Michał Buchowski has addressed various aspects of boundary drawing in his anthropological works on making ‘the Other’ as well as in his studies on social exclusion in post-socialist European context. ‘The Other’ is created in social practices that are dialectically intertwined with public
Prof. Dr. Michał Buchowski
Professor of Central European Studies, Faculty of Social and Cultural Sciences, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Germany
discourses. Cultural hegemony exercised by those more powerful enables them to produce images about others and to set social boundaries that are culturally legitimised. Building social boundaries assumes multiple forms and various criteria are applied. In this way social hierarchies are established, in which ethnic, religious, racial and sexual minorities, as well as poor people, ‘lower’ classes and other socially stigmatised people are presented as less worthy or dangerous Others. Similar mechanisms are involved in the creation of spatial distinctions, e.g. between West and East, or, North and South.