ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the growing body of literature on the anthropology of ‘borders’ and ‘boundaries’. It identifies the different approaches which anthropologists have taken to each of these concepts, and points out that while they have sometimes conflated them, at other times they have been careful to draw a distinction. Early anthropological concern with society as a functioning organic whole meant that anthropologists were interested in boundaries chiefly as a device to define and delimit the ‘edges’ of their subject matter. The history of the theoretical development of British social anthropology and American cultural anthropology could therefore be characterised as marked by a discernible shift of focus: from an interest in what a boundary encompasses to an interest in the boundary itself. Cultural emblems and differences are thus significant only in so far as they are socially effective, as an organisational device for articulating social relations.
