Boundary work as a concept and practice in human geography

In the field of geography, boundaries can be conceived in many ways. Physical geographers may think of boundaries as lines on maps describing where geological characteristics or ecozones start, finish, or converge. Political geographers might work with boundaries as concrete spatial divides between political regions. Human geographers acknowledge and work with such boundaries but also extend the concept of boundaries to include interfaces such as those that define and shape culture, society, and epistemology. Regardless of the boundary that is being considered, a common characteristic of boundaries is that they are areas of transition and contestation, and to human geographers, boundaries are often areas of interest where research can enhance our understandings of society. They are spaces where conflict and collaboration can be better understood through different types of research. In some cases, such as with participatory action research, geographers (as well as researchers from other fields such as resource management) can work with community partners to explore the relevance and permeability of boundaries. This special issue in the Journal of Cultural Geography is on “boundary work”, an approach in research that has been gaining in prominence¹ since it was first introduced by Star and Greisemer in 1989 in the context of Science and Technology Studies focused on scientific knowledge translation at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at Berkeley University. Boundary work has evolved significantly since it was first introduced, and this special issue illustrates the diversity of applications and new directions in which the concept has been taken in the past over 30 years.

Like many concepts in human geography, boundary work has been defined differently by researchers and the concept has been applied and adapted to diverse research contexts. A general and commonly used definition for boundary work was put forward by MacMynowski (2007, 3) as “those acts and structures that create, maintain, and break down boundaries”. This definition opens boundary work to practice beyond research and clarifies that boundaries can be transcended, but sometimes boundaries may be desirable and there are often good reasons for boundaries to be maintained (e.g. when sensitive knowledge needs to be protected). Boundary work, according to MacMynowski's definition can also be thought of in terms of everyday human action. Individuals and communities often very intentionally “create, maintain, and break down boundaries” through different types of action. Political movements provide great examples of boundary work and often produce diverse “boundary objects” such as murals, political cartoons, or protest songs. The creation and/or identification of boundary objects are central to boundary work and are what Cash and Moser describe as objects that are “valued on both sides of the boundary and provid[ing] a site for cooperation, debate, evaluation, review and accountability” (2000, 115). Boundary objects in human geography research can come in a variety of forms that reflect the plurality of topics, cultures, and places being explored.

Boundary objects can be identified or created. Landscapes and even species have been identified as holding value across groups and have been used as boundary objects. Boundary objects that are created through the research process are also diverse and manifest as items that are precisely directed to communicate values and aspirations across socio-political boundaries. An example would be a set of policy recommendations created by through engaging an equity seeking group in reflecting on their current situation and visioning what their future could look like if certain structural barriers were removed. Other boundary objects are intentionally determined or created to be emotionally compelling towards enhancing certain kinds of engagement and communication across boundaries. Arts-based boundary objects often fit into this type and are generally meant to generate interest, enhance dialogue and highlight perspectives, values and aspirations on one or multiple sides of the boundaries being investigated and acted upon (Zurba and Berkes 2014; Zurba and Friesen 2014; Rathwell and Armitage 2016). Boundary objects may also be intangible and fluid, such as a traditional knowledge system or non-physical artforms that are transmitted orally and meant to evolve over time (e.g. song, poetry, or choreography). One could also consider shared feelings to be powerful boundary objects. Feelings of grief and anxiety over local or global catastrophes, such as climate change or COVID-19, could create important sites for relating, exploring commonalities among desperate parties, and transcending barriers to collaboration (Woodgate, Zurba, and Tennent 2017).

In this special issue, my colleagues and I present a pilot study for collaboratively produced boundary education as an advancement of the boundary work concept in academia and relate boundary education to decolonization and Indigenization in university programming (Zurba et al. 2021). This approach is grounded in a conceptual framework and process for conducting boundary work and creating boundary objects with Indigenous communities that I developed and published with colleagues in 2019 (Zurba et al. 2019). Our 2019 framework detailed eight essential stages for research communities of practice (RCoPs) to consider when embarking on collaborative boundary work and the co-production of boundary objects. These stages are: (i) identifying the boundary; (ii) initiating the boundary work; (iii) establishing ethical principles [for the research collaboration]; (iv) deciding on the boundary object; (v) establishing ownership and custodianship of the boundary object; (vi) creation of the boundary object; (vii) interpretation of the boundary object; and (viii) planning and activation of the boundary crossing (Zurba et al. 2019). For my paper with colleagues in this special issue, the framework was applied and extended to collaboration with Elder George Land who is also a Medicine Man and land-based educator from Wabaseemoong Independent Nations. By modifying the framework and exploring outcomes of collaborative boundary education we were able to build insights relating to what is needed to diminish structural injustices, build equity, and enhance relationships among partners from universities and communities.

Continuing with extending boundary work into new realms in this special issue, Maclean and colleagues (2021) explore the potential for biosecurity risks in Australia to act as a boundary concept towards bridging knowledge and enhancing partnerships among partners from Indigenous and western science organizations. Biosecurity risk as a boundary concept resulted in the illumination of different worldviews and knowledge systems, co-learning, and improved knowledge sharing in cross-cultural (Indigenous/non-Indigenous) settings. Indigenous participants were able to engage rationally, emotionally and spiritually to the current degradation and future biosecurity risks to their traditional territories and assess formal governance structures according to their knowledge systems and values. Maclean and colleagues discuss how boundary concepts can be powerful for innovation, building partnerships, and advancing reconciliation through supporting local priorities and capacities, such as Indigenous Ranger Units. Ambiguity and uncertainty, compassion and humor, and trust all played important roles in the boundary work.

Bishop and colleagues also explore cross-cultural knowledge sharing and production in this special issue in the context of mobilizing Inuit knowledge into scientific approaches through the creation of participatory maps. In this case, the maps act as boundary objects which could create permeable knowledge boundaries and resolving some of the ontological tensions arising in the cross-cultural boundary work settings. The transposing of Inuit knowledge onto oceanographic maps satisfied needs of knowledge systems on both sides of the boundary, but also came with certain limitations, namely that some forms of knowledge could not be rendered spatially. Importantly, Bishop and colleagues state that the boundary object was not only found in the maps but also the co-creation and interpretive processes, which created opportunities for non-spatial knowledge to be shared and for special cultural considerations to enter curation of Inuit knowledge through the spatial map-based representations. In this sense, Bishop and colleagues emphasize the complementarity of the tangible product and the intangible process, and how the appropriate acknowledgement of each can lead to unique and culturally relevant applications, such a generating conversation across ontological divides.

Shaw and colleagues contribute to this special issue and literature on geospatial boundary objects by using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as boundary objects capable overcoming obstacles (representation, engagement, participation) to translating Indigenous Knowledge across (IK) across knowledge boundaries. They develop a conceptual framework to advance how boundary objects can also enhance critical thinking and develop insights about the inclusion of IK in natural resource management and planning processes. To develop their framework, they use Houde's (2007) Six Faces of knowledge, which includes factual observations, management systems, past and current uses, ethics and values, cultural identity and cosmology. Shaw and colleagues relate the Six Faces to boundary object principles in the context of Nisbet Provincial Forest land use planning. An important insight emerging from their article is that GIS boundary objects needed to be both flexible and concrete to be successful at crossing knowledge boundaries. Flexibility was especially important when working with cultural forms of knowledge, especially those that are traditionally orally transmitted. They concluded by stating that western cartographic approaches are suitable formats to be used in decision making, they may not be universally suitable for representing IK.

Larsen's article in this special issue also speaks to the importance of process in the creation of a boundary object. In his article, Larsen tells the story of a children's book co-produced by the Cheslatta Carrier Nation in British Columbia and two undergraduate students at the University of Missouri (MU) along with their faculty mentor and his son at the 2018 Cheslatta Camp Out. The Camp Out is a time when the Cheslatta Nation returns to Cheslatta Lake, the homeland from which they were forcibly evacuated in 1952. By sharing this story, he aims to fill a gap around the agency of boundary objects. Larsen reflects grounds this in (2021) statement on objects “contain[ing] its own world, emanat[ing] its own medium or level, such that relation is not external to objects but internal to objects” (emphasis in original). The use of storytelling in this article (re)positions the ontology of the research being shared and enables Larsen to navigate his lived experience of the boundary between western knowledge and Indigenous place. Through the storytelling, Larsen engages with relational thinking. Using relational thinking brings awareness to the non-singularity of the children's book as a boundary object and expands the very boundaries of the object to include the relationships that the production of the boundary inspires. Larsen puts forward the notion of “boundary-gift” as being something that enables learning to “receive the gift of place and work with it”.

The final article in this special issue, by Wheeler and Leudee, focuses on the potential of place to become a boundary object. They do so by examining the curation of film produced by the Manitoba Oil Museum, which is led by people working in oil extraction in south-western corner of Manitoba, Canada. The paper explores the co-constituence and lack of separation between the social and material and investigates the sociomaterial place as a boundary object. Critical Place Inquiry (CPI) plays a central role as a framework that supports contestation of dominant (i.e. settler-colonial) narratives and is not connected to one methodological underpinning. The paper aims to make a theoretical intervention and decolonize the concept of place in research. In their attempt to decolonize place as a boundary object, they also center relationships within and to place and untether places from ownership and other colonial constructs.

The articles in this special issue express the practicality and insightfulness of the boundary work and boundary object concepts for a variety of place-based research contexts. They also provide extensions of the concept into different practical spaces, such as post-secondary education. Such extensions demonstrate an ability to respond to two important undercurrents in academia. Many universities around the globe are continuously aiming to foster multi-/inter-/trans-disciplinary research that responds to real-world problems and are striving to enhance and improve community engagement in research and educational programming. In Canada, the latter is part of universities’ responses to the Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada that call to eliminate educational and employment gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students (TRC 2012). Boundary work provides a pragmatic starting point for addressing the epistemological, social and political boundaries that hinder societal actions that are a part of processes such as reconciliation, decolonization, equity-building, or simply finding some common ground through coming closer to shared understandings facilitated by boundary objects.

In my personal research program, boundary work has become a central concept for community-engagement in research. The flexibility, practicality, and ability to open pathways for meaningful collaboration within and between academics and communities, I believe, makes the concept one that will continue to gain prominence and connect to a plurality of forms of research and action-oriented projects. However, one very simple yet important challenge remains in using boundary work with communities – the very term itself. As an academic who has worked with boundary work for over a decade and a half now, the term feels familiar and highly appropriate. For community partners, the term feels awkward and even alienating at times. For this reason, I often find myself not using the terminology, even though I know well in my mind that I am engaging in boundary work. The challenge is with the word “boundary”. Community partners have often expressed that the word boundary makes them feel as though the research is hindering or creating divides. This makes presents a challenging and a direction for community-engaged researcher. Future partnered research should explore how language in research can affect the research process and how the boundary work process itself can become even more comfortable and familiar for the people who are meant to benefit from the research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Melanie Zurba

Melanie Zurba (she/her) is an Assistant Professor at the School for Resource and Environmental Studies and the College of Sustainability at Dalhousie University. Her work focuses on environmental governance projects that are developed and implemented in collaboration with communities. She is also the Chair for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Theme for Governance, Equity and Rights (TGER).

Notes

1 When searching for “boundary work” on a variety of databases, citations have been steadily increasing over the past 10 years.