ABSTRACT
In so many small, and sometimes seemingly insignificant, ways we catalogue information, give definitional headings and draw distinctions between areas of study. We find a focus, construct boundaries and limit horizons; a way to organise and try to make sense of our work. We cannot avoid using such strategies; we require maps to organise our material and bring into relation sets of ideas. But we need to recognise not only the many contingent factors which lie behind these acts of mapping but also the power of the consequences of such decisions. Too often what are actually fluid boundaries become portrayed as immutable. Loosely constructed sites become burdened with coherence. Acts of mapping take on a form which suggests that they have an internal logic which transcends space and time, the contexts in which they were constituted. What was, or indeed is, simply messy, and the best one can do, appears beautiful as order, offering, it seems, certainty in its conformity and completeness. We can feel safe. Safe in the knowledge that knowledge itself is safe.
