Gating communities: an introduction

This issue of Home Cultures presents papers originally delivered at the "Symbols of Division and Markers of [Dis]order: Gated Communities as Fortified Spaces in a Neo-colonial World" panel at the American Anthropological Association Meetings in Chicago in 2003. The five articles take as their subjects communities that reflect the many varieties of fortified social space in the Americas, including a U.S. military officers' retirement community and emergent gated communities in large urban centers. The authors of these articles address the specific ways in which the built environment reflects and reinforces ideologies of segregation and fear, illuminating the way in which such barriers literally and metaphorically manifest ideologies of the powerful, solidify social hierarchies, and control the movement of people inside and outside of the gates