Glossary Term:

Othering

The process whereby individuals distinguish between themselves and those like themselves and those who are not. Edward Said (Orientalism, 1978) extended the individual process of constructing the Other to cultures or groups and looked at the ways in which colonizing nations and societies engaged in a collective othering of other groups and societies based upon assumed and ascribed characteristics (see Stereotyping). In developing a sense of the other, the individual (person or collective) implicates the self, since it is only by a comparison of self and those like the self with those the self is seen as not resembling—of being different from—that identity forms.

« Back to Glossary Index