Othering Discussions

Othering (Background)

            When you heard the word “Othering”, what first comes in your mind? What is othering? Othering means giving certain markers to make a separate group. This happens in humans’ life. Othering makes people better than the others. Thus, in this article, we will learn more how “Othering” influenced humans’ social life and their attribution.

Othering (Discussion)

In the previous chapter, we have already known, what othering is. Moreover, in this section, we will know how othering can influence human’s social’s life and human’s attribution. In the human’s social’s life, othering can be happened in many situations whether it is in-group and/or out-group situation. In the in-group situation, it is happened when someone feels comfortable with their group because it is the groups where they are belong to. In addition, the out-group situation is a situation that happened when someone feels uncomfortable with the out-group place because they do not belong to that group.

Furthermore, othering can be happened in the in-group situation and inequality can be happened. For instance, there is a meeting of an organization where there are people from clan A and clan B. In the meeting, the coordinator of that meeting summarize up and find that clan A’s job is better than clan B’s job, indirectly it will affect both of their social’s life. The A will feel more superior and feel that they can be accepted in any group including the Out-group. This might make the A thinks that the group they do not belong at first, will no longer remain as it should be, and now, they think that they can belong into the out-group (another group outside their original group) because of this superior feeling. On the other side, the B will only feel comfortable in their in-group rather than the out-group because of the othering by their coordinator, and it makes the B unconsciously feel inferior. If this always happens unconsciously, there will be inequality in their organizational life. This makes the situation worse than before since no one feels equal to one another.  

Othering also happens because of people’s attribution. Attribution is a behavior which talking about another someone’s behavior or the reason about her/his behavior and it is very common in our social’s life. For instance, someone feels the attribution by the people surround her/him and that attribution makes her/him different (uncomfortable) from the others.  Take an example, there is a case where a teenager always comes home late or at midnight because she/he has several occasions to finish. Some people around her/him still see that most of the kids who come home late (at midnight) are considered as a bad teenager. This kind of attribution will make her or him feels uncomfortable; though the reality might be different where she/he comes home late, because she/he has some projects from her/his college to finish up. However, this is what we face; this is the attributions that happens a lot in our society, but sadly most of us unaware of it or even ignore it.

Attribution in a term of othering is not a good thing in our social’s life. Othering people or makes an attribution to certain people do not make us better or superior than them; vice versa it makes us worse than the people that we are being othered.

Othering (Conclusion)

In general, we understand what othering is, how othering influences our social’s life and people’s attribution, and the examples offer in detail. Thus, we should be aware to comprehend our differences from other perspectives, so that othering or othered someone can be avoided.