting three grammars of identity from the major works Orientalism (Said [1978] 2003), The Nuer (Evans-Pritchard 1940), and Homo Hierarchicus (Dumont 1980), which are, respectively, about an antagonistic dichotomy, a segmentary principle, and hierarchical subordination and encompassment. These were fundamentally different ways of dealing with the relation between the self and the "other" in the ethnographic archive. ...
Following the so-called “paradigm shift” in Danish refugee policy in 2019, the previous ambition of “integration” was replaced by a state strategy of revocation and deportation. This article suggests that the political change reflects the development of a particular “grammar of identity,” where refugees are viewed as exogenous “others” who are neither seen nor recognized as part of the Danish nation and welfare state. The grammar tends to cast externalization as a reasonable and necessary solution to current challenges—best illustrated by the utopic–dystopic vision of sending asylum-seekers off to camps in Rwanda. Finally, the article discusses the risk of the current grammar transmuting into an “anti-grammar” of ethnic annihilation by means of externalization and deportation.
... Para nosotros, las gramáticas de la inmunidad señalan la importancia de entender los procesos ideológicos y estructurales que participan en la construcción cultural de las narrativas y prácticas biomédicas y epidemiológicas inspiradas por conjuntos sociales diversos sobre la noción de riesgo y de vulnerabilidad. Las definimos como estructuras clasificatorias socialmente compartidas en el sentido expresado por Baumann (2004), en este caso, a través de narrativas instituidas con carácter universal y científicamente legitimadas, basadas en la evidencia o en la ausencia de datos y cuyo objetivo es producir una representación de no afectación a la salud de ciertos grupos sociales o culturales a partir de la focalización en la afectación de colectivos específicos desde el binomio norma-desviación. La gramática de la no afectación se produce a través de constructos sociales e ideológicos relacionados, por ejemplo, con la identidad sexogenérica o cultural o con la orientación sexual, así como con estilos de vida o estatus sociales adscritos a grupos socioculturalmente definidos como antagonistas (en términos de vulnerabilidad) de las denominadas por la epidemiología como poblaciones clave (por ejemplo, ser mujer, ama de casa, indígena y casada). ...
... Las gramáticas de la inmunidad son estructuras clasificatorias socialmente compartidas (en el sentido señalado por Baumann (2004) de narrativas instituidas con carácter universal y científicamente legitimadas, basadas en la evidencia o en la ausencia de datos, cuyo objetivo y consecuencia es producir una representación de no afectación a la salud de ciertos grupos sociales o culturales, a partir de la focalización en la afectación de colectivos específicos desde el binomio norma-desviación. La inmunidad étnica forma parte de estas gramáticas, al constituirse en una narrativa y una práctica epidemiológica que se inscribe en la concepción del riesgo y de la vulnerabilidad a partir de poblaciones clave y estilos de vida cuya construcción sociocultural e ideológica excluye -en México y en otros contextos de Latinoamérica-a los pueblos indígenas de la afectación del vih. ...
RESUMEN En la actualidad no existen cifras oficiales sobre el impacto del VIH en los pueblos indígenas en México; son muy escasos los estudios al respecto, debido a la exclusión-desde ciertas ideologías dominantes-de conocer y abordar esta problemática y sus especificidades. A partir de una investigación etnográfica, complementada con análisis cuantitativo de datos epidemiológicos, se documentan y analizan en Oaxaca (el estado que posee el mayor número de hablantes de lengua indígena): a) datos cuantitativos desagre-gados por etnicidad sobre prevalencia de vih y mortalidad por sida; b) procesos socioculturales que producen inequidades en la prevención, detección, atención del VIH y en la mortalidad por sida de esta población respecto a la no indígena, y c) estrategias individuales y colectivas para afrontar las barreras en el acceso y apego al tratamiento. Se proponen las gramáticas de la inmunidad y la inmunidad étnica como eje teórico-conceptual que discute las narrativas y prácticas dominantes en la epidemiología, en la academia y en la sociedad civil respecto a esta problemática, basadas en la consideración de la etnicidad como un factor protector frente al VIH.
... e oppressor. The proximity of the frontier Oriental renders their oppression as intelligible and tangible to Western society, and so the West must confront and embrace the object of its imperial ambitions. This confrontation produces insecurity in the Western psyche on the basic assumption of the insuperable moral authority of Western civilisation.Baumann (2004) describes this process as a "reverse mirror-imaging" whereby "the grammar of Orientalism can implicate self-critique, albeit under the auspices of a self-invented other" (pp. 20-21). ...
The renewal of hostilities between Israel and Hamas in October 2023 inaugurated an upsurge in Canadian media interest in the region. However, the singular preoccupation with the plight of Palestinians may displace needed concern for the oppression of other groups in other contexts in the Global South. This research paper offers a comparative analysis of Canadian media coverage of the occupations of the Palestinian territories of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem (1967–present) and that of Western New Guinea (WNG, 1962–present). These two subjects were selected due to the relative similarity in the natures of the occupations, therefore permitting a meaningful comparative approach. No such endeavour exists in the literature. The analysis comprises both quantitative and qualitative surveys of articles pertaining to the two occupations published between 1 January 2013 and 30 September 2023 in four Canadian online news outlets: The Toronto Star, CBC News, The Globe and Mail, and The National Post. The quantitative survey demonstrates a disparity in volume of articles produced between the two occupations. This disparity indicates a significantly greater degree of media interest in Palestine over WNG. The qualitative element examines differences in language and framing, suggesting a tendency to humanise Palestinian subjects to a greater degree than their WNG counterparts. Drawing from the conceptual work of Edward Said and André Gingrich on the nature of colonial discourse, this paper argues that the dramatic difference in representation is in part the product of a self-critical modality of Eurocentrism underscoring Western engagement with foreign political conflict. This research thus questions the ways in which the Western political imaginary assesses, evaluates, and represents the oppression of the Other according to implicit Eurocentric logics.
... In the literature, Baumann names this as the englobing grammar, minorities can consider themselves dierent; but from a higher level of consciousness, these supposed dierences are nothing but ctions of the politic of identity. In fact, or better said, from above, those auto dened as others are nothing more than a subordinated part of an englobing Us [12]. I could see misery rsthand, for example, when going on a tourist train ride, some Tunisian children were running by our side, and other tourists were throwing coins at them from the train as if we were in a kind of human safari. ...
One's private space (both domestic and personal) is an unarguable place of ''culture'' in the multiple meanings such word encloses. Thus, privacy is the quintessential place of practices, habits, and routines; material and immaterial transit and acquisition; production and reproduction; relationships, affections, and memories. Only due to having it ''too close'', could its highly valuable ethnographic density go unnoticed.In this work, the author shares some learnings acquired during his very intense life in the form of a tale. The action is placed in his kitchen, where he imagines out loud how precious it would be to gather all his memories there at the present time.
... This perspective, then, portrays orientalism as: [...] tending to confront the structures of Western knowledge and power and to engage with Eastern ideas in ways which are more creative, more open-textured, and more reciprocal than are allowed for in Said's critique. This does not by any means imply a total rejection of Said's attitude of 17 See, for example, Baumann (2004), Lowe (1991) and Clarke (1997). 18 It must be remembered that Said did not deal specifically within his book with orientalism regarding China (even though he mentions it in some parts of Orientalism); his main interest led him to analyze the orientalist construction of the Islamic Orient within Great Britain and France, from the 18th century onwards and, finally, the US during the 20th century (even though he sometimes cites examples from Antiquity and the Middle Ages). ...
The present article explores the Jesuit interpretation of the Confucian concept of “tian” 天 (usually rendered as “heaven”) and “tianming” 天命 (“mandate of heaven”) within a few passages from the first Western translation of the Lunyu 論語 (Analects) to Latin (1687). Thus, it examines how Jesuit missionaries, driven by the goal of evangelization, sought to reconcile Confucius’ philosophy with Christianity. This not only implied interpreting terms such as “tian” or “tianming” through a Christian’s perspective but also commenting on the original text and adding content to it so as to portray Confucius as a proto-Christian. By using an orientalist framework, this article will analyze the construction of a “Christo-Confucianism”; a phenomenon that could be understood as a natural product of the particular material and theological conditions to which the Jesuit Order had to adapt in China.
... Our use of "alternative grammars" is mindful of the many possible connotations of the term "grammar", which has been used in linguistics and literary theoryfor example, Noam Chomsky's (1966) "generative grammar" or Jacques Derrida's (1974) "grammatology" -and in the social sciences, ranging from Gerd Baumann and Andre Gingrich's (2004) concept of "grammars of identity/alterity" all the way to decolonial theorists such as Walter Mignolo (2007) who talks of "grammars of decoloniality" or Vicente Rafael (1992Rafael ( , 2016 who analyses grammar as a colonial tool of domination and control. ...
Naming racism has been usually seen as a necessary step for understanding racism and undertaking anti-racist action. However, the explicit naming of racism does not immediately tell us what kind of understanding of racism is at stake nor what kinds of action will follow. In the context of an incipient turn to antiracism in Latin America we conducted a project looking at antiracist activities in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico. It became apparent that different organisations varied markedly in their approaches to the concept and language of racism. Some explicitly use the language of racism, other organisations do not, even though they are engaged in struggles for land, rights, etc., which clearly have a racialised dimension. This difference revealed variations in the awareness of racism, which came in and out of focus in their practice. With examples from Colombia, Brazil, Mexico and Ecuador, we discuss the antiracist effects of what we call “alternative grammars of antiracism” and the racially-aware class consciousness” they imply. We end by questioning the assumption that the explicit naming of racism as such is necessary to advance antiracist work, and suggest that employment of more indirect ways of evoking racism, which imply an awareness of structural racism, have some advantages for antiracist practice.
In Interface: a journal for and about social movements, 13 (2): 20-50
... Theoretisch wie forschungsstrategisch klüger scheint es uns, vor einer solchen Clusterung zunächst einmal in verschiedenen Hinsichten Verwandtschaftsverhältnisse festzustellen. Erste Versuche dazu finden sich nach Simmels klassischem Vorstoß (1908) etwa bei Linton (1942) und Baumann (2005) (Hirschauer 2010). Die Biologisierung des Albinismus war für davon betroffene Afrikaner:innen ein klarer Fortschritt gegenüber der vorgängigen Kategorisierung als Mensch-Geist-Hybride, die sie der Stigmatisierung und Verfolgung aussetzte Unser Plädoyer für Vergleich statt Subsumtion richtet sich aber auch auf die Spielräume empirisch-kulturwissenschaftlicher Forschung gegenüber der soziologischen Theoriebildung. ...
Zusammenfassung
Loic Wacquant ist zuzustimmen, dass „Rassen“ für die Soziologie nur eine ethnosoziologische Kategorie einer rassifizierenden Praxis sein können und dass international gebräuchliche Begriffe von Race implizit auf einem ethnozentrischen Begriff der US-Gesellschaft beruhen. Dort wird Race freilich auch von den Dominierten substanzialisiert und essenzialisiert. Für den konzeptuellen Rassismus ist eine Reifikationsallianz sozialer Bewegungen und kritischer Soziologie verantwortlich. Eine große Schwäche der Agenda Wacquants liegt darin, dass seine Subsumtion von Race unter einen vagen Begriff von Ethnizität diesen ethno–zentrisch überdehnt. Sie macht es unmöglich zu bestimmen, was allgemein und was spezifisch ist an Race. Stattdessen braucht es spezifizierende Vergleiche von Formen der Humandifferenzierung: Race, Ethnizität, Konfession, Sprache und Staatsbürgerschaft sollten erstens analytisch klar separiert werden, bevor man zweitens darangeht, im Vergleich mit weiteren Unterscheidungen (wie Geschlecht, Klasse, Alter, Disability) ihre Familienähnlichkeiten zu bestimmen, und drittens ihre empirischen Interferenzen mit anderen Unterscheidungen untersucht.
... To Baumann, Othering is a dialectic processa process of "reverse mirroring" where not only an "Other" but, more importantly, a new "Self" is created. 28 Each time we attach a negative connotation to the "Other," we are, in essence and implicitly, creating an imaginary positive "Self." For example, if we perceive the "Other" as "backwards,""conniving," or "greedy," we implicitly consider ourselves to be "progressive," "technologically advanced," "honest," and "self-sacrificing." ...
The corpses] were laid in such a position as to expose their persons to the ridicule of passersby, and on the abdomen of each was cast a large stone. They had evidently been murdered there at the noon hour and then the brutal guards had stopped to leave behind them the signs not only of violence but of mockery and insult 1 (emphasis added).
... To Baumann, Othering is a dialectic processa process of "reverse mirroring" where not only an "Other" but, more importantly, a new "Self" is created. 28 Each time we attach a negative connotation to the "Other," we are, in essence and implicitly, creating an imaginary positive "Self." For example, if we perceive the "Other" as "backwards,""conniving," or "greedy," we implicitly consider ourselves to be "progressive," "technologically advanced," "honest," and "self-sacrificing." ...
... Collective identity is a multidimensional, context-dependent concept that is studied in many fields such as cultural, feminist, and cognitive sociology as well as social psychology (Ashmore & Deaux & McLaughlin-Volpe 2004;Owens et al. 2010). It is not a single, monolithic theory but rather a "system of relations and representations" (Melucci 1995, 50) that includes, for instance, individual-level processes that cause categorical group membership (Ashmore & Deaux & McLaughlin-Volpe 2014;Turner et al. 1987), the sense of 'we-ness' between members of the same category (Owens et al. 2010), exclusions of alterity that cause the division between 'us' and 'them' (Baumann 2004;Jenkins 2008), and identification with common features that regulate the opportunities and limitations of the group or collective (Ashmore & Deaux & McLaughlin-Volpe 2004;Melucci 1989). Collective identity is interrelated 2 According to Fackre, narrative theology is a "discourse about God in the setting of story. ...
Through ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2020–2021, this paper investigates how people experiencing poverty and social exclusion process their collective in-group/ out-group identity as the urban ‘others’ in faith-based food assistance in Finland. By building on the concept of collective identity and employing narrative construction, the analysis shows that not only does perceived social exclusion function as a stigmatizing self-category and symbolic boundary maker but also as a resource for resistance, especially in the theological accounts of the informants. When looking through the lenses of urban theology, the informants do not just tell a story about themselves, but they do theology as well. All in all, the others may be excluded from society and yet included in Spirit.
... In anthropological, but also sociological and criminological literature, much has been written about the construction of the 'other' as enemy (e.g., Besteman 1996;Fabian 1990;Bauman 1995;Baumann 2004). These works show how such 'othering' happens through media, state narratives and, for example, educational practices that produce an enemy who is recognised as such by a wider public. ...
From checkpoints in Palestine and cities in other war-torn places to Istanbul, Ferguson and Paris: anti-riot and other so called ‘non-lethal’ weaponry is used worldwide against civilians by government forces. The use of such violence (even if framed as ‘non- or less-than-lethal’) against protestors in major cities, often turning the city streets into scenes from battle fields, is worrying as it shows an increasing disrespect for human and civil rights by states with an obsession with ‘keeping the order’. What is less visible, however, is how technologies and weapons that are used against protestors, and the ways they are marketed, (re)produce the image of the protestor as a legitimate target. Studying this process in more detail can help understand the criminalisation of protests and protestors along with other democratic tools.In this article I will investigate the global sale and marketing of ‘anti-riot’ or so-called ‘non-lethal’ or ‘less-than-lethal’ weaponry and technology that are used against protestors on a global security market. I will argue that this industry constructs a new enemy and by doing so criminalises our cities’ populations and the democratic tools they have at their disposal to voice their concerns. Instead of looking at police actions of repression of protest, I will thus approach this issue through the weaponry that is used against protestors and what that tells us about repression of their civil rights. I will do this by focussing on the Israeli security industry.
... More recently, attempts to make sense of excessive phenomena, such as alterity and violence, catch it in 'grammars', e.g.Baumann and Gingrich 2004. ...
... Since this chapter is occupied with Islamic ways of seeing peripheral regions, one should not pass over the fact that the Islamic world itself became subject to Western othering that in some cases is particularly built around imaginaries of a frontier between the 'orient' and the 'occident' (Gingrich 2010). In the course of orientalist perceptions that rest upon dynamics of positive and negative stereotyping (Baumann 2004), Muslim societies are often equated with the Middle Ages and thus also relegated back in time; or they are kept at a 'distance' in spatial terms (Heiss and Feichtinger 2013). Long before the emergence of modern European discourses of temporal and spatial degradation, however, Muslims have developed their own concepts of the frontier. ...
... Les trois grammaires que présentent Baumann et Gingrich -la segmentation, l'encompassment et l'orientalization -expliquent comment les circonstances sous lesquelles nous considérons l'altérité la transforment. Selon Baumann (2006), la segmentation consiste en ce que les personnes deviennent Même ou Autre selon le contexte : « l'ami de mon ami est mon ami ; l'ennemi de mon ami est mon ennemi ; l'ennemi de mon ennemi est mon ami » (p. 23). ...
Habib Bourguiba, premier président de la Tunisie indépendante, a développé l’idée de la tunisianité afin d’exprimer toutes les influences culturelles qu’a connues son pays après des millénaires de domination extérieure, mais la définition qu’emploie Bourguiba du terme ne comprend pas les contributions de la communauté judéo-tunisienne. Les Belles de Tunis , roman de Nine Moati, présente l’histoire de cette communauté, et met en valeur les manières dont elle influe sur la culture tunisienne, surtout en ce qui concerne la gastronomie. Cette influence s’oppose à l’altérité imposée sur la communauté juive par différents gouvernements et exige une définition plus large de la tunisianité .
... The Dhivehin's longing for island holidays demonstrates that the stereotypical tropical holiday island idyll no longer is the privilege of a white, Western, affluent middle-and upper-class in the metropolitan centers of former and existing colonial powers. In an almost orientalizing grammar of identity/alterity (Baumann & Gingrich, 2004), the islands are seen both as inferior and as desired places of retreat. Zeena's longing for her beautiful home island and her repeated invitation to the haemoglobinopathy doctor from Male' is embedded in this local cultural dialectical understanding of and dealing with islandness. ...
Relations within are quintessential in anthropological fieldwork — and in archipelagos in particular. The domestic sea is incorporated in the national consciousness connecting an archipelagic nation but distinguishing individual islands with a strong emphasis on the centre. The Maldivian archipelago displays this spatial organization of a socio-political and economic centre and a dependent island periphery. In the national consciousness, the capital island, Male', contrasts with “the islands” — a distinction which is particularly evident in the public health sphere, where striving for health equity encounters geographical and socio-political obstacles. Using the topic of the inherited blood disorder thalassaemia as a magnifying lens, this paper asks how different actors are making sense of health inequities between central and outer islands in the Maldivian archipelago. Intra-archipelagic and international mobilities add to the complexities of topological relations, experiences, and representations within this multi-island assemblage. Yet, my study of archipelagic health relations is not confined to a mere outside look at the construction of the ‘island other’ within the archipelagic community. It is a situated investigative gaze on disjunctures, connections, and entanglements, reflecting my methodological-theoretical attempt to unravel my own involvement in island–island relations and representations — my being entangled while investigating entanglements.
... Stepping away from performativity, one may also consider how Chinese in Suriname are othered, and Gerd Baumann's conceptual framework for that process is helpful here (Baumann 2004). He identifies three grammars of identity and alterity, grammars in the sense that they provide prescriptive, normative rules for identifying oneself by positioning others: orientalisation, segmentation, and encompassment. ...
... El Quijote ofrece al análisis antropológico un juego complejo de gramáticas de la alteridad aún sin explorar conformada por un conjunto heterogéneo y poliédrico de personajes que se van sucediendo en la trama. (Bauman and Gingrich, 2004;Hall and Du Gay, 2011) Esta es sin duda una temática interesante por explorar, el juego de identidades y de otredades en plena interacción tal y como aparece en el texto cervantino, pero el profesor Lisón centra su atención además en el carácter liminal de la propia figura de D. Quijote como un personaje poseedor de identidades múltiples que se van manifestando a lo largo del escrito. Es racional e irracional, individual y social, es hostil al sistema pero al mismo tiempo utópico, injusto y luchador por la justicia, un ser bifronte, pero sobre todo un ser liminoide. ...
En la obra del profesor Lisón la presencia de la literatura resulta habitual. En muchos de sus escritos establece diálogos con sus autores de referencia para ofrecer al lector una perspectiva antropológica de la imaginación literaria. En este trabajo exponemos algunas de las reflexiones del antropólogo aragonés sobre la creatividad y la cultura y sobre la literatura, para centrarnos en el análisis cultural que lleva a cabo sobre El Quijote de Cervantes.
... The anthropologist Gerd Baumann (2004) pointed out that collectivities, including national collectivities, can respond in different ways to 'the other see Kelman 2005;Rex 1996). Every claim to a collective identity is inevitably tied to the exclusion of alterity, every 'us' excludes a 'them'. ...
... To Baumann, Othering is a dialectic processa process of "reverse mirroring" where not only an "Other" but, more importantly, a new "Self" is created. 28 Each time we attach a negative connotation to the "Other," we are, in essence and implicitly, creating an imaginary positive "Self." For example, if we perceive the "Other" as "backwards,""conniving," or "greedy," we implicitly consider ourselves to be "progressive," "technologically advanced," "honest," and "self-sacrificing." ...
In this chapter I explain sexual violence in all its shapes through the process of Othering, which lies at the centre of the genocidal process. By using this approach even the most gruesome act gains meaning and is not just meaningless or sometimes not even sexual.
... Even though we have supposedly moved beyond these ideas and they are not usually expressed verbally, they are still danced every night in clubs all over Europe. What Gerd Baumann (2004) called 'orientalist grammar of identity/alterity' is embodied and transformed into fun, leisure, lifestyle, addiction, self-fashioning art. ...
This is a brief reflection on the consequences of the commodification of dance cultures from the former colonised world and the ways they are consumed in Europe. Inspired from ten years of fieldwork, the ethnic structuring of postcolonial dance floors in European cities proves an empirical basis to start this line of thought. Instead of promoting respect and interest in the dance forms and the cultural contexts in which these dance forms developed, aficionados tend to consider that these are less evolved, beautiful and interesting than the appropriations they develop in their home countries. As a result, commodification leads to reinforcing previous stereotypes and emic hierarchies of value. The kinetic metaphor of the bodies that scream but cannot listen structures the text and its arguments.
... Importantly, at the same time as these chapters discuss discursive processes of categorical disidentifi cations from the other, they are more or less explicitly also about the identifi cation of the selves in question, about 'us' discursively valorizing 'them'. In this sense, there is also a relational dimension in play in such categorical other-identifi cations-a dimension that is familiar to us from traditional and stereotypically dichotomous discourses of 'us' versus the 'other' (see, e.g., Baumann, 2004). This is revealed by the perspectives, stances and discourses adopted and adapted in the communication: the points of view, voices and ideologies in the data under investigation are those of in-group members projected onto what are perceived as an outgroup. ...
This chapter seeks to bridge the gap between the social and legal interpretations of genocide by exploring the complex processes that define and transform targeted groups through mechanisms of stigmatization, othering, and dehumanization. It critically examines how legal frameworks, particularly those rooted in the Genocide Convention, often compartmentalize the phenomenon of genocide into rigid judicial constructs that may overlook the broader sociological realities. The chapter argues for a more integrative approach that considers the continuum of genocide, from initial targeting and othering to the ultimate destruction of the group, and underscores the importance of understanding the dynamic and trans-subjective nature of group identity in the context of genocide. By engaging with both legal and non-legal perspectives, the chapter highlights the challenges and necessities of aligning legal norms with the social realities of genocidal processes to ensure both justice and the protection of vulnerable groups
The marginalization of particular groups or people as a result of the idea that one group or person is better than another is known as the "othering" process. This article discusses how a film adaptation of Dee Alexander Brown’s book on Native American history, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (BMHWK) performs this act of othering. First of all, it is done by negatively portraying the heroic figure in the book. Sitting Bull, a Teton Dakota Chief who united the Sioux tribes in North America, the Great Plains, in mid 19th century is reduced in the film into a weak figure. The Native American chief is overshadowed by White figures like Elaine Goodale and Senator Henry Dawes. In the film adaptation, the social hierarchy-building process, which put the Whites on top, educated natives in the middle, and the rest of Native American population in the bottom, serves as a vehicle for a further process of othering. The film represents Native Americans as people who need to be governed and who can only survive if they abide by White people's laws.
KEYWORDS: Native American, Othering, Sitting Bull.
The rhetoric of the Pauline letters has garnered much interest over the years, and regardless of agreement with the positions expressed in the letters, Paul generally received praise for his adept communicative skills of persuasion. Appreciation for his rhetorical craft, however, should not prevent the recognition of Paul’s deft handling of discourse, as if rhetorical skills and discursive goals are disconnected. Using discourse as a broader category than rhetoric, several instances of discourse manipulation, which at times remind us of imperialist discourse, are identified, including kinship language and ethnic stereotyping, military metaphors, as well as gendered power discourse and sexual slander, illustrated with examples mostly from Philippians.
This article presents an excerpt from our ongoing doctoral research, which aims to identify and analyze linguistic aspects and argumentative strategies in electoral campaign publica-tions on social media from the official profiles/pages of Jair Bolsonaro and Fernando Haddad - the 2018 Brazilian presidential candidates – and Ana Gomes and André Ventura – the 2021 Portuguese presidential candidates – based on the theoretical framework of Discourse Analysis. Here, we pro-vide an analysis of two of the 15 most relevant publications from each candidate on the Twitter social media posted in the 15 days immediately preceding the elections. We draw on Textual Lin-guistics, following the works of Adam (1997, 2001a, 2001b), Bronckart (1985), and Plantin (1996), to identify and analyze how the structure of the social network (Bossetta, 2018), as a textual support, as conceived by Maingueneau (2001), influences the materialization of techno-discourses (Paveau, 2021), which is reflected in the construction of textual sequences identified in the corpus, specifi-cally regarding the presentation of arguments or data (premises) in argumentative textual sequences in which multimodal compositions involving static images, links, and videos were preferred.
This chapter provides the historical groundwork for the subsequent analysis. It starts by theorising the idea that citizenship is narrated. Using some preliminary ideas from Charles Tilly’s work, it discusses how narration abstracts the concept of citizenship from wider discourses of inequality. After this theoretical prelude, the chapter lays out a genealogy of Dutch citizenship, or burgerschap. This historical reconstruction is developed by looking at three key concepts of public discourse: citizenship, nationhood and race. Along their conceptual histories, burgerschap continues to appear as the moral capacity to life without imposition by others. While the relevant moral equipment shifts from a prudent, restrained and civilised composure to a liberal, expressive and hedonistic lifestyle, burgerschap nonetheless involves stark boundaries and questions of inequality. While its narration often follows a logic of encompassment, race and racial differences also continued to pose unresolvable problems for its narration, prompting the re-articulation of differentiating narratives of burgerschap by the 1970s. This constituted the demise of characterology and the emergence of an identitarian problematic of Dutchness.
This book focuses on comparison in anthropology, turning an ethnographic lens onto the diversity of comparative practice. It seeks to understand how, why and with what consequences diversely situated groups of people – many of whom operate on radically different premises to professional anthropologists – make comparisons, above all, between themselves and real or imagined others. What motivates people to compare, what techniques or logics do they employ, and what are the most likely outcomes – both intended and unintended? How do comparative practices reflect, reinforce or refuse uneven relations of power? And finally, what can a rejuvenated comparative anthropology learn from the anthropology of comparison? The volume develops a dialogue between scholars with long- term ethnographic engagement in a variety of contexts around the world and is particularly valuable reading for those interested in anthropological methodology and theory.
In Egypt during the first centuries CE, men and women would meet discreetly in their homes, in temple sanctuaries, or insolitary places to learn a powerful practice of spiritual liberation. They thought of themselves as followers of Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary master of ancient wisdom. While many of their writings are lost, those that survived have been interpreted primarily as philosophical treatises about theological topics. Wouter J. Hanegraaff challenges this dominant narrative by demonstrating that Hermetic literature was concerned with experiential practices intended for healing the soul from mental delusion. The Way of Hermes involved radical alterations of consciousness in which practitioners claimed to perceive the true nature of reality behind the hallucinatory veil of appearances. Hanegraaff explores how practitioners went through a training regime that involved luminous visions, exorcism, spiritual rebirth, cosmic consciousness, and union with the divine beauty of universal goodness and truth to attain the salvational knowledge known as gnôsis.
This article focuses on converts to Islam in Poland, taking into account the specific socio-cultural, political, and historical contexts and new trends that have emerged with the gradual growth of the Muslim population. We draw attention to the unique patterns of practices related to Islam and patterns of belonging. Eastern European Islam remains relatively under-researched and, as a consequence, there is little clarity whether processes identified in relation to Western European Islam are mirrored in Eastern Europe. In line with the current literature, we propose the concept of ‘Polish Islam’ as an analytical tool. Based on 16 interviews with Polish female converts, this article traces the way meanings of religious teachings and practices are negotiated and integrated into daily social interactions. We analyse participants’ views regarding the fit between Islam and the national culture. Expanding on the finding that Polish converts to Islam in our sample do not consider themselves to be outsiders, we explore the implications of this pragmatic stance and discuss that the majority of our respondents choose to amalgamate Polish cultural practices with their new religion and renegotiate the meanings of these practices.
This is a collection of teaching anecdotes and reflections on how my experiences as a Canadian and Francophile from New Brunswick, Canada have helped shape the identity of my undergraduate classroom in Western Washington University, located mere minutes from the British Columbia–Washington State border. Over the years, I’ve adopted a more experiential and comparative lens through which francophone Canada is now presented to my students, grounded in experiential learning. These stories aim to illustrate my efforts to combat the singularization and othering of francophone Canada (namely Acadia) within Canadian Studies which, until very recently, has been mirrored at Western Washington University in both Canadian-American Studies and the French program. As a linguistic and ethnic minority in Canada, Acadia, like many cultures suppressed by colonialism and hegemonical groups, has been othered in North America since the early 1700s and whose lasting effects have trickled down into contemporary Canadian Studies and the French language classroom. Fortunately, through my efforts described herein and with the support of the university administration and its current strategic plan that calls for pursuing the knowledge and understanding of minorities, Canada has gained some sexiness.
As states and national majorities often demand “good immigrants”, they designate a narrow space of inclusion that is conditional on fulfilling certain pre-determined criteria of behaviour and identity. Recognition of membership in society is increasingly something that immigrants and their children must deserve through certain efforts, achievements, and actions. This special issue introduction develops a theory of conditional inclusion and good citizenship with a focus on migrant and immigrant-origin minorities in Europe and the Americas. The research in this issue reveals how regimes of conditional inclusion become modes of controlling and rank-ordering minorities. At the same time, it shows how immigrants respond with diverse struggles for inclusion and recognition. These struggles are a hidden battleground of citizenship on which minorities negotiate the parameters that determine who can be included and accepted in a given state or society. Their experience shows that a logic conditionality is inherent to citizenship today.
Zusammenfassung
Dieser Aufsatz entwickelt ein analytisches Vokabular für die Erforschung von Prozessen der Humandifferenzierung – einer Form kultureller Differenzierung, die neben Formen sozialer und gesellschaftlicher Differenzierung wirkt und ihre Ansatzpunkte in unterstellten ‚Eigenschaften‘ von Menschen findet. Der Beitrag unterscheidet verschiedene Stufen der Humandifferenzierung: zunächst die elementaren Prozesse der vorsprachlichen Unterscheidung, der Kategorisierung, der materiellen Dissimilierung und der Klassifikation. Dann arbeitet er vier Besonderheiten der Humandifferenzierung heraus: die Agentivität und Relationalität ihrer Objekte, die Perspektivität von Selbst- versus Fremdkategorisierung sowie ihr besonderes Potenzial für Asymmetrien – ihre Entfaltungen in Wir/die-Alterisierungen sowie in unterschiedlichen Modi asymmetrischen Unterscheidens (Distinktion, Devaluierung, Diskriminierung und Stigmatisierung). Prozesse der Humandifferenzierung können durch ihre Verschränkung mit Formen sozialer und gesellschaftlicher Differenzierung in Grenzbildung und Polarisierung eskalieren, sie können aber auch praktisch minimiert, normativ eingehegt und institutionell abgeschwächt werden.
A critical approach to neofalante, newspeakers of Galician and their theoretical framework, is presented. In order to do so, we take as a case study some of its documented cases as a popular notion, its transformations, and its mobilisation in the planning discourse, along with its construction and evolution as an analytical category in the Galician academic and research fields. We then pay special attention to the latest proposals on the conceptualisation of this subject that place linguistic conversion as a fundamental element of neofalantismo. Lastly, we propose a rethinking of the object neofalante in order to more broadly investigate the processes of linguistic revitalisation through neofalantes’ agency, taking the notion of majority language displacement as an operational concept to do that.
Palestino is a football team founded by Palestinian immigrants in Chile in 1916. This article examines how a group of Palestino supporters with no Palestinian heritage understand their sonic practices of football fandom. I argue that they conceptualise their vocalisations as indexing an imaginary wherein the Palestinian experience in the Middle East is marked by struggle and resilience. Disjunctive pro-Palestine images have led them to imagine the feeling of resistance that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must stir up among Palestinians abroad – an experience they seek to ground in their vocalisations in order to sonically dominate rivals, cheer for Palestino, and express solidarity with and raise awareness about Palestine. In addition to foregrounding the potentials and constraints of sounds that are not overtly political, the article demonstrates the affordances of vocal expressions to bundle transnational elements with local practices and inhabit the resulting imaginative space via performance.
The authors in this volume of articles, compiled from the
Arctic Yearbook, illustrate how China’s approach to the Arctic
serves a dual purpose that reflects burgeoning Chinese
influence beyond its borders in a global context. As China
advances its relationships with Russia and Greenland to ensure
Chinese energy security, access to raw materials, and
emerging transportation routes, commentators continue to
debate what this means for Arctic security. Will China eventually
become a challenger to the Arctic’s regional political
norms? What does China’s growing influence in the region
mean for the return of great power competition elsewhere in
the world?
In recent years, the growing exploration of natural resources and development of transport routes have reemerged in the Arctic as scenes for political and economic collaboration between Nordic and non-regional states. Being a non-Arctic country, China nevertheless has played an active role in the elaboration of international regulations and the establishment of governance mechanisms in the Arctic. The country has recently released a White Paper on Arctic Policy and thus prioritized scientific research; underscored the importance of environmental protection, rational utilization, law-based governance, and international cooperation; and committed itself to maintaining a peaceful, secure, and stable Arctic order. Diversified transportation routes and economic corridors are of paramount importance to such global trading nations as China. However, an extension of the economic corridors to the Arctic is viable only in the case of development of satellite trade, production, and research opportunities along the potential transport routes. In this study, the authors discuss the critical points in the implementation of China’s paradigm of collaboration and connectivity in the Arctic, as well as focus on the promotion of bilateral win-to-win investment and trade projects with the countries along the potential Arctic Blue Economic Corridor (ABEC). The authors conclude that the ABEC may be efficiently incorporated into China’s Belt and Road network but emphasize that specific technological and economic challenges must be considered and met before a sustainable connectivity between the markets of Asia and Europe is established in the Arctic.
Currently, about 80% of globally traded cargo is carried by maritime transport, including increasingly along the routes in the North, which have not been secured previously due to heavy ice conditions and extreme temperatures. In recent decades, however, climate change has been affecting the reduction of ice coverage in the Arctic Ocean and thus providing opportunities for the development of commercial navigation. Many countries are becoming increasingly interested in the exploration of opening maritime routes. With the incorporation of the Polar Silk Road into the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) network, China has rapidly emerged as the major non-Arctic actor in the region. Contributing to the development of commercial shipping in the North, China aims at the diversification of its trade routes and linking itself with Arctic countries by a network of maritime corridors. The implementation of the Polar Silk Road initiative requires first and foremost the improvement of the navigation safety and passability of Northern routes, primarily through the Northern Sea Route (NSR). The existing network of operable routes along the Russian coastline of the Arctic Ocean allows commercial shipping during summer and autumn only. Due to the prevailing shallow depths, the operation of icebreakers is limited. The extension of the secured navigation window is hindered by the lack of icebreaking and underdeveloped navigational infrastructure in Russia. In this paper, the authors discuss how China may collaborate with Russia to ensure the development of secure navigable routes by determining the areas suitable for the development of deep-water shipping and allowing the operation of large-tonnage tankers and icebreakers. The paper presents an analysis of water areas in the NSR suitable for the development of deep-water routes and operation of large-tonnage vessels with high categories of ice reinforcements. The authors provide an overview of the current condition of the shipbuilding industry in Russia in relation to the construction of vessels and marine equipment for the Arctic in such segments as icebreaking, transport, port, and dredging fleet. In the conclusion, the existing obstacles and opportunities for China and Russia are summarized in light of the establishment of more secure and stable navigation along the NSR
In this article, we problematise the practice of appointing principals on the basis of comradeship instead of excellence, qualifications and competency. The appointment of principals in South Africa has, over the years, become politicised and unionised to the extent that it is contextualised within comradeship narratives, thereby negating the competency and qualifications that are required to champion quality education – education that is essential to empower people. To cement its arguments, the article is couched in decoloniality, a framework that evokes the need to challenge coloniality, which has displaced professionalism and competency as criteria for appointing principals. The data for the study were generated through questionnaires completed by, and interviews with, 19 participants in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province. The article reports that most schools with comrade principals face challenges related to competency, learner performance and indiscipline. The article recommends that the Department of Basic Education revisit its appointment policy for principals to ensure that competent principals are appointed, regardless of whether they are comrades or not.
This article advocates an approach that is conscious of the offline geographies and geopolitics that inform contemporary social media activities. It does so with regard to the Islamic world, examining how Indonesian Muslims imagine their place within it. These imaginaries are increasingly expressed on social media through a variety of discourses in various forms (blogs, memes, videos, etc.). Moreover, in Indonesia today social media have become the main platforms on which different views on the position of Indonesian Islam in the Islamic world collide. More than any other media, they have become a contested space, as they play a crucial role in defining—and rejecting—the very concept of an Indonesian Islam, which today is mainly propagated as Islam Nusantara or the Islam of the Archipelago. The article analyzes the online strategies and social media activities of the proponents of Islam Nusantara, concentrating on the spatial hierarchies that their discourses entail as well as how offline geographies inform their attempts to translate offline significance into online visibility. In a second analytical step, the article considers the literature on Southeast Asian concepts of power with conceptualizations of a center as one of their main features, and argues that today such concepts re-emerge where one would not initially expect them, namely in the online discussions about Islam Nusantara and the position of Indonesian Islam in the Islamic world. The article thus examines imaginaries of transforming centers and peripheries from the particular angle of Islamic identity discourses that are becoming increasingly significant in Indonesia’s public sphere.
In this paper I re-examine a theoretical framework developed for researching xenophobia in Romania’s post-communist contexts. I begin by emphasizing several relevant anthropological considerations regarding the fear of the Other. Subsequently, I review the conceptualization of the Other in the anthropology of the past century. Next, I emphasize the analytic potential of three ternary grammars of identity/alterity, developed by Gerd Baumann and André Gingrich. Lastly, I present Johannes Fabian’s theses regarding the Other and their significance. Instead of treating xenophobia intrinsically, I advocate a ‘weak’ interpretation of it from a logical standpoint. Thus, I
suggest approaching xenophobia as part of a “conceptual constellation”.
En el presente estudio abordamos las posibilidades heurísticas de la denominada teoría de las “gramáticas de alteridad/identidad” al análisis del Libro de las buenas andanças e fortunas de Lope García de Salazar. Dicha teoría permite explorar la forma en la que se formula la construcción de la autoimagen a través del mecanismo de la alteridad, bien en términos especulares (gramática orientalista), bien como una forma de jerarquización entre aparentemente iguales (gramática segmentaria), bien como una forma de incluir -o excluir- al Otro de una sociedad política imaginada por el grupo de poder al que representa el cronista.
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