Symbolic Boundaries

Symbolic boundaries are an important matter because they do not only explain our sense of place in society but also show why and how we separate people into different groups. Through Lamont and Molnar (“The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences”), Thorne (“Creating a Sense of Opposite Sides”) and Levine (“William Shakespeare and the American People”), I aim to explain not only what symbolic boundaries are, but also how they lead and become social boundaries.
According to Lamont and Molnar, symbolic boundaries are “conceptual distinctions made by social actors to categorize objects, people, practices, and even time and space” (2002:168). In other words, symbolic boundaries are used to not only categorize people but to also separate them
Some of the more common types of symbolic boundaries are groups that different between statuses (i.e. high and low status groups) as well as boundaries in social identity, gender, and race. In comparison to symbolic boundaries, Lamont and Molnar state that “social boundaries are objectified forms of social differences manifested in unequal access to and unequal distribution of resources (material and nonmaterial) and social opportunities” (2002:168). Symbolic boundaries become social boundaries when the point comes to when the symbolic boundary becomes so widely accepted that it actually becomes a social boundary. One of the many examples Lamont and Molnar uses to explain symbolic boundaries reinforcing social boundaries is class inequality. They use research from Pierre Bourdieu and his collaborators on academic performance between lower-class and higher class children. The children are put under the spotlight by being tested about their knowledge with the culture of the dominant class or the value of “high culture” in school. In other words, the lower-class children are punished for not knowing certain vocabulary words or perhaps certain cultural
Of course, the sense of boundary between boys and girls often switches around when they do certain things together such as eating on the same table during lunch or perhaps talking in class. However, Thorne argues through interactions or the term “borderwork” that “…sometimes girls and boys come together in ways that emphasize their opposition; boundaries may be created through contact as well as avoidance” (1993:64). In other words, the boundary between boy and girl is largely seen once they start playing with each other on the playground. The children reinforce the boundaries between boys and girls on the playground through competition in ball-games or with different encounters depending on the situation. One example would be when Thorne describes “cooties” where children play a game of tag where a specific individual or group is deemed as being contagious of “cooties”. More often than not, “cooties” was directed towards girls rather than boys where boys would run away from the girls who have “cooties” and avoid them as much as possible. From this, we can derive that the children already have differentiated themselves by gender due to the imagination of “cooties” being upon the opposite sex and being potentially dangerous so that they have to avoid them at all costs. Another example would be the way that the boys and girls formed