Processes of Social Minoritization: The Constant Social Construction of Minority Positions

Sociological debates frequently focus on ideas of social change or social dynamics, often leading to an assumption of an ongoing overarching process of change, mainly embedded in (eurocentric) notions of modernization or progress. Against this background it is striking how „classical“ categories of social stratification and thus inequality remain important to define social positions and especially a status as social minority. The social dynamics thus could be thought of as being more visible and relevant to the ongoing re-negotiation of categories of difference and of inequality, among these categorizations of race, gender, age, class etc., than to overall social change. The study of the social minoritization of specific groups may grant an insight on how related categories are on the one hand flexible and dynamic and constantly contested and renegotiated, but on the other hand never disappear and hence those groups stay with a marker of minority despite of all social transformations.

Therefore I am going to discuss how these positions are continuously renegotiated in day to day interactions but at the same time influenced by broader narratives like those related to national imaginaries or discourses on the anthropocene itself or the causes and effects of climate change. This requires to analyse how northern modes of categorization, power relations and systems of knowledge resp. of ignorance, but also ways of contesting these, are important dimensions in the reconstruction of socially minoritized groups.

For this I am going to stress on an analytical comparison of diverse contexts, however by applying a decolonial lens I am not just focussing on the related social processes and „facts“ but especially on practical and theoretical approaches to diversity emerging in contexts where diversity is conspicuous and thus acknowledged as a basic feature of society, thus also acknowledging the agency of members of the concerned groups.