Belonging Without Othering: How We Save Ourselves and The World (powell & Menendian, 2024)

This book is rooted in the premise that Othering, or the process of stigmatizing those not like us, is at the core of human division and isolation. The book asserts that belonging is structured and patterned in society, with material substrates and preconditions that function as necessary conditions. It outlines othering as particularly visible along lines of religion, race, class, caste, ethnicity, and sexuality, and as a barrier to the multi-dimensional, relational, and often fleeting construct of belonging. powell’s longstanding work at the intersections of civil rights, structural racism and marginalization, and democratic practices is at the core of the book’s practical guidance toward a paradigm of belonging that does not require the creation of an ‘other’ but enables common cause and community.

powell, j. & Menendian, S. (2024). Belonging without othering: How we save ourselves and the world. Stanford University Press.