Strangers
The foreign describes something that is perceived as deviating from the familiar, that is, as something actually or supposedly different or distant. The feeling of foreignness can arise through ethnocentrism , through which every ethnic group defines itself and differentiates itself from other groups. It can evoke defenses ranging from fear to aggressiveness ; however, depending on the personal or social attitude, also affection in the sense of interest or even longing (cf. Xenophilia versus Xenophobia ) .
People who are perceived as strange in this sense are called strangers , in contrast to acquaintances and confidants. Locally perceived regions that are perceived as foreign - more or less far outside of the living space experienced as "own" or familiar and the cultural habits understood as "own" - are often referred to as the foreigner ; as a dialectical counter-term to home, so to speak . The distinction between the familiar (also known or accustomed) and the unfamiliar is a basic experience of people who - parallel to the development of their ego - experience different degrees of foreignness or belonging.
Ancient terminology
The ancient world recognized the foreign especially in the dimension of the different language ( Greek : βάρβαρος, bárbaros, plural βάρβαροι, bárbaroi; the barbarian is the foreigner who does not (or badly) speaks Greek and therefore incomprehensible).
Group dynamics
The concept of the stranger plays a role in group dynamics , among other things . In principle, there are two ways to deal with the unfamiliar when something new comes up to you.
- Positive: Involvement is perceived as an expansion of one's own abilities and opens up new possibilities. This behavior is often referred to simply as learning . The integration requires personal work. If the foreign is fundamental and connected with changes in one's own behavior, this can be associated with a temporary instability ( crisis ) during the reorientation.
- Negative: The foreign is rejected and marginalized. Such exclusion fundamentally prevents dealing with new things. As long as the internal encounter with the foreign can be avoided, it may strengthen the existing.
The definition of what is strange or familiar in this sense is determined by social opinions. Both possibilities are part of the normal repertoire of human behavior. A defense against fundamentally foreign (new) things is strengthened when the foreign not only has an impact on oneself, but above all on the surrounding group (one's own culture ) or is particularly exposed through being different. This can create some kind of peer pressure.
In jurisprudence , a thing is “foreign” if it is at least owned by someone else, i.e. neither belongs to the acting person alone nor is ownerless . As a constituent element, the strangeness of a thing plays a major role, especially in criminal law (see theft , damage to property ).
During National Socialism, for example, Jews were denigrated and excluded as " foreigners " or " alien ". Like the Sinti and Roma , they became victims of mass and genocide.
ethnology
The anthropology or ethnology deals traditionally with the stranger (the culture) and strangers. Strangeness is the basis of this scientific discipline. For several decades it has no longer been assumed that the foreign is a matter of course and must be described and analyzed as such. Rather, the foreign is only determined in the process of demarcation from one's own.
Ethnology differentiates between alterity ("translatable" otherness) and alienity ("radical" otherness). First and foremost, ethnology tries to translate the foreign into terms of one's own, i.e. H. to be nostrified. But with this one risks to exclude the "mystery of the foreign". From such a perspective from the foreign way of life, some things can be seen that may not be accessible from your own point of view.
The stranger
sociology
The endeavors of a society to make foreign cultural elements “something of its own”, to accept them, to reinterpret them and to merge them into something new with tradition are called indigenization .
In addition to an immigrant , migrant or tourist, since Georg Simmel's digression on the stranger, the stranger also describes a category of sociology . Simmel grasps the category of the foreign with the simultaneity of near and far. Because of this simultaneity and as a product of it, properties such as mobility, objectivity and an abstract nature are ascribed to the foreign, since the viewer only connects the general with the foreign. In interpersonal relationships, what is not in common is emphasized and perceived as something typified. Simmel describes the history of the European Jews as a classic example of the stranger. This point of view has been further developed several times, most recently in Germany in a monograph by Elke M. Geenen and Andrea Wilden, who primarily considers the constructedness of strangeness.
Mistrust and caution towards everything foreign is not xenophobic per se, but part of a rational strategy. The healthy distrust of unknown people is reflected in every locked front door. Children are taught not to speak to strangers, to accept something from them or even to get in their car. Zygmunt Bauman expresses this as follows:
“Strangers mean a lack of clarity, you cannot be sure what they will do, how they would react to your actions; one cannot tell whether they are friends or enemies - and therefore one cannot avoid looking at them with suspicion. "
Law
In German-speaking law, those who do not belong to a certain social group are referred to as “strangers”.
Examples:
- Anyone who does not have citizenship in a state .
- Anyone who is not employed in a particular company is considered to be a “non-company” in comments and judgments on issues relating to the works constitution .
- Who in a parochial school not the confession belongs to the school in question is obliged to apply to the in Lower Saxony applicable denominational schools recording Regulation as "confessional foreign."
See also
literature
- Zygmunt Bauman : United in diversity. In: J. Berghold, E. Menasse, K. Ottomeyer (Ed.): Trennlinien . Drava, Klagenfurt 2000, pp. 35-46.
- Hartmut Behr: Theory of the foreign as criticism of culture and civilization. A critical research report. In: Philosophical Yearbook. Vol. 102, 1995, ISSN 0031-8183 , pp. 191-200.
- Christian Bremshey, Hilde Hoffmann, Yomb May, Marco Ortu (eds.): There are no strangers. Xenology and Knowledge . LIT, Berlin / London 2004, ISBN 3-8258-7458-3 .
- Albrecht Classen: The foreign and the own. In: Peter Dinzelbacher (Ed.): European Mentality History. Main themes in individual representations (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 469). 2nd, revised and supplemented edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-520-46902-1 , pp. 459-517.
- Andrea Wilden: The construction of foreignness - an interactionist-constructivist perspective. Waxmann-Verlag, Münster 2013, ISBN 978-3-8309-2851-5 .
- Munasu Duala-M'bedy : Xenology . The science of the foreign and the repression of humanity in anthropology. Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg (Breisgau) / Munich 1977, ISBN 3-495-47350-5 .
- Elke M. Geenen : Sociology of the foreign. A social theoretical draft . VS-Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2002, ISBN 3-8100-3599-8 .
- Ute Guzzoni : amazing and strange. Experiences and reflections. Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg / Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-495-48555-2 .
- Christian Hoffstadt , Franz Peschke, Andreas Schulz-Buchtam Michael Nagenborg (Ed.): The foreign body . (= Aspects of Medical Philosophy. Volume 6). Projekt Verlag, Bochum / Freiburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-89733-189-1 , pp. 571-586.
- Julia Reuter: The stranger. In: Stephan Moebius , Markus Schroer : Divas, Hackers, Speculators. Social figures of the present. Suhrkamp, Berlin 2010, pp. 161-173.
- Richard Rottenburg : On the keeping of the mystery in the foreign. In: Dirk Tänzler , Hubert Knoblauch , Hans-Georg Soeffner (eds.): New perspectives in the sociology of knowledge . Universitätsverlag, Konstanz 2006, pp. 119–136.
- Dolf Sternberger : Feeling like a stranger . Insel-Verlag, Wiesbaden 1958.
- Bernhard Waldenfels : Topography of the foreign. Studies on the phenomenology of the foreign 1 . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1997.
- The other, the stranger. (= The blue rider. Journal for Philosophy . No. 39). Verlag der Blaue reiter, Hannover 2017, ISBN 978-3-933722-50-8 .
- Giovanni Tidona: Strangeness. Xenological approaches and their relevance for the educational question , Mattes, Heidelberg, 2018.
Web links
- Georg Simmel: Digression on the stranger
- Xenos was a funding program of the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs ( Memento from February 11, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
- Training concept by Jane Elliott
Individual evidence
- ↑ cf. the term "tourism" as a German translation of the word " tourism "
- ↑ § 2 Paragraph 4 No. 1 of the Aliens Police Act 2005
- ^ Text of the Confession School Admission Ordinance
