formulated in Chapter 5, which marry conceptual or ideational meaning (Chapter 3) to empirical identifiability (Chapter 7).
Theorising boundaries
A closer look at boundaries as a concept in a methodological context is needed in order to better appreciate the information which is unlocked by regarding the inhabited built environment as composed of boundaries that give rise to entities. Differentiation demonstrates that we come to know any entity by its distinctions to its outside, i.e. at the boundary. When we create conceptions of the world around us we start by recognising the binary distinction that something is not something else. This has led to the suggestion that boundaries are the basis for knowledge in general (Jones 2009), and a knowledge based on differentiation sits comfortably with constitutive phenomenology (Schütz 1967). The logical implication of this is that the socio- spatial significance of the material presence of the built environment to inhabitation should not start with the entities that commonsensically jump out to us. These commonplace features are based on our lifetime of acculturation, i.e. immersion in time- space specific socio- cultural contexts. Instead, it should start with the characteristics of the distinctions incorporated in the boundaries that compose it.
In the academic field of boundary studies, mainly spanning across human geography, sociology and philosophy, a focus on the distinctions incorporated in boundaries is exactly what has been suggested in gen-eral. One should not study entities, but the boundaries from which they emerge (Abbott 1995; Jones 2009, 2010). Against the background of the discussion of social interaction and relations and the emergence of socio- spatial systems, Abbott’s (1995: 860) assessment of entities falls into place: ‘social entities come into existence when social actors tie social boundaries together in certain ways. Boundaries come first, then entities.’ How entities become physically distinguished by boundaries is the specific constitutive human and social datum of the inhabited built environment.
It could easily be argued that in the context of the built environ-ment, boundaries are merely built distinctions and divisions, whilst
‘boundary’ as a term is as protean as it is elusive. Yet, it is exactly this flexibility that makes it suitable in the light of how we now understand the constitution of our object of study: the inhabited built environment.
When only regarding the ‘built distinction’ we are unable to capture the full socio- spatial complexity of the differentiation introduced beyond a
merely physical empirical outcome of interaction. The term ‘boundary’
is both accurate and can be invested with the empirical and ideational social reality it specifically represents in the present methodological endeavour.
In speaking about boundaries, however, it should be noted that imagined or ideational boundaries in particular have received much attention in sociological (e.g. Lamont & Molnár 2002) and anthropo-logical research (e.g. Pellow 1996). This discourse concerns what could be called socio- cultural, geo- political or formal and administrative symbolic boundaries as constituents of social categories. In historically and socio- culturally contextualised themes, such as power, religion, economics, etc., boundaries have been the object of research in various guises: from very implicit social boundaries and categories in Van Gennep’s and Turner’s anthropology of rites of passage and symbolism (see Turner 1969; Bell 2009), to more explicit boundaries of organisation, territory and inter-national borders (e.g. Abbot 1995; Lamont & Molnár 2002; Jessop et al.
2008; Jones 2009). The main strands of scholarly thought from similar socio- cultural, economical and political perspectives that concern built space in particular, are usefully summarised by Archer (2005; for arch-aeological overviews see Kent 1990 and Steadman 2016).
As argued in Chapter 1, the high- level interpretation resulting from context- specific knowledge, representational analogies or metaphors often required for such perspectives are deemed inappropriate for broad comparative social scientific aims. Furthermore, in Chapter 2 I determined the rudimentary nature in which the social is applied here. On this basis, boundaries will not explicitly refer to differences in class, nation, kin or cultural identity, even though these aspects influ-ence how the differentiation posited by built boundaries is understood in social life.
This is not to deny the existence or importance of such higher- level social specificity. As a case in point, Lawrence (1996: 33) states that: ‘It was commonly at the border between private and collective spaces (by the entrance door or at the windows) that residents engaged in expres-sive behavior with kith and kin.’ This quotation illustrates Lawrence’s parallel assertion that boundary thinking is capable of converging many disparate social and cultural research interests. So, despite allowing the socio- cultural concepts and categories which often are at the core of boundary research merely a subdued implicit presence, for present purposes I simply acknowledge that they are inseparable parts of what the envisioned method studies socio- spatially. Without consistent means and availability of data, our theoretical framework is now delineated so
that these aspects of boundaries cannot be directly accessed within my comparative research purposes.
The emergent research literature on boundaries is littered with examples of metaphorical representations. These representations seem to accept, as a fundamental empirical and experiential presupposition, that any feature or component of the world is eventually delimited, at which instance it becomes something else. The language and philosoph-ical underpinnings of metaphorphilosoph-ical, representational or abstractly ana-logical and relational approaches to the study of boundaries, borders, barriers, limits and edges often pay homage to Deleuze and Guattari.
However, their dense ‘geophilosophical’ language of space, speaking of deterritorialisations, lines of flight, and smooth vs. striated space, remains overly ideational (especially Deleuze & Guattari 1987).
While Deleuzo- Guattarian ideas are invested with the vigour of politics and power, and are evocative and thought- provoking, within the context of boundaries making up the inhabited built environment a full- blown Deleuzo- Guattarian approach is not deemed appropriate. On the whole, this would remain detached from the physicality of material presence as a vantage point.1 The foundation of my comparative urban methodological interest is precisely formed by the immediately empir-ical (experiential) and intelligible nature of physempir-ical properties in the social inhabitation of the world. Therefore, since Chapter 1, historical and context- specificity is being avoided. Nonetheless, without pursuing any concrete application or ascribing particular purchase to Deleuzo- Guattarian contributions, their philosophical narratives maintain a back-ground presence for making sense of deconstructing institutionalised and discursive categories. Here, deconstructive notions help to uncover the transformative processes that let spatial entities emerge to constitute a heterogeneous environment in which introduced differentiations evoke a multitude of affective and affording responses.
We take from this that deconstructive discourse in boundary studies merits our attention. Before boundaries as a constitutive datum can effect-ively be used as an ‘analytical unit’ in research, its conceptual basis as an information source must be established. How can we access the informa-tion that boundaries contain? Jones (2009) argues that the heterogenesis produced by deterritorialisation reveals a socio- spatial complexity that is normally disguised by categorical divisions. Similarly, commonplace built environment terms can disguise socio- spatial complexity with fixity and
1. A discussion of bordering and materiality as is featured in the work of Deleuze and Guattari can be found in Woodward & Jones (2005).
apparent ‘container units’, i.e. entities such as building categories and land use. Even the apparent complexity resulting from seeing urban form as consisting of conjunctions of distinct features with physical dimensions (e.g. shape, size, layout, configuration, etc.) is in fact a simplifying empir-ical approximation. All these simplifications result from reductions of the intricate negotiation processes (social, spatial and material) which put the built environment there.