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A groundbreaking exposé of the hidden harms of race and sex data across
medicine, education, politics, and society at large
Daily we are asked—on government forms, at the doctor’s office, by schools and employers and even social platforms—to mark our sex and race, with the tacit understanding that in doing so we are contributing, somehow, to the greater good. But as Angela Saini shows in this gripping reassessment of data and identity, we have sleepwalked into a minefield.
Other takes us from the idealistic 1960s, when categories used to divide people were repurposed to administer equal rights, to today, when they have been twisted back to their original ends. Governments from the United States to Hungary have narrowed their definitions of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ to curb reproductive freedoms; the pharmaceutical industry is making billions from exploiting myths about group difference; and right-wing campaigners claiming to want a colorblind society are in fact using race data to push back against equality efforts. Latin American countries that once abandoned race categories on their censuses are bringing them back and in 2027, the Indian census will classify people by caste for the first time since 1931. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is being used to quietly profile and track minority populations, silently determining people’s race and sex by reaping their private data.
Making an original, progressive case for leaning away from categorization, Saini urges us to consider what we lose when we are placed in a box. As race and sex categories move back into the hands of those seeking to divide, she argues that there is more to gain from escaping classification than we might imagine. Freedom lies in recognizing that the only category that truly captures any of us is the final option on any form, the one that defies definition: “Other”.
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR OTHER:
"Bold and provocative, deeply researched and forcefully argued, Other shows how the systems that we wield in the name of equality can so easily become tools of oppression. It’s a vitally important and timely addition to Angela Saini’s crucial body of work.”— Ed Yong, New York Times bestselling author of An Immense World
"Who am I? What box should I tick about my gender, race, caste? Angela Saini has written a provocative, brilliant argument against classifying the unclassifiable human. In gripping, accessible prose, Saini draws from a wealth of research to illuminate the absurd and evil stupidity of institutional attempts to categorize and divide us. If you resent being put in a box, Other will unbox you." — Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City and This Land is Our Land
"Angela Saini has written a brave, brilliant, and urgently necessary book. Other asks us to reconsider something so deeply embedded in contemporary life that we barely notice it: our compulsion to sort human beings into categories, even when our intentions are just. With characteristic rigor, humanity, and intellectual fearlessness, Saini shows how the boxes we use to understand inequality can also obscure complexity, harden difference, and themselves become instruments of power. At a moment when race, sex, and identity seem to organize so much of our politics, medicine, and everyday lives, Other offers something increasingly rare: an invitation to think again." — Professor Jonathan Metzl, author of Dying of Whiteness
"An impassioned plea for the human right to be different and unique, to define one's identity in units of one, not categories including millions. Angela Saini once again forces the left to challenge its own certainties." — Paul Mason, author of
Reds: A Global History of Communism
For book-related media enquiries in the US please contact Justina Batchelor at Grove Atlantic. For book-related queries in the UK and Commonwealth please contact Michelle Kane at 4th Estate, HarperCollins.