27 Symbolic Policing: Boundary Work and the Control of Construal

Series: Construal and the Collective – Part 27

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Introduction: The Power to Define

Every collective draws boundaries around what counts as intelligible, credible, or legitimate. These are not just social boundaries—they are symbolic boundaries, and they are actively maintained.

This post explores the policing of construal: the symbolic operations through which collectives regulate what can be meant, by whom, and in what terms.

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1. Boundary Work in Symbolic Fields

"Boundary work" refers to symbolic labour that:

• Defines a legitimate frame of construal

• Enforces that frame through social and institutional means

• Excludes construals that do not align with the dominant symbolic order

Examples include:

• Academic gatekeeping of what counts as "theory"

• Religious definitions of orthodoxy and heresy

• Legal construals of land that exclude ancestral ones

Such work is often naturalised—made to seem as though the boundary is not symbolic, but inherent.

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2. Policing as Reflexive Constraint

Symbolic policing is not merely coercive; it is also constitutive. It shapes:

• Who can speak and be heard

• What can be imagined or questioned

• Which meanings appear commonsensical or nonsensical

In doing so, it constrains the reflexive horizon of a collective.

But this is not always deliberate. Policing often emerges as protective habit—a reflex to maintain coherence.

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3. Techniques of Symbolic Control

Common forms of symbolic policing include:

• Semantic narrowing: reducing polysemy to enforce a singular construal

• Disqualification: labelling alternatives as irrational, emotional, or primitive

• Deferral: postponing engagement indefinitely through procedural or technical means

• Projection: attributing incoherence or hostility to marginal construals

• Erasure: pretending alternatives were never meant at all

Each technique performs a symbolic cut, redrawing the field to secure dominant meanings.

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4. The Aesthetics of Legitimacy

Symbolic legitimacy often relies on aesthetic cues:

• Styles of language (e.g. jargon, precision, neutrality)

• Forms of embodiment (e.g. calmness, confidence, restraint)

• Spatial and temporal positioning (e.g. who gets the podium, who speaks first)

Policing is therefore not only discursive, but affective and performative. It shapes how meaning feels.

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5. Resistance and Rearticulation

To resist symbolic policing is not to exit the symbolic field, but to:

• Rearticulate what can be meant and how

• Expose the operations of boundary work

• Reclaim marginalised construals as legitimate acts of meaning

This is dangerous work. But it is also how symbolic evolution happens.

Resistance is not noise—it is the next phase of collective reflexivity.

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Conclusion: Symbolic Work as Political Work

Policing construal is not just about meaning. It is about power—who holds it, who enacts it, and who becomes subject to it.

To understand symbolic work as political work is to recognise that meaning is not innocent. Every construal is positioned. Every collective draws lines.

But the more reflexive a collective becomes, the more it can see its own boundary work—and choose whether to reinforce it or transform it.

Next, we explore symbolic violence: when construal becomes a tool of domination, dispossession, and epistemic erasure.