Special issue on being outdoors part 3. Outdoor leisure: Other and othering

Abstract

This is part three of the special issue ‘Being Outdoors: Challenging and celebrating diverse outdoor leisure embodiments and experiences’. The focus of this part is on Other and Othering. In many ways ‘other’ is a horrible label, it is amorphous, devoid of meaning as a direct consequence of its all-embracing-ness. In this way, ‘other’ can be seen as a derogatory label, one that robs individuals of their meaning, identity and value. Following this, the process of ‘othering’ is a disempowering one that ignores the importance of understanding diversity. In other words, ‘other’ is not only a discriminatory label, but it can also be seen as a discriminatory process (Harmer and Lumsden 2019), one that has been referred to as discursive discrimination (Boréus 2006). Within this context, ‘other’ and ‘othering’ has been utilized in a negative sense to identify those labelled as being different from, lesser than, those in power, the societal gatekeepers and enforcers of sociocultural norms and values (Roberts and Schiavenato 2017; Jensen 2011). Within this special issue the process of ‘othering’ has been referred to as exclusionary (Canales 2000). In this way, to be ‘othered’ is to be identified as being different from the norm, from those in power who are socially acceptable (Rothmann and Simmonds 2015). This negativity imbued in the ‘other’ is associated with Nietzsche’s (1967, 157) view that the herd instinct speaks. It wants to be master: hence its ‘thou shalt!’ – it will allow value to the individual only from the point of view of the whole, for the sake of the whole, it hates those who detach themselves – it turns the hatred of all individuals against them.