Theories of the present have converged on changes in spatialization or the spatial order of societies. These social science proclamations aim at setting major research agendas. Intriguingly, there is a focus on borders and boundaries in programmatic statements on reflexive modernity or remodernization (RM) by Bruno Latour and Ulrich Beck. They argue that boundary-marking and border-making become simply more fraught or obvious.
It is insufficient: aren’t borders stronger? What about them is more contested? Where is the difficulty? There is a historically-changing, dynamic quality which needs to be developed in such analyses. I believe what is more difficult about borders has to do with their intangible aspects, or ‘virtuality’. We can propose a dynamic, four-part ontology to elucidate the functioning of borders as interfaces and liminal zones with their own internal semiotics and emergent meanings and effects.
As a thing, a border is made up of elements which are concrete, virtual, abstract and probablistic:
This is the first basis of extending the critique of RM. But moreover, a more diverse set of methods than might be supposed is required to research boundary phenomena, which social sciences are ill-equipped to undertake because of their concentration on probabilities rather and abstractions to the exclusion of virtualities…