Social boundaries separate us fromthem. Explaining the formation, transformation, activation, and suppression of social boundaries presents knotty problems. It helps to distinguish two sets of mechanisms: (1) those that precipitate boundary change and (2) those that constitute boundary change. Properly speaking, only the constitutive mechanisms produce the effects of boundary change as such. Precipitants of boundary change include encounter, imposition, borrowing, conversation, and incentive shift. Constitutive mechanisms include inscription–erasure, activation–deactivation, site transfer, and relocation. Effects of boundary change include attack–defense sequences. (...) These mechanisms operate over a wide range of social phenomena. Key Words: social boundary • mechanisms. (shrink)

In extreme situations such as war, genocide or refugee crises, anthropologists, who are usually closer to afflicted people than other scholars, face the crucial questions of the utility and responsibility of anthropology. However, anthropologists in particular are susceptible to the way of reasoning that concludes that anthropology as a science (or even as a technique or art) does not offer any answers to these questions. Some become engaged trying to help one way or the other, yet not as anthropologists, since (...) they hold that as an anthropologist one is powerless to help …. (shrink)