How do we construct the category of the other?

 
The ‘other’, in reference to a particular group or community, is constructed through factors of historical
complexities, a consequent (but not always) economic disparity, and a strict adherence to a set of
principles that are taken as the truth; an entrenched set of distinctions between, for example, right and
wrong, truth and untruth, etc. wherein the ‘other’ is antithetical to a group’s perception and assumed
position of higher ground. With regards to the Global South mentioned in Phillips’ paper and the slums in
that of Ghertner’s, both groups have been consolidated as the ‘other’ by particular group, such as the
Global North and the affluent in Delhi, due to the aforementioned factors. Phillips insertion of Harpold’s
quote, for instance, discusses the reification of the Global South through a historically misrepresentative
exhibition of data: “These depictions of network activities are embedded in unacknowledged and
pernicious metageographies—sign systems that organize geographical knowledge into visual schemes
that seem straightforward but which depend on the historically and politically-inflected misrepresentation
of underlying material conditions.” (Phillips)(pg15) Ghertner’s asserts that “By designating objects of
urban disorder and calibrating individuals’ perceptions of that disorder to a broader, class-based
program of social action—world-class city making—nuisance-as-aesthetic clarifies and confirms
the unsightliness of poverty, disclosing its inherent structure to be as it appears: out of place, disturbing
the natural order, illegal.” (Ghertner)(pg 15) This demonstrates the phenomenon of the slum-dwellers
being considered the source of geographic and aesthetic pollution by the RWA, placing them in the wrong
for merely existing while ignoring their historical and economic background, thus constructing an
antithetical ‘other’.