Boundary-Thinking in Theories of the
Present
The Virtuality of Reflexive
Modernization
Rob Shields
UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA, CANADA
Abstract
Theories of the present have converged on changes in spatialization or the
spatial order of societies. This article discusses the focus on borders and
boundaries in programmatic statements on reflexive modernity or remod-
ernization (RM) by Latour and Beck. It is insufficient to say that boundary-
marking and border-making become simply more fraught or obvious. There
is an historicity and dynamic quality which are central to these analyses
which are best understood in terms of the intangible aspects, or virtuality,
of borders and boundaries. A dynamic, four-part ontology is advanced to
elucidate the functioning of borders as interfaces and liminal zones with
their own internal semiotics and emergent meanings and effects. This is the
basis of a critique of RM. Further, a more diverse set of methods than might
be supposed is required to research boundary phenomena, which social
sciences are ill-equipped to undertake.
Key words
 border  interface  reflexive modernization  remodernization 
spatialization  Ulrich Beck
Theories of the present, such as late capitalism, postmodernism, `reflexive
modernity' (Beck, 1994; Lyotard, 1979), or `second modernity' attempt to name
the current moment, proposing an epochal identity across diverse and contradic-
tory social trends. While they provide a useful shorthand for more complex
processes, their utility is less in their explanatory power than in their heuristic
character and the ability to assimilate diverse cultural and economic research
results into a single framework. They rely on their rhetorical force as extended
metaphors, or literary conceits, as much as upon evidence. Lassoing the present,
they organize the data of everyday life into narratives of progress, dystopia and
promise. This article raises questions concerning the importance of a discourse
European Journal of Social Theory 9(2): 223­237
Copyright  2006 Sage Publications: London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi
www.sagepublications.com DOI: 10.1177/1368431006063342
of borders and boundaries to the (European) reflexive modernization thesis
which has been discussed by a number of prominent European sociological
theorists.1
This article begins by clarifying the practices and semiotics of borders and
boundaries at play in statements of the reflexive modernization thesis. Borders
and boundaries are then shown to consist of a set of interacting registers which
interact in a dynamic way. These define complex objects (which consist of both
physical infrastructure, institutional practices and socially constructed meanings)
away from either being understood as simply material or as an equally simple
dualism of material and abstract elements. Their intangible qualities are more
than abstractions (border as an idea). They include both probabilistic (e.g. risk)
and virtual (e.g. performative) aspects. In this article, I aim to establish and
explore what is virtual in boundaries and border claims within theories of the
present, specifically reflexive modernity.
Boundaries and Borders
While they disagree in their interpretation of the status of reflexive moderniza-
tion, Ulrich Beck and Bruno Latour both converge on the question of bound-
aries and border-making in their approach to the thesis of reflexive
modernization (Beck et al., 2003; Latour, 2003).2 For the purposes of my
argument, the term border (from Portuguese and Spanish, via the Old French
bordeure ­ `edge') presently denotes territorial or material cases ­ at least in
English, the word refers to a state border, the border of a diagram, a flowerbed
planted along the edge of a property. In contrast, boundaries mark a border or
edge. A marker stone (bourne), a line on a map, or even the result of an equation
mark the `bounds' of an area. Boundaries are semiotic. They describe a broader
set of distinctions that can be material or virtual (i.e. immaterial) ­ although the
term is often used synonymously with `border' (Grenze) and to describe edge-
conditions (Rand) more generally. `Boundary' originates from the Medieval Latin
bodina via the Old French bodne. In discussions of reflexive modernization in
English, `border' and `boundary' often appear interchangeably. In this article I
use the terms in their strict etymological sense. In everyday usage, depending on
local circumstances, these two terms are differently weighted in contemporary
experience. In places such as the southern United States, `the Border' ­ the
USA­Mexico border ­ with its fence and crossing points is a specific thing and
a place which takes precedence over notions of cultural boundaries.
Boundaries include the limits of fields and classes. They are part of the intel-
lectual apparatus of distinctions between foundational modernist categories such
as nature and society, human and technological, rational and irrational, and so
on. As the status of these distinctions between value spheres is eroded, so the
characteristically `modern' is changed into a `reflexive', `re-modernizing' or
`second' modernity. For Latour, this is a qualitative shift, but for Beck a matter
of substantive change. The status of borders and boundaries
European Journal of Social Theory 9(2)2 2 4
can serve as a litmus test for the existence of reflexive modernity as opposed to post-
modernity: the existence of boundaries whose artificial character is freely recognized,
but which are recognized as legitimate [not ironic] boundaries all the same. In other
words, reflexive modernity exists to the extent that fictive as-if boundaries are institu-
tionalized into systematic procedures that affect everyday life. (Beck et al., 2003: 20)
For the proponents of reflexive modernization, this is not a matter of a `post-
modern' suspension of boundaries and borders; rather, inviolable borders become
harder to maintain. In the context of political and economic challenges to the
sanctity of procedures for generating trusted knowledge, challenges to the author-
ity of experts, and to the legitimacy of institutions of governance, the enforce-
ment of borders and boundary-marking becomes more fraught. Hypothetically,
`There is instead a multiplicity of inclusionary and exclusionary practices, and,
according to context, a multiplicity of ways that things are bounded off' (Beck
et al., 2003: 24). Boundary-drawing is more obvious and less taken-for-granted.
Thus, it is more likely to be contested.
What Are Territorial Borders?
A border constitutes space as territory. As such, borders are usually conceived
spatially from within a jurisdiction, and are conceived functionally as limits. Even
where their precise location is arbitrary or subject to negotiation, borderlines are
a location and locus of political certainty imposed on an often-recalcitrant topog-
raphy. Without borders, there is no territory (Shields, 1992). To the extent that
borders are inelastic, they establish the fixity of this shape. To the extent that they
are porous to different flows, they establish the degree to which a territory is
exclusive (see also Paasi, 2002: 140).
There has been a broader tendency to contrast territorial borders as part of
spatial assemblages of `places' against immaterial and dynamic `spaces of flows'
(cf. Castells, 1996; Sassen, 2002). But geographers recognize that borders are not
just material or concrete (1) (see Figure 1; Paasi, 2003) but a combinatory ­ phys-
ically traced on the land and in juridical texts, governmental practice and cultural
symbols. The intangibility of borders must be recognized for they may be moved
and may be marked, reinforced or signalled in different material ways but they
remain the borders of this or that state or territory. Borders may be erased, even
superseded in a manner that erodes their relevance even in abstract theoretical
terms (Shields, 1997). But if not forgotten, a border retains a virtual (2) exist-
ence which holds the potential to be actualized in the future.
Borders are assemblages with four registers. They are technologies. The border
is an abstract, material and virtual interface, a membrane that consists as much
of fences or rivers as it consists of abstract (3) concepts and political rhetoric, of
ways of operating detection equipment, verifying passports, and maintaining
databases.
Borders and nations are lived, intangible-but-real `things' (Conversi, 1995;
Rose, 1995). Ontologically, such immaterialities are virtual, in the strictest sense
Shields Boundary-Thinking in Theories of the Present 2 2 5
of the term (Shields, 2003) which are performatively actualized via embodied
behaviours and concrete objects.3 More simply put, the soft operational culture
of a border, the habitual routines of boundary-drawing are the real `meat' of this
subject, not the concrete exo-skeleton of gates, fences, signage or border posts.
This is a level of detail that is essential to develop the reflexive quality of borders
or boundary-practices which evolve and as technologies, are able to learn from
mobilities and relations that cross them. This points to a certain memory
capacity of borders and boundaries which goes beyond mere semiotics, say, the
scarring graffiti or bullet marks on the Berlin Wall.
Fourth, as algorithms, borders are technologies that produce tendencies and
respond to risks which are understood in probabilistic (4) terms (such as recog-
nizing citizens, screening invasive plants and organisms).4 These various aspects
respond to, for example, flows of abstract data, tangible and intangible bodies
which pass through or are turned back at the border-interface. Borders are thus
more than material and involve more than conceptual abstractions. They are also
virtual and probable (see Figure 1).
This four-part ontology is a framework through which the internal dynamics
of complex objects can be described. Each aspect or `register' is a spatio-temporal
mode. Some highlight past tradition; others are oriented toward future effects
even while their functionality in the present moment is paramount. `Over-
dimensioned' in time and space, borders cannot be sufficiently analysed in
Enlightenment terms such as real versus ideal ­ or even more narrowly, material
versus abstract. However, the categories making up these old dualisms ­ such as
material versus abstract can be usefully reset into a broader framework if this is
also understood to be dynamic. This allows aspects to be juxtaposed, to be under-
stood as co-present `registers' which may undercut or negate each other and affect
the functioning of the border or of a boundary drawing projects or discourse.
European Journal of Social Theory 9(2)2 2 6
Ideal Virtual (2) Abstract (3)
status interface, intangibles, rhetoric, representations,
knowledges of citizenships, identities theories and concepts of the border,
sense of (in)security information flows
Real Possible
Actual Concrete present (1) Probable (4)
Fence, gate, percentage outcomes,
actions, bodies, goods trends
danger . . . risk . . .
Figure 1 Ontology of the border
Boundary Claims in Reflexive Modernity
From this ontological point of view, what is being claimed when theories of the
present postulate changes in borderings and boundings? If the `truth' of an object
lies somewhere within a dynamic of defining registers which are abstract, virtual,
concrete and even probabilistic, what of boundaries ­ `signs' of borders? These
are even more strongly virtual, and by no means merely abstractions or represen-
tations. The significance of a dotted line on a map is not its own inky material-
ity. It abstractly represents a border somewhere. However, the history of
colonialism is full of examples where lines drawn on maps were figured on the
ground only much later. Such lines are more than representations or boundary-
marking; they are virtual borders which prefigure concrete lines on the landscape
(Shields, 1997). As will be argued below, boundaries can be understood as both
spaces and also as infinitely thin dividing lines (bifurcations) between radically
different states ­ between the `civilized' and `uncivilized', to give one example. If
boundaries have any difference from borders, it is their greater abstraction and
virtuality as signs whereas borders are strongly material edges. Boundaries may
consist of abstract economic distinctions or lie between value spheres, or socio-
economic groups (bands of income or age to suit the purposes of analysis). Or,
boundaries may be virtual: cultural distinctions of taste, affiliation and status. As
virtualities, these are not known directly, but through their effects or the effect
of transgressing them (Shields, 2003).
We know boundaries through their effects. This virtual aspect is of seminal
importance to any border or boundary: the border is not of interest merely as a
line but as a line with effects. Without an ontology which includes the virtual,
these effects ­ the changes in status, etc. ­ can only seem to be supernatural, for
the scale of their effects goes well beyond what one would credit to a social
construction, such as an ideology, a representation or a social convention. Recall
that virtuality means `real but ideal' ­ we are dealing not with flimsy abstract
ideas but something of the durability of an institution or culture. And of the
same flexibility: for it is the virtual quality of a boundary that raises it to the
stature of more than mere ink or a division in a herb garden, that allows it to be
repositioned yet remain `the same' boundary, and allows it to evolve in its func-
tionality yet remain `the same', giving borders and boundaries the sort of historic-
ity that is being claimed in reflexive modernization theses. I am not positing an
abstract quality, an essence, Platonic Idea, or spirit of boundaries but acknowl-
edging an aspect of the reality of borders and boundaries.
Boundaries have a range of significance as limit-objects (bournes). Yet a
boundary was once a material limit which marked `the edge' beyond which
civilization ceased to exist, or beyond which sailing ships did not return, and
perhaps even `fell off' the world. The terror of these absolute limit-boundaries
persists in the popular imaginary. They are routinely tapped by disaster movies:
beyond a certain point, lie catastrophic phase changes, unmapped spaces, and
formless monstrosities. By contrast, abstract natural divisions are the centrepiece
of contemporary culture. In these cases, measurements indicate bifurcations at
Shields Boundary-Thinking in Theories of the Present 2 2 7
which systems shift from one state to another state of dynamic equilibrium ­
from solid to gas or from one crystalline geometry to another. Boundaries have
their own historicity as aspects of all-encompassing cultural formations of spatio-
temporal practice, cognition and imagination (Lefebvre, 1991; Shields, 1999).
Boundary drawing is spatial and visual semiosis which describes an encom-
passing vision of a set of elements or an area or expanse, with a particular stress
on the limits of these sets. Boundary drawing is a matter of deciding on what or
where is included and what is excluded. It is an aspect of relational, aesthetic
reason (in the Kantian sense) and a form of judgement and discrimination or
distinction in Bourdieu's terms. Beck and Latour include examples such as
gender, race and the nation-state, to give examples; boundary-drawing as a
canonical gesture of modernity. Such boundaries and categorical distinctions are
foundational moments to any social order that would be understood as such
through the lenses of Euro-American social sciences. However, this is also to say
that boundaries are less `modern' than social ­ what matters here are processes
for boundary-drawing, which may be ritual, derived from tradition or a charis-
matic leader, and/or may be the outcome of institutional processes.
The thesis of reflexive modernization proposes a general shift in not just the
legitimacy of borders but in the authority and semiotics of boundaries as discur-
sive entities. The quartet of different registers of boundaries, can be summarized
in Figure 2, again with the caveat that these registers are dynamic.
In the discourse of reflexive modernization, border and boundary are not only
interchanged rhetorically to relieve the reader. Each term is used in ways that
accentuate and blend different internal registers, sliding between them in each
sentence ­ just as we do in everyday conversation to convey the vividness of
things. We can see this command in the comment that `fictive as-if boundaries
are institutionalized into systematic procedures that affect everyday life' (Beck et
al., 2003: 20). Abstract `fiction' is realized in virtual objects (if you permit me to
figure `boundary' as such in this case) and is actualized in concrete practices and
`procedures'. Their probable effects on an idealization ­ `as-if boundaries' ­ which
combines virtuality (banal routine) and abstraction (everydayness is a theoreti-
cal construction) is presented rhetorically as an actual impact on a concrete thing,
European Journal of Social Theory 9(2)2 2 8
Ideal Virtual (ideally-real) Abstract (possible-ideal)
dividing effect concept, indicator,
categorical division cartographic convention . . .
Real Possible
Actual Concrete present (actually-real) Probable (actual-possibility)
line on a map, marker, predictable limit
welcome signage
Figure 2 Ontology of boundaries
`everyday life'.5 Elsewhere, there is a suggestive `virtual abolition of borders' (Beck
et al., 2003:17). Furthermore,
structural changes that are often referred to in shorthand as `vanishing of [concrete]
borders' have effects far beyond their immediate impact on the economy. Globaliz-
ation also has [virtual] political and cultural dimensions which, by changing the
relation between the local and the global and between domestic and foreign,
[abstractly] affect the very meaning of national borders, and, with that, all the
[probable] certainties upon which nation-state society is based. (Beck et al., 2003: 6;
my italics)
A border is a line, a limit and an edge. It is also therefore a border zone with a
border culture that acts as a focus for anxieties. Borders are marginal spaces: zones
of unpredictability at the edges of discursive stability, where contradictory
discourses overlap, or where discrepant kinds of meaning-making converge
(Lownhaupt-Tsing, 1994: 279). In the 1990s, the border culture of the USA­
Mexico frontera defining Chicano ethnic identity was theorized in terms of
linguistic marginality (Anzaldúa, 1987: 57). This internal life is performative,
virtual, and determines the actual operation and effects of borders. But there is
a long-standing history to this border-as-virtual space: consider the burlesque
image of Charlie Chaplin in the film Gold Rush, in which, at one point he zigzags
along the Mexico­USA border, pursued by the police on one side and bandits
on the other. This surreal image of the border as the only safe territory hints at
the different semiosis within the border-as-interface. It derives something of its
surreal power from the impossibility of actually inhabiting a borderline itself. It
is instead a virtual `reality'. Borders are normatively defined as `to-be-crossed',
not travelled along. If they are followed, their status changes into virtual, inter-
stitial, or liminoid spaces of `inter-action'. Surreality prevails when the border-
as-interface reveals that it is a sort of virtual and semiotic force field which
translates, connecting and disconnecting the codes of adjacent systems and forms
willy-nilly. How does the reflexive modernization thesis deal with semiotic
marginality and liminality of dynamic, interactive borders?
The uniqueness of a boundary is that it is a line which not only divides but
which, if crossed, induces a sudden or extraordinary change in the traversing
body or object. Any line can be `drawn in the sand'. The significance of bound-
aries is that they mark out two distinct areas of qualitative difference. A small
movement in space, across the borderline or boundary, is associated with a
change much greater than would otherwise be expected from such a minimal
movement. A minimum of effort results in a maximum of distinction
(O'Connor, 1997). Crossing boundaries, sudden transitions occur in bodies
which might otherwise be unexpected. Bodies move from being insiders to
outsiders or foreigners; objects go from being produce to being contraband
(Shields, 1996). As an interface or `junctural zone' (Van Loon, 2000), bound-
aries are not only spatial but are experienced as temporal instants which have a
unique and special status: they are the critical moments of opposed situations,
spaces, territories and states. Borders and borderlines share this virtual quality as
Shields Boundary-Thinking in Theories of the Present 2 2 9
events that `happen' in the crossing. Since the space traversed in the interface or
`inter-action' (or the space between the different actions) is infinitesimal
(approaching the limit or degree-zero), the distinctions that are generated by this
leap across the boundary are virtual and qualitative (i.e. different in kind) rather
than concrete and probable (quantitative, i.e. different in degree or measure).
Crossing a border, my status changes far more than my weight!
Yet in the equivocal semiotics of the interface, infinitesimal distance exists
only to suddenly increase (explode or rapidly expand) into infinitely large liminal
distances/differences or situations charged with ambiguity. Different states of
bodies or objects are required as they pass through the boundary-as-interface.6
Beyond the liminoid and the marginal, this raises questions of the syncretic and
of boundaries as indicators of `translations'. Borders are active translation tech-
nologies which mediate between phases, states. If a dynamism describes concrete
mobilities that traverse the boundary as an interface, there is also a virtual,
internal dynamic which operates on its own semiotic terms. In other words,
interfacial boundaries have their own specific rules and semiotic orders, distinct
from the fields or systems which they lie between. How might the reflexive
modernization thesis accommodate this approach which sees the boundary as a
interface, rather than like a border ­ only the marginal edge or effect of a more
significant system? The internal logic of borders and boundaries is revealed
through stressing their virtuality and probabilistic registers. This takes us beyond
mere claims that borders are cultural, political or that they have their own
historicity.
Categorical Boundaries across Modernities
Reflexive modernization theories appear to spatialize cases where the erosion or
loss of legitimacy of categorical and social boundaries is occurring. The associ-
ation of borders with boundaries risks oversimplifying discussions of boundaries
and appeals mainly to the constitution of territorial states and individuals' bodies
(Beck et al., 2003: 17). It does this by invoking a physical discourse of `drawing',
`making' and `building' ­ terms which more often are understood in relation to
territorial borders.
Yet reflexive modernization attends less to territorial borders than to cultural
boundaries between categories. Different types of border and different bound-
aries cannot be assumed to map perfectly onto each other as the concrete and
virtual registers of the same phenomenon. The emphasis on unstable boundaries
repeats well-known spatial descriptions of postmodernization and globalization
as involving both continuities and discontinuities in the `cognitive mapping' and
spatial practices of advanced capitalist societies (Flitner and Heins, 2002; Jameson,
1984). Boundaries are socially constructed as shorthand representations. Borders
actualize virtualities such as socio-cultural divisions. Both borders and bound-
aries are therefore intimately connected to the epistemological politics and to
the disposition of knowledges (Sibley, 1995). What we need to know is what
European Journal of Social Theory 9(2)2 3 0
registers shift within specific aspects of cultural boundary-marking and within
liminoid, `interfacial' practices.
Categorical boundaries are often associated with territorial borders in a form
of spatial shorthand (Shields, 1991: Chapter 7). Foundational to modernity is
not just the drawing of boundaries but the association of this practice of spatial
division with specific cultural significance such as the border of the nation-state.
Culturally, borders once established geographical and historical forms of
inclusion and exclusion which correlated the local with insiders, presence and
the known while the distant is correlated with outsiders, the foreign and absent
(Shields, 1992). In modernist spatializations, borders are thus part of a set of
metaphoric and metonymic boundary structure. This allows extended literary
conceits to work back and forth in culture. Thus, inside and near have been to
outside and distant as inclusion is to exclusion.7 The entanglement of the spatial
forms of inside­outside and near­far with the absolute binary of presence and
absence (existing and non-existing) is akin to the mixing of notions of boundary
with a border. This spatialization makes boundaries into limit conditions which
are ideal for founding fixed categorical identities and thereby stabilizing the
dynamism between the different ontological registers of border and boundaries
in an equilibrium.8
Especially significant has been the division between nature and society, which
is Latour's focus. This is a constitutive part of the institutional order of modern
societies. He casts the changes in this boundary as a question of `diminishing the
efficacy of the pure nature/pure culture boundary'. This extends from develop-
ments in the biological and life sciences to micro-technological interventions in
the human body. Distinctions are not only de-naturalized and have to be worked
up or are the matter of explicit choice and struggle, `More exactly the hard labour
of boundary making between the two will become highly visible ­ as visible as the
building of a fence around a park to make it "wild"' (Latour, 2003). `Efficacy'
signals a situation not unlike a child's sand wall built at the beach: continuous
building is necessary as waves eat away at it. However, Latour emphasizes human
­ social ­ agency of `boundary making' and does not do the hard labour of
inquiring into the causative powers of the boundary-as-interface. Beck presents
a broader discussion, and differentiates between borders and boundaries when
he hypothesizes that these become `not boundaries so much as a variety of
attempts to draw boundaries. In a similar manner, border conflicts are trans-
formed into conflicts over the drawing of borders' (Beck et al., 2003: 17). What
are the implications of a shift out of equilibrium to more dynamism in the
exchanges and mobilities between the ontological registers? It would appear
correct to highlight the internal dynamism between registers such as the
performative actualization of the virtual in the concrete. Hypothetically,
boundary-drawing is not just `more fraught', borders less legitimated: the internal
dynamism of both borders and boundaries is heightened, bringing their less
tangible registers to our attention.
If there is a distinction between theories of postmodernity and reflexive
modernization, it is that whereas postmodern theories argued for the erasure or
Shields Boundary-Thinking in Theories of the Present 2 3 1
at least suspension of such divisions, reflexive modernization hypothesizes the
recreation of political institutions to cope positively with ambiguity. However, it
would be necessary to discipline not just equivocal representations of the border
but virtualities such as the development and evolution of borders, of their related
practices and of the internal semiotic dynamics of boundaries-as-interfaces.
The thesis of reflexive modernity posits a crisis in this structure of antinomies,
but the situation is not one of `across the board' change. Which antinomies,
which boundaries are problematized? How and for whom? This is less a theor-
etical question for sociologists than an urgent problem for those caught at or
desperately attempting to cross different social, economic and political bound-
aries (Simone, 2004; Yuval-Davis, 1997). Indeed, a weakness of theories of reflex-
ive modernity has been their explicit focus within the borders of Europe, as if
the world beyond did not exist and as if European borders were not problematic
(consider the debate over Turkey), multiple and non-isometric, depending on the
phenomena being investigated.
Political boundaries and territorial borders continue to be strongly enforced
despite the paradox of imprisoning migrants because no clearly defensible logic
for deporting them can be reached. Whether the border is an ocean
(Indonesia­Australia), chain-link fencing (Mexico­USA; Britain­France at the
Channel Tunnel, Israel­Palestine), land-mines (North­South Korea) or fire-
breaks, surveillance devices and motion detectors (Canada­USA; Finland­
Russia), borders have never been more strongly policed. But they appear to be
less often touted as defences against a menacing absence or `evil without'. Rather,
they are part of a mosaic of boundaries designed to stratify territory and slow
down mobile enemies. The purpose and ambitions of present borders are less
absolute and more `negotiated'. Further, they are more obviously `machinic' ­
marked, policed and staffed.
Far from contributing to the collapse of institutions, this situation has seen
the birth of new institutions (such as International Courts of Justice such as at
The Hague) and new efforts, including theoretical schemas such as `reflexive
modernization'. These function precisely thanks to the breaching of the nation-
alist geographical and political boundaries of legal jurisdiction. Other important
legal moments would include the American accession to apply at least aspects of
the Geneva Convention to prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. In neither case are
borders eliminated but rather there is a shift in their historico-cultural semiotics
and ontological dynamics. However, one negative impact is not the appearance
of new political struggles over boundary-projects but the disappearance of
discussion as borders are reinforced by dint of sheer reactionary force against
terrorist `wars without frontiers'. These projects attempt to reinforce the linear
and controlled articulation of ontological registers one with the other. A particu-
lar stress is placed on limiting the internal mobility between registers internal to
strategic entities such as borders.
One example is found in the policing of social margins and controlling
everyday life as a means of forcing difference back into clear distinctions
between identity and non-identity, social being and nothingness. However, this
European Journal of Social Theory 9(2)2 3 2
undermines the efficacy of boundaries by restricting their vitality as active inter-
faces. It forces a creative socio-geographical dynamic back into a more positively
differentiated grid more strongly marked by judgements of presence and absence
(of civility, of whiteness, of wealth, of normality). Reflexive modernity is a diag-
nosis of a situation in which bodies and populations no longer take their identity
from their location within fixed borders so that citizenship and belonging are a
norm. Yet it also risks being the academic filigree on a normative project to legit-
imate new norms of boundary drawing and new border practices. This amounts
to an effort to reground the institutional system of the state ­ a modernist
construct. This should be critiqued as a proposal that the virtuality of objects
and social arenas be more subtly and microscopically governed, potentially fore-
closing areas of freedom and creativity.
Conclusion
The thesis of reflexive modernization entails a general shift in not just the legit-
imacy of borders but their semiotics.. Divisions may remain intact while
changing in significance, efficacy or relevance. Beck and Latour conceive of
boundaries as changing socially-constructed objects but devote less attention to
the precise registers or forms of division which that may be shifting. The
nature­society division is highlighted above as an example of the crisis of
boundary-making. The argument here has been that borders and boundaries
have complex ontologies and spatio-temporal form as interfaces. They are not
just edges.
Change may be promoted by increased dynamism permitted by the unbind-
ing of a spatialization of being as proximity and presence, but needs to be under-
stood as happening at different rates and in different registers. Rather than
collapsing borders or boundaries down into one or two registers such as their
concrete manifestation and the abstracted ideologies which announce them, all
aspects need to be acknowledged. As translation machines or interfacing tech-
nologies, boundaries between nature and society may not be shifting as much as
promoting and discouraging traffic in new ways.
Pushing the argument further, the reflexive modernity thesis appears as a new
jurisprudence which aspires to resolve courses of action in the face of unclear
categories, whether Beck's boundary struggles, or Latour's hybrid natural-social
`dishevelled quasi-objects'. These are surely neither concrete bodies nor socially
constructed meanings or abstractions but virtual objects. I call this a jurispru-
dence because more than exegesis or interpretation is necessary ­ the virtual
potentials of borders and boundaries must be performatively actualized in
concrete operations on material bodies.
The context is greater internal dynamism and more complex, dynamic and
diverse relations across borders and boundaries. In such situations, the statistical
methods of social science and policy making are inadequate tools for governance
­ to wit, the failures of police agencies across the OECD to account for and assess
Shields Boundary-Thinking in Theories of the Present 2 3 3
the changing powers of a multitude of variables and insurgent forces either
actually through contacts on-the-ground or probabilistically. Borders must be
rethought, not only beyond materialist-idealist dualisms that privilege only the
concrete and abstract but beyond the statistical risk assessment of actual possi-
bilities. To warrant the label `reflexive' requires also rethinking our appreciation
of the internal life of liminal, equivocal border zones: these spaces are the
crucibles in which virtual aspects of the border are actualized as outcomes and
effects ­ the actual operation of the border or boundary.
Given early twenty-first-century geopolitics and moralities, the vitality of
boundaries and borders cannot be in doubt. Yet I have warned that their vigour
derives in part from an increased internal dynamism that also promotes virtual,
hybrid forms and emergent meanings. More than empirical or probabilistic
methods will be necessary to define the internal mobilities and inter-active
objects of boundaries. The virtuality of borders and boundaries suggests that new
questions be asked and asked in new ways. But, if they lack the theoretical appar-
atus, are the social sciences methodologically equipped to research the virtual?
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to Anne Galloway, who brought the significance of conceits to my
attention, and to Yun-Csang Ghimn whose research on semiosis inspired some insights
and whose bibliographic assistance helped finalize this article. Chris Rumford made some
valuable suggestions concerning structure for which I am grateful.
Notes
1 For an overview of the state of research on boundaries from the political to the psycho-
logical, see Van Houtum et al. (2005).
2 In a nutshell, reflexive modernization refers to reflexive processes of social change
which act back on the established norms of modern society to `re-modernize' it. It
posits a normative and homeostatic modernity which is now changing or being
`updated' or `re-modernized' in ways which utilize the same processes that produced
`first modernity' but are now reflexively leading to a qualitatively distinct `second
modernity.' Concerning boundary discourses in modernization programmes of the
mid-twentieth century, see Flitner and Heins (2002). I refer to the programmatic
proposal and discussions for research on reflexive modernity which are now a few years
old but remain germane to current social science (for critiques see Murdock, 2004).
Although I closely compare and contrast the positions and English-language reception
of Beck and Latour, this should not be mistaken as an article about these two indi-
viduals' research. I will not deal with the translations and elisions of border/boundary
in terms such as Rand and Grenze, for example (see Beck et al., 2001). Rather, they
are figures for two related positions, which they set up in contrast to a hypostatized
theory of postmodernity and hypotheses of a postmodern condition. All three
arguments turn on putative changes in institutionalized regimes of spatiality and
specifically on boundary-making.
European Journal of Social Theory 9(2)2 3 4
3 Strictly speaking, the term virtual denotes an intangible object ­ `real but not actual,
ideal but not abstract' in Proust's memorable turn-of-phrase. Only since the mid-
1980s has it been widely used to refer to computer-mediated communication and
digitally-generated simulations. The recent usage revives the older meaning of virtual,
with its roots in the Latin virtu, but it obscures the wider importance and history of
these phenomena, even as digital technologies returned the virtual to the agenda after
being repressed by dualisms contrasting the concrete and the abstract see Shields
(2003).
4 The discovery and mathematical exploration of the probable are one of the most signifi-
cant contributions of the social sciences to civilization, but all the while the Virtual was
not only neglected but mis-recognized as Abstract. The result: understandings of the
Actual improved, but understanding of the Possible was bifurcated and knowledge of
the Ideal and of the Real (these are not opposition) were both impoverished.
5 Rather than dignifying this as a critique, this rhetorical performance is banal. It reflects
the strategies we have at hand for communicating vitality of our world and tactics by
which we attempt to not only understand but to `get ahead' of the flow of events ­
on anticipatory power, see O'Connor (2003) and Anderson (2002).
6 Deleuze refers to this as a `skeleton-space' because so much significant seems to be
missing, like a skeleton whose organs and flesh are missing. There are
missing intermediaries, heterogeneous elements which jump from one to the other,
or which interconnect directly. It is no longer an ambient space [of flows] but a
vectorial space, a vector-space, with temporal distances. It is no longer the encom-
passing stroke of a great contour, but the broken stroke of a line of the universe,
across the holes. The vector is the sign of such a line. It is the genetic sign of the
new action-image, whilst the index was the sign of its composition. (Deleuze, 1989:
168; see also Shields, 1997)
7 Presence and absence are no longer so strictly spatialized and actualized as near and
far, and thus no longer fit so perfectly (if they ever did) with inside and outside.
Instead, forms of the virtual reappear, such that virtual presence is now not only tech-
nically feasible but culturally acceptable, prompting political debates over virtual
membership and partial inclusion.
8 This entanglement dates back to the Latinization of Parmenides and of Aristotle's
discussions of presence (parousia ­ e.g. Aristotle, 1970 IV: §222a). As Derrida notes,
in the Latin presentia it becomes `impossible to distinguish rigorously between
presence as Anwesenheit (presence here) and presence as Gegenwärtigkeit (presence
now)' (1970: 90­1). Truth becomes a form of presence. Heidegger's analyses mark
perhaps the high point of this metaphysical tradition.
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 Rob Shields is Henry Marshall Tory Chair and Professor of Sociology/Art and
Design at the University of Alberta. He is editor of Space and Culture (www.
spaceandculture.org) and has published widely on urban and other social spaces,
most recently: Building Tomorrow (co-edited with André Manseau, 2005). Address:
University of Alberta, 5­21 Tory Building, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6J 0P3. 
Shields Boundary-Thinking in Theories of the Present 2 3 7