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Rejecting Suburban Identity on the Fringes of Melbourne
Author(s) -
Newton Janice
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
the australian journal of anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.245
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1757-6547
pISSN - 1035-8811
DOI - 10.1111/j.1835-9310.1999.tb00028.x
Subject(s) - identity (music) , sociology , transition (genetics) , spirituality , work (physics) , history , aesthetics , media studies , art , engineering , medicine , mechanical engineering , biochemistry , chemistry , alternative medicine , pathology , gene
This paper concerns a community, Valinda, on the suburban fringe of Melbourne. It considers the processes by which the community has acted to reject the perceived attributes of suburbanisation. Optimistic aims of progress in the 1940s and 1950s have been replaced by more nostalgic points of view in the 1970s and 1980s, a transition I document in a number of different areas. The paper concludes with an examination of key agents in the anti‐suburban discourse and the genealogy of that discourse. Valinda's search for an ecological spirituality, I suggest, particularly resonates with David Tacey's popular Jungian work Edge of the Sacred , published in 1995.