Walling, Boundaries and Liminality

Going beyond conventional definitions of ‘the long term’, this book locates the social practice of walling and encirclement in the broadest context of human history, integrating insights from archaeology and anthropology. It locates the essential dynamics of the practice, showing how walling produces a paranoid vision of the world in which whatever falls outside the wall becomes demonised and threatening, and stands in need of ever-renewed attempts to exterminate it. A study of the isolating practice of walling, Walling, Boundaries and Liminality explores the links between the kind of dangerous expansion that walling represents, and its accompanying loss of certainty and inner conviction.

Agnes Horvath is a political theorist and sociologist. She was an affiliate visiting scholar at Cambridge University, UK, 2011 to 2014, and is a Visiting Research Fellow at University College Cork, Ireland. She is a founding editor of the academic journal International Political Anthropology.

Marius Ion Ben?a is a sociologist, journalist, and playwright. He received his PhD from University College Cork, Ireland, and teaches Broadcasting Journalism at the Babe?-Bolyai University in Cluj, Romania.

Joan Davison is Professor of Political Science and a Cornell Distinguished Faculty Member at Rollins College, USA. She has a PhD from the University of Notre Dame and specialises in international relations and comparative politics.