THE CONCEPT OF SYMBOLIC BOUNDARIES – CHARACTERISTICS AND SCOPE
THE CONCEPT OF SYMBOLIC BOUNDARIES – CHARACTERISTICS AND SCOPE

Summary/Abstract: Although it is one of the building blocks of sociological analyses, the concept of symbolic boundaries has been undergoing a second revival over the last twenty-odd years. Following in the footsteps of theoretical and empirical work by Michèle Lamont, researchers have been rethinking the potential of symbolic boundaries for additional fleshing out and elaborating in areas that have proven to be most productive. In general, its development moves in both significant scientific directions, toward enabling the transformation of basic premises into a sequence of research questions and linking them to appropriate methods, so as to include a significant portion of social reality empirically. Additionally, there are also theoretical aspirations to expand it from within, developing different aspects of it on an abstract level so as to establish a base categorical schema that would either serve to synthetize existing literature or, even more importantly, to focus further research. Of equal importance is also the attempt to compensate for the limitations of the concept of symbolic boundaries (Lamont 1992) by combining it with another, believed by its advocates to be complementary to the former, that of social relationships (“double objectivity” – Bourdieu and Wacquant 2013), in order to simultaneously examine both the social and mental structures of social differences and social stratification.

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