The Locals: Identity, Place and Belonging in Australia and Beyond (Cultural Identity Studies)

This book presents the first comprehensive survey of being a local, in particular in Australia. As in much of the colonised, English-speaking world, in Australia the paradox is that the locals are not indigenous peoples but migrants with a specific ethnic heritage who became localised in time to label other migrants as the newcomers and outsiders. Claims of belonging as 'local' provide a crucial insight into power relations that extend beyond the local level to questions of national identity and the ethics of belonging in a postcolonial, multicultural nation. How have Anglo-Celtic Australians installed themselves as locals? Where do Indigenous Australians stand in this local politics of identity? What are the ethical considerations for how we connect our identities to places while also relating to others in a time of intensifying migration? This book explores these questions via a multidisciplinary cultural studies approach and a mixed methodology that blends a critical language study of being local with auto-ethnographical accounts by the author, himself a 'local'. Contents - vii ......Page 9 List of figures - ix......Page 11 List of tables - xi......Page 13 Acknowledgements - xiii......Page 15 Introduction - 1......Page 17 Chapter 1 - Within and beyond the clearing - 13......Page 29 Chapter 2 - Local geographic - 31......Page 47 Chapter 3 - The locals: A critical review of literature - 69......Page 85 Chapter 4 - The local word - 107......Page 123 Chapter 5 - Becoming local: White on white - 159......Page 175 Chapter 6 - White ‘autochthony’ - 175......Page 191 Chapter 7 - Towards an ethics of location - 205......Page 221 Select Bibliography - 221......Page 237 Index - 239......Page 255