ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a number of cases of how the rituals and symbols of national and ethnic identity encode the borders between states, making these borders more or less discernible to resident and traveller, depending on their knowledge of the cultural codes on display. All social and political identities are now shaped by the state in some way. Some identities emerge from state attempts to define borders, while others result from state efforts to define and control people. Experiences of borders, as in all liminal experiences, simultaneously reinforce and disintegrate social and political status and role, and structure and meaning, by putting into sharp relief the full range of our identities. Anthropologists have studied ethnicity and ethnic groups throughout the globe in every conceivable way: as an ideology, as social and political movements, as mythic charters for action, as a minority identity, and in terms of their relationship to religion, politics, economics and social structure and organisation.
