ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the role of boundaries in the Durkheimian theoretical tradition. The Durkheimian notion of the sacred and the profane, and this particular variant of boundaries’ implications for the social is perhaps most illuminatingly developed by Mary Douglas in her analysis of pollution and taboo. Considering the Durkheimian tradition, the chapter discusses how the notion of borders/boundaries is part of analyzing and understanding the social world, as, for instance, in Weber’s discussion on how status groups tend to set up boundaries towards other groupings, building a social closure. Boundary work, as the term was coined by Gieryn, was originally used to discuss problems related to how to distinguish between science and non-science and to analyze how social boundaries were constructs in order to distinguish between different kinds of intellectual activities.
