The Dictionary of Human Geography

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Most of these critical elaborations have been

historical, but the spectre of Orientalism still

haunts the present. Its imaginative geograph-

ies have been activated in two new rounds of

demonization of the ‘Oriental Other’. First, a

techno-Orientalismhas been directed against

the economic rise of Japan and, more recently,

China, which have both been represented as

threats to the global economic power ofeur-

ope and the USA (Morley and Robbins,

1992). Second, aneo-Orientalismhas been mo-

bilized in the ‘waron terror’ against political

actors, groups and organizations in the Middle

East, and against Arab and Muslim commu-

nities in Europe, North America and Australia

(Tuastad, 2003; Gregory, 2004b: cf.terror-

ism). These new activations have an insistently

practical dimension too, which is by no means

confined to grand strategies and political or

military campaigns. Haldrup, Koefoed and

Simonsen (2006) identified the rise of aprac-

tical Orientalismgrounded in the corporeal

encounters and routines ofeveryday life,in

which Orientalist versions of the friend/enemy

distinction are reproduced through the count-

less ‘small acts’ and stories that make up the

intimacies of everyday life. Seen thus, the

critique of Orientalism is far more than a

theoretical or textual affair: it is also a pro-

foundly political and practical project. dg

Suggested reading

Haldrup, Koefoed and Simonsen (2006); Said

(2003 [1978]); Sardar (1999).

Other/Otherness The Other is that which is

excluded from the Self and through this exclu-

sion comes to constitute the boundaries of the

Self. InPhenomenology of spirit(1807), G.W.F.

Hegel introduced the master/slavedialectic,

which founded an idea of the ‘Other’ that has

since been absorbed from continentalphil-

osophyinto the social sciences andgeog-

raphy. Simone de Beauvoir built upon the

Hegelian master/slave dialectic, in which a

hierarchical dualism defines a superior pos-

ition in relation to an inferior one, to show

how woman has been constituted as the

Other to man. As long as women remain

locked in this relationship, de Beauvoir ar-

gued, they cannot become subjects in their

own right (seesubjectivity). For both Hegel

and de Beauvoir, true freedom requires a

struggle in which the Other comes to risk her

life. Themasculinismof the Self/Other binary

has been taken up infeminist geographiesto

show how some kinds of geographical know-

ledge have been privileged over others.

The idea that the Self is defined in relation

to Others is also a key component ofpsycho-

analytic theory. According to Jacques

Lacan (2002), the ‘mirror stage’ of infancy

occurs when the child first realizes that what

he had until then experienced as fragmented is

in fact his ‘self’. Following this recognition

comes a desire to delimit these boundaries

and thereby to maintain the Self through the

exclusion of the Other. Drawing upon the

work of Sigmund Freud, the relationship be-

tween one’s self and the objects of the world

has come to be referred to as ‘object relations

theory’. Geographers have drawn upon these

ideas to show how the Self is a cultural pro-

duction that relies on socio-spatial practices of

inclusion and exclusion.

The Self/Other duality has come to inform

post-colonialism,feminismand their inter-

section. In his critique oforientalism, Edward

Said (2003 [1978]) showed how European

and American representations of ‘the Orient’

have worked to constitute the self-identity of

thewestas superior to the East. Bringing

Said’s critique together with feminist theory,

others have shown how the interlocking hier-

archies ofrace,classandgenderhave been

constitutive of both imperial relations and

domestic social structures. In other words,

hierarchical dualities of Self and Other (West

and East, man and woman, human and less-

than-human) have been shown to be the build-

ing blocks of Westernmodernity. ‘[I]t is only

insofar as ‘‘Woman/Women’’ and ‘‘the East’’

are defined asOthers, or as peripheral, that

(Western) Man/Humanism can represent

him/itself as the center. It is not the center

that determines the periphery, but the periph-

ery that, in its boundedness, determines the

center’ (Mohanty, 1991, pp. 73–4).

Geographers have shown how the Self/

Other duality has worked to produce and de-

limit geographical knowledge. For example,

Derek Gregory (2004b) has built upon Said’s

work to show how everyday cultural practices

work to produce spaces of ‘the same’ and

spaces of ‘the other’ at the globalscale. Greg-

ory shows how some peoples are represented

as occupying a space ‘beyond the pale of the

modern’, and therefore to have forfeited the

rights and dignity associated with Western

modernityandhumanism(p. 28). ajs

Suggested reading

McClintock (1995); Sibley (1995).

outsourcing A mode of business organiza-

tion that has become increasingly common

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