ABSTRACT
Georg Simmel once began a book with words which seem to be an entirely appropriate way of beginning this book as well. He wrote that: ‘Man’s position in the world is defined by the fact that in every dimension of his being and his behavior he stands at every moment between two boundaries’ (Simmel 1971:353). Georg Simmel continued to briefly outline what he meant when he spoke of these boundaries. Perhaps inevitably he saw the boundaries which define the position of the human in the world, the boundaries which give the human a place and a direction, in terms of a series of dichotomies; higher and lower, greater and lesser, better and worse (however, it must be admitted that Simmel seems a little vague as to the basis and the precise meaning of that human being and community). But without these polar opposites and without their ability to locate the human and to make sense of activities and institutions, the world would be more or less (another dichotomy) meaningless to us. After all, ‘The boundary, above and below, is our means for finding direction in the infinite space of our worlds’ (Simmel 1971:353).
