Who is the "Other"? : Rethinking and redefining the "other" through immigrant studies and philosophy

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Other Title
  • 他人が「他者」になるとき : 移民研究と「他者」再考
  • タニン ガ タシャ ニ ナル トキ イミン ケンキュウ ト タシャ サイコウ

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Description

The idea and construction of the "other" has been criticized in Anthropology. It came to the point where some anthropologists would argue that otherness is the result of power relations and that we must denaturalize and deconstruct otherness. This paper reexamines what such anthropologists think about the "other" and "otherness" and calls their premises into question. There are also recent critiques from some philosophers toward postmodernism which argue that "there is no other" in postmodernist studies. Using their idea of the "other" and examining the usage of the term the "other" in recent immigrant studies in Japan, I will redefine this term using the colloquial Japanese term "tanin," which simply means "another human being." This enables us to use "tasha" as a term for social analysis. The word "tasha" itself has an unfamiliar, abstract nuance. Confusion arises when people use this term to mean anyone but "oneself," people other than "us," people who are marginalized, people who are studied, and so on. This paper suggests using the word "tasha" only when there is otherness felt and mentioned towards others by someone. The boundary of otherness between other and self is seen only from one place and time. Seen from different point of views and occasions, different boundaries will be perceived by the same person. Such differentiation cannot be reduced to mere political strategies. Rather, the "politics of otherness" is just one aspect of a complex process by which we perceive an "other."

Journal

  • 年報人間科学

    年報人間科学 20-1 229-245, 1999

    大阪大学人間科学部社会学・人間学・人類学研究室

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