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Key Words culture, identity, inequality, community, borders
* Abstract In recent years, the concept of boundaries has been at the center of influential research agendas in anthropology, history, political science, social psychology, and sociology. This article surveys some of these developments while describing the value added provided by the concept, particularly concerning the study of relational processes. It discusses literatures on (a) social and collective identity; (b) class, ethnic/racial, and gender/sex inequality; (c) professions, knowledge, and science; and (d) communities, national identities, and spatial boundaries. It points to similar processes at work across a range of institutions and social locations. It also suggests paths for further developments, focusing on the relationship between social and symbolic boundaries, cultural mechanisms for the production of boundaries, difference and hybridity, and cultural membership and group classifications.
INTRODUCTION
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 still read for its account of the dynamics between several class boundaries. As for Weber, his analysis of ethnic and status groups continues to stand out as one of the most influential sections in Economy and Society (1978) (on the history of the concept, see Lamont 2001a and Schwartz 1981).
Unsurprisingly, the multifarious recent developments around the concept of...