The Other

The 3rd Annual International Conference on "Engaging the Other: The Power of Compassion” will be held from September 4 - 7, 2008 in San Francisco (San Mateo), California, USA. Registration for the conference is Open to the Public.

This conference is intended to address “roots of negative stereotypes, prejudice, and concepts of "The Other" from a universal, cross-cultural perspective”.

Common Bond Institute (CBI) is the organizer of the conference. CBI is a U.S. based Non-Governmental Organization.

For more information visit: http://cbiworld.org/index.htm

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The concept of the Other is essentially a modern concept. Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt in their book Empire argue how modernism determines insiders and outsiders. This is for the good of imperialism and in Negri and Hardts words Empire. Modernism, they say, with taking this dualistic view define its own boundaries. This in turn, facilitates controlling different people from different cultures.

Other is: “ A person, persons, group, social class, community, race or nation who are not `us` and who are defined by their difference from us; yet who by that difference contribute to our concept of self, as individuals, members of groups etc”

Hill, Anne and James Watson (2006). Dictionary of media and communication studies. 7^th edition. Hodder Arnold.London.p.207.

In this sense, the Other who is from outside is an alien and probably threatening. Edward Said in his reputable study, “Orientalism” shows that the orient in dominant western discourse was constructed as an “other” to the west.

Thus, apparently this otherization process is a socially constructed process. Media can contribute to this process a great deal. They can represent dominant culture’s dislike, disapproval and fear of a group which is entitled as the Other. Media in the modern world reinstate the binary divisions of progressive modernistic states.