He is the Subject, he is the Absolute – she is the Other.’ – Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex. Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him she is not regarded as an autonomous being… She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. Masculinity is therefore socially constructed as the universal norm by which social ideas about humanity are defined, discussed and legislated against. Thus it is that no group ever sets itself up as the One without at once setting up the Other over against itself.ĭe Beauvoir argued that woman is set up as the Other of man. Otherness is a fundamental category of human thought. In the early 1950s, Simone de Beauvoir argued that Note that these two identities are set up as opposites, without acknowledging alternative gender expressions. This is clear in the social construction of gender in Western societies, or how socialisation shapes our ideas about what it means to be a “man” or a “woman.” There is an inherently unequal relationship between these two categories. The concept of The Other highlights how many societies create a sense of belonging, identity and social status by constructing social categories as binary opposites. Woman is the other of man, animal is the other of human, stranger is the other of native, abnormality the other of norm, deviation the other of law-abiding, illness the other of health, insanity the other of reason, lay public the other of the expert, foreigner the other of state subject, enemy the other of friend (Bauman 1991: 8). He argues that identities are set up as dichotomies: Zygmunt Bauman on Otherness Zygmunt Bauman writes that the notion of otherness is central to the way in which societies establish identity categories.

Sociologists set out to study how societies manage collective ideas about who gets to belong to ‘our group’ and which types of people are seen as different – the outsiders of society. As such ‘we’ cannot belong to any group unless ‘they’ (other people) do not belong to ‘our’ group. It just so happens that such criteria are socially-constructed (that is, created by societies and social groups). Just as when we formally join a club or an organisation, social membership depends upon fulfilling a set of criteria. Identities have some element of exclusivity. Ideas of similarity and difference are central to the way in which we achieve a sense of identity and social belonging. We adjust our behaviour and our self-image based upon our interactions and our self-reflection about these interactions (this is also known as the looking glass self). Mead’s work shows that identities are produced through agreement, disagreement, and negotiation with other people. George Herbert Mead’s classic text, Mind Self and Society, established that social identities are created through our ongoing social interaction with other people and our subsequent self-reflection about who we think we are according to these social exchanges. These social categories shape our ideas about who we think we are, how we want to be seen by others, and the groups to which we belong. Social identities reflect the way individuals and groups internalise established social categories within their societies, such as their cultural (or ethnic) identities, gender identities, class identities, and so on. Rather than talking about the individual characteristics or personalities of different individuals, which is generally the focus for psychology, sociologists focus on social identities. Identities are often thought as being natural or innate – something that we are born with – but sociologists highlight that this taken-for-granted view is not true. In order to understand the notion of The Other, sociologists first seek to put a critical spotlight on the ways in which social identities are constructed. This is because the representation of different groups within any given society is controlled by groups that have greater political power. The idea of ‘ otherness’ is central to sociological analyses of how majority and minority identities are constructed.

I will also include examples and resources for people interested in learning more about otherness. This page provides a sociological definition of otherness and how it works in societies.

Cultural notion definition