Abstract
There are minority groups in every human society, which are often leftovers of the “one” major group of persons within such society viewed as the self-contained group that has nothing to do with the “other” minority groups. The Other is conventionally seen as a threat to the one. Othering within societies invariably results in the exclusion of the Other from the one. By Othering, we mentally or practically classify an individual or group as “not one of us” and, therefore, inferior or less a human person than we are, a process of casting another person, group, or object into a position or role different from mine or ours, and I or we consequently establish my or our identity in opposition to the Other person in a relationship of superiority that allows me or us vilify the Other. Through Othering, we create a system of social exclusion that systematically blocks the Othered minority individual or group from rights and opportunities that are fundamentally the prerogative of all. Hence, issues of justice for the Othered minority naturally arise. This is manifested in the xenophobic treatment of African foreigners in South Africa and Christian minority groups in the mainly Muslim North of Nigeria. The socially excluded is confined to the fringe of society as the minority, whose basic and fundamental rights become privileges by virtue of the Otherness. This chapter critically analyzes and evaluates the manner of othering and exclusion of minority groups in African societies. My primary concern is to examine the role of African communitarian theory in the face of Othering in African societies. I argue that our constant awareness and acknowledgment of our commonness beyond self-contained groups ensures justice and equity in our interpersonal relationships in any human society.
References
Adamolekun, T. 2013. A historical perspective in the Christian-Muslim relations in Nigeria since 1914. Journal of Arts and Humanities 2 (5): 59–66.
Althusser, L. 1971. Lenin and philosophy and other essays. London: New Left Books.
Andersson, M. 2010. The social imaginary of first generation Europeans. Social Identities 16 (1): 3–21.
Beauvoir, S. de. 1949. Le Deuxième sexe. Paris: Gallimard.
Blumer, H. 1958. Race prejudice as a sense of group position. The Pacific Sociological Review 1 (1). https://doi.org/10.2307/1388607.
Bolaffi, G. 2003. Dictionary of race, ethnicity and culture. London: Sage.
Bridger, E. 2015. Xenophobia in South Africa: Historical legacies of exclusion and violence. http://www.imperialglobalexeter.com. Accessed 4 Apr 2018.
Brons, L. 2015. Othering, an analysis. Transcience 6 (1): 69–90.
Cahoone, L. 2003. “Introduction” in From modernism to postmodernism: An anthology. Second edition. 1–13. Malden: Blackwell.
Crenshaw, K. 1991. Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of colour. Stanford Law Review 43 (6): 1241–1299. https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039.
Dzobo, N. 1992. The image of man in Africa. In Person and community: Ghanian philosophical studies 1, ed. Kwasi Wiredu and Kwame Gyekye. Washington, DC: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy.
Eze, D. 2014. Nigeria and the crisis of cultural identity in the era of globalisation. Journal of African Studies and Development 6 (8): 140–147.
Giliomee, H. 2003. The Afrikaners: Biography of a people. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Gingrich, A. 2004. Conceptualising identities: Anthropological alternatives to essentialising difference and moralising about othering. In Grammars of identity/alterity – A structural approach, ed. G. Bauman and A. Gingrich, 3–16. Oxford: BergHahn.
Gyekye, K. 1992. Person and community in African thought. In Person and community: Ghanian philosophical studies 1, ed. Kwasi Wiredu and Kwame Gyekye, 110–122. Washington, DC: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy.
Gyekye, K. 1995. An essay on African philosophical thought: The Akan conceptual scheme. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Gyekye, K. 1996. The unexamined life: Philosophy and the African experience. Accra: Sankofa.
Harrison, T. 2002. Greeks and Barbarians. London: Taylor and Francis.
Hughes, A., and A. Witz. 1997. Feminism and the matter of bodies: From de Beauvoir to Butler. Body & Society 3 (1): 47–60.
Ike, O., and N. Edozien. 2001. Understanding African traditional legal reasoning, jurisprudence and justice in Igbo land. Enugu: CIDJAP Publications.
Jensen, S.Q. 2011. Othering, identity formation and agency. Qualitative Studies. 2 (2): 63–78.
Jimoh, A. 2016. Metaphysics in African philosophy. West African Journal of Philosophical Studies. 18: 92–113.
Jimoh, A. 2017. Ubuntu, Ibuanyindanda: Harnessing African philosophy of personhood for peaceful co-existence in Nigeria. Ewanlen: Journal of Philosophical Inquiry 1 (1): 40–49.
Kitzinger, C., and S. Wilkinson. 1996. Theorizing representing the other. In Representing the other, ed. S. Wilkinson and C. Kitzinger, 1–32. London: Sage.
Krieger, L.H. 1995. The concept of our categories: A cognitive bias approach to discrimination and equal employment opportunity. Stanford Law Review 47 (6). https://doi.org/10.2307/1229191.
Kukah, M. 1993. Religion, politics, and power in Northern Nigeria. Ibadan: Spectrum Books.
Levinas, E. 1948. Le Temps et l’Autre. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Levinas, E. 1979. Politique apres! Les Temps Modernes 398: 521–528.
Lister, R. 2004. Poverty. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Lutz, D. 2009. African Ubuntu philosophy and global management. Journal of Business Ethics 84: 313–328.
Massey, D.S. 2007. Categorically unequal: The American stratification system. New York: Russell Sage Publication.
Mbiti, J. 1969. African religions and philosophy. London: Heinemann Publishers.
Miller, J. 2008. Otherness. In The SAGE encyclopedia of qualitative research methds. Thousand Oaks: Sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412963909.n304.
Miller, D. Justice. In The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, (Fall 2017 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/justice/. Accessed 5 Apr 2018.
Molefe, M. 2017. A defence of moderate communitarianism: A place of rights in African moral-political thought. Phronimon 18: 181–203. https://doi.org/10.25159/2413-3086/2668.
Morris, A. 1998. Our fellow Africans make our lives hell: The lives of Congolese and Nigerians living in Johannesburg. Ethnic and Racial Studies 21 (6): 11–25.
Ndubuisi, F. 2004. A conception of man in an African communalism. In Metaphysics, phenomenology and African philosophy, ed. Jim Unah, 422–438. Ibadan: Hope Publications.
Newman, D.M. 2012. Sociology: Exploring the architecture of everyday life. 9th ed. Los Angeles: SAGE.
Ochonu, M. 2014. The roots of Nigeria’s religious and ethnic conflict. https://www.pri.org/stories/roots-nigeria. Accessed 4 Apr 2018.
Oyeshile, O. 2006. The individual-community relationship as an issue in social and political philosophy. In Core issues in African philosophy, ed. Olusegun Oladipo, 102–119. Ibadan: Hope Publications.
Pomerleau, W. 2018. Western theories of justice. In Internet encyclopedia of philosophy. https://www.iep.utm.edu. Accessed 5 Apr 2018.
Powell, J., and S. Menedian. 2016. The problem of othering: Towards inclusiveness and belonging. Othering & Belonging: Expanding the Circle of Human Concern. https://www.otheringandbelonging.org. Accessed 17 Mar 2018.
Quadri, Z. 2015. Can Christians and Muslims in Nigeria talk? https://www.pulse.ng. Accessed 5 April 2018.
Rawls, J. 1999. A theory of justice. Revised edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Said, E. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.
Sassen, S. 2014. Expulsions: Brutality and complexity in the global economy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Schwalbe, M. 2000. The elements of inequality. Contemporary Sociology 29 (6): 775–781.
Schwalbe, M., et al. 2000. Genetic processes in reproduction of inequality: An interactionist analysis. Social Forces 7 (2): 419–452.
Smith, J. 2015. Muslim-Christian relations: Historical and contemporary realities. In Oxford research encyclopedia of religion. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.1.
Solomon, H., and H. Kosaka. 2013. Xenophobia in South Africa: Reflections, narratives and recommendations. South African Peace and Security Studies 2 (2): 5–30.
Turner, J.C. 1982. Towards a cognitive redefinition of the social group. In Social identity and intergroup relations, ed. H. Tajfel, 15–40. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Xenophobic violence in democratic South Africa. South African history online. https://www.sahistory.org.za. Accessed 4 Apr 2018.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Jimoh, A.K. (2019). Justice and the Othered Minority. In: Imafidon, E. (eds) Handbook of African Philosophy of Difference. Handbooks in Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04941-6_12-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04941-6_12-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-04941-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-04941-6
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities