A central question in class analysis is how lifestyle differences constitute symbolic boundaries between groups located in different class positions. In this article, we investigate how political position-taking can function as what we have dubbed green boundaries – discursive categorisations and evaluations of others’ attitudes and practices concerning the environment and environmental protection. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with representatives of the Norwegian middle class who self-identify as committed to environmental protection. It shows the evaluative criteria interlocutors draw on to construct «us» as environmentally conscious and «them» as people with negative attitudes towards environmental protection. However, the interlocutors have moral concerns about expressing distance in social encounters. They thus report performing a form of impression management by moderating or downplaying symbolic boundaries, often motivated by not wanting to harm the environmental cause to which they are committed. The article also contributes important theoretical-methodological insights to the scholarly debate about the way in which tensions between egalitarian sentiments and symbolic demarcations in Norwegian society should be understood.

Parents of schoolchildren are increasingly expected to engage in social events that promote a good social climate in the classroom. This form of involvement takes place in a social context and is therefore visible and measurable, making it subject to comparisons and symbolic boundaries among the parents. Taking as its theoretical point of departure Bourdieu’s concepts of fields and capital, this article investigates from a parent’s perspective, how parents’ participation in these social events can be understood in symbolic terms; what actions are recognized as valuable by the school and by the parents. Based on fieldwork carried out at two schools in the Copenhagen area, the article describes the kinds of social involvement the school encourages and appreciates, and how the parents themselves get involved, and perceive the involvement of other parents. These comparisons work as symbolic boundaries, and I discuss how these boundaries contribute to the reproduction of social inequality, because they hide the fact that a high degree of involvement in social events rests on, primarily, cultural capital.

This article is an ethnographic study of professional boundaries in the workplace, often referred to as workplace jurisdiction. Specifically, it focuses on the diagnostic boundaries drawn between physicians and nurses in a Norwegian emergency department. Here, nurses were responsible for prioritising patients in the frontline of the department. Their work was demarcated from that of physicians in that they were required both to use a formal system for priority setting and prohibited from diagnosing patients. However, the analysis shows that these boundaries were ambiguous and, furthermore, that this ambiguity, in combination with other factors, gave nurses flexibility to prioritise patients in a more discretionary, «diagnostic» manner. Because their use of discretion helped nurses prioritise patients more accurately, it was also met with a great degree of informal acceptance from management. The article contributes to research on workplace jurisdiction both by demonstrating how workplace boundaries can be decoupled from jurisdictional boundaries on a macro level, and by giving a detailed analysis of the ambiguity, flexibility and multiplicity of intra-organisational boundaries.

This article shows how users of the online video-game The League of Legends (LoL) describe and negotiate symbolic boundaries and identity constructions. The analytic framework is based on theories of symbolic boundaries and the analytic concepts used are cultural distinctions, stereotypes and policing mechanisms. The study is based on semi-structured interviews and observations of five young adults, both genders represented, in addition to studies of the game and observations of gaming. The analyses show that game preferences, gaming styles and skills are constructed as a hierarchy, which defines what is perceived as an authentic gamer. This distinction works together with negative language and harassment in the process of excluding the feminine and female gamers, while masculine positions are allowed greater variation. Symbolic boundaries in the virtual game feed into the social boundaries that shape the young players’ actions in the game and sense of self.