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Topic 4: Sub/Objective Boundaries
SUB/OBJECT: Mental Maps and Brick Walls
Symbolic Boundaries Research Network Online Conference, Feb. 10-14, 2003
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From: Paul Lichterman lichterm@ssc.wisc.edu
University of WisconsinóMadison
Sunday, Feb 2, 2003 (16:48)
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Where we draw the line: public groups and boundary work in concrete settings

Here are four, related claims that steer my approach to boundaries. First, groups draw boundaries in concrete settings. Second, the same group of people may draw different boundaries, place itself on a different ìsocial map,î in different settings. Third, the boundaries a group draws in a particular settings are not simply a by-product of group life, but are central to a groupís very self-definitionóin one setting. And fourth, boundary work is customary for groups in particular settings: It is incumbent upon members of a group to draw the groupís boundaries in similar ways in a particular settingóeven if members draw boundaries differently in other settings. Let me elaborate a bit, and show how these claims help us understand the ways groups create ties with other groups.

Ethnographic work teaches me that public groups sustain shared ìsocial mapsî of their place in the wider social world, as they are going about their ordinary rounds. These social maps powerfully shape what people can say and do together in a group setting (see Eliasoph and Lichterman 2003). Conflicts result if group members are not working from the same social mapóor else, as in my study of lesbian/gay and queer activists (1999), the same people must reconstitute themselves as a different group in a different setting in order to use a different map. This mapping, or boundary work, is part of what I call the ìgroup-building customsî through which groups reproduce themselves and cultivate new members (forthcoming). Different groups have different group-building customs, including different ways of drawing their social maps. A few examples from my forthcoming book on local, Protestant community service groups may help illustrate:

The social map of one mainline Protestant group featured greedy corporations and mass media outlets. Another mainline Protestant group drew itself onto a map of other community service groups, churches, local state agencies, as well as less concrete entities such as ìAfrican Americansî and ìCambodian immigrants.î An evangelical Protestant group drew itself onto a map that featured ìhurting individuals who need loveî and callous social service bureaucracies. These maps all oriented groups toward building certain kinds of ties, while making other kinds of ties hard to imagine at all. Members of one group, a multi-church alliance, talked of pooling resources and creating public goods for a low-income neighborhood when they spoke in alliance settings. Inside their own church settings, some of the same people spoke from a different, customary map, one that featured ìneedy peopleî in general. Inside church settings, these people spoke of mobilizing individual donations to meet aggregate, individual needs, rather than creating ties between a church as a collectivity and a specific neighborhood as a collectivity. Differing maps in different settings promoted very different ways of transferring resources and creating ties.

Lichterman, forthcoming, Elusive Togetherness: Religious Groups and Civic Engagement in America, Princeton University Press.

_________, 1999, ìTalking Identity in the Public Sphere: Broad Visions and Small Spaces in Sexual Identity Politics,î Theory and Society 28:101-141.

Eliasoph, Nina, and Paul Lichterman (equal co-authors), 2003, ìCulture in Interaction,î
American Journal of Sociology, January issue.


From: Mabel Berezin
Cornell
Thursday, Feb 6, 2003 (23:00)
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Territoriality and Boundary Making.

I have been working for the last few years with the concept of territoriality and how it is affecting the spatial and mental re-calibration of European citizens as they confront European political and cultural unification. Independently of the specific empirical case, territory as an analytic frame has much to offer. What I wish to underscore about territory is that it underscores some of the positive aspects of boundary makingóas territory is a metaphor of inclusion as well as exclusion. What follows is excerpted from ìTerritory, Emotion and Identity: Spatial Re-calibration in a New Europe.í The Introduction to Re-mapping Europe (Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming). The entire article is available upon request.

Because territory intersects power, nature and culture, or force, space and meaning, it is the fulcrum for all forms of human organization from the purely social to the purely political. Territory calibrates space and time.

Territory derives its intuitive appeal and resilience from its combination of conceptual plasticity and physical specificity. Territory, territoriality, territorial are metaphors of possession that imply actions--acquisition, exclusion and protectionóand secondarily emotionsólove, hate, violence. Territory is not reducible to space; nor is it merely a linguistic tropeóalbeit a compelling one. As a conceptual frame, territory is active and re-active, simultaneously analytic and empirical. As an empirical entity, territory is manifest in a range of organizational forms from the macro-level of the nation-state to the micro-level of the householdóand every other type of spatial configuration that lies between the public and private.

Territories and borders are co-terminus. For this reason, territory is never neutral and is deeply connected to the exercise of social and political power. The consolidation of power always requires the closing of frontiersóthe free spaces of geo-politics. The salience of territory for social science analysis resides in the distinction between its formal properties and the historical or cultural formations that it defines. Achieving full analytic purchase on territory requires parsing the distinction between the formal and the historical. Failure to maintain the distinction between the formal and the historical leads to pre-mature proclamations of territoryís obsolescence and attenuates its relation to power. As a formal category, territory suggests a behavioral strategy of boundary making that incorporates a range of political forms and organizations; as a historical instance, territory is constitutive of the modern nation state, but arguably also the modern family.

Territory has four experiential dimensions that fuel thicker attachments than its purely formal components would suggest. Territory is: social because, independent of scale, persons inhabit it collectively; political, because groups fight to preserve as well as to enlarge their space; and cultural, because it contains the collective memories of its inhabitants. Territory is cognitive as well as physical and its capacity to subjectify social, political and cultural boundaries make it the core of public and private identity projects. Emotion is a constitutive dimension of territory. The feelingómine, not yours; ours, not theirsócolors social and political space.

From: Suzanne Shanahan
Duke University
Thursday, Feb 7, 2003 (20:53)
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In thinking about boundaries, I struggle with the analytic distinction (and its empirical implications) between the symbolic and the social: Can you have symbolic boundaries that are not simultaneously social boundaries? Can systems of differentiation and classification ever be merely symbolic? And don¼t all social boundaries have a symbolic dimension?

In an effort to organize a growing literature on boundaries and, just as importantly, to develop general statementsãeven theories--about the texture, properties, functions and fluctuations of boundaries scholars identify different types of boundaries. For example, in ways implicit and explicit, we distinguish symbolic and social boundaries. And while this distinction makes immense analytic sense (and is itself an act of boundary maintenance) I want to suggest that there may be theoretical and epistemological consequences of this particular way of framing differences in boundaries. What do I mean? While this distinction may well be a useful heuristic device to parse the varied and expanding work on boundaries, I worry if such a distinction does not affirm and encourage a literal and realist way of seeing the social world. Indeed, I wonder if this distinction encourages a binary perspective that privilegesãfor want of a better term-- the non-symbolic. Thus the symbolic is to the social as the subjective is to the objective, as the ideational is to the material, as the abstract is to the concrete, as the theoretical is to the empirical. No matter how strongly we emphasize that the symbolic is equal to the social, much of our empirical practice as scholars affirms quite the opposite. Real (social) boundaries do things. They have tangible and measurable implications. Thus the notion of symbolic boundaries appears flimsy even ephemeral when compared to our concrete, palpable notion of, say, organizational boundaries. And I wonder too whether a distinction between the symbolic and the social doesn¼t encourage this sort of comparison. Simply put, such a distinction makes it hard to avoid essentialism.

If there is reason to be at least self-conscious about our present tendency to implicitly privilege the social over the symbolic, Weber reminds us there is no question that these sympathies do not translate well when we examine boundary-making cross culturally and historically. In my own workãwhether on the identity in the early modern Atlantic world, on an emergent sense of European identity, on international rights discourse and national policy, or on immigration and racial violence in the Unites States-- I find that distinguishing the symbolic from the social confuses rather than clarifies. In my own work as in the work of so many others, boundaries are never either just social or just symbolic, and the relationship between the symbolic and the social cannot be neatly captured in even the most sophisticated path model. Indeed, boundaries are always and simultaneously both distinguishing individuals and groups on paper, in language and in the three dimensional work of the senses, and expressing meanings, values, and cognitive world views. There is no such thing as a social boundary that doesn¼t also convey, evoke, signify meaning and values etc. Likewise, ideas and cognition cannot constitute a collective boundary as long as they remain an idea in a single head. It is in the social dimensionãthat is, all that exists within language, broadly definedãthat boundaries are manifested. So, for example, by invoking their clan identity over their identity as subjects of what one author has called the „first British empire,¾ 16th century Gaelic families at once chose a set of customs, laws, and ways of speaking knowing full well that these were markersãin the dominant ideologyãof barbarism.

Finally, I wonder whether differentiating social and symbolic boundaries doesn¼t logically imply that you can have social boundaries that aren¼t symbolic and symbolic boundaries that are not social. If this is indeed the case, then most all of sociology could be the study of boundaries. And perhaps a network trying to map and coalesce a field could be a bit more proprietary and try to command a perspective as well as a terminology.

From: Bethany Bryson mailto:bryson@virginia.edu
University of Virginia
Thursday, Feb 7, 2003 (20:53)
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From Social Locations to Mental Maps

I'm working on two boundaries-relevant projects. The first is a joint project with Sarah Corse on artistic and decorative displays. She describes it over in the "Interplay" room. The other project is an attempt to re-conceptualize the way respondents answer public opinion surveys in theoretical terms that make more sense to cultural sociologists.

One of the most painful problems for public opinion researchers is the fact that so many respondents report logically inconsistent opinions. This problem has lead scholars like Susan Herbst to argue that public opinion doesn't exist on it's own and to turn to (really cool) alternative projects such as studying the construction of public opinion in politics and the media. But a cultural sociologist can pretty quickly conclude that the survey research problem lies less in assumptions about the existence of opinions than in the assumption that opinions are or should be organized by logic. Cultural theory offers lots of other good alternatives, but my favorites naturally involve symbolic boundaries. In particular, I'm interested in the way that respondents use the various response categories to indicate group memberships and identity.

The catch for my research design is that my view and the traditional one expect the same thing: a relationship between group membership (a.k.a. social location) and political opinions. So I'm in the process of brainstorming (help?) about the empirical differences between the traditional Manheimian account (social location - interests - ideology/opinions) and a symbolic boundaries approach. I'm looking for identities that don't imply clear organized social locations. Sexual identity would fit that bill, but the 'interests' argument would still apply. A more promising possibility is to use variables that measure group identity (or the salience of group identities/identification) and compare them to variables that measure categorical membership. And the most fun possibility: re-conceptualizing the famous 'interviewer effect.' That plan's still in the rough.

From: Michele Lamont mlamont@wjh.harvard.edu
Harvard U./Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
Wednesday, Feb 12, 2003 (13:07)
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Dear Suzanne,

Your point about the distinction between symbolic and social boundaries reproducing the traditional subordination of the symbolic to the social is very well taken. Nevertheless, I think that it is needed if we are to have any analytical leverage in developing a better understanding of the social processes that lead to the emergence and rigidification of boundaries. Moreover, class-based moral boudnary work is a very different type of phenomenon than, say, residential racial segregation. Each requires different analytical tools (the former is captured via social representations, while the later can be measured by an index). In Money, Morals, and Manners, I proposed that we look at symbolic boundaries are a necessary but insufficient condition for the drawing of social boudnaries.

As for the potential subordination of the symbolic to the social, my only response is to keep reminding our colleagues that cultural structures are structures, and that considerable work goes into producing taken for granted intersubjective definitions of reality (see how hard Bush is working nowadays).

I think it would be very difficult for our network to be more proprietary or active in policing the work being done on boundaries. It is simply everywhere (see my 2002 ARS review (with Virag Molnar) for a small sampling of what is being done). Moreover, it is a field that is not developing in a cumulative fashion, despite efforts (my own and that of others) to systematize it. As a sociologist of knowledge, I am puzzled by why this is. Perhaps we would find an answer if we were to examine the process by which other fields, such as the sociology of organization, came to be organized around clearly defined and widely agreed-upon paradigms. Perhaps it is simply too early for systematization and more empirical work needs to be done. Clearly there is a lot of excellent work being done on a range of issues, as illustrated by the work described in this virtual conference. Perhaps we need competing interpretations of what the "field" (if there is one) is about and where it is going. Ideally, this is what this conference would generate. But folks are being awfully careful.

Thanks for your contribution, which gave me the opportunity to think aloud, for what it is worth.

Michele

From: John Sonnett jsonnett@email.arizona.edu
University of Arizona/Sociology
Wednesday, Feb 12, 2003 (21:40)
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I am working on a problem similar to Bethany Bryson's (described above), trying to understand the organization of survey respondents' symbolic boundaries (more specifically, musical boundaries). Instead of searching for interests or logics I am attempting to uncover cognitive schemas organizing boundary patterns (rhetorics of authenticity, refinement, cosmopolitanism, etc). I think the concept of schemas provides a viable alternative to interests as an explanation for boundary patterns-óas Paul DiMaggio (1997) summarized, schemas are cognitive structures which organize disparate bits of information, so the image is more inductive bricolage than deductive logic.

My project has two parts, based on applications of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and Person-Centered Methods to survey data (GSS 1993). QCA enables an aggregate-level mapping of the intersections between cultural structures, but unlike conventional statistical analyses, it retains respondents as the unit of analysis instead of disaggregating them into variables. The researcher can then select individual representatives of aggregate groups, and look deeper into the organization of boundaries. This is done by producing narrative descriptions of particular respondents, which (hopefully) enables the theoretical interpretation of cognitive schemas organizing boundary patterns.

It seems that much current research on boundaries employs ethnographic methods, which allow for a rich interpretation of boundary-work in context. By contrast, survey data is de-contextualized and usually analysed in very abstract ways. It therefore seems appropriate for a researcher of sub/objective boundaries to try to bridge the quali/quantitative divide, by linking individual-level narratives to aggregate-level distributions. Itís still a work in progress!


From: Bethany Bryson bryson@virginia.edu
University of Virginia
Thursday, Feb 13, 2003 (20:45)
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Hi John, It's nice to hear from a fellow traveler. I hope you'll me me and everyone else up to date as your project progresses. You can do that over on the "bios" page--even after the conference ends. Speaking of which....

ALL, I've noticed that we were slow to start and things are just starting to get rolling as we approach the scheduled "end" of the conference. I know the feeling. There's a lot of great stuff to read and some (unfortunate?) pressure to do lots of preparation for each post. I plan to leave the conference open as long as it is still active, but if anyone has a specific request (such as, "Oh please leave it open until Spring Break when I'll have five minutes to spare!" I'll be happy to accomodate that.

Take Care,
Bethany

From: Bethany again

Thursday, Feb 13, 2003 (20:55)
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Whoops! I meant to speak to Suzanne (and Michele) too...

I'm rather fond of emphasizing the symbolic in symbolic boundaries--not because I think there's stuff out there that isn't symbolic, stuff I want to differentiate from the "subject" of my research, but because it's cool to be symbolic. I'm only partly kidding and partly aplying my theory of the world to our own work. We don't alsways make these decisions based on their logical impact. We make them based on the way they map our own aliances. By the way, over in the "emergence" room, Roger Friedland provides the address to a downloadable paper by John Martin that offers a nice quip to these kinds of debates.

-bethany

From: Suzanne Shanahan shanahan@soc.duke.edu
Duke Sociology
Friday, Feb 14, 2003 (16:14)
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Hi Michele, Hi Bethany,

I would certainly agree that empirically there are very different kinds of boundaries. But Iím still just not sure thatófor me-- the distinction between social and symbolic is the best way to parse the terrain. I also wonder whether this distinction makes it harder to render that which we know to be the case: that all boundaries are simultaneously symbolic and social. As John McGreevyís work (Parish Boundaries 1996) on working-class Catholic conceptions of community demonstrate, residential racial segregation in post-War Chicago is a moral boundary. That said, if people do find the social/symbolic distinction helpful I still think we might want to consider that logical implications and consequences of making this particular distinctionówhat is lost as well as gained. And finally, like Bethany, I too think that that which we understand to be symbolic is most ëfun.í

Anyway, thanks for getting me thinking.

Suzanne


From: James Roebuck roebuck@ag.arizona.edu
University of Arizona/Sociology
Wednesday, Feb 19, 2003 (12:18)
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Hello,
I know this is a late post.

In struggling with the idea of symbolic boundaries, which I find quite useful and provocative in many ways, I, like Suzanne, find the distinction between the symbolic and the social rather problematical for many of the same reasons that were cited above. I don't think there is much debate about the term 'boundary' - boundaries, at various levels, from the objective (geographic, bodily) to the subjective (perceptual, conceptual, discursive) appear to exist as 'real' entities, at least 'real' in their consequences for social action.

However, when it comes to nailing down the 'symbolic' herein lies a potentially thorny problem, at least for me. So I thought it might be a nice to analytically parse out the various meanings of the word 'symbol' and figure out which definition is meant in the phrase 'symbolic boundary'.

According to Merriam-Webster there are 5 definitions of 'symbol'
1 : an authoritative summary of faith or doctrine : CREED
2 : something that stands for or suggests something else by reason of relationship, association, convention, or accidental resemblance; especially : a visible sign of something invisible <the lion is a symbol of courage>
3 : an arbitrary or conventional sign used in writing or printing relating to a particular field to represent operations, quantities, elements, relations, or qualities
4 : an object or act representing something in the unconscious mind that has been repressed <phallic symbols>
5 : an act, sound, or object having cultural significance and the capacity to excite or objectify a response

In glancing over these five definitions of symbol, I can imagine an application for most of these, with regard to boundaries.

For instance, definition 1, symbolic boundary as creed, seems to mesh well with Bourdieu's image of symbolic violence, legitimated/imposed cultural boundaries. Definition 3, symbolic boundary as an arbitrary convention brings forth Saussurian structuralism and the arbitrariness of the relationship involved with the 'sign'. Definition 4, symbolic boundary as an object which represents something subjective/unconscious has appeared in some of the discussions on this conference. While definition 5, symbolic boundary as an object with cultural significance imbued with the capacity to elicit a response seems to fit well with the idea of a symbolic boundary as a mechanism for social action, or perhaps, a strategy of action. Definition 2, which harkens to Durkheim's notion of the sacred as contagious, and thus needing to be 'bounded' through ritual practice, is a bit more tricky to fit with the concept of symbolic boundary. Although now that I say that, it's not as tricky...

So my question for the group is, do any of the above definitions of the symbolic help to clarify our theoretical toolkit? Is one definition more applicable than others? Does one resonate with your work more readily than others? Has this been done somewhere else and I've missed it? any thoughts? leads?

thanks,
james