The constant gardener
Boundaries
Alina Sajed,
McMaster University
Boundaries can be defined as those lines, whether visible
or invisible, material or abstract, which divide
territories, cultures, traditions, practices, and world
views. The term is often used to point toward something
that is contained and characterized by homogeneity,
coherence, clear-cut separation, or difference from that
which is outside. Many authors claim that individuals and
collectivities define themselves in terms of what they
stand against, what they are not, or from what or whom they
are different. In this way, borders become central to
understanding concepts and practices such as identity,
belonging, and culture. Some argue that it is not so much
that which is contained by boundaries that is relevant and
in need of attention. Rather, it is the very lines, in the
form of boundaries, which delineate that which is
permissible from that which is forbidden, and that which is
familiar from that which is different. In this respect,
boundaries speak more vividly about the limits of the
possible in our societies.
Boundaries can be physical or abstract (in the sense of
mental, emotional, psychological, or spiritual). Physical
boundaries divide territories, spaces, and places, creating
a basis for physical and even socio-cultural separation
between such territories, and for an imagined
coherence within them. Making physical and socio-cultural
separation congruent, however, is based on illusions about
homogeneity. Boundaries always enclose many contradictions,
tensions, and paradoxes. For example, the nation-state
relies on and feeds off the ideal of the perfect match
between a clearly-cut and uncontested territory, and a
homogeneous nation. From the very beginning, such an ideal
gave rise to painful internal and external conflicts, as
various ethnic groups, caught within the arbitrarily drawn
borders of a state, were forced to struggle either for
recognition and autonomy, or for separation (which is a
more radical form of autonomy). Thus, during and after
World War I, thousands of people, considered either ethnic
or political minorities in their countries (such as Jews,
communists), became undesirable for the states where they
were rooted and were consequently expelled. They were
forced to take refuge in other countries. As they became
"stateless," "refugees," or "displaced persons," their
uncertain political status deprived them of human rights
both within the territory from which they fled, and within
the territory where they subsequently resided. This
situation was possible as only the political status of
citizenship entitled people to "human rights." This dilemma
prompted the political theorist and philosopher Hannah
Arendt, in her famous The Origins of
Totalitarianism, to state that only with a
"completely organized humanity" (thereby pointing to its
division into sovereign territorial entities divided by
borders) "could the loss of home and political status
become identical with the expulsion from humanity" (1951,
177).
In contemporary Europe, with the intensification of
economic and political integration, and the expansion and
the growth in the number of states belonging to the
European Union (EU), boundaries that were previously
considered fixed and controlled have become ever more
porous and subject to contestation. That is not to say that
the free circulation of people is an accomplished fact in
today's Europe. With the signing in 1990 of the Schengen
Agreement, borders separating the member countries of the
EU have become more porous and more flexible, but there is
a greater policing and securitization of national
territories against "aliens," such as (illegal) migrants
and refugees. Therefore, as processes of territorial and
economic integration intensify in Western and Central
Europe, citizens belonging to these countries acquire an
increased sense of autonomy, in the sense of an increased
freedom of movement, whereas the autonomy of migrants and
refugees to these countries is painfully restricted.
As transnational flows of goods, ideas, images, and people
intensify, socio-cultural boundaries become the object of
tremendous renegotiations. Cultures and traditions have
defined themselves by the boundaries they set on what is
permissible and what is forbidden, what is identical and
what is different, what is included and what is excluded.
Such boundaries are invisible, in the sense that they are
internalized and become an intrinsic and natural(ized) part
of the individual and collective psyche. For example, the
clothes a woman might choose to wear in the presence of men
will vary depending on who those men might be. The clothes
might point to boundaries about her body that she draws
depending on who is present.
It should also be recognized that socio-cultural and
material boundaries are mutually constitutive. Thus when
one uses a form of dress to determine which parts of her
body a woman might display when she is outside the home,
over time this act of dressing is assimilated by the woman
as a boundary. If a man should by chance see her without
the prescribed form of dress, she might feel violated, her
socio-cultural border having been crossed. This example
points to the psychological aspect of boundaries, and shows
that material boundaries may also be internalized, as
adherence to certain religious, cultural, and social
precepts. Such precepts are meant to differentiate an
individual/group from others, and bring together
individuals with similar perspectives.
In this sense, it would be helpful to perceive boundaries
as more material than we envisage and less rigid and
natural(ized) than we claim them to be. This implies that,
on one hand, even though they are arbitrarily drawn or
established, "invisible" boundaries have concrete effects
on the lives of individuals and groups; and, on the other
hand, material and immaterial boundaries, although enjoying
a legitimized status, are changeable and constantly subject
to contestation. Socio-cultural boundaries are invisible,
yet they have very visible ramifications, creating and
maintaining social, economic, and political hierarchies,
and giving rise to various (and often contradictory)
practices, contestation, and renegotiation, in the forms of
socio-economic and political movements. In the same vein,
concrete borders and boundaries, while arbitrarily and
artificially drawn, bear tremendous and concrete
consequences on people's lives, shaping the ways in which
they perceive difference, community, identity, and
belonging.
In the context of globalization and regionalization
processes, changing boundaries not only redefine forms of
political and socio-cultural community, but challenge
jealously guarded traditions and world views. In many
cases, challenges to forms of political organization
(through the redefinition of national borders as in the
case of the EU, or as in the case of the struggle for the
establishment of an autonomous Palestinian nation-state),
are accompanied by challenges to social and cultural
practices. Sometimes, these two can be contradictory. For
example, in the case of Morocco, claims to national
autonomy and modernization have challenged traditional ways
of socio-cultural and economic organization. In her Beyond the Veil (1987), the Moroccan
sociologist Fatema Mernissi discusses the way in which the
contradictions faced by Muslims, due to modernization and
globalization processes, are more or less about boundaries,
which relate to legacies of colonization, modernization,
and gender issues — specifically, the imposition
of foreign world views and European bureaucracies onto Arab
territories and lifestyles; the extent to which Western
technology is welcomed and/or challenged within Arab
societies; and the degree to which women's status is
impacted by discourses of modernization, human rights, and
emancipation. The author states that women's claims to
equality were most disturbing to Muslims, in as much as
these claims imply a serious renegotiation and retracing of
social, cultural, sexual, economic, and political
boundaries. This seems to suggest that material boundaries
can be understood as physical expressions of "invisible"
boundaries. There is a close connection between the visible
and invisible boundaries which implies that one type of
boundaries cannot be altered without affecting the other
one.
Though nations or bodies are bounded material entities
often thought inviolable, it is nonetheless the
socio-cultural boundaries that arouse the most heated
debates and contestation, because these constitute world
views or practices of identity and culture. As women in
Moroccan society obtained an increased autonomy, they
gained access to high-skill jobs, which led to a
renegotiation and contestation of traditional views and
practices regarding family, family roles, and the economic
bases of family. Paradoxically, at the same time, women who
lacked access to education saw their status radicalized
into a deeper condition of poverty and seclusion. As such,
not only does the alteration of physical boundaries impact
profoundly on socio-cultural ones (and vice versa), but the
impact reverberates differently within a particular
society, bringing into a more acute focus questions of
class, race, gender, and ethnic affiliation.
In the case of post-socialist countries, not only did the
retracing of physical boundaries reshape (sometimes in
extremely violent ways as in the cases of former Yugoslavia
and the former Soviet Union) the territory on which these
particular societies were established, but also it led to a
profound and sometimes violent redrawing of previous
socio-cultural and economic boundaries. The exposure of
these particular societies to the exigencies and conditions
of a free-market economy and political liberalism has had
tremendous impacts on their socio-cultural boundaries.
As socio-cultural boundaries become less constrained by
territorial political ones under globalization, the
assertion of claims to personal autonomy takes on new
political forms. For example, gays and lesbians become more
conscious of themselves as a transnational community
anchored in particular views of sexuality. These notions of
self also come to be recognized in supranational charters
of human rights. These changes create new opportunities for
personal autonomy within given nation-state borders, while
also changing the politics of such claims.
For example, in Romania, political pressures for the
legalization of homosexuality coming from European
institutions have caused the government to abolish the
legislation that denied rights of individuals based upon
sexual orientation. Similar to other societies, however,
such gains in autonomy have also been met by strong social
pressures coming from organized religion, in this case, the
Orthodox Church, an institution that is still extremely
powerful in Romanian society. As such, claims to autonomy
made by individuals and groups get to be renegotiated in
"new politics" by the various political, economic, and
social elements that have a stake in such claims. Moreover,
the Romanian example suggests that, particularly in an era
characterized by an intensification of globalization
processes, the limits that are thought to separate
societies from one another are fragile indeed. This
illustrates that political boundaries, which limited the
impact of external social processes on national notions of
personal autonomy now need to be reconsidered as they lose
material and symbolic power in controlling socio-cultural
practices and ideas.
Works Cited:
Arendt, Hannah. 1951. The decline of the nation-state and the end of the rights of man. In
The origins of totalitarianism. 147-82. New York:
Harvest.
Mernissi, Fatema. 1987.
Beyond the veil. Male-female dynamics in modern Muslim society. Revised ed.
Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
Suggested Readings:
Balibar, Étienne. 2004.
We, the people of Europe? Reflections on transnational citizenship.
Trans. James Swenson,
Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Berdahl, Daphne. 1999.
Where the world ended. Re-unification and identity in the German borderland. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.