Protecting people "like us" from people "like them"

Religion seems to be a not infrequent element in such xenophobia.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16iraq.html?_r=2&hpw
http://www.ansamed.info/en/news/ME.XEF71828.html
http://news.bahai.org/story/805
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n....ce-iraqi-christians-flee-to-turkey-2011-01-16
http://www.asianews.it/news-en/For-...mic-parties-on-the-blasphemy-issue-20507.html
http://tribune.com.pk/story/103891/blasphemy-allegations-another-christian-family-on-the-run/
http://continentalnews.net/christian-news/iran-regime-hits-out-at-apostasy-70-arrested-5054.html
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/pak-to-block-websites-sms-propagating-antiislam-agenda/737061/

I guess this raises another complication to the OP: the social construction of some "mixed" communities.

 

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us and them....

this is some good stuff up in here.

I remember some historian bringing up the old divine play once to a bunch of us art students. (There is a wicked dildo joke too) we where talking about these female historians in the 70s from Lithuania, this woman (bad for names) dug up these clay pots and idols. every thing came out. the people still living in the area shared some weird parallels with the indegiounus people living there thousands of years ago. there songs and storys there contributations to modern art all looked vary similar to one an other. this anthropoligest was enammerd with her sites. some latter conceived these stories about the tribes ultimate down fall, which was documented and varified from sites all over europe.... what happned, they had this place of splendor, lots of fish, vary mild winters little waste.... a pretty advanced community for pre-agroculture people. they had all this stuff. then these hungry Scandinavians went to town on them. a confused and hungry tribe who had been bashing into people all over Europe found the place killed every one and took off to the next place. they too had some advancement but regardless of there similarities where with out what these people and many others at the time had. they left the villages broken in there path and gradually assimilated there genome across northern Europe down through the eastern block. There where these idols unique to there corner of Europe (by that I mean most of mans early artifacts trade similarities across time and place) in a way almost too simarian for there time.... this is besides the point.... (I'm forgetting my dick joke) oh yeah, this tribe was supposed to have been a goddess worshiping people, they had these half foot high carved and polished rocks with winged ends on them. they carried these and small Venus statues around them (Venus of some thing, it was hella common for people to carve these things out...) so suddenly the discussions over and where watching these videos of these polished columns with wings flying through the air... I had just read about these particular carved polished columns the day before. There was, and still is, heavy speculation from some cats, that these rocks where some of the earliest sex toys.

I was watching dildos flying around on a projector to new age music wondering... whos going to come along hungry after the ice age, pissing fire, stamping in the doors. Bring this school to the Hords!! well I can say I've acted with this "us and them" thing so many times... and still fucking will. I guess we all will, some how some day we will kill each other over hunger or plenty. some day the divine play will surface one more act. after that day will have hungry scavengers hovering over our homes looking for those other guys who have it real good. so good they can fish and teach and ride dildos into the sky listening to new age BS synth music. until they find the fuckers and have to compete for all the new pussy they find..

BTW I'm no easterner I'm just trying to keep in mind we keep fucking repeating our self's, the divine play is just a good way of saying it. Seriously keep your mind on what matters PUSSY.

 

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If you read the OP, I am referring to the debasement of humans beings [the other] in the name of social stability or conflict resolution and what drives such group behaviour - i.e. when it is legislated and a socially acceptable norm.

Let me give you an example which is not cross cultural:

Convict women in Australia.

These were women, from Britain Ireland or Wales who were transported to Australia in the 18th and 19th centuries to serve out their sentences. These women were from British society, so there was no cultural element involved. They were transported to what is known as a Female Factory in Australia, where men could come and pick them out as servants, concubines, prostitutes [taken into the interiors and sold for sex to the men there] and slaves. They were starved and beaten [flogged with whips] and were considered public property- for free.

And these were the lucky ones. Those who were not transported were burned at the stake [especially husband killers or adultresses, the latter needing only the support of a peer of the realm] or hung.

But those who were transported, became "the other", legally sanctioned oppression and debasement becoming their lifestyle. They were sent far away to protect people "like us" from people "like them"

So what drives such group behaviour?

Example of one such female factory:

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http://www.femalefactory.com.au/

 

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Conception of The Other is a ubiquitous, systemic feature of all political and social systems. And not an un-studied one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other

 

This is interesting:

But I am referring to "othering" which requires separation of the other. Transportation, female factories, reservations, Gaza, concentration camps and the like. Under legal sanction of a representative state apparatus. The general rule being to minimise the influence of the other - to reduce contact, to keep separate. Even the mechanisms used - dehumanisation and demonisation - could be considered as ways and means to prevent interest in "the other" or what they signify.

What drives that behaviour?

 

Isn't "infidel" a fancy way of saying "other"?

 

For millions of years, humans and proto-humans lived in small, extended family goups where everyone knew and was related to everyone. Virtually all such societies regard outsiders with deep suspicion. In the eyeblink (the last 10,000 years) when we have lived in other arrangements, our inherited behaviour towards others hasn't changed at all.

 

It is simply how identity works; namely, that which is considered one's self or favorable to it is accepted, and that which is not is rejected.

For example, you consider your hands to be yours. When you finish working in the garden, your hands are dirty and you wash them, wanting to remove the dirt - because you don't consider it yours.

Some people identify with being Arian German, for example. So they expel everything that is not Arian German (ie. people of other races).


What I find interesting is how come people identify with particular things to begin with. Why do some people feel a strong sense of identity in relation to the country they were born in, and others do not? And so on.

 

dbnp

You are correct that the basic inherited potential for cultural hostility has not changed. But it would not be correct to say no change has happened. In fact, humans have enormous ability to adapt to changing circumstances, and we have done so. This happens all the time around us.

This adaptation can be seen with our current crowded and diverse city populations. You get into a crowded elevator with a bunch of people of various ethnic groups. You may feel nervous, but you do not say or do anything hostile and you climb out of that crowded elevator with no-one having insulted or attacked anyone else. We have learned to get along with others who are different.

 

You forgot "drawing and enforcing political borders as such." Othering is fundamental to any and all identity politics - national, religious, gender, whatever - you can't have an identity group without implying an Other group, and you can't have identity politics without working to derrogate the other and advance the in-group. By defintion.

You're still just describing general-case Othering as it occurs everywhere.

And the mechanisms specified are not means of "preventing" interest in the other, but of coping with such interest. It is inevitable that the "interest" would exist - it is, again, the other side of the coin of the contructed of identity in the first place, as Hegel described in the material you quoted.

The identity politic itself fundamentally drives such outcomes. You can't have an identity politic without Othering the (necessarily implied) Other. It's absolutely fundamental to - and inseparable from - the operation of identity politics.

That's why identity politics is dangerous. Is this really news, or mysterious, or something?

 

There were most definitely "cultural elements" involved, in the treatment of the Welsh and Irish by the British. There was borderline civil war involved, and deep religious divides, and language barriers, and a history of conquest and oppression and tyranny and bloody revolt going back hundreds of years.

The religious divisions, in particular, were then and have been since famously and centrally at issue. Perhaps that would be an instructive place to begin an analysis of the "othering" in this situation?

Burning for anything (except religion, possibly) and hanging for adultery, seems to have ended in England before transportation to Australia and the "female factory" setup was begun. These details are fairly important, if your argument is going to consist of a bigoted emotional appeal, as seems the trend.

Your examples run from criminals to military foes, central members of the the group to foreigners and complete strangers.

Removing criminals - betrayers of a group from inside - is not necessarily going to end up being explained the same way as removing the presence of aliens and strangers from proximity to the group. Note that only very direct and serious betrayal of the group invokes "othering" from the inside - heresy, treason, murder of central group authority, that kind of thing. An actual deed, individually blamed, not an identity of some kind, is key - granted that religion sufficiently oppressive can make a person's very thoughts into such a deed.

Serious criminals do not form a group, and are not "othered" as members of a group, normally (religion providing the major exceptions, and many of the most horrific and irrational examples).

Are you in need of explanation as to why the people of a community might wish to banish thieves and rapists and murderers from their midst?

 

No but I am interested in why they were used as slaves and concubines - ie debased and dehumanised - when they were women from the same society.

Note that there were women who came from good families as well and they were treated just like criminals from the dockyards, in a society where class was very important. It didn't matter how well born the woman was, she was also separated from her children and family in the same way. It didn't matter if she was from Ireland or Cornwall or England or Dublin. They were all treated the same. At one point, the governer used to strip the women immediately after they came off the ship and sell them for rum [which was the unique currency of the place].

Not according to what I read. Have you any evidence for this? Seems like in cases where the woman was pregnant, for instance, transportation was the "commuted" sentence in lieu of hanging or burning or delaying sentencing. Do you know any different?

Sure if you think there is any problem with the information, I'd be happy to hear the correct details. You can make the argument as unbigoted and unemotional as you like. Or you can provide some other non cross cultural example of othering with legislative separation and dehumanisation [all unbigoted and unemotional] too. My point was that it is not necessarily cultural, there are instances when people define an other within their own society and dehumanise them as well.

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If you cannot have an identity politic without othering and othering is dangerous, what is the underlying anthropological reason for it? What is the reason for this investment in identity to the extent that even within the same society and culture there can be dehumanisation of a non-specific or specific other?

Yeah, but what are the reasons that it becomes necessary not only to reject the other but dehumanise them? What is achieved by that process? What is the compelling reason behind the need to ridicule, to undermine, to strip of rights, to use as objects without consent, persons who are deemed unacceptable?

 

It allows you to set up political organizations on larger scales - and so, wielding greater organizational capability and so power. Obviously - what else?

Also, why on Earth would "dangerous" be incompatible with "anthropological reason?" Things that are "dangerous" are frequently advantages in social evolution - especially if said danger can be selectively targetted at opponents of the polity in question.

You weren't under the impression that social evolution works by promoting benevolence and safety, were you?

 

So you are saying that the reasoning behind dehumanising the other is practical? It achieves organisational or political aims? But isn't the direction the other way around? That people are used because they are not considered as human as "people like us"?

How would you say social evolution of a society works then? Is it by promoting dehumanising and degradation of the other? Are societies considered more evolved if they are less benevolent and safe for the other?

 

They weren't, by and large, from the "same society". They were from Ireland, Wales, various ethnic and cultural groups within England.

And your position is puzzling: are you somehow thinking that being from the "same society" affords protection to the betrayers of that society? Rather the opposite, one would normally assume.

Besides: since when has debasement and dehumanization, especially in the realm of oppression of women, been alien to the normal internal workings of a society? Look at the chador, the punishments for immorality, the honor killings - those are specifically women from the "same society".

From this we see

that at the time transportation to Australia had begun - 1787 - no woman had been "burned at the stake" (alive, as a punishment) for fifty years or more.

And before then, only for crimes such as heresy, treason - high level offenses against the Religion and State.

Better, since it is your argument, would be for you to choose examples of debasement and dehumanization from cultures you are familiar with, and can discuss without making so many errors of fact and implication.

 

Maybe, but they would devolve into arguments other than the point of this thread. Most people on sciforums are not really interested in unfamiliar cultures

Thanks for the information on the burning law. Just to be clear, [and off topic] although women were not being burned inside the kingdom, were they being burned in the colonies? I know men were hung drawn and quartered but because it involved nudity, women were preferentially burned. So when they stopped burning the women, what was the punishment given to them?



What changed between this:

and this:

http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/burning.html

Also :

Sure but "honor killings" are not legislated - they are treated as criminal offences. Not the same as the governer stripping women who are fresh off the boat and selling them for rum. The chador itself is not special treatment, in places where the chador is mandatory, it is already under some form of dictatorship so all freedoms are basically up in the air. Women in chador are considered part of the society, not "the other". Perhaps women in chador in societies where the veil is not common and legislation against the veil in such societies could be considered an example?

I'm looking at dehumanisation of the other in a socially accpetable context. One where it is considered the normal status quo to treat people in a way that specifically underlines the fact that they are not considered human or belonging to the society.

So if you prefer to discuss legislation against the veil, what purpose is served by dehumanising women who veil and marking them as socially "other"? What are the underlying anthropological mechanisms at play here?

Or you could pick your own favourite example of a slice of society defined as the other and legislated against in a way that is dehumanisning

The example is not relevant, I'm trying to get at the mechansims at play. What underlies the process of dehumanising the other and what drives the kind of group behaviour where such dehumanisation is considered socially acceptable?

 

People weren't being drawn and quartered, by then, either.

Yes, there were burnings in the colonies - in the Americas, of slaves, for example. However, they seem to be outside your category of interest:

so the normal treatment of women, slaves, niggers, adulterers, concubines, and so forth, within and as part of a society, is not "othering". And neither are honor killings, however accepted and unpunished in fact, because:

So we are left with a fairly specialized category of "othering": it must be legislated by a government, does not apply to the normal workings of a given society, and so forth.


I think you will find that stripping newly delivered convicts and selling them for rum, in a British colony, was not legislated, and was treated as criminal offense if it ever came before a court of the time. So that example is not part of our discussion either.

I don't think this method of evidence selection is going to allow a sensible discussion.

But things like the chador are not to be considered, nor honor killings, but banishment and ill treatment of murderers is?

Uh, OK. Not sure where you're headed there, but maybe it's make sense later.

 

Not sure if this is a spanner in the works but according to PNAS: Friends on Social Networks Connect on a Genetic Level.

Which really doesn't surprise me in the least. As well as reproductive partner(s), we'll probably find that this goes for religious affiliation, political ideology, etc... etc.... etc... . all the way to why some societies are democratic while others are not.

 

I suppose the principle is the same as with washing your hands of dirt.
Unless you see the dirt as something completely unacceptable, you won't deem you may wash it off. (Although this example seems so basic we hardly give it a thought.)

Similarly, someone won't be able to push someone away, distance themselves from them, or feel justified about punishing them unless they view them in ways that facilitate such a rejection.
It is difficult to reject someone whom you think is a "worthy human being", much less to punish them.