The Second Fieldwork: Borders and Freedom in Marc Augé
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| The horizon marks humanity’s first frontier. Augé |
“It is not about abolishing or sacralizing borders, but about learning to inhabit them”. Rodo
In The Ethnologist and the Tourist (see link below), Marc Augé addresses a series of distinctions that quietly shape his reflection on the contemporary world: travel and displacement, observation and consumption, proximity and distance. Among these, the notion of the border occupies a crucial place, even if it does not always appear as a central concept. In a context marked by globalization, accelerated mobility, and the tightening of geopolitical boundaries, Augé proposes an interpretation that distances itself both from the discourse of security and from the fantasy of a world without borders.
As it emerges in his lecture, the border is not reduced to a device of exclusion or a line of closure. Rather, it functions as a relational figure that allows us to think about contact, translation, and coexistence. From this perspective, Augé develops a notion of freedom that moves away from absolute autonomy and is embedded within a network of situated relationships. This article explores this dual articulation: border and freedom as anthropological conditions for human encounter.
Border: Limit, Transit, and Relation
Augé emphasizes that human history cannot be narrated solely as a succession of separations. Before becoming insurmountable walls, borders have functioned as passage zones, intermediate spaces where identities, meanings, and positions are negotiated. In this framework, to claim that a border is merely an obstacle is to overlook its structuring function.
When Augé states that a border is not a wall that forbids, but a threshold that invites passage, he shifts the problem from the notion of limit to that of relationship. The threshold does not erase distance; it makes it habitable. It marks a minimal difference without which recognition of the other would be impossible. Encounter presupposes separation, just as relationship requires a form of exteriority.
Language provides a privileged example of this logic. Learning a foreign language does not mean erasing the symbolic distance that constitutes the other as distinct. Translation does not eliminate the linguistic border; it traverses it. At this crossing, the limit becomes a condition for the possibility of connection. Learning the language of another involves acknowledging that certain differences exist and cannot be fully absorbed.
From this perspective, the border is not a relic of an archaic world destined to vanish, but a minimal structure of social life. Anthropology, as conceived by Augé, does not aspire to a homogeneous space devoid of differences, but to a world in which limits are recognized and negotiated rather than turned into instruments of absolute exclusion.
The Ethnologist at the Border
The figure of the ethnologist occupies a strategic place in this reflection. Far from presenting themselves as a sovereign observer, the anthropologist appears as someone situated at a permanent border: between cultures, languages, codes, and expectations. Their presence in the field is never neutral or transparent; it is marked by an exteriority that cannot be fully dissolved.
This liminal position requires the ethnologist to justify their presence, negotiate access, and accept that their perspective does not entirely coincide with that of those they observe. In this case, the border is not a methodological obstacle but a condition for knowledge. Without distance, there is no observation; without limit, there is no perspective.
Augé emphasizes that anthropological work involves embracing this tension without attempting to resolve it through the illusion of fusion. The ethnologist does not become the other, nor does the other become fully accessible. The relationship is sustained precisely through this controlled asymmetry, in an intermediate space where meaning is constructed without abolishing difference.
Freedom as a Situated Space
The notion of freedom that emerges from this conception of the border moves away both from the idea of absolute autonomy and from total determinism. Augé defines it as “the space left for individual initiative within a system of relationships.” This formulation relocates freedom from the realm of abstraction to that of concrete situations.
Initiative is only conceivable within a framework that delineates it without nullifying it. There is no action without structure, nor room for maneuver outside of all relations. Freedom does not consist in the absence of limits, but in the capacity to move within them, interpret them, and partially displace them.
In this sense, the border does not oppose freedom; it makes it possible. Where everything would be entirely open, no initiative would have meaning. Similarly, an absolute closure would nullify any scope for action. Freedom plays out within that interval, in that regulated space where difference does not become an insurmountable barrier.
The ethnologist once again embodies this logic. Their freedom does not lie in ignoring the limits of the field, but in learning to navigate them: recognizing implicit rules, accepting resistance, adjusting position. Anthropological initiative is always situated, never sovereign.
Writing, Repetition, and Displacement
This conception of border and freedom can be extended to anthropological writing itself. Each text is part of a series, engages in dialogue with others, revisits previously formulated concepts, and displaces them. Writing does not mean starting from scratch; it means intervening in a preexisting structured space.
The author’s freedom is not measured by the ability to break completely with what came before, but by the skill to reorganize points of fixation of meaning. Each new text proposes a distinct articulation, opens a perspective, and modifies the field without closing it off. Repetition does not imply stagnation but variation.
From this angle, the border between texts is not a sharp cut, but a transitional zone. Writing becomes a practice of crossing, where meaning is redefined without nullifying what preceded it. Here too, the limit enables movement.
Conclusion: Inhabiting the Border
Marc Augé’s reflection invites us to conceive the border not as an anomaly of the contemporary world, but as a constitutive structure of human relation. Far from opposing freedom, the limit sustains, guides, and shapes it. There is no initiative without framework, nor encounter without distance.
In an era marked by the temptation of walls and the illusion of unrestricted openness, this perspective offers a demanding alternative. It is not about abolishing or sacralizing borders, but about learning to inhabit them: recognizing their relational function, accepting their ambivalence, and resisting their transformation into instruments of absolute exclusion.
Anthropology, as Augé conceives it, situates itself at this threshold. Where limits do not close off, they open space to think, to move, and to relate to the other without denying or absorbing them.
References
Augé, M. (1997). Pour une anthropologie des mondes contemporains. Paris: Aubier.
Augé, M. (2008). El viaje imposible: el turismo y sus imágenes. Barcelona: Gedisa.
El etnólogo y el turista - Marc Augé https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2quj5zf6wk&t=523s
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