Conceptualizing The Other
Conceptualizing the “Other”, Institutioinalized Discrimination, and Cultural Racism
Masoud Kamali
Department of Sociology
University of Uppsala
The legacy of Orientalism and creation of “the West and the rest” is deeply rooted in the Western intellectual traditions, educational institutions, and political systems, as well as in our seemingly “value-free” social sciences.
In this note I identify category systems, value structures, and discourses – as elements of theories or paradigms – which serve to transmit, reproduce, and elaborate institutionalized expressions of racism, particularly as it relates to Islamic peoples. The note also points out the role of the mass media in focusing on “prototypical cases” constructing a reality of substantially different “other,” even a “primitive or evil other.”
One should keep in mind the covertly or overtly forgotten institutionalization of categories of
“we” in the West and “they,” whether in “the orient” or elsewhere on the globe.1 Thinking racially has been an inseparable part of the Enlightenment’s philosophy and science.
The tradition of categorizing people in “natural” categories in the same way that the nature was categorized is also a legacy of the Enlightenment. Eighteenth century’s natural scientists and philosophers from Karl von Linné to Hegel have contributed to hierarchical categorization of human groups and societies.2 One of the most lasting categorizations of human societies, that has its roots in uprising of a rival religious universalism in Middle East, namely Islam, is “Orientalism.”
The legacy of Orientalism
The orient has traditionally been considered to be the negation of the West, i.e. the other side of rationality, science, development, economic growth, prosperity, and so forth. In other words, everything that was prized as the elements of superiority of the occident was lacking in the orient. Accordingly, the field of social scientific and sociological research has mainly neglected conducting
Masoud Kamali
Department of Sociology
University of Uppsala
The legacy of Orientalism and creation of “the West and the rest” is deeply rooted in the Western intellectual traditions, educational institutions, and political systems, as well as in our seemingly “value-free” social sciences.
In this note I identify category systems, value structures, and discourses – as elements of theories or paradigms – which serve to transmit, reproduce, and elaborate institutionalized expressions of racism, particularly as it relates to Islamic peoples. The note also points out the role of the mass media in focusing on “prototypical cases” constructing a reality of substantially different “other,” even a “primitive or evil other.”
One should keep in mind the covertly or overtly forgotten institutionalization of categories of
“we” in the West and “they,” whether in “the orient” or elsewhere on the globe.1 Thinking racially has been an inseparable part of the Enlightenment’s philosophy and science.
The tradition of categorizing people in “natural” categories in the same way that the nature was categorized is also a legacy of the Enlightenment. Eighteenth century’s natural scientists and philosophers from Karl von Linné to Hegel have contributed to hierarchical categorization of human groups and societies.2 One of the most lasting categorizations of human societies, that has its roots in uprising of a rival religious universalism in Middle East, namely Islam, is “Orientalism.”
The legacy of Orientalism
The orient has traditionally been considered to be the negation of the West, i.e. the other side of rationality, science, development, economic growth, prosperity, and so forth. In other words, everything that was prized as the elements of superiority of the occident was lacking in the orient. Accordingly, the field of social scientific and sociological research has mainly neglected conducting