Recomendaciones

and a sense of (biographical) familiarity³ through our participation in their continued constitution and development (i.e. interactions with the socio- spatial environment). Their subsequent existence necessarily accommodates the constant processes of binding and unbinding: nego-tiating the introduced differentiations, while we continue to participate in their constitution. This dimensionally complex combination offers a tentative explanation for why many built (materialised) boundaries are ultimately persistent (or resilient, i.e. emergent stability) over time (a key premise for urban morphology, see Chapter 6).

The togetherness (cf. Hägerstrand 1976)  or relations between built boundaries can readily be perceived to connect up the distinctions (subdivisions) by which we come to know and make sense of the inhabited world:  i.e. the entities and categories of the inhabited built environment. Even when the performed system that is originally respon-sible for the introduction of the differentiation of a built boundary ceases to exist and/ or is replaced,⁴ its material presence continues to occur in our socio- spatial environment. As such, built boundaries remain suscep-tible to modification and participation as a constitutive contextual com-ponent in other interactional relations of inhabitation. Only obliteration is a one- off reconfiguring interaction.

Consolidation and classification

In what I  have previously called the consolidated stages of the built environment (Vis 2009; cf. Abbott’s (1995) lineage of events), bound-aries get physically constructed by human beings, i.e. they are built. At that moment surfaces of matter or substance acquire edges (physical distinctions) that are introduced into the environment. These edges phys-ically persist as a built shape within the continuing processes (fluxes) of the physical environment. This persistence gives rise to a degree of inertia. Persistence disguises the ongoing fluxes (cf. Ingold 2008a) of the environment and the inchoateness of the formative processes as conveyed by Jones (2009). Even though edges are varied according to their conditional nature and their contextual position and situation, the

3. Familiarity with (patterned or aggregating) differentiations is intended to be a very broad con-cept in which belonging, memory and even claimed or emotional ownership (supported admin-istratively or arising through personal investment and participation) can all have a part.

4. Performative existence and replacement should be understood in terms of Sayer’s (2000) spa-tial independence and Mekking’s (2009) mismatch between use and intended use of a building type (Chapters 1 and 2).

persistence of built boundaries tends to be strong. That is to say, many past built forms persist into the present and/ or have a long lasting effect.

Simultaneously, the inhabited built environment is also ephemeral.

During local residence, the processes of inhabitation might not affect or change each built boundary physically with every event of ongoing development. Longer term, however, this material consolidation in the inhabitation process is merely a stage, because the ongoing processes may at any time modify and transform both the constitutive environ-ment of the built boundary (the contextual characteristics) and the material properties of the original boundary. This consolidation process amidst the potential for change in everyday inhabitation practice bears some resemblance to Star’s (2010) ideational cycle of standardisation (cf. structuring and imposition), residual categories (cf. De Certeau’s everyday resistance) and ‘boundary objects’. With any physical change or development, boundaries will often be consolidated again in their new situation or shape. Historical and archaeological data on the built envir-onment should therefore be seen as conveying such an ephemeral stage in ongoing (inchoate) processes.

In contrast to the deconstructive thinking propagated above, thinking on boundaries is commonly articulated by what could be called the ‘scientification’ of social research conduct. Scientification favours observation used for explanatory law and regularity seeking based on a natural scientific model, instead of social and interpretive approaches pursuing human understanding. Such approaches thrive on the concept of categorisation.

Categorisation sets the expectant norm, for without categorisation observations could not be turned into orderable data. Quantification, determining many kinds of analysis, would not be possible, because it relies on categorisation into discretely separate things. By exception, fuzzy set theory is a quantitative approach that approximates the rec-ognition that distinctions and boundaries are not discrete, but part of continuous processes and complex interrelations (e.g. Fesenmaier et  al. 1979; Abed & Kaysi 2003; Tang et  al. 2007; Pleho & Avdagic 2008; Yusuf et al. 2010; Kim & Wentz 2011). Conversely, many fuzzy set approaches try to work towards classifications from ambiguous artificially sensed (automatically acquired) data. In other words, observation adheres to static divisions, despite the fact that the natural sciences identify ongoing processes. Likewise, a long- term view in the social sciences will make it appear as if phenomena ‘suddenly’ appear and disappear, despite understanding that they are part of continuous processes.

Classification in archaeology is conventionally tied to constructing area- specific periodical typologies of artefactual progression. These typologies tend to be based on dimension, shape, and other exclusive characteristics observable in isolated examples, not relationality (Read 1989; though see Hermon & Niccolucci 2002 for an application of fuzzy logic to improve typological interpretation). Read (1989: 184) argues that automatic classification approaches (cf. objective measured approaches) are still some way removed from cohering to the understanding we have of archaeological (cf. human) data for which no solution is yet available.

If structuring processes are the beginning point of understanding the data in hand, then the initial goal becomes one of relating structuring process to measurable groups in the data and not the reverse. One might devise a sequence going from general process to material realization, but the difficulty arises that the sequence does not predict the particular form the objects should take. Hence it does not predict what will be appropriate measures, with the possible exception of those such as the tip of the point; that is, measures that are clearly constrained by the tasks for which the objects are to be used. If it is not possible to go from measures made over a collection of objects to classes via numerical methods, and if definition of the taxonomic structure does not lead to prediction of form, then it is necessary to devise a means to provide the missing part of the argument.

The preceding argumentation positions the inchoate process of forming boundaries, or bounding, as an operative for inhabitation of the world and the constitution of the inhabited built environment. In concordance with Read’s suggestion, one could argue that the built environment is used for inhabitation and therefore possibly the ‘measures’ of it can be predicted. However, as we have seen (Chapters 1 and 2), there is con-siderable flexibility and independence of social life from the exactitude of spatial form and physical characteristics. Hence, an ontologically ordered study of boundaries first depends on a ‘typology’ of the kind of operation they facilitate. This operation will not predict boundaries’ pre-cise relational situation nor the shapes and sizes in which they occur (cf.

Fletcher’s (2004) interest in material operations; Chapter 5 features an ontology of types).

In summary, from a utilitarian perspective the built environ-ment serves the purpose of inhabitation. We know, however, that the built environment is necessarily emically salient (see Read 1989)  to

the inhabitants – incorporating meaning that is only accommodated in a fuzzy way by the socio- spatial significance of material presence. So, inhabitation places the built environment first and foremost as relational and processual, but these relations are in part determined by the con-textual influence of shapes and sizes, which permit the measurement of its occurrence.