Boundary Work

Boundary work has been studied in fields as varied as sociology, anthropology, history, political science, history, and social psychology. In sociology, boundary work is frequently studied in contexts where social groups are vying to exact influence or control over other social groups or to reinforce their distinctiveness from other social groups. Boundary work can be thought of as the use of symbolic resources (e.g., language, frames, cultural elements, objects, and labels) to create, maintain, reinforce, or even erode differences among social groups. Without boundaries, social groups would cease to be distinct.

Boundary work helps establish where one type of social group ends and another begins. People engage in boundary work to distinguish social groups, to distinguish occupations, and to manage their roles at home and in the workplace. The exercise of symbolic boundaries to segment social groups helps generate feelings of similarity and fosters the identification with a particular social group that may not align neatly with other types of social categories (e.g., race, gender, or class). For example, social movements use frames to distinguish [Page 34]between “us” and “them” in order to mobilize and motivate people to support their cause. “We are the 99 percent” is an effective example of a frame used to create a very large social group that shares little other than their distaste for the growth in inequality. The broader the symbolic resource summoned, the larger the group that can identify with it.

Likewise, symbolic resources can also be used to tighten boundaries and narrow the size of the groups that can identify with those resources. In this manner, boundary work can be used to either maintain or disrupt systems of privilege. Bourdieu focuses on how systems of privilege are maintained: Those in power use boundary work to legitimate their ways as superior and destabilize or delegitimize others in order to exclude them and narrow who can belong to the group. Lamont and Molnar argue that although social boundaries (e.g., race or class) and symbolic boundaries are not the same thing, symbolic boundaries are more likely to generate or reinforce social boundaries when they are drawn in opposition to a particular group. Scholars show that people strive to create distinctiveness through boundary work in ways that may not be readily discernible to outsiders. Katherine Newman's ethnographic work reveals how the working poor in Harlem engaged in boundary work to distinguish themselves from the unemployed poor. While an investment banker may not be savvy to the differences between these two social groups, these differences may be stark to members of both groups (the working poor and the unemployed poor). Thus, distinctions among groups are not equally salient to all: Boundary work can be used to create distinctions between groups that others perceive as similar.