This chapter presents a new, annotated translation melding the two Latin versions of one text: first, the Expositio totius mundi et gentium (Account of the Whole World and its Peoples); second, the Orbis descriptio (Description of the Globe) preserved under the name of Iunior Philosophus, which includes additional material. The chapter introduction shows how the work, dating to around the mid-4th century AD, is an impressionistic outline of world geography region by region, focused upon the East and characterized by subjective judgements about non-Roman peoples; maybe originally written in Greek or a third language; possibly by someone with commercial interests and a home in the eastern Mediterranean area. The value of the work may lie in what it tells us about semi-popular knowledge of world geography.

The introduction to this part of the book briefly describes the state of play in Australia when I entered the profession of book editing in 1989. Although there was much discussion among members of the local society of editors about the role of the editor as “gatekeeper”, to my knowledge few publicly discussed social injustice as a lived experience. But as a fledgling editor, the dawning of understanding about what that editorial gatekeeper role meant virtually gave me wings! I soon realised that if I could establish myself as an editor in good standing I would have the power to influence virtually every single reader of the books I was editing, including their authors. That was a powerful moment. I had never before in my life felt as though I held any real power – in any sphere.

The confrontation of the foreign was a key aspect of the theatrical culture of eighteenth-century British culture. The performances of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s comic opera The Duenna (1775) in Kingston, Jamaica, and his comedy The School for Scandal (1777) in Calcutta, Bengal, enabled residents to embrace both the love of alterity and the longing for home that were each endemic to colonial life, as the comic figures of the Jew and the nabob and the forlorn figure of the enslaved child suggested that Britishness and otherness were not far removed from each other, as theatrical performance in circulation began to sketch in more similarities than differences dividing us from them.

At the heart of Judaism is the most frequently repeated commandment of the Torah, namely the care and the concern for the stranger, for the one who is deemed “the other.” Judaism is the religion of “otherness,” as one can see in the notion of the Jews as “a people apart” (see Leviticus 20:24), as well as in the view that that the non-Jew, the “other,” may be counted among the righteous as readily as any Jew. The basis for this view is that the other is not so “other”: the other, too, is a ben adam, a “child of Adam,” regardless of his or her beliefs, ethnicity, or color. Fundamental to an understanding of the Covenant is an understanding of Jewish teachings on the importance of the stranger or the ger: According to Jewish teaching, there is no Covenant with God without an embrace of the stranger. Next, the chapter notes the commandments regarding the treatment of the stranger, with a closer look at the meaning of the word stranger, in contrast to other words that mean “strange.” Finally, the chapter explores the teachings from the Jewish oral tradition regarding the stranger and the notion of the Righteous among the Nations.

The Conclusion ties the themes of the book together to emphasize monotheism not as an "identity forged negatively against the other," nor as an escape from this othering. Rather, through the apophatic intolerance explored in all chapters, monotheism is conceived as othering-in-reverse, as a revelation of our blindness to scapegoating the other, highlighting our need not for mere inclusivity but agonistic pluralism.

This chapter places the social process of 'othering' in the context or regulation of immigration and asylum. The chapter also introduces the structure and content of the individual parts of the book as well as their chapters.

Chapter 4 draws on a series of interrelated ideas including those of Emmanuel Levinas and phenomenological and Buddhist thought concerning ethics as a non-violent relation to the Other; a relation that is marked by one’s response to an other’s singularity. The aim is to outline a key element for creating institutional change that recognises this singularity, appreciating the complexity involved in living with others and the challenges this places on educational institutions. In particular, it argues that changes in educational institutions must encompass both the people who exist in them and the practices that constitute these spaces as institutions in the first place. In this light, while institutions are governed by rules, regulations, policies, legal frameworks and organisational structures, they institute themselves as institutions through cultures, which are composed of relationships, practices, experiences and shared imaginaries. These practices are not only cognitive or intellectual but also embodied, sensate and phenomenal. Thus in order for institutional change to have any real purchase, it is necessary that the transformation of cultures qua embodied practices, and the imaginaries that support them become the focus of our efforts, towards promoting new forms of relationality and new modes of sensibility in pluralistic contexts.