In recent years, the idea of “boundaries” has come to play a key role in important
new lines of scholarship across the social sciences. It has been associated with
research on cognition, social and collective identity, commensuration, census categories,
cultural capital, cultural membership, racial and ethnic group positioning,
hegemonic masculinity, professional jurisdictions, scientific controversies, group
rights, immigration, and contentious politics, to mention only some of the most
visible examples. Moreover, boundaries and its twin concept, “borders,” have been
the object of a number of special issues in scholarly journals, edited volumes, and
conferences (e.g., for a list in anthropology, see Alvarez 1995; for sociology, see
the activities of the Symbolic Boundaries Network of the American Sociological
Association at http://www.people.virginia.edu/»bb3v/symbound).
This renewed interest builds on a well-established tradition since boundaries
are part of the classical conceptual tool-kit of social scientists. Already in The
Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Durkheim (1965) defined the realm of the
sacred in contrast to that of the profane. While Marx often depicted the proletariat
as the negation of the capitalist class, The Eighteenth Brumaire (Marx 1963) is