Cities of Whiteness E-Book

Wendy S. Shaw

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Serie: Antipode Book Series
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 396

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

This groundbreaking book brings the study of whiteness and postcolonial perspectives to bear on debates about urban change.

• A thought-provoking contribution to debates about urban change, race and cosmopolitan urbanism
• Brings the study of whiteness to the discipline of geography, questioning the notion of white ethnicity
• Engages with Indigenous peoples' experiences of whiteness – past and present, and with theoretical postcolonial perspectives
• Uses Sydney as an example of a 'city of whiteness', considering trends such as Sydney's 'SoHo Syndrome' and the 'Harlemisation' of the Aboriginal community

Leseprobe

Contents

List of Figures

List of Boxes

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Fields of Whiteness in Inner Sydney

Theoretical Trajectories

Methodological Trajectories

A Personal Account of a Field of Whiteness

Organization of Cities of Whiteness

Notes

1 Encountering Cities of Whiteness

Journeying to Inner Sydney

Cities as Cultural Constructions ∼ Gentrification and Urbanism

The Birth of Whiteness Scholarship

Cities of Neo-colonial Whiteness

Notes

2 (Post)colonial Sydney

From Dangerous to Endangered City

Securing Whiteness in the Paradoxical City

Conclusions

Notes

3 'The Good Old Days'

Heritage Dreaming

Performing Sydney Heritage

Activating Heritage

Architectures of Escape 1: Into the Past

Conclusions

Notes

4 Cosmopolitan Metropolitanism (Or The Indifferent City)

Introduction

Manhattan Dreaming (in Sydney Australia)

Architectures of Escape 2: Sydney’s SoHo Syndrome

Conclusions

Notes

5 Cities of Whiteness

Geographies of Urban Whiteness

Studying Cities

Racialized Urbanism

The End of (Cities of) Whiteness?

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Antipode Book Series

General Editor: Noel Castree, Professor of Geography, University of Manchester, UK Like its parent journal, the Antipode Book series reflects distinctive new developments in radical geography. It publishes books in a variety of formats – from reference books to works of broad explication to titles that develop and extend the scholarly research base – but the commitment is always the same: to contribute to the praxis of a new and more just society.

Published

Cities of Whiteness

Wendy S. Shaw

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Edited by Kim England and Kevin Ward

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Edited by Luis L. M. Aguiar and Andrew Herod

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Edited by Noel Castree and Derek Gregory

Working the Spaces of Neoliberalism: Activism, Professionalisation and Incorporation

Edited by Nina Laurie and Liz Bondi

Threads of Labour: Garment Industry Supply Chains from the Workers’ Perspective

Edited by Angela Hale and Jane Wills

Life’s Work: Geographies of Social Reproduction

Edited by Katharyne Mitchell, Sallie A. Marston and Cindi Katz

Redundant Masculinities? Employment Change and White Working Class Youth

Linda McDowell

Spaces of Neoliberalism

Edited by Neil Brenner and Nik Theodore

Space, Place and the New Labour Internationalism

Edited by Peter Waterman and Jane Wills

Forthcoming

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Rob Lambert, Edward Webster and Andries Bezuidenhout

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Joel Wainwright

Privatization: Property and the Remaking of Nature–Society Relations

Edited by Becky Mansfield

© 2007 by Wendy S. Shaw

BLACKWELL PUBLISHING

350 Main Street, Maiden, MA 02148-5020, USA

9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK

550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia

The right of Wendy S. Shaw to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks, or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

First published 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd

1 2007

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Shaw, Wendy S.

Cities of whiteness/Wendy S. Shaw.

p. cm. – (Antipode book series)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4051-2912-1 (pbk.: alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-4051-2913-8 (hardcover: alk. paper) 1. Urban geography–Australia. 2. Urbanization–Australia. 3. Whites–Race identity–Australia. 4. Racism–Australia. 5. Aboriginal Australians–Attitudes. 6. Australia–Race relations. I. Title.

GF801.S53 2007 307.760994–dc22

2007018628

For my parents, Mary Shaw (1927–2006)

and Alexander George Shaw (1914–2004).

List of Figures

1.1Map of Sydney’s Inner City and The Block1.2Map to show The Block and its Local Area2.1Terrace or Row Houses in Sydney3.1Restored Workers’ Cottages in Sydney3.2‘Just Another Day in Redfern’ Petition3.3Are You Nervous? Leaflet3.4REDAlert Graffiti Campaign3.5Nitty Gritty Workshop Leaflet4.1The Dakota4.2Imagining New York, New York

List of Boxes

1.1 A short history of The Block 1.2 Sydney settlement in the twentieth century 1.3 New locality studies 1.4 Through a postcolonial lens 2.1 University expansion 2.2 ‘Drug headlines’ 2.3 Policing The Block 2.4 The ‘Usual’ confrontations 2.5 Other stories about The Block 2.6 Survival or Demise of The Block 3.1 Wilson Bros. Factory Site 4.1 Ghetto-Referenced headlines 4.2 Manhattan dreaming in Sydney 5.1 Postcolonial colonizations

Acknowledgements

I completed this book during a tumultuous time of professional and personal upheaval. Along with the usual thanks for bringing a book to fruition, very special thanks must go to those who supported me generally, and in writing. I am grateful to my colleagues, in particular Kevin Dunn, Jes Sammut, Chris Gibson (now at Wollongong), Ian Burnley, and the body of postgraduate geography students, who all fought to save geography (and my job) at UNSW. Thanks also to colleagues in the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, in particular the Head of School, Paul Adam, for providing us ‘human’ geographers with a scholarly home. Special thanks to my friend Ry Mitchell for reading and commenting on the drafts, and for insisting that I strive to write for ‘a wider audience’ than the academy, and to Natascha Klocker for closely reading and editing sections of the text. Thank you to Noel Castree (series editor) and Alistair Bonnett for supporting the project, and for provided carefully considered input toward producing a more coherent text. Thanks also to the Antipode Special Series team at Blackwell, Angela Cohen, Jacqueline Scott and Rebecca DuPlessis, Stephen Erdal for the cover design and to Janey Fisher for the final copy-editing and indexing. I am also grateful to the variety of folk who gave their time and their views during interviews – the people of Redfern and Darlington.

I am indebted to friends and family members for their support over the past few years. Enriching conversations, which have provided perspective, are too many and varied to mention with accuracy but thanks to all who have discussed, listened, provided input and feedback, and argued with me. Very special thanks to Phillip Shaw who has buoyed me up throughout.

Writing and completing this book has also marked the loss of both of my parents. My father died in April 2004, and in December 2006, I suffered the loss of my mother. In a small gesture to two inspirational human beings, I dedicate this book to Alexander George and Mary Shaw.

Introduction

‘This is about family!’ cried the baby-strapped member of yet another newly formed resident action group. This collection of concerned citizens had grabbed the attention of other local residents, the mass media, and politicians. They had all gathered at a balloon and pram-filled public hall in inner Sydney, Australia, in June 2005. Most in the crowd were there to vent their objections to yet another proposal by the New South Wales State government to establish a healthcare facility in Sydney’s Redfern area. Their problem was that the proposed facility would target what appeared to be an ever-escalating drug problem. The public outcry focused on the highly charged mix of illicit drugs (heroin mostly) and children (or babies), and a perception that the facility would simply exacerbate the problem by attracting more drug users, and therefore increase the danger to their children. The walls of the hall were plastered with large imposing posters that stated: ‘No Needles Next To Children’. Newspaper clippings, also of poster size, screamed the headlines ‘It’s not Mr Whippy [ice-cream van], it’s the Needle Van!’ and ‘The last thing Redfern Needs’ (Sydney Morning Herald, June 2005).

Redfern is an inner Sydney neighbourhood that is infamous because it houses a small Aboriginal community. Eveleigh Street, Aboriginal Redfern or, as it is most commonly dubbed, The Block, was once just another part of the stigmatized, undesirable and run-down inner city. This inner city is now in the grip of urban renewal – of brightening, and whitening. The advent of gentrification, the refurbishment of Victorian housing stock and the redevelopment of its former industrial sites into ‘apartments’, has heralded a new era of revanchist mobilizations against a maligned, and heavily racialized remnant of the formerly impoverished part of the city. The consequent tensions, of a poor Indigenous settlement that suffers from a host of poverty-related social issues, set against a relatively new cohort of mostly non-Aboriginal home-buyers (and their offspring), who aspire to create a highly gentrified space in the increasingly expensive city of Sydney, seem irrevocable. The extent of the social ills of Indigenous dispossession contrasts starkly against urban renewal, and the associated desires to ‘improve’ urban spaces, and to ensure that they become ‘safer’ as well as more ‘habitable’. At the aforementioned public meeting, there was no mention of who was to blame for the area’s heroin problem but it is widely understood that The Block holds that dubious reputation, and has done so for the last few decades. As tensions mount over entitlement to urban space the pressure builds, and this was surely felt by the residents of the struggling Aboriginal community that day in Redfern Town Hall.