Understanding Port Melbourne: Accounting For, and Interrupting, Social Order in an Australian Suburb

Understanding Port Melbourne: Accounting for, and interrupting, social order in an Australian suburb Tracey Michelle Pahor http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8276-3751 Doctor of Philosophy February 2016 The School of Social and Political Sciences The University of Melbourne Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree Abstract Understanding may be a process rather than an end point, but any account of a place or people relies on the imposition of order. In this thesis, I use methods and concepts drawn from the work of Jacques Rancière to configure an ethnographic account of Port Melbourne, a bayside inner-suburb of Melbourne, Australia. That account, presented in three parts, demonstrates how processes through which social order is experienced, imposed and interrupted in the places people live can be studied ethnographically. In Part I, I analyse the material and social geographies described in accounts people offer of Port Melbourne, making use of the suburb’s distinctive built history to discuss what was protected in the past development and more recent planning decisions for some of Port Melbourne’s housing estates. In exploring how some people in Port Melbourne map a social geography onto the material geography, I mobilise Rancière’s conceptualisation of the imposed nature of order and argue for an understanding of this as always premised on social order. In Part II, stories and characters that I, and others, came to learn about in Port Melbourne are analysed to reveal such order to only ever be imposed, not inherent. When new arrivals, through learning the stories of Port Melbourne, enacted membership of the community of those who ‘know’ that place, they were simultaneously demonstrating the capacity to exceed the identity they had been accorded in the prevailing order. Yet social identifications, such as that of being an ‘older person’, still matter in Port Melbourne. Rather than being grounded in set criteria against which capacity is universally evaluated, however, I found this identity being co-opted into a broader binary classification of effective subjects/objects of care that operates in Port Melbourne. Classifications of people, then, are not descriptions of difference so much as the imposition of inequality. In Part III, I turn to issues of policy and politics. Institutions also position particular categories of people as objects of care. Through policies, such as those of the City of Port Phillip on footpath use, such processes of ordering had material consequences. In Port Melbourne, these consequences were not necessarily experienced as negative. Instead, they often met the expectation held by people for institutions to be fair in their dealings with all. It was possible for people to redraw the order against which assessments of fairness are made, but this was dependent on interrupting the existing social order. In the example I offer from Port Melbourne, this was achieved through some residents being recognised as speaking sense as the community. My thesis thus demonstrates that Rancière’s work offers an insightful approach to understanding the suburb of Port Melbourne. It shows, too, that a Rancièrian approach can usefully contribute to the critical tradition in anthropology of playing with strangeness and familiarity to render visible elements of human experience that are more often taken for granted. This clears the path for uncomfortable policy questions to be raised regarding who does and who should have a say in what happens in our suburbs. Dedication In memory of Kay Roy Handy John Francis Burgess Ryszarda Mambort Edward Howard Gibson Steven Walters and dedicated to all of you for whom these names can be the indexes to much larger stories (i.e. everybody). iii Declaration The thesis comprises only my original work towards the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used. The thesis is fewer than the maximum word limit in length, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices. Tracey Michelle Pahor 2nd February 2016 iv Preface Not so long ago, I went for a run and realised I could no longer see people’s faces without my glasses. With my Port Melbourne fieldwork being my introduction to gyms and group exercise in general, I was particularly fascinated by the curious phenomenon I had named ‘gym face’ — the uncanny ability people had at the gym to be eye-to-eye with another person, without a hint of acknowledgement on their face. I thought it was a learnt skill particular to that setting, and I worked hard over many months to master it myself. The moment I realised I could not see people’s faces threw into question the sense I had made as a younger fieldworker who was yet to need glasses. Now I understand how lucky I was to be able to see so much in the world in the first place. Port Melbourne has changed since my fieldwork. Groups have grown or folded. Sites have been bulldozed and reconstructed. Land to the north of my field site has been rezoned for housing. As this land is larger than Melbourne’s central business district, there are rapid changes anticipated in the area. I am surprised when I return to Port Melbourne not so much at the change, but that enough has stayed the same for me to still find my way around and (thanks to my glasses) greet a familiar face. There has also been much change in what has been included and excluded from this dissertation over the years. There may be some echoes of earlier blog posts (see inportmelbourne.wordpress.com) and conference papers (‘Flirting with social order: Why a rejection-adverse approach to offering a hand does not foreclose politics’ at Australian Anthropological Society Conference 2015, ‘People are not stupid even though my paper is ridiculous’ at Reason Plus Enjoyment 2 2015; ‘“Vintage Port”: Making locals through the social creation of place’ at Community Identity Displacement Research Network Conference 2012; ‘Ordering dinners in Port Melbourne: What does not eating together illustrate about social mix?’ at The Australian Sociological Association Conference 2012; ‘Negotiating space and breaking the rules’ with John Francis Burgess at University of Melbourne Ethnography Forum 2012; ‘Gaining an ethnographic understanding of an urban place: The rhyme and reason of success and failure’ at RC33 Eighth International Conference on Social Science Methodology 2012; ‘Cars as a vehicle for expressing concerns about social change in v Port Melbourne’ at Housing Theory Symposium 2012; ‘The political impotence of ‘cracking the shits’: Evaluating affect in civic spaces’ at Sociology of Emotions and Affect Symposium 2012). Those of you who know things about and people from Port Melbourne at the time of my fieldwork might struggle to recognise this place in my work. If you so desire, I look forward to reading your account in the future. vi Acknowledgements The list of people I would like to acknowledge far exceeds the space that would be sensible to devote to such a task. Important are those who told me I was not making sense (particularly Catherine Phan and John Burgess), those who told me I could make sense (particularly Monica Minnegal), and those who did a better job than me of understanding my work (particularly Bryonny Goodwin-Hawkins, Laura McLauchlan and Mythily Meher). I have an intellectual debt to University of Melbourne’s Ethnography Forum and the Shut up and Read writing group. Individuals involved, who also brought much merriment to this processes, include Anastasia Chung, Bryonny Goodwin-Hawkins, Claire Kennedy, Gabrielle Desilets, John Burgess, John Cox, Julia Saint-Mire, Khyrstyna Chushak, Kim Neylon, Melinda Heron, [the other] Melinda Herron, Michelle Hannah, Morgan Harrington, Mythily Meher, Nadiya Chushak, Natalie Swann, Robyn Natasha, Sandrine Lefort, Sarah Francis, and Thomas McNamara. The same is the case for my honours cohort: Jen Tan, Maddy Fox, Alex Dickson, Paulina Alexandra, Dave Williams, Joseph Ferguson, Heather Anderson, Kate England, Giri Ramasubramanian, Gemma Baker and Nur Abrotonite. Formative in my understanding of anthropology have been Peter D. Dwyer, Richard Sutcliffe, E. Douglas Lewis and Andrew Dawson. Thank you to my supervisors who not only kindly came on board relatively late in the project, but gave me the benefit of their astounding capacity to engage intellectually with my work: Adrian Little and Monica Minnegal. Monica’s widely acknowledged personal and administrative support for students, along with her impressive capacity to comprehend ideas and express them clearly in words, made getting this close to completion possible and even pleasurable. I want to acknowledge the insight, patience, kindness and companionship extended to me by so many people in Port Melbourne. Naming fieldwork interlocutors can be a murky question of actual and institutional ethics, but I do not think it will surprise anybody that I owe a great deal of gratitude to Janet Bolitho, Pat Grainger and Stacey Hanley. vii People from across my life — clients, colleagues, high school friends, Ingress players, Kingston Public patrons and staff, neighbours, and family — have helped by both tolerating my divided attention and calling me back into the shared symbolic order. I have not forgotten the long conversations about the work of Jacques Rancière shared with Michael Sellings. I would certainly not have the insights, practical skills or confidence I do today if it was not for Jill Sealey. Lina Pahor and Walter Pahor, my parents, have been indulgently generous and

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