The Invention of “Xenophobia”
lareviewofbooks.org
lareviewofbooks.org
Living around the world, I've felt a baseline anxiety while being surrounded by 'other' there's no doubt about it.
Being surrounded by 'people like you' feels like 'home' and that anxiety goes away.
Very obviously the same reason people in those situations often move to sub-communities in those regions where there are like-minded peers.
The term 'xenophobia' I think is misapplied in too many contexts. I suggest people are more often ethnocentric than they are xenophobic.
What's familiar feels safe. Maybe the long term `solution` to living among/with many different tribe members is to mix more and more people of different origin/background/culture so that it feels normal and familiar (thus safe) to be surrounded by people who are different (actually they wouldn't be different anymore).
But somehow I don't think it's easy to set up the condition for such an environment. I think mixing implies the blending of different cultures and it leads to a new mono culture made up of common or assimilated characteristics (or one culture taking it all with just some minor details from other cultures left) rather than a patchwork of strongly differentiated (untainted) cultures.
This is the great question of "how do we live together ?".
edit: I think there should be a warning about my comment. When I was young I heard a similar reasoning used to justify `racism` because it would seem it's inherent to the humane nature. The adult I heard saying that was a complete racist and he didn't hold this explanation/theory/outlook to find how to live with others but to justify his dislike of others.
They adopt 'basic civic values' - and all cultural artifacts are thrown out the door, because they can't continue to exist.
Those people go to Starbucks.
When people have actual distinctions from one another - this is where actual 'diversity' exists. People have attitudes, opinions, and especially practices that are stronger and more resilient.
This is why Starbucks can't make headway in Italy -> their local dynamics around coffee are stronger than the power of the Starbucks marketing team.
Though McDonald's does exist there, it's in a totally different capacity.
(FYI Nothing wrong with either of those companies, I'm alluding to the notion of those things being more universal and a more fundamental part of culture, which 'fast food' is in the US, and not Italy).
I really do believe we can live together, and that we mostly do - just fine.
There's some work to do with equal access and opportunity - but by and large most of the advanced world is fair to most people.
Good points though.
Context: I'm white, only understand English. At Whole Foods most people look like me, and I understand the snippets of conversations as I pass by. It is overall a stressful experience being there.
When I shop at 99 Ranch, I generally can't understand other shoppers' conversations, and I don't look like the other shoppers. For some reason it is much more peaceful, easier to share a smile with others as we pass by, and just overall a more positive experience.
Just a personal example going the other direction. I don't think there's any deep meaning here.
In Whole Foods, you might be expected to answer a question or inquiry since your appearance says that you would understand the query. You might even be expected to engage in banter.
In 99 Ranch, your appearance means that the chances of you understanding a question in the interlocutor's native tongue are approximately zero. Therefore they are unlikely to ask. There is very little chance of an attempt at conversation.
Your difference and assumed lack of ability to interact with in any meaningful way act as a firewall, giving you the same comfort you would derive if the store were completely empty and automated to where you didn't have to interact with other humans.
Not a dig, just an analysis and projecting of my own situation and thoughts on it.
I live in Mexico and present as a very obvious gringo. I'm not an extrovert, when I encounter a situation where I really would rather not interact, I can play up the language barrier. My Spanish is mediocre to begin with, so that helps.
There is at least one other factor, though. At Whole Foods, at least the one near me, a large fraction of the conversation snippets I overhear are complaints, expressions of anxiety, and generally expressions of unhappiness. At 99 Ranch I generally can't understand what people are saying, but on average people's emotions seem to range from neutral to positive. My perceptions may not be a complete picture of reality, but I think they're also not completely detached from reality.
Go and move to Thailand for 4 years.
You will probably meet lovely people, be enamoured with all the different 'everything' and probably be in 'awe' for 2-ish years which is how long it takes to get over that 'new' aspect of being somewhere.
Everyone will treat you well - but - essentially as an outsider your entire time there.
While you might have local friends will also likely seek out other ex-pat (if you're English speaking, it'll be from other English nations, not just where you are from) as do the vast majority of the migrants there (ie Chinese will seek out Chinese there) - why? Because you have a lot in common.
For the same reason, the vast majority of XYZ culture people, when moving to a new country, chose that XYZ sub-culture when they arrive.
Obviously, this is not entirely universal, but it's by far more common than not.
FYI I'm literally writing this to you from an English part of the world, but in a tiny community of mostly all native French speakers. They move here for reasons aforementioned.
I think what's really interesting about this is the amount of intellectual hoop-jumping that people do to find an excuse - anything - do deny realities which may be uncomfortable to them.
1) People generally prefer their own cultures.
2) People may have stereotypes of misconceptions of other cultures, but generally don't outright disregard those people. Especially on an individual basis, most people are nice.
3) More people are actively interested in other cultures, than actively antagonist with other cultures, by a wide ratio, with most people being generally ambivalent.
4) Though Xenophobes do exist, so do Xenocentrists, i.e. those who think everything in another culture is 'legitimate, honourable, even spiritual' while the local culture is not. You can see this in the West among those who defend utterly barbaric practices in other cultures (that would never, ever be tolerated 'at home') under the guise of some kind of cultural premise. For example, I remember a David Cameron interview where he was defending the Taliban, i.e. a progressive human rights campaigner glossing over the deeply disturbing and violent practices of groups in that part of the world. It's far to easy for all of us to trivialize broad aspects of foreign culture, that's nothing new, but to do it in a way that diminishes horrifying elements I think is evidence of Xenocentrism.
Edit: ** big caveat of course this dynamic changes a bit when you have some kind of hyper-nationalist leader, or maybe an issue with migration, in which tensions are inflamed etc. etc..
Where are you from / experiencing this?
The problem tends to come in when someone's area is becoming less homogenous - which in turn spurs hatred and a desire to expel others. Feel free to move and find said homogenous place, but this desire doesn't give you the right to banish others who are just living their free lives.
Really the idea that the people "like you" by some superficial shared variable are actually more like you is fundamentally a lie. More familiar but the individual variation is far more powerful than just "born in Bavaria".
"stranger-as-enemy relationship"?! Did someone use Google Translate here? No, "Fremdenfeindschaft" or "Fremdenfeindlichkeit" ("enmity towards strangers") is actually the usual German translation of "Xenophobia" ("fear of strangers") - see https://neueswort.de/xenophobie/.
I've seen "Freundschaft" translated as either "amity" or "friendship". Going off of Duden (I'm not a native speaker), it seems "Feindschaft" also has two definitions. The first is a hostile attitude towards another person, and the second is a relationship defined by this attitude. I'd translate the first as "enmity", but unless you consider "enemyship" to be a word there isn't a perfect translation for the second definition.
Xenophobia is the best translation based on actual usage, but the words still have noticeably different roots. "stranger-enmity"/"stranger-enemyship" vs "stranger-fear".
Unfortunately most modern laws and policies do it in reverse.
Hilarious given Germany's history with foreigners (all the way back to the 17th century). Maybe we should pay more attention to countries with high diversity indexes, to teach us about living together in the new globalised context. I think more and more this will be relevant for "not-so-diverse" cultures/countries.
I guess the takeaway is that the term "xenophobia" was just as much of a shallow, falsely dismissive rhetorical technique originally as it is today, used to underhandedly deflect from legitimate grievances regarding forced integration and cultural erasure.
"Only by remembering xenophobia’s first instantiation do we bring these broader battles into focus. For the contested ground named by Jean Martin de Saintours became far more than a matter of semantics; it buttressed aspects of Western ethics, psychology, science, economics, and political power. In the end, what was at stake was nothing less than fundamental notions of identity — of I and thou, us and them, stranger and host — that had been thrown into question by new forms of global interconnection and radical technological change, disruptions not unlike the ones we face today."
That the changing, ambivalent, and contradictory nature of the term is a reflection of a history that is just as complex. To yet again simplify language and to immediately tie it to a perceived grievance politics today would be making the same mistake that some people made then.
Granted. Maybe there are people who are just "rational xenophobes" who have no ill feeling against the foreigner, but feel they are taking away from their community, but just anecdotally those are exceptionally rare (and often fall back to the disguist thing after a few beers). I have yet to meet such a person, but okay anecdotal evidence..
There is btw. a whole field of studies that researches the links between disgust and xenophobia, for example: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30639587/