Recent Graduations

Yuriko Yamanouchi

Searching for Aboriginal Community in South Western Sydney

Supervisor: Dr. Gaynor Macdonald
PhD, 2008
Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney

Abstract

This thesis explores how Aboriginal people in the suburbs of south western Sydney develop a sense of being part of a community. Unlike many Aboriginal social contexts, in this urban area they are not connected through kinship ties or place of origin. They do not live in close proximity but are spread through various suburbs. They do not have most of the characteristics thought to be the basis of community. To understand why they nevertheless refer to themselves as a community, the thesis will develops a model which links the notion of social networks to interaction with organisations dealing with Aboriginal issues. People in urban areas are connected and their social networks activated by their participation in activities run by these organisations. These activities create event-places, which are to community what individuals are to an ego-centric network. Interaction in event-places are the nodes of the experience of community. Through their experience at one or more of these event-place nodes, people are recognised as Aboriginal and come to gain their sense of community – an experience which does not rely on community as shared or bounded.

The sense of community in urban Sydney is entangled with the complicated processes of identity negotiation. In addition to people born and raised in all-Aboriginal communities of rural Australia, many of those living in south western Sydney have only recently identified as Aboriginal people. The thesis seeks a way in which to conceptualise the dynamic nature of both community and identity, and in doing so to contribute in two ways. First, it develops an approach which can transcend the tendency in urban anthropology to rely on models originally developed for the study of small-scale communities assumed to be relatively homogeneous, and thus opens up a means through which urban anthropology can better incorporate the ethnography of people who live lives that only intersect from time to time. It uses an ethnographic approach to reposition discussion on the possibility of community in a modern complex society. It then applies this model to the exploration of how an Aboriginal commonality emerges in an urban context which is no longer based on place of origin or kinship.

Erin B. Taylor

Abajo el Puente: Place and the Politics of Progress in Santo Domingo

Supervisor: Professor Diane Austin-Broos
PhD, 2009
Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney


Abstract

In recent years there has been substantial research on Dominican migration and transnationalism, yet these studies have largely overlooked both the manner in which globalisation generates new localisations, and the continuing salience of the state as a mediator between the global and the local. Based upon fieldwork in La Ciénaga, a poor barrio of Santo Domingo, this thesis argues that emplacement, rather than transnationalism, is paradigmatic of the experiences of poor Dominicans and provides their primary source of unity. Race, ethnicity, and social class have long been promoted as structuring the experiences of Caribbean people, but my analysis suggests that these operate more as sources of differentiation than of identification in Santo Domingo’s barrios. I examine the strategies and practices residents deploy to create value in place, overcome their localisation, and achieve progreso (progress) within the bounds of the state. These include transforming the material environment and its symbolic meanings, elaborating certain social hierarchies and contesting others, and developing locality-based political organisations.

the Caribbean, it has been usual for studies of cultural oppositions or dualisms to effectively constitute a different genre to studies of class, race, and globalization. My ethnography indicates that this distinction is false. Residents of La Ciénaga deploy cultural oppositions and notion of difference to define a place in the social hierarchies of the barrio and city, while simultaneously recognising the moral value and identical structural position of those around them. Popular politics in Santo Domingo are characterised by this tension between social stratification and the elaboration of cultural value in place. This thesis develops a political and social economy of value that addresses both the bases of stratification in the sphere of production and the ways in which projects of self-creation, such as through consumption, allow for the elaboration of cultural value and meaning for individuals and social groups. Given the importance of locality to popular politics, I argue that this integrated approach is necessary to any assessment of the transformative potential of community organisations and other political movements in Santo Domingo.

Sophorntavy Vorng

Status City: Consumption, Identity, and Middle Class Culture in Contemporary Bangkok

Supervisor: Dr Richard Basham
PhD, 2009
Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney

Abstract

I explore social stratification and consumption practices in Bangkok, focusing on shopping malls, markets, and hypermarkets. Critiquing the idea that shopping malls, in particular, work to create a globalised, homogenous, consumer identity, I suggest that they are meaningful in ways that are uniquely local. The socio-spatial configuration of consumption sites in the capital city highlights Thai class relations and the elaborate system of social stratification. Specific attention is directed towards delineating the socially, politically, and economically influential urban middle class, a group that has notoriously eluded comprehensive definition thus far. I further argue that understandings of class are limited unless contextualised within the Thai status hierarchy, and considered in relation to the significance of power, presentation and prestige in Thai social life.