Abstract
Why is it that a human being may feel the desire to reify another human being to define their humanity? The degrees to which scholars have made contributions and attempts at interpreting and addressing this broad question, and affecting social change and reform in positive ways, are as vast as they are commendable. Of course, James Clifford (1988: 263) has explained that universal humanist claims are ‘meaningless, since they by-pass the local cultural codes that make personal experiences articulate’. However, I am not arguing that addressing ‘fairness’ to understand the origins of conflict is panoply of understanding ‘human nature’ and/or the ‘human condition’. The ‘human condition’ is not fixed; rather, individuals continually modify themselves through choice and action and, as such, outcomes to the questions and topics of concern of this book will always be, necessarily, different and unpredictable at any given historical moment. In the complicated and ever-changing subjectivities of individuals themselves can be found the particular rationalities for and motivations behind constructions of Otherness, and their outward determinations and manifestations. What this book contributes is a timely ethnographic insight into the ways in which the people of Halleigh are dealing with the ever-changing and politicized world around them.
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© 2012 Katherine Smith
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Smith, K. (2012). Conclusion: Beyond Fairness. In: Fairness, Class and Belonging in Contemporary England. Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137009333_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137009333_9
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-33110-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-00933-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social Sciences CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)