1) Cultural boundaries persist even as people move across them. Stable social relations are often maintained across boundaries based on dichotomized ethnic statuses. 2) Flexibility in culture exists in a "border space" where traditional cultural values are reinterpreted and challenged by individual experimentation and outside influences. 3) This flexible border zone is controlled by subjective feelings and allows people to see how they are both included in and distinct from a culture. It forms a space of differences, exclusion, and inclusion.

1. Flexibility in culture Extracts from
What is flexibility and it’s nuances? Ethnic Groups and Boundaries
Is it a adaption, a pulsation? Is it a permanent, irreversible change? by Fredrik Barth
“First, it is clear that boundaries persist despite a flow
I was searching for a ‘cultural contour’ or ‘border space’ where the of personnel across them. In other words, categorical ethnic distinctions
traditional cultural image is challenged. do not depend on an absence of mobility, contact and information,
My hypothesis is that this space keeps the culture with both vibrant but do entail social processes of exclusion and incorporation whereby discrete
and protective mechanisms. I think the elements within this space are categories are maintained despite changing participation and membership in the
easily changable and adaptable to reactions of outer or inner changes. course of individual life histories. Secondly, one finds that stable, persisting, and
One might say that this zone ‘fill up’ the in between space, between often vitally important social relations are maintained across such boundaries, and
the indside and the outside. It is indeed also a creative sphere. It forms are frequently based precisely on the dichotomized ethnic statuses. In other words,
tradtional cultural values as more accesible and visible to the outside, ethnic distinctions do not depend on an absence of social interaction and
as reinterpretations of traditional cultural values. This space also car- acceptance, but are quite to the contrary often the very foundations on which
ries a potent field of feelings. embracing social systems are built. Interaction in such a social system does not lead
The flexibility and the protecting maintenance of the contour are to its liquidation through change and acculturation; cultural differences can persist
controlled within the register of subjective feelings and opinions of despite inter-ethnic contact and interdependence.”
the Sami people.
In this border zone one also get aware of what distinguishes me from “The critical focus of investigation from this point of view becomes the ethnic
you. You can place yourself inside of what you recognize something boundary that defines the group, not the cultural stuff that it encloses. The
else from outside you. In this way it is a zone of differences, exclusion boundaries to which we must give our attention are of course social boundaries,
and inclusion. though they may have territorial counterparts. If a group maintains its identity when
members interact with others, this entails criteria for determining membership and
I have in this diagram distinguished that ways of signalling membership and exclusion.”
1) individual reinterpretations or experimentings are pushing this
contour
2) provocations from ‘outside’ impact the ‘body of the culture’. These “We can best analyse the interconnection by looking at the agents of change: what
provocations tend to collect strong reactions from within the culture. strategies are open and attractive to them, and what are the organizational
implications of different choices on their part?”
To look upon the cultural definition as a whole one could acknowl-
edge it as a more ‘stable cultural definition’ that individs can acknowl- “(i) they may attempt to pass and become
edge themselve a part of/inside of, and that has sort of a consensus. incorporated in the pre-established industrial society and cultural group; (ü) they
At the same time, within this ‘more fixed image’ the individual in- may accept a `minority’ status, accommodate to and seek to reduce their minority
terpretations of the shareholders of the culture constantly challenges disabilities by encapsulating all cultural differentiae in sectors of non-articulation,....
this view, and those are the ones that define themselves inside of or (iii) they may choose to emphasize ethnic identity, using it to
outside of. This view is challenged by influences in each of the share- develop new positions and patterns to organize activities in those sectors formerly
holder’s lives. not found in their society, or inadequately developed for the new purposes.”