Thesis Submitted to Fulfil Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
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Territorial stigma and territorial struggles in Sydney’s Waterloo estate Alistair Sisson School of Geosciences, Faculty of Science, University of Sydney A thesis submitted to fulfil requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Year of award: 2020 Word count: 89,354 This is to certify that to the best of my knowledge, the content of this thesis is my own work. This thesis has not been submitted for any degree or other purposes. I certify that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work and that all the assistance received in preparing this thesis and sources have been acknowledged. Alistair Sisson 2 Abstract This dissertation is about territorial stigmatisation and public housing in Sydney, Australia. It draws on discourse analysis and 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork, much of which was spent working with a resident action group who were contesting the redevelopment of the Waterloo estate, in the city’s inner-south. While public housing in Australia has always been a marginal form of tenure and has been further marginalised and stigmatised in the era of neoliberalisation, the stigmatisation of Waterloo is especially intense. The Waterloo estate is the largest in the country and is located in a gentrifying neighbourhood. The stigma of public housing is also conjugated with the stigma of the Aboriginal community: throughout the 20th century, the neighbourhood of Redfern-Waterloo was home to a large and politically active community of Aboriginal people from across NSW and Australia, particularly during the self-determination movement of the 1960s and 70s. Through interviews and ethnography with tenants and community workers, interviews with public servants and other housing professionals, and discourse analysis of a range of media and policy texts over the 10 years to 2019, I unpack (i) how the territorial stigmatisation of public housing is produced; (ii) how it was deployed and articulated through the redevelopment of the Waterloo estate; and (iii) how tenants contested and resisted the redevelopment, and the stigmatisation that undergirded it, through what I call territorial struggles. I fuse concepts of territory from political geography with the prevailing urban sociological/geographical approach to territorial stigmatisation to argue for the centrality of territory to understanding the production and contestation of territorial stigmatisation. Territory is both the space controlled from above through politico-institutional practices and representations and space that is appropriated physically and symbolically from below through everyday and organised means. Thus, as I explicate through my case study, territorial stigma is not thrust upon its subjects without some form of resistance: inhabitants of stigmatised territories like Redfern-Waterloo engage in territorial struggles over both symbolic classification and physical control. 3 Acknowledgments There are many people whom I wish to thank. Firstly, I wish to acknowledge the Gadigal and Wangal of the Eora Nation, on whose land I live and work as an uninvited guest. I acknowledge Elders past, present and emerging. I acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded. I acknowledge the long and ongoing struggles for justice and self-determination, and the many struggles in which Redfern-Waterloo – the place that is central to this dissertation – was a crucial part. I am deeply grateful to the people who participated in my research, particularly the tenants, community workers and activists in Redfern-Waterloo and elsewhere who shared their time, knowledge, and experiences in what was for many a very difficult time. I am still inspired by their warmth, generosity and resolve, and I hope I have done justice to their words and stories through this dissertation and besides. I’d particularly like to thank Catherine, Karyn, Aelwyn, Anna, Anna, and Jerome*, as well as Genevieve, Joel and Clare, who did not participate formally but were important in shaping the project nonetheless. I also wish to thank my supervisors Kurt Iveson and Dallas Rogers. It goes without saying that were it not for their guidance and mentorship this would be a far inferior work (if a work at all). More importantly, without them both, the past four years would have been a far less enjoyable and rewarding experience. Thanks also to the School of Geosciences and the University of Sydney for their institutional support as well as the Research Training Program scholarship which allowed me to pursue this project. I am also grateful for the support, advice, and friendship of many colleagues at the University of Sydney and elsewhere: Jenna Condie, Paul Maginn, Naama Blatman-Thomas, Craig Lyons, Sophie Webber, Marilu Melo, Laura Wynne, John Connell, Leah Emmanuel, Phil McManus, Nur Adilah, Sopheak Chann, Josh Bray, Tegan Hall, Mark Vicol, and Billy Tusker. Special thanks to Pratichi Chatterjee, with whom I worked closely throughout my PhD. Our collaboration and friendship have been vital to the intellectual, ethical and political dimensions of this project from beginning to end. I look forward to them continuing long into the future. Some material from this dissertation was presented at the 2019 IAG conference in Hobart, the 2018 IAG-NZGS conference in Auckland, the 2018 RGS-IBG conference in Cardiff, the 2018 Housing Theory Symposium in Wollongong, and the 2017 ISA RC21 conference in Leeds. Thank you to the organisers and to the participants who offered constructive feedback. 4 Finally, to my partner Patricia. Without her support and encouragement in all aspects of my life I wouldn’t have made it to this point intact. This dissertation is as much a product of her emotional labour as it is my own writing, thinking and research. 5 Table of contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................................ 3 Acknowledgments....................................................................................................................................... 4 Table of contents ........................................................................................................................................ 6 List of tables and figures ............................................................................................................................ 8 List of acronyms ........................................................................................................................................ 10 Chapter 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 11 Chapter 2 Interrogating territorial stigmatisation: production, contestation, and the significance of territory .................................................................................................................................................. 24 2.1 Spatial concentrations of stigma: estates, ghettos, camps and beyond ......................... 26 2.2 What does stigma do? Misrepresentation, obfuscation and legitimation ..................... 32 2.3 Whither territory? .................................................................................................................. 39 2.4 Territorial struggles: resisting and contesting territorial stigmatisation ........................ 44 2.5 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 53 Chapter 3 Methodology and methods ................................................................................................... 55 3.1 Investigating stigmatised territories: ethnography and ethics ......................................... 56 3.2 On territorial stigma, discourse and symbolic power ...................................................... 60 3.3 Methods and approach ......................................................................................................... 62 3.4 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 68 Chapter 4 Settler colonial foundations and neoliberal intensifications: a historical context for the territorial stigmatisation of public housing in Australia ...................................................................... 70 4.1 Housing assistance in the settler colony ............................................................................ 71 4.2 The neoliberalisation of housing assistance ...................................................................... 83 4.3 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 102 Chapter 5 Territorial stigmatisation and discourse on public housing ........................................... 104 5.1 The stigma of subsidy......................................................................................................... 106 5.2 The deserving and the undeserving .................................................................................. 113 5.3 Territorialising stigma in the estate................................................................................... 119 5.4 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 127 Chapter 6 Territorial stigma and the redevelopment of the Waterloo estate ................................